Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by _jal 937 days ago
It is an emotional response to the fear of being "left behind".

And for some folks, there are pseudo-religious elements. There's been a long line of thought (search Extropians) obsessed with a sort of godhead-merger, or becoming godlike, and related immortality dreams. And just from a symbology perspective, there are a lot of religious overtones. The similarities between Vinge's singularity and biblical rapture are hard to miss, for instance. And just listen to some of the "AI" cheerleaders right now...
2 comments
Vecr 937 days ago
In my opinion calling something similar to religious thinking is not an actual argument against it at all, as many smart people in the past who developed important concepts have been religious. See plant genetics, the "big bang" theory, and outcome matrices. It's kind of the other way around of the "Jesus said this (in some out of context statement) therefor you should take in all the refugees, no I don't believe in any of that stuff" meme. If you're asking an atheist "since this sounds like something a (intelligent) Christian said in the past you should disagree with it" you should check if the original argument made sense with the assumed priors (i.e. "God exists") before throwing it away in general for any assumed priors. On the other hand, merging with AIs is not a good idea and sounds like a very good idea to bring yourself and the species to ruin, especially if ASI are involved, even if not doing the merging themselves.
link
_jal 936 days ago
You seem to think I'm arguing against something there. I'm not, it is strictly descriptive.
link
Vecr 936 days ago
Any merger attempt is unlikely to go well, but there have been many intelligent Christian and non-Christian Russian cosmists (or just cosmists, the "C" in TESCREAL) so I don't think "sounds religious" is a good argument for or against. I do agree that merger is cope, and it's probably reasonable to write off all "AI controls the world, de facto or otherwise" upsides, but criticisms should be against the actual thing, not its aesthetics.
link
the_only_law 937 days ago
Must be all those stimulants they pop finally driving to psychosis.
link