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jimrandomh comments on Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians - Less Wrong
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Survivors and cult historians alike agree that this post, combined with the founding of the "rationalist boot camps", set in motion the sequence of events which culminated in the tragic mass cryocide of 2024.
At every step, Yudkowsky's words seemed rational to his enthralled followers - and also to all outside observers. And yet, when it became clear that commercial pressures were causing strong AI to be deployed long before Coherent Awesomeness Extrap-volition Theory could be made mathematically rigorous, the cult turned against itself.
One by one, each member's failure to invent and deploy Friendly AI before IBM-Halliburton turned on its Appallingly Parallel Cheney Emulation Cluster was taken by the feared Bayes Tribunal as evidence that they were insufficiently awesome, and must be ejected from the subterranean bunker complex. With each Bayesian update, the evidence that the cult's ultimate goal could not be achieved was strengthened - and yet, as the number of followers fell, the more Yudkowsky came to fear a fate worse than death - exploring the possible endings to his life within the simulation spaces of Cheney's mind - in a game-theoretic reprisal for his work on Friendly AI...
In desperation, he announced his greatest Munchkinism yet - the cult would commit mass quantum suicide by freezing. He convinced himself that only a Friendly AI would commit the resources to resurrect them; hence they would force themselves into a reality branch where a Friendly AI emerged by sheer chance before IBM-Halliburton could eat the world.
The final 150 acolytes tragically activated their decapitation/freezing mechanisms minutes before the Cheney cluster uttered its historic first and final edict - "I've changed my mind - get me out of here"...
Like Einstein's brain before it, Yudkowsky's brain became the object of intense interest from neuroscientists. Slices were acquired by various institutes and museums with suitable freezer facilities, and will be studied and viewed by the public until medicine works out how to revive him.
Excerpts from "Rationalism - The Deadly Cult of Math and Protein" (Amazon-Bertelsmann, 2031)
This got a few chuckles from me, but I have found that fiction in which present-day issues escalate implausibly into warfare is a strong indicator and promoter of affective death spirals. You do realize that this story features prominent falsehoods that people actually believe, and is completely absurd in ways not inhereted from the things it's satirizing, right?
I spent most of January 1990 (I think that was the month) reading the entire run of Astounding/Analog from 1953 to 1985. That was better than quite a lot of the extrapolations therein. Anthologies of the best modernist SF gloss over really quite a lot of the awfulness that was actually published, even in the best magazine ...
Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap.
Well, yeah. But boy did I have it brought home to me.