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public forums should be for exchanging ideas and not a place to virtue signal whatever fad Nextdoor/Facebook emotional bait normies are feeding each other via b

public forums should be for exchanging ideas and not a place to virtue signal whatever fad Nextdoor/Facebook emotional bait normies are feeding each other via brain rot feeds. the public essentially has little interest in preventing human extinction. And tons of interest in preventing data centers under false arguments and performative displays. What is the point of empowering the public when they are not curious but rather emotional children. Basically, to empower the public now means, how to bastardize your arguments into an emotional narrative that is palatable to the commoners but probably misses all relevant arguments. Like if you think x-risk is real, and datacenters are benign/reasonable/can-be-done-in-net-local-positive-way - then you are incentivized to pretend like datacenter are bad because peasants will not entertain your x risk calculus. It's a herding/shepherding game where the only people willing to play are compromised.

atomicthumbs 5d ago
>the public essentially has little interest in preventing human extinction. yes, most people don't belong to that cult
- ianm218 5d ago
  Hasn’t the idea of existential risks entered the kind of “cultural elite Overton window” at this point? Bill gates is talking about it, NYT just ran a bunch articles on AI safety concerns, a reporter just asked Trump about it in a one on one. Feels unfair to still dismiss it as a cult LessWrong thing at this point.
scared_together 5d ago
> It's a herding/shepherding game where the only people willing to play are compromised. This is how all politics is, and frankly the existential risk crowd needs to learn how to play the game instead of complaining about it.
- wallst07 4d ago
  It's "all politics" when you agree to a particular issue It's "regime" or "fascism" when you don't.
  - scared_together 4d ago
    The comment I was replying to was complaining about appealing to the masses, emotional arguments, and compromising on certain issues to get progress on other issues. If you view a regime as fascistic, you still need to be able to do all the above. Nazi Germany was defeated by an alliance of communists and capitalists who immediately started a Cold War when the Nazis were defeated. That required compromise, propaganda, and all the other distasteful things I called “all politics”. Dealing with existential risk will require collaboration on a similar scale.
parineum 5d ago
> Basically, to empower the public now means, how to bastardize your arguments into an emotional narrative that is palatable to the commoners but probably misses all relevant arguments. It's just to mobilize NIMBYs, a thing everyone was against when people were trying to protect their neighborhood against construction projects that would increase noise and stress the local public infrastructure, like high density housing. But now that there's a different noisy project stressing public infrastructure, NIMBY seems like the right move, I guess.

atomicthumbs 5d ago

>the public essentially has little interest in preventing human extinction. yes, most people don't belong to that cult

ianm218 5d ago
Hasn’t the idea of existential risks entered the kind of “cultural elite Overton window” at this point? Bill gates is talking about it, NYT just ran a bunch articles on AI safety concerns, a reporter just asked Trump about it in a one on one. Feels unfair to still dismiss it as a cult LessWrong thing at this point.

scared_together 5d ago

> It's a herding/shepherding game where the only people willing to play are compromised. This is how all politics is, and frankly the existential risk crowd needs to learn how to play the game instead of complaining about it.

wallst07 4d ago
It's "all politics" when you agree to a particular issue It's "regime" or "fascism" when you don't.
- scared_together 4d ago
  The comment I was replying to was complaining about appealing to the masses, emotional arguments, and compromising on certain issues to get progress on other issues. If you view a regime as fascistic, you still need to be able to do all the above. Nazi Germany was defeated by an alliance of communists and capitalists who immediately started a Cold War when the Nazis were defeated. That required compromise, propaganda, and all the other distasteful things I called “all politics”. Dealing with existential risk will require collaboration on a similar scale.

parineum 5d ago

> Basically, to empower the public now means, how to bastardize your arguments into an emotional narrative that is palatable to the commoners but probably misses all relevant arguments. It's just to mobilize NIMBYs, a thing everyone was against when people were trying to protect their neighborhood against construction projects that would increase noise and stress the local public infrastructure, like high density housing. But now that there's a different noisy project stressing public infrastructure, NIMBY seems like the right move, I guess.