fixes

Author: hzoo

src/content/podcast/season-5/facade.md

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 #### Unexamined Accelerationism
 
-[24:37] **Melody:** It's crazy that it's being accepted. No one's talking about it. Literally, the other day at dinner, people were talking about getting dogs, and now I'm thinking, "Isn't that what Gattaca...?" Are we not racing towards this path? Because, again, it's the whole "because we can and that technology is a net good." I definitely fall into that sometimes, even with the AI stuff. I think, "Yeah, it's inevitable. We're going to..." I've definitely used that argument before. But I'm still wary to say that about artificial wombs and us racing down, and cloning non-sentient humans to be replacement organs. Where do you stand on that in this accelerationist argument for AI? What do you feel is going to happen? We talked about how, at least for me, I'm not afraid of the sentience piece. I am curious what people are nervous about. The picture they paint is that one day the AI will become sentient and try to trick us, take over the world, and eradicate humans. Is that what people are? I don't know. Suddenly, we're in a simulation, da-da-da. I don't know. There's a huge spectrum. That is one aspect of it. Anything's possible, but I don't think that matters to me, meaning that other things will happen that could also cause the end of the world that would happen before that happens, if that makes sense. I said about how it's already changing our dependence on it and changing our relationship to other people. I feel that already leads to a lot of bad outcomes, because that will happen earlier than our fear that it's going to take over the world and then everything gets bombed or something. That, to me, if that is possible and can happen, then that is a concern. But along the way, there are plenty of bad things that will happen. Why are we...? And I know there's this, especially in the EA circle, it's all about the doomsday scenario. If something has a 1% or .00001% chance, but it will destroy everything, then we need to put all of our resources into it. I feel you can co-opt a lot of people's careers and lives to get them to think about that, but we don't even know how to... It's funny. We don't even know how to care for our family, and now we're concerned about this? There are many levels before that. You think, "We don't..." As I said, I don't even know how to cope with someone getting mad at me, and that's simple. And then now we're saying, "Oh, the AI's going to take over the world." We don't even know how to take criticism or forgive people.
+[24:37] **Melody:** It's crazy that it's being accepted. No one's talking about it. Literally, the other day at dinner, people were talking about cloning dogs, and now I'm thinking, "Isn't that what Gattaca...?" Are we not racing towards this path? Because, again, it's the whole "because we can and that technology is a net good." I definitely fall into that sometimes, even with the AI stuff. I think, "Yeah, it's inevitable. We're going to..." I've definitely used that argument before. But I'm still wary to say that about artificial wombs and us racing down, and cloning non-sentient humans to be replacement organs. Where do you stand on that in this accelerationist argument for AI? What do you feel is going to happen? We talked about how, at least for me, I'm not afraid of the sentience piece. I am curious what people are nervous about. The picture they paint is that one day the AI will become sentient and try to trick us, take over the world, and eradicate humans. Is that what people are? I don't know. Suddenly, we're in a simulation, da-da-da. I don't know. 
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+[26:05] **Henry:** There's a huge spectrum. That is one aspect of it. Anything's possible, but I don't think that matters to me, meaning that other things will happen that could also cause the end of the world that would happen before that happens, if that makes sense. I said about how it's already changing our dependence on it and changing our relationship to other people. I feel that already leads to a lot of bad outcomes, because that will happen earlier than our fear that it's going to take over the world and then everything gets bombed or something. That, to me, if that is possible and can happen, then that is a concern. But along the way, there are plenty of bad things that will happen. Why are we...? And I know there's this, especially in the EA circle, it's all about the doomsday scenario. If something has a 1% or .00001% chance, but it will destroy everything, then we need to put all of our resources into it. I feel you can co-opt a lot of people's careers and lives to get them to think about that, but we don't even know how to... It's funny. We don't even know how to care for our family, and now we're concerned about this? There are many levels before that. You think, "We don't..." As I said, I don't even know how to cope with someone getting mad at me, and that's simple. And then now we're saying, "Oh, the AI's going to take over the world." We don't even know how to take criticism or forgive people.
 
