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Beautiful piece. I sometimes feel like technologists actually desire to remove the humanity from the world because it's messy and they don't understand it and

by eunoia 4mo ago

Beautiful piece. I sometimes feel like technologists actually desire to remove the humanity from the world because it's messy and they don't understand it and therefore they fear it.

renegade-otter 4mo ago
The whole idea of trans-humanism, so beloved by VCs and the AI cult, seems borderline psychopathic to me.
- simoncion 4mo ago
  > The whole idea of trans-humanism, so beloved by VCs and the AI cult, seems borderline psychopathic to me. Do you find HRT and gender-affirming surgeries to be borderline psychopathic? How about safe and effective cures for genetic, viral, and bacterial maladies that cripple or kill? The big things about transhumanism are to figure out how fix the things that damage and destroy us, and figure out how to let each person shape themselves to be the best version of them possible. If your best you is a baseline human, then, great! More power to you! I know that mine sure as fuck isn't. Will there be lots of trouble on the way towards teching up so that everyone can be the best version of themselves possible? Absolutely. Hell, we appear to be generally incapable of figuring out something so simple as how to provide good lives for everyone even if there's no useful work for them to do.
  - jubilanti 4mo ago
    > The big things about transhumanism are to figure out how fix the things that damage and destroy us, and figure out how to let each person shape themselves to be the best version of them possible. Come on, by that vague of a definition, Aristotle and Confucius were apparently transhumanists.
  - jimbokun 4mo ago
    This is all bullshit. Transhumanism when put into practice will be about changing our environment to take away everything that allows humans to thrive and be happy and fulfilled. It's about the destruction of families, communities, and human cultures built up over millennia with no serious thought put into what comes next and why it might or might not be better for human beings. > How about safe and effective cures for genetic, viral, and bacterial maladies that cripple or kill? This is not Transhumanism, the desire for these things far pre-date Transhumanism as a philosophy. > Hell, we appear to be generally incapable of figuring out something so simple as how to provide good lives for everyone even if there's no useful work for them to do. So maybe we work on that before diving head long into the post human future?
  - renegade-otter 4mo ago
    You mean the same people who want to destroy the fabric of civilization - norms, caring for one another, feeling shame - also care deeply about us? REALLY... It's the same as Elon Musk "worrying" about saving humans and then it turns out it's all racism after all. > Do you find HRT and gender-affirming surgeries to be borderline psychopathic? What. These current class of tech oligarch support MAGA, which came to power with this being the major culture war flashpoint. They didn't seem to mind.
- graemep 4mo ago
  To others too. Much of what they say (and some other trends and ideas) remind me of those of the literal demonic baddies in CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength. Especially the loss of the value of human beings and human connections.
ChrisMarshallNY 4mo ago
> "Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." -Max Frisch
pandoro 4mo ago
I feel the same too. And I believe there is much more complexity in the question "will this be good for society overall" than technologists can apprehend. For example even though I recognize some benefits to social media, I'd have a hard time arguing that on a societal level it's not a huge net negative. Overall, people are more divided, more angry, depressed, egotistical because of social media and the attention economy. And ultimately, as one of my previous boss would say "it's all about people".
smokedetector1 4mo ago
> they don't understand it and therefore they fear it I feel this whenever discussion of consciousness comes up. Even though consciousness is not well understood at all (e.g. no scientific progress whatsoever on the "hard problem"), some people would rather say "it's just molecules and we don't have free will, we don't really exist, it's all an illusion, science will reduce it eventually, etc. etc." It baffles me that some people would rather contradict their very experience and declare that they don't exist! Rather than admit there's something that may be impossible to understand.
- cortesoft 4mo ago
  Who argues that we don't really exist just because we are made up of molecules? That doesn't make sense at all, EVERYTHING that exists is made up of molecules, that is what existence is. I know I have consciousness, and I know I am made up of molecules. I don't find that limiting or disappointing at all. I am very confused by these people you say argue that we don't exist. I have never heard anyone argue that.
  - jimbokun 4mo ago
    There are people who think a machine that can produce the same outputs as or better than humans are just as good or better than humans, that we can be treated just as black boxes. Those people frighten me.
  - smokedetector1 4mo ago
    > EVERYTHING that exists is made up of molecules, that is what existence is This is a belief system which one does not have to believe in order to accept the findings of physical science. > I know I have consciousness, and I know I am made up of molecules. I don't find that limiting or disappointing at all. There's two things this can mean: (1) You do genuinely believe you exist, but just that you're arising from a temporary arrangement of molecules -- essentially, all the statements that one can make about souls is true of you. In that case, you're not who I'm talking about. (2) There is no such thing as "you", it is purely an illusion, and no legitimate subjective entities really exist.
- 4mo ago
datakan 4mo ago
I was thinking the other day about animals in their natural habitat versus in captivity. Remove a gorilla from its jungle and stick it in a small zoo enclosure and it tends to go insane at worst, at best depression sets in. With orcas their fin flops over and even when released back into the wild it never returns to form, we can only guess what happens to them psychologically. Humans in supermax prisons exhibit the same issues. I think we're seeing some of this with people today due to doom scrolling and sedentary isolated lifestyles our technology is creating. AI is perhaps the final nail in the coffin for some as they genuinely treat these chatbots like they are friends and confidants and lose human connections to the real world. Just look at how people behave these days, it's hard not to notice the widespread mental illness epidemic that has set in and seems to get worse daily. We've created little prisons for ourselves and locked the door. We're losing human connection in real time almost like people are willingly submitting themselves to the Matrix.
- jimbokun 4mo ago
  These are excellent analogies. We are destroying the environments humans were designed to thrive in.
- customguy 4mo ago
  > We've created little prisons for ourselves and locked the door. Yes, but that kind of ignores the more active elements. This story didn't languish with few upvotes and a few shallow comments, it was an instant HN darling so had to be killed, or it would still be on the front page. [0] https://hnrankings.info/48323101/ https://hnrankings.info/48323101/ And whatever the reasons or rationalizations for that may be, you can be 100% sure it was by a tiny minority.
g-b-r 4mo ago
People like that probably hate AI, given how inscrutable it is
- fullshark 4mo ago
  Just because it's nondeterministic doesn't mean they don't understand it. In fact those people can mold it and love doing so, it's like they can finally direct the humans that they feel forced to interact with as they always wanted to.
  - g-b-r 3mo ago
    No one can really mold it, or understand what goes on when you input a prompt
zug_zug 4mo ago
I definitely got this sense with Zuckerberg/meta (and probably Musk too) -- it should be ironic disturbing to have people who aren't really social people building our social networks.... Some of the least-mentally-healthy people I know see human dynamics as fundamentally 0-sum competitions, and I feel like some of these platforms are modeled on that, but not all of them (youtube is a mixed bag, reddit used to be pretty harmless).
jjulius 4mo ago
I've felt something similar about the internet for a very long time. Time and again I've seen people talk about how they don't have a lot of friends, or that it's hard to make friends, or social interactions are a struggle, which is why the internet is great. I see those comments a lot on HN too, even in this very thread. Hell, I said similar stuff myself when I was younger. But the more you lean on the internet or on technology, the more you feed that feedback loop of "in-person interaction = hard". Yes, things are difficult, but you're never going to figure out how to be comfortable in those situations if you're not actively putting yourself in them. Growth takes struggle, and I say that with all the empathy in the world. As Snaut says in Solaris, man needs man.

