
Dude, you broke the future (transcript) - nod
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-you-broke-the-future.html?
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nod
Corporations are optimization processes. Advertising is an optimization
process. Social networks are. Smartphone addiction. Political polarization.
Television, mobile games, and most forms of entertainment.

This prevalence, and the fact that it's not _EVIL_ doing it but just amoral
goal-directed processes, seems to me to be the key to recognizing, fighting
back, and fixing society.

We have to figure out some way to fight for our human values, against these
optimization processes. I don't think Stross has (or claims to have) a strong
answer there... any ideas?

~~~
ythn
It's almost like we need community-level organizations for people to
participate in weekly dedicated to helping people become more selfless,
humble, and generally more loving humans so that their actions can then be an
influence to everyone around them for feedback effect. Fix society at the
community level, and higher levels will follow.

~~~
nod
Haha... (at the cleverness of your description of church/religion)

Secular church is definitely one approach, one option to try to fight fire
with fire. I've seen compelling analysis tying the increase in intense
political tribalization to filling the void left by the general decline in
societal religiosity.

Every cause wants to be a cult. (To quote, I think, eyudkowsky)

~~~
lostlogin
> I've seen compelling analysis

Have you any idea where you saw this? It doesn't sound right to me, as voter
numbers are generally stable to falling the elections I pay attention to,
while religion declines. I'm also not convinced that politics is more
tribalised (perhaps it is in the US?) but have not read about this either.

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nod
Meta note: I'm submitting this again, and don't think of this as a dupe,
because I think the transcript/blog form is much more engaging than a video
(and by accounts on the video thread, the transcript may be the better form
here even if one likes videos).

Previous discussion on video:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16032643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16032643)

~~~
detaro
note that the authors own submission was marked as a dupe of the video:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16051337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16051337)

~~~
dang
Ok, since people seem determined to resubmit it we'll mark this one as the
dupe and revive that one.

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Rhapso
I think a way to look at it is this: The singularity happened, likely sometime
in the 90s. It was, what any singularity is, the point where what came before
it is not useful to predict what came after.

It is no surprise that the event defined by our inability to predict past it
did not work out in the way we imagined.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
By that definition there would be MANY singularities throughout history.
Pretty much anything that caused a paradigm shift would fit, for example "the
printing press", "the atom bomb", or "the internet".

It is definitely an interesting way of looking at things, but I think waters
down the "singular" part of the singularity too much.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, the printing press was a singularity in the availability of information.
The atom bomb was a singularity in defense and war. The Singularity is
supposed to be a singularity in _everything_ , or at least in enough of them
that we can become gods (immortal, all-knowing and close enough to all-
powerful).

And this discussion prompts a new thought: What are the military applications
of The Singularity? (Don't bother saying that we're all going to live in peace
and harmony after it happens. We won't.)

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
It isn't that we all live in peace and harmony, but any conflict would happen
so rapidly and conclusively that 99% of time after the Singularity would be
peace time.

~~~
lostmsu
Very much not necessary. You clearly haven't played the paperclips game.

