Some guy wrote a whole Substack post about why books aren’t worth reading. TL;DR, dude. Why do people write hundreds of words when their idea fits in a tweet?
Brian Eno: “This is why the idea of surrender is so interesting to me, because surrendering is what we are most frightened of doing. Everything is telling you to stay in control. One of the really bad things that’s happened in the art world recently is the idea that a piece of work is as valuable as the amount it can be talked about. So these little pieces of paper you see beside every artwork, in every gallery: if you watch people, they look quickly at the painting, then they read for a long time, then look quickly at the painting again. The analytical mind always wants to say, ‘OK, I understand this. It’s no problem, it’s no threat.’”
Albert Borgmann – perhaps the most important philosopher of technology in our time – has died. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for a re-read of his essential books, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry (1984) and Holding onto Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium (1999).
Erik Hoel: “So if someone regularly talks about IQs significantly above 140 like these were actual measurable and reliable numbers that have a real-world effect, know that they are talking about a fantasy. And if they make claims that various historical figures possessed such numbers, then they’re talking unscientific nonsense. If they’re bragging about themselves, well. . . it’s like someone talking about their astrological sign. Stratospheric IQs are about as real as leprechauns, unicorns, mermaids — they’re fun to tell tales about, but the evidence for them being a repeatedly measurable phenomenon that matters in any meaningful sense of the word is zip, zero, zilch.”
If you could really plug an AI’s intellectual knowledge into its motivational system, and get it to be motivated by doing things humans want and approve of, to the full extent of its knowledge of what those things are3 - then I think that would solve alignment. A superintelligence would understand ethics very well, so it would have very ethical behavior.
Setting aside the whole language of “motivation,” which I think wildly inappropriate in this context, I would ask Alexander a question: Are professors of ethics, who “understand ethics very well,” the most ethical people?
The idea that behaving ethically is a function or consequence of understanding is grossly misbegotten. Many sociopaths understand ethics very well; their knowledge of what is generally believed to be good behavior is essential to their powers of manipulation. There is no correlation between understanding ethics and living virtuously.
Spending some time with Ol’ Blue Eyes 🎵
WSJ: “In one study, Dr. Strayer and colleagues compared two groups of people strolling an arboretum. One group chatted on their phones. The others had their devices taken away. After the walk, the people who didn’t carry their phones were in a much more calm and rested state than the chatters, researchers found.” This has been my experience too. When I stopped taking my phone on my walks they became more restorative; and birds are more delightful to listen to than podcasts.