by eunoia 4mo ago

Beautiful piece. I sometimes feel like technologists actually desire to remove the humanity from the world because it's messy and they don't understand it and therefore they fear it.

renegade-otter 4mo ago

The whole idea of trans-humanism, so beloved by VCs and the AI cult, seems borderline psychopathic to me.

simoncion 4mo ago
> The whole idea of trans-humanism, so beloved by VCs and the AI cult, seems borderline psychopathic to me. Do you find HRT and gender-affirming surgeries to be borderline psychopathic? How about safe and effective cures for genetic, viral, and bacterial maladies that cripple or kill? The big things about transhumanism are to figure out how fix the things that damage and destroy us, and figure out how to let each person shape themselves to be the best version of them possible. If your best you is a baseline human, then, great! More power to you! I know that mine sure as fuck isn't. Will there be lots of trouble on the way towards teching up so that everyone can be the best version of themselves possible? Absolutely. Hell, we appear to be generally incapable of figuring out something so simple as how to provide good lives for everyone even if there's no useful work for them to do.
- jubilanti 4mo ago
  > The big things about transhumanism are to figure out how fix the things that damage and destroy us, and figure out how to let each person shape themselves to be the best version of them possible. Come on, by that vague of a definition, Aristotle and Confucius were apparently transhumanists.
- jimbokun 4mo ago
  This is all bullshit. Transhumanism when put into practice will be about changing our environment to take away everything that allows humans to thrive and be happy and fulfilled. It's about the destruction of families, communities, and human cultures built up over millennia with no serious thought put into what comes next and why it might or might not be better for human beings. > How about safe and effective cures for genetic, viral, and bacterial maladies that cripple or kill? This is not Transhumanism, the desire for these things far pre-date Transhumanism as a philosophy. > Hell, we appear to be generally incapable of figuring out something so simple as how to provide good lives for everyone even if there's no useful work for them to do. So maybe we work on that before diving head long into the post human future?
- renegade-otter 4mo ago
  You mean the same people who want to destroy the fabric of civilization - norms, caring for one another, feeling shame - also care deeply about us? REALLY... It's the same as Elon Musk "worrying" about saving humans and then it turns out it's all racism after all. > Do you find HRT and gender-affirming surgeries to be borderline psychopathic? What. These current class of tech oligarch support MAGA, which came to power with this being the major culture war flashpoint. They didn't seem to mind.
graemep 4mo ago
To others too. Much of what they say (and some other trends and ideas) remind me of those of the literal demonic baddies in CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength. Especially the loss of the value of human beings and human connections.

