All of JohnCDraper's Comments + Replies

A couple of points. In certain, limited expressions of human international relations, we do know what the decision making process was to reach major decisions, such as the drafting and signing of the Geneva Conventions, some of humanity's best and most successful policy documents. This is because the archived UK and US decision making processes were very well documented and are now declassified. 

In other words, we can actually deconstruct human decision making principles (probably conforming instrumentalism in the case of the Geneva Conventions) and t... (read more)

This has now been published as an article in AI & Society, available at: https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/optimising-peace-through-a-universal-global-peace-treaty-to-cons/20022666

Humans are really not so dissimilar compared to what's probably out there. I had my moment in the desert where I was asked, 'What do you want?', and the answer was 'Global Peace'. To a certain extent, I wish I had your life. But then, I wouldn't have my three kids, and I wouldn't have had that moment where something said back to me, "Global Peace? That old chestnut? Seriously? Oh, you are serious. Okay, this is what you have to do..."

Let me go find out more about lie detectoring companies in London.

0ligvent
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Hmm. Let me try to restate this. What I'm trying to do is to create a protocol for reporting weird experiences as we close in on the Singularity. If I'm correct about a soft Zoo Hypothesis (basically a 'leaky' Prime Directive situation, with Contact contingent on creation of an ASI or a warp gate/drive), with several interstellar civilizations with mindjacking tech monitoring the planet, then attempts to influence human global development do occur, probably by the panhuman equivalent of special forces, i.e., 'Special Circumstances&... (read more)

0ligvent
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Okay, so below is an attempt at a brief, one that could be tailored, hopefully, for other people. Any suggestions before I hunt around for quotes from lie detector companies?

Completed Template Brief for Hail Mary Cookie Experiences

Overview

The brief is to establish the veracity of a subject regarding a series of extraordinary claims about experiences. The brief is not to establish the subject’s sanity or to investigate the claims at some kind of philosophical level. The brief does include the requirement to establish veracity... (read more)

0ligvent
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Well, this is where we regress from the rum and uncanny to normality. If I were in a position to be able to reproduce atypical brain states involving the appearance of electrical input or output that just blew away the technology being used to monitor it, that would be one heck of a result. It could also be a dangerous result, personally and politically.

But, to take that point on board, first we