It's not a given that it will happen, but you can get out of the valley. It's just that the effect is more disturbing as you get close (but not outside) the upper limit of the valley.
I think future World Wars are definitely possible with a few caveats:
1. There can be nuclear combatants but the fighting is primarily on the soil of non-nuclear countries.
2. Because of #1, the war more like World War 1 than in World War 2: some sort of peace treaty that doesn't stipulate unconditional surrender. There is no regime change nor post-war occupation of nuclear powers.
3. There is an unprecedently high level of communication between the nuclear combatants as both sides try to reassure the other that they aren't going to unilaterally launch nukes (there may be nuclear brinksmanship in public though as propaganda tool. Backchannels will be all about nuclear deescalation)
I suppose a regime change can come from within, as a consequence of a lost war and economic hardships. I suppose Russia has a fair chance to experience just that, once it loses.
Ugly business is industrialization. I suppose it's seems to be the most noble application of technology to avoid the techno-horrors of the past in the future. But there are always newer, greater techno-horrors emergent. In fact, one might say that techno-horror is a fundamental emergent property of the universe.
Any technology (physical, social, philosophical) we create has the ability to wreak havoc on equilibrium (natural, societal, or otherwise). We are fundamentally unequipped to restore equilibrium because that process takes the unwilling participation of all agents. So I think all technologies have a way of creating an existential threat, obviously some more than others.
My own internal sci-fi version of the future involves us creating replicating but non-intelligent technology that outlasts us.
Another free sci-fi premise while I’m on a roll is consciousness becoming such a good interpreter of reality (that sees everything so clearly) such that it evaporates. The map has become the territory.
Interesting ideas. Would you expand on your last point? We're you meaning an artificial consciousness becomes so good at interpreting the things around it that the consciousness itself evaporates?
Sure. So consciousness is maybe very loosely the ability for an entity to model and interact with its surroundings. On the low end we have a rock. It is the product of its surroundings and therefore you could say it has some kind of model, but no interaction. Then you have a worm, it can do some basic tasks and has a kind of plan. Humans are further along. But at some point if an entity has such a rich model of its surroundings and can control it so effectively, the line between it and its surroundings starts to blur. It’s able to effect more nuanced change at a greater and greater distance. It is less and less surprised by new events. And I guess in this way I imagine that it starts to merge with its surroundings.
Thinking about entropy, a single drop of dye in a glass is very high entropy, but the drop is very confined to a particular place. This is like the rock. Then as it swirls around the complexity increases, even though entropy is decreasing. This high complexity is like us. But as the drop of dye becomes totally intermixed the entropy is at its lowest, but the dye is evenly mixed through the entire solution. It stops making sense to ask “where is the dye?” because it is everywhere.
I love this. I always wonder why I have almost no interest in novels now although I spent my entire youth buried in them. Occasionally I feel guilty. But I think life became the novel?
I binge read Doestoeski at the end of highschool and he remains a major influence on me to this day.
The reason is that, encountering life's most challenging experiences (which are always human in their origin), these novels are like a preset pattern of meditation by which one can find the ground.
It's a well meaning article. My first thought is that it's generated by AI in the service of some moderate yet far reaching religious org.
"Finding our intrinsic values is no trivial task, but something that forces us to stare into the core of our humanity."
I think it misses a critical topical conclusion which is that "intrinsic values" means little or nothing to many, and many folks are fairly incapable of competently doing the kind of contemplative meditating required to arrive at some set of rules like that, and so they look to others.
And here's the crux of the missed point:
To really resonate with our intrinsic values, we need to drop the myth that a rational economic system exists, and build one with the value of present and future human life explicitly built in.
We already have a massive framework for understanding individual intrinsic values in terms of the sanctity of human life and that's the great mystery religions that have birth to our modern age. What's needed now is a planetary ethos where intrinsic human value is put in the proper context of the ecological reality of the biological and geological systems and processes that sustain us. Building that culture requires myth and magic, but also is an intensely rational project. There is really no way around it, and any philosophical text intended to shift the cultural landscape is incomplete without it.
We're in the Yosemite park bear era of AI: there is considerable overlap between the capabilities of the most intelligent AI and the most stupid humans
what's so sacrosanct about life? life is common, many argue too common. (see the overpopulation hysteria.)
I'd argue there are better things that we should hold dear, like empathy and cooperation, the resilience of getting up after devastating events, our ability to cooperate in even the most abstract frameworks.
>I'd argue there are better things that we should hold dear, like empathy and cooperation, the resilience of getting up after devastating events, our ability to cooperate in even the most abstract frameworks.
You can't hold those things dear without first believing in the sanctity of human life. If human life has no value above the value of human endeavor neither do empathy, cooperation or resilience, human life becomes just another resource to exploit and consume.
I disagree religion is the only possible framework through which this can be expressed, however. It's entirely possible to hold human life sacrosanct in its own liminal terms without invoking the supernatural.
You're not negating properly, you've got to balance both sides of the equation.
If we discount life altogether, there is perhaps a greater hidden element of value which goes unseen.
Instead, if we acknowledge that all life is meaningless, that we're on some infinitesimal little body floating around a star whose life is slowly ticking away set to vaporize everything ever known - if we really acknowledge that desperation, certainly the closest to universal value we might have, then we can engage with reality and work together. Real egalitarianism, and trans-species as well, because at least within the scope of our limited knowledge we're the only advanced life known, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the only planet with confirmed life.
The sanctity of life shit is just a means to defer the ultimate end that we're all fraught to look into, our inevitable deaths. It's a write off. Chris's life was sacrosanct, he died delivering Pizza Hut for $8.50/h, he died painfully and left behind a mangled corpse. We make a big, superficial guffaw about it. That's fucking tragic! We, collectively, should all be fucking horrified that someone was relegated to that, horrified that someone could possibly die like that - but it's sacred by default - that's bullshit though, we let Chris fall into a swirling oblivion that carried him to a rock bottom and put him in a position that made it really likely he'd die doing the shameful shit of delivering a pizza.
Sanctity of life is what allows us to justify the egregious, not the lack thereof.
Life cannot exist without excrement, but relatively few people think highly of poop. What is your point? If you go far enough with your reasoning you have to basically value the entire universe and everything in it to be allowed to say you value any particular thing. It dilutes the meaning of valuing something to the point where the word/concept itself becomes meaningless.
I disagree. You cannot hold this principle "in theory" without understanding the specifics of this case.
It makes no sense to value (human) empathy and cooperation without valuing (human) life. You can argue about first principles, excrement and the universe, but this will still be true.
Without valuing human life, all sorts of things start to unravel in our society. Of course, just life is not enough! Empathy, cooperation, kindness, curiosity, etc: all things that make the human experience worthy.
I don't disagree. It is valuable because of all those things, and more. It is not valuable at all costs. But human life is the sine qua non (for now, without going into scifi territory).
I would argue that someone in permanent vegetative state is not much of a "human", mind you.
