[jampekka]

Not that people, especially tech oligarchs, aren't full of themselves, but many physicists who were inventing the bomb, most famously Oppenheimer, also laid a lot of the philosophical basis of implications of nuclear weapons.

The situation may be a bit different now. The megacorporate world is the biggest threat from these tech developments, and the inventors are getting deeply embedded in this. Sort of similar situation that implications of nuclear weapons would be handled only by the military.

[vasco]

They laid them out yet did not have the ability to prevent using it, didn't predict the cold War, and if you asked any of them, the chances the world would exist 10 years after proliferation were basically zero. They were all depressed because of how sure they were that they helped destroy humanity, it was just a matter of time. And here we are. We're talking about the most intelligent humans ever and even they got it wrong.

I'm not saying they can prevent themselves from thinking about the implications, anyone would, but this grandstanding as if nobody else will be able to figure it out or that only them understand the dangers is what is a bit weird.

My main point isn't "don't listen to the inventor", it's more like, "listen to the inventor but don't think that they know the future just because they invented a gadget". These are people that have investment documents saying they don't know what role money will play in post-AGI world. It has the vibes of a cult mixed with role play.

[losvedir]

I don't think that's a fair characterization of their predictions.

Szilard predicted the development of the bomb would end major war, and he was mostly right for the right reasons, though he envisioned a UN-type organization to control the bombs. And he was one of the first to understand the potential for fission chain reaction once nuclear physics got underway. And he was involved in its development. I think Ilya would be happy to be compared to him.

Bohr, too, had pretty good predictions about the implications of the bomb.

Oppenheimer seemed to understand some of the implications but was happy to leave the policy stuff to the government, and not too try to influence anything like Bohr and Szilard tried to do.

Teller just wanted to keep pushing the tech bigger and bigger.

So the inventors had all sorts of different predictions and values, same as here. Some better than others.

[jampekka]

They had very significant effects on the nuclear policy. Oppenheimer's (of course a big movement of which he figureheaded) big idea was to prevent a nuclear arms race, which obviously didn't fully materialize, but what was the basis for e.g. test bans, disarmantments and limiting proliferation.

I agree that you shouldn't ask the inventor just because they invented the gadget. But at least in the Manhattan project the scientists were in a very strong position that if they refuse to co-operate, the bomb just won't happen (soon enough). And for that you'd want inventors versed in the wider implications.

One difference from that era is probably that interest in wider philosophy and politics was encouraged from academics. E.g. the "giants of modern physics" (Oppenheimer, Einstein, Bohr etc) took great interest and scholarship in philosophy and societal issues whereas nowadays, as you said, there's practically 0% of the inventor of the gadget to understand the issues. They should "shut up and calculate", and leave the philosophy to philosophers and the societal impact to economists.

A problem is that philosophers and economists don't really understand the technology and its ramifications, and are heavily influenced by the hype. And philosophers have very little power to influence anyway. There are valid reasons for such specialization, but it has drawbacks.

[beowulfey]

How can you be sure that it wasn’t their efforts that allowed us to continue existing? Maybe if they hadn’t made the destructive implication of their work clear no one else would have recognized it. None of us can say.

It’s obvious in hindsight, but can we really say with certainty that things would have been exactly the same if the inventors did or said nothing? I’m not willing to take that bet.

To me, effort such as this is always worth it, even if it DOES have no effect, because the chance it can change things for the better is worth it.

[RandomLensman]

Because they were not charge, if anything the more aggressive voices among them had bigger roles in the cold war. You can never rule some impact, but there was an awful lot of effort going into handling cold war dynamics where those scientists had no role in.

[jampekka]

In such complicated things there's nobody "in charge". Some policy documents etc may be signed by some person in some capacity but this doesn't mean that person dictated the thing in a vacuum.

There were many different voices from many different walks of life of course.

[RandomLensman]

There were huge research efforts and, of course, some people were in charge of those.

[minihat]

>They were all depressed because of how sure they were that they helped destroy humanity, it was just a matter of time. And here we are.

There's still plenty of anthropocene left for them to be right. At least I hope there is.

[WillAdams]

They all got together and wrote a letter to FDR w/ Einstein as signatory because the implication of not having it was the Axis Powers getting and using a nuclear weapon.