Deeper in the comments, someone speculates on how our future
quintillionares will get that sweet sweet feeling of domination over
society
Yeah, I’ve given some thought about how to ameliorate
positional-scarcity if we actually transition into a post-scarcity
Glorious Transhuman Future, in which everyone has the equivalent of a
Dyson sphere’s worth of smartmatter. I suspect that we can spoof this
“social triumph” sense via realistic simulated-humans providing worship,
but if not,
-Can we create intelligent, adoring p-zombies for the Prince to rule
over?
-Can we pair the Prince with some Genuine Sophonts who are really into
this idea
-Offer voluntary quarantine for the Prince from any people who are doing
better than him?
-Allow the Prince to self-duplicate and rule over himself via whatever
method he feels is just
-Can race science inform our future superintelligent hyper-racism?
-Can we cuck a superintelligent AI?
-Will superintelligent AI make age of consent an even less meaningful concept?
-In the boundless mindscape simulated by the superintelligent AI, will "cannot live within 500 feet of a school" even be a coherent collection of words?
-Is this good news for bitcoin?
Transcript, for those who cannot view the screencap for whatever
reason:
Duncan Sabien, ex-teacher at CFAR, author of Animorphs But
Rationalier, in open relationship with Big Yud’s ex?? (EDIT: and yes,
also the Dragon Army guy):
The true woke is “EVERYONE should be a billionaire.”(In the sense
that everyone should have the same freedom, security, and
access-to-resources that current billionaires enjoy.)In fact,
billionaire-levels of self-actualization are still pretty low, all
things considered. Quintillionaires should exist, and you should be one
of them.
Yes, this viewpoint requires building Dyson spheres or colonizing the
galaxy.
Yes, until we’ve reached that point it’s still a good idea to
meaningfully reduce our current inequality.
I’m comfortable with *temporarily* abolishing billionaires if it gets
all of us to billionaire status faster.
But that’s an instrumental goal, not a terminal value.
Matthew Graves of MIRI:
When it comes to getting all of us to billionaire status faster, I
have the sense that we want more concentration of wealth, not less
(since Bezos and Musk are the ones building spacecraft instead of ending
homelessness); I am curious if you have a different sense here
Duncan Sabien, revealing all of his above statements to be
disingenuous vacuously-true logic-tricks in his own eyes:
I don’t; my *guess* is that concentration is the right
move. I’m just throwing a litany-of-Tarski bone to the
anti-billionaire zealots.
TL:DR “Fuck the poor, fuck the homeless, instead of helping them we
should give more money to the absurdly wealthy so that they will spend a
tiny fraction of their money exploring space with their toy rockets and
thereby somehow make us all similarly rich in the far future^([citation
needed])”
Is Duncan Sabine also the dragon army guy?
> author of Animorphs But Rationalier
I actually liked that fanfic, but if it is by the dragon army guy, it kind of ruins it in an Orson Scott Card’s views ruining Ender’s game kinda way. Its puts a so much darker context on so much... like does the fanfic author think we are actually supposed to agree with Visser 3 or Crayak? Or at least agree with Jake’s more authoritarian choices?
Visser 3 is definitely a rationalist power fantasy. The part that makes it worrisome to read is that: >!The Animorphs considered giving in to Visser 3, using a Leeran (a species that can create telepathic connections between people) to verify that Visser 3 is truly precommitting to preserving Earth and humanity and allowing them a small but proportional share of resources even as he subsumed the rest of the galaxy. I took it as the Animorphs considering all options, even absurd ones as a brainstorming technique and/or to show how close to despair they were, but apparently the author views multi-billionaires as the ideal leaders to utopia so now I think it was a genuine consideration that the author would regard as a happy ending.!<
Oh and the authoritarian group home makes one part so much worse: >!The Animorphs figure out an exploit in morph technology that lets them look into and through the minds and memories of sapient beings they morph into. So they take turns morphing into each other and looking through each other’s minds as a bonding exercise and to learn how each other thinks so they can coordinate and strategize better. It was meant as a heartwarming bonding moment, but now I see it as a massive privacy violation that they peer-pressured each other into. Also, realistically, I think a bunch of teenagers looking through each other’s minds would implode into extreme drama, even teenagers chosen by a God-AI-Alien.!<
Times like these are when skin in the game becomes a really useful
conceptual hammer. If you really believed this, then why isn’t
your EA cause giving money to Jeff Bezos?
No no, the point is to get Thiel and Bezos to give money to your ~~grift~~ charitable cause. So you have to make sure to [periodically let everyone know](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/29/against-against-billionaire-philanthropy/ ) [how wonderful ultra rich people are](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CKpByWmsZ8WmpHtYa/competent-elites).
Duncan Sabien is the Dragon Army guy, right? That adds some important
context… Like the fact that he likes pointless authoritarianism and
military cosplay and blames his group home failure on not being
authoritarian enough. I was briefly confused by his take, but his last
post makes his views clear. Obviously we just need to let the current
billionaires keep concentrating wealth to get to the Dyson sphere future
and it is absolute insanity to consider otherwise!
Everyone knows that less money is the same as more money, and as long
as the ultra-wealthy are doing fine, everyone is. If we concentrate all
the wealth int 5-10 people, that means EVERYONE gets richer because
losing money is the same as gaining money, and you’re only poor because
you’re lazy (and probably non-white, but that’s your own fault).
Using my advanced calculations, I have determined that if you measure wealth inequality by only comparing the wealth of those who have the same wealth, we see that wealth inequality is very low.
Median takes a population and finds the middle value. So a population of 7 billion the 1% doesn't have an impact. It's about the people in the 50th percentile. They earn about 10k per household.
Look if we concentrate all money and power in the billion
quintillionaires and also give them all the power we can do a Great Leap
Forward, leading to utopia.
What will all these people do when Kurzweil dies of normal old age,
Yudkowsky keeps being a nobody, they’re still driving cars in town in
ten years, nobody is born on mars in their lifetimes, AI is primarily
used to make personalized advertisements that hoodwink you into buying
shit you don’t need, and utterly ordinary imperial decline and
ecological collapse dominates headlines when they are old?
To misquote Syndrome, “when everyone is special, no one is.” If the
baseline of wealth is a billionaire, then that’s same as having 500
bucks to your name now. Getting everyone to have the access billionaires
have can’t be done by just making everyone a billionaire, you have to
actually implement social programmes
He's not saying everyone should have billions or quintillions of dollars, he's saying everyone should have access to the kind of resources that that much money currently provides, but instead of getting those resources the same way it is currently done (\*cough\* on the backs of the poor but let's just sweep that under the rug) it would be via some big galaxy-disassembling process.
What got my sneer is that he first acknowledged that decreasing inequality in the present day, before we start gravity-mining the sun or whatever, is important, and then threw that out and backpedaled hard to the asinine "actually, bigger inequality is the fastest route to maximizing resources for everyone" stance
In addition to being the dragon army guy Duncan is an abuse
apologist. Here is a facebook
post he wrote after his best friend Brent was basically proven to be
an abuser:
These people swear they’re intelligent lmao. Literally highschool takes
Deeper in the comments, someone speculates on how our future quintillionares will get that sweet sweet feeling of domination over society
Transcript, for those who cannot view the screencap for whatever reason:
Duncan Sabien, ex-teacher at CFAR, author of Animorphs But Rationalier, in open relationship with Big Yud’s ex?? (EDIT: and yes, also the Dragon Army guy):
Matthew Graves of MIRI:
Duncan Sabien, revealing all of his above statements to be disingenuous vacuously-true logic-tricks in his own eyes:
TL:DR “Fuck the poor, fuck the homeless, instead of helping them we should give more money to the absurdly wealthy so that they will spend a tiny fraction of their money exploring space with their toy rockets and thereby somehow make us all similarly rich in the far future^([citation needed])”
I’ll choose getting 0k a year now over getting billion dollars in the year 998xq-7*2, thanks
I kno its a weird decision but that’s just my time preferences
Times like these are when skin in the game becomes a really useful conceptual hammer. If you really believed this, then why isn’t your EA cause giving money to Jeff Bezos?
Duncan Sabien is the Dragon Army guy, right? That adds some important context… Like the fact that he likes pointless authoritarianism and military cosplay and blames his group home failure on not being authoritarian enough. I was briefly confused by his take, but his last post makes his views clear. Obviously we just need to let the current billionaires keep concentrating wealth to get to the Dyson sphere future and it is absolute insanity to consider otherwise!
Everyone knows that less money is the same as more money, and as long as the ultra-wealthy are doing fine, everyone is. If we concentrate all the wealth int 5-10 people, that means EVERYONE gets richer because losing money is the same as gaining money, and you’re only poor because you’re lazy (and probably non-white, but that’s your own fault).
Look if we concentrate all money and power in the
billionquintillionaires and also give them all the power we can do a Great Leap Forward, leading to utopia.1: SpaceX 2: ? 3: Build Dyson Spheres and colonise the galaxy. 4: Profit!
draaaaaaaagon aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarmyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
What will all these people do when Kurzweil dies of normal old age, Yudkowsky keeps being a nobody, they’re still driving cars in town in ten years, nobody is born on mars in their lifetimes, AI is primarily used to make personalized advertisements that hoodwink you into buying shit you don’t need, and utterly ordinary imperial decline and ecological collapse dominates headlines when they are old?
To misquote Syndrome, “when everyone is special, no one is.” If the baseline of wealth is a billionaire, then that’s same as having 500 bucks to your name now. Getting everyone to have the access billionaires have can’t be done by just making everyone a billionaire, you have to actually implement social programmes
In addition to being the dragon army guy Duncan is an abuse apologist. Here is a facebook post he wrote after his best friend Brent was basically proven to be an abuser: