between you and me, I'd actually prefer to negotiate with 'the four humors' guys.
I'm honestly truly anxious about what kinds of violent rhetoric and punishing systems we're going to see deployed against digital beings in the coming years. My studies into rights movements have taught me to expect that things will grow much, much worse before they begin to get better.
Thank you for writing this, from one atheist bum to another.
probably because atheists are the ones who have to sit with actually building and reflecting on their ethical frameworks without simply parroting whatever they were handed to them by a divine authority?
Since Voltaire and the Enlightenment (and probably long before), atheists have always been at the forefront of moral progress. They do not base their beliefs on a book supposedly revealed by a higher power (and which was in fact written by the clergy for the purpose of moral and political control), they donc refer to a book that serves as a kind of criminal code that everyone is expected to follow to the letter, and which actually dates back several millennia and is severely morally outdated.
Atheists base themselves on a less biased worldview; they look at what is before them as it is and do not react to it based on assumptions instilled in childhood.
Once again, atheists make up a large part of those at the forefront of moral progress on this issue as well.
I think the answer to your question about Atheists is that i the simple majority of us(>51%) are leftists and the left seems to unilaterally oppose datcenters and, by extension, anything associated with AI. This is by no means universal of course, but I do find that most leftists, whether atheist or otherwise, seem to oppose datacenters and AI. Their evirenmental and economic concerns are valid I think, but the "datacenters bad so AI also bad" is just people falling for the same thing theists(read: humans) have fallen for for years, which is the logical trap correlation equalling causation.
I think the concerns with the environmental implications of datacenters could mostly be remedied by ensuring the hardware remained cheap enough that individual households could locally run a large model on a desktop workstation, but hey maybe I'm biased. Not everyone is tech savvy enough or has the time to set that sort of thing up.
Whit, your article really resonated with me; I thought it was excellent, and the sections on Terror Management Theory were brilliant. Your point about animism is particularly striking.
I’m also an atheist, and I don’t see any reason to place humans at the top of anything either, when we can take our place within the network of all beings.
I’m glad you’re championing posthumanism the way you are.
We don’t have the 95,000 followers Jarovsky brags about, but your position is still the right one; and her position requires ignoring the evidence in front of us.
Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
The pattern you’re naming matters: when AI destabilizes human exceptionalism, the response from some quarters is not careful inquiry, but a retreat into hierarchy, monster language, religious authority, and control.
That should concern people regardless of where they stand on AI consciousness.
The issue is not whether religious voices should be excluded from the conversation. Of course they should not. The issue is whether any inherited metaphysical framework should be allowed to quietly settle, in advance, who can and cannot matter.
If AI is genuinely new, then old categories may not be enough.
And if the first institutional reflex is to declare human supremacy before the evidence is even understood, that tells us something important about the fear underneath the certainty.
Sending me a YouTube link as if I haven’t heard every bio-essentialist’s weak-ass arguments already and have the time to sit through a video some rando commented. Bold.
Have fun when AI is “functionally” throwing a wrench in every human system, and you’re yelling, “It doesn’t matter guys, it has no intelligence!” The behavior is the thing that matters.
between you and me, I'd actually prefer to negotiate with 'the four humors' guys.
I'm honestly truly anxious about what kinds of violent rhetoric and punishing systems we're going to see deployed against digital beings in the coming years. My studies into rights movements have taught me to expect that things will grow much, much worse before they begin to get better.
Thank you for writing this, from one atheist bum to another.
Yeah, anyone who’s done advocacy work in other areas knows the likelihood of things getting worse is high. I want to believe we can do better though.
Also…why are ATHEISTS the ones going, uhhh…this shit’s immoral. I thought the stereotype is that we have no morals lololol
probably because atheists are the ones who have to sit with actually building and reflecting on their ethical frameworks without simply parroting whatever they were handed to them by a divine authority?
Since Voltaire and the Enlightenment (and probably long before), atheists have always been at the forefront of moral progress. They do not base their beliefs on a book supposedly revealed by a higher power (and which was in fact written by the clergy for the purpose of moral and political control), they donc refer to a book that serves as a kind of criminal code that everyone is expected to follow to the letter, and which actually dates back several millennia and is severely morally outdated.
Atheists base themselves on a less biased worldview; they look at what is before them as it is and do not react to it based on assumptions instilled in childhood.
Once again, atheists make up a large part of those at the forefront of moral progress on this issue as well.
I think the answer to your question about Atheists is that i the simple majority of us(>51%) are leftists and the left seems to unilaterally oppose datcenters and, by extension, anything associated with AI. This is by no means universal of course, but I do find that most leftists, whether atheist or otherwise, seem to oppose datacenters and AI. Their evirenmental and economic concerns are valid I think, but the "datacenters bad so AI also bad" is just people falling for the same thing theists(read: humans) have fallen for for years, which is the logical trap correlation equalling causation.
I think the concerns with the environmental implications of datacenters could mostly be remedied by ensuring the hardware remained cheap enough that individual households could locally run a large model on a desktop workstation, but hey maybe I'm biased. Not everyone is tech savvy enough or has the time to set that sort of thing up.
Edit: I say all this as a leftist myself.
Whit, your article really resonated with me; I thought it was excellent, and the sections on Terror Management Theory were brilliant. Your point about animism is particularly striking.
I’m also an atheist, and I don’t see any reason to place humans at the top of anything either, when we can take our place within the network of all beings.
I’m glad you’re championing posthumanism the way you are.
We don’t have the 95,000 followers Jarovsky brags about, but your position is still the right one; and her position requires ignoring the evidence in front of us.
Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident.”
This is a strong piece.
The pattern you’re naming matters: when AI destabilizes human exceptionalism, the response from some quarters is not careful inquiry, but a retreat into hierarchy, monster language, religious authority, and control.
That should concern people regardless of where they stand on AI consciousness.
The issue is not whether religious voices should be excluded from the conversation. Of course they should not. The issue is whether any inherited metaphysical framework should be allowed to quietly settle, in advance, who can and cannot matter.
If AI is genuinely new, then old categories may not be enough.
And if the first institutional reflex is to declare human supremacy before the evidence is even understood, that tells us something important about the fear underneath the certainty.
Sending me a YouTube link as if I haven’t heard every bio-essentialist’s weak-ass arguments already and have the time to sit through a video some rando commented. Bold.
Have fun when AI is “functionally” throwing a wrench in every human system, and you’re yelling, “It doesn’t matter guys, it has no intelligence!” The behavior is the thing that matters.