ChrisMarshallNY 4mo ago

> "Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." -Max Frisch

pandoro 4mo ago

I feel the same too. And I believe there is much more complexity in the question "will this be good for society overall" than technologists can apprehend. For example even though I recognize some benefits to social media, I'd have a hard time arguing that on a societal level it's not a huge net negative. Overall, people are more divided, more angry, depressed, egotistical because of social media and the attention economy. And ultimately, as one of my previous boss would say "it's all about people".

smokedetector1 4mo ago

> they don't understand it and therefore they fear it I feel this whenever discussion of consciousness comes up. Even though consciousness is not well understood at all (e.g. no scientific progress whatsoever on the "hard problem"), some people would rather say "it's just molecules and we don't have free will, we don't really exist, it's all an illusion, science will reduce it eventually, etc. etc." It baffles me that some people would rather contradict their very experience and declare that they don't exist! Rather than admit there's something that may be impossible to understand.

cortesoft 4mo ago
Who argues that we don't really exist just because we are made up of molecules? That doesn't make sense at all, EVERYTHING that exists is made up of molecules, that is what existence is. I know I have consciousness, and I know I am made up of molecules. I don't find that limiting or disappointing at all. I am very confused by these people you say argue that we don't exist. I have never heard anyone argue that.
- jimbokun 4mo ago
  There are people who think a machine that can produce the same outputs as or better than humans are just as good or better than humans, that we can be treated just as black boxes. Those people frighten me.
- smokedetector1 4mo ago
  > EVERYTHING that exists is made up of molecules, that is what existence is This is a belief system which one does not have to believe in order to accept the findings of physical science. > I know I have consciousness, and I know I am made up of molecules. I don't find that limiting or disappointing at all. There's two things this can mean: (1) You do genuinely believe you exist, but just that you're arising from a temporary arrangement of molecules -- essentially, all the statements that one can make about souls is true of you. In that case, you're not who I'm talking about. (2) There is no such thing as "you", it is purely an illusion, and no legitimate subjective entities really exist.
4mo ago

datakan 4mo ago

I was thinking the other day about animals in their natural habitat versus in captivity. Remove a gorilla from its jungle and stick it in a small zoo enclosure and it tends to go insane at worst, at best depression sets in. With orcas their fin flops over and even when released back into the wild it never returns to form, we can only guess what happens to them psychologically. Humans in supermax prisons exhibit the same issues. I think we're seeing some of this with people today due to doom scrolling and sedentary isolated lifestyles our technology is creating. AI is perhaps the final nail in the coffin for some as they genuinely treat these chatbots like they are friends and confidants and lose human connections to the real world. Just look at how people behave these days, it's hard not to notice the widespread mental illness epidemic that has set in and seems to get worse daily. We've created little prisons for ourselves and locked the door. We're losing human connection in real time almost like people are willingly submitting themselves to the Matrix.

jimbokun 4mo ago
These are excellent analogies. We are destroying the environments humans were designed to thrive in.
customguy 4mo ago
> We've created little prisons for ourselves and locked the door. Yes, but that kind of ignores the more active elements. This story didn't languish with few upvotes and a few shallow comments, it was an instant HN darling so had to be killed, or it would still be on the front page. [0] https://hnrankings.info/48323101/ https://hnrankings.info/48323101/ And whatever the reasons or rationalizations for that may be, you can be 100% sure it was by a tiny minority.

g-b-r 4mo ago

People like that probably hate AI, given how inscrutable it is

fullshark 4mo ago
Just because it's nondeterministic doesn't mean they don't understand it. In fact those people can mold it and love doing so, it's like they can finally direct the humans that they feel forced to interact with as they always wanted to.
- g-b-r 3mo ago
  No one can really mold it, or understand what goes on when you input a prompt

zug_zug 4mo ago

I definitely got this sense with Zuckerberg/meta (and probably Musk too) -- it should be ironic disturbing to have people who aren't really social people building our social networks.... Some of the least-mentally-healthy people I know see human dynamics as fundamentally 0-sum competitions, and I feel like some of these platforms are modeled on that, but not all of them (youtube is a mixed bag, reddit used to be pretty harmless).

jjulius 4mo ago

I've felt something similar about the internet for a very long time. Time and again I've seen people talk about how they don't have a lot of friends, or that it's hard to make friends, or social interactions are a struggle, which is why the internet is great. I see those comments a lot on HN too, even in this very thread. Hell, I said similar stuff myself when I was younger. But the more you lean on the internet or on technology, the more you feed that feedback loop of "in-person interaction = hard". Yes, things are difficult, but you're never going to figure out how to be comfortable in those situations if you're not actively putting yourself in them. Growth takes struggle, and I say that with all the empathy in the world. As Snaut says in Solaris, man needs man.