 #### The Proximity of Care
 
-[26:42] **Melody:** It's almost the social breakdown is what we should be focusing on—the breakdown of the social fabric, the loneliness epidemic. I completely agree, and this is a social thing we've dealt with where we love the idea of a grand cause to work towards versus being kind to our neighbor. We will get worked up for all these social causes, whether you're on the left or the right. We want to go on missions. I'm a strong proponent of missions, but you need to be serving your church, serving the neighbor next door. Do you even greet the people around you? Do you get up for the grandmother on the subway? If you can't even extend this level of kindness, why are we even thinking about the greater thing?
+[28:01] **Melody:** The loneliness epidemic. I completely agree, and this is a social thing we've dealt with where we love the idea of a grand cause to work towards versus being kind to our neighbor. We will get worked up for all these social causes, whether you're on the left or the right. We want to go on missions. I'm a strong proponent of missions, but you need to be serving your church, serving the neighbor next door. Do you even greet the people around you? Do you get up for the grandmother on the subway? If you can't even extend this level of kindness, why are we even thinking about the greater thing?
 
 [28:59] **Henry:** There is an assumption with that: there are concentric circles of care. Not everyone agrees with that. Some would say it's more of a globalist view that everyone is equal. I think most people do care about proximity, and it's not an arbitrary value. It's also easier to love people that are really far away because you don't have to experience the pains of being in a relationship with a real community. You give them money, which are necessary things, but it almost makes you... Again, you can hide behind that in a way. It makes you feel good, "Oh, I helped all these people." And then, the person right next to you... There's this weird cognitive dissonance that gets created when we care about people in the abstract. Everyone has different levels of, you could say, power or influence to be able to do that. But it's interesting that most regular people still feel this need to help everybody. If we all helped our neighbor... but that's too hard because we have to change the culture. It's funny. Our reason to make all this technology is because we're unable to have real community. We scale our lack of character and humanity by scaling technology instead of ourselves. But it's funny that that's more impossible to us because we don't have faith in ourselves and in each other, in people. That's why we're relying on robots or AI to do it for us, because they will do what we want them to do.
 
 [30:28] **Melody:** Yes. The stuff doesn't scale to do the kind things for your neighbors. But what you're saying is that if we do encourage that as a culture, that is what can scale.
 
 #### Self-Sufficiency and Vulnerability
 
-[30:56] **Melody:** We don't want to be uncomfortable. But what were you going to say? Sorry. Ugh. I feel that's heartbreaking.
-But to your point, all of this points to this idea that we don't want to be... Even our lunch conversation was about this, I feel. We all want to be super self-sufficient. We want technology to take care of everything for us, and this technology gives more people access towards this self-sufficiency. I feel that's what it is. And I feel we're going to keep butting up against this. I never really thought about this contrast until this conversation. But it's that technology gives us this façade of self-sufficiency. It's really the thing that encourages a stronger fabric of society is being willing to be vulnerable, being willing to not be self-sufficient, being willing to deal with uncomfortable feelings where we're brushing up against each other. We're sad, we hurt each other. But it's that's what we need to lean into more. And technology maybe abstracts all of that away from us, or gives us the idea that we can abstract it all away from us.
+[30:56] **Melody:** We don't want to be uncomfortable. But what were you going to say? Sorry. Ugh. I feel that's heartbreaking. But to your point, all of this points to this idea that we don't want to be... Even our lunch conversation was about this, I feel. We all want to be super self-sufficient. We want technology to take care of everything for us, and this technology gives more people access towards this self-sufficiency. I feel that's what it is. And I feel we're going to keep butting up against this. I never really thought about this contrast until this conversation. But it's that technology gives us this façade of self-sufficiency. It's really the thing that encourages a stronger fabric of society is being willing to be vulnerable, being willing to not be self-sufficient, being willing to deal with uncomfortable feelings where we're brushing up against each other. We're sad, we hurt each other. But it's that's what we need to lean into more. And technology maybe abstracts all of that away from us, or gives us the idea that we can abstract it all away from us.
 
 [32:29] **Henry:** Yes, it does. And it works too, to some degree. That's the... It's effective and it works. I think that's the problem. Is when we say it makes us feel self-sufficient, it doesn't mean that we need it. We both work in tech. The point is that you cannot ultimately be self-sufficient, meaning that you can't rely on it entirely. It's clearly helpful, and we need it, and I'm working on it. But at the very core of it, that's not what gives me hope that we're going to solve any of this because we made some new app.