Rhetorical

I predict that you will counter that this is actually just [perfectly reasonable explanation of why an AI would think this way for instrumental reasons], and that when we dissect the perfectly reasonable instrumental reasons why AI would think this way, it will be identical to the convergent instrumental goals that we were trying to convince you of all along.

Here are three propositions.

1. Metaphors are the fundamental abstraction layers in modern AI debates.

2. We are in a moment where you could plausibly argue that Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nick Land are the most influential policy intellectuals in the US conversation. Just look at the state of the two of them. This is not a good thing.

3. The collision of (1), (2), and recent events means that “machine gods” have now entered the discussion. This is a problem. Abstractions necessarily throw information away. The information that the “machine gods” metaphor/abstraction dumps is crucial to navigating the moment we are in. If public and policy debate stays centered around “machine gods: good or evil?” we are in for a bad time.

But I don’t need you to accept my speculative philosophical research program - only the drop-dead obvious fact that GPT-6 is better than GPT-2 in every way, and the same process that produced these improvements will soon be used to produce GPT-7, 8, and 9. Once we accept this empirical argument, what is left of the philosophical argument that intelligence is too slippery and conflationary to work with?

The more you create, the more powerful you become.

The more you consume, the more powerful others become.

When in Rome, leave.

But be the ordeal sharp or long or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley; we may show mercy—we shall ask for none.

Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it least.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”

‘You have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.’

But for you to make this move would reveal the two fundamental tenets of true atheism. One: There is no God. Two: I hate Him.

Garish in her dress, eccentric in her habits, chaste in her conduct, coarse in her speech, she succeeded in her lifetime in drawing upon herself the ridicule of the great and the applause of the learned.

Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

As far as I can tell from reading his blog, Nick Land is the guy in that terrifying border region where he is smart enough to figure out several important arcane principles about summoning demon gods, but not quite smart enough to figure out the most important such principle, which is NEVER DO THAT.

Humility is thinking of yourself less, not thinking less of yourself.

Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.

‘Yes. All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World.’

It was all dry: all withered: all spent.

It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil.

The question is whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble.

As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will remain exactly the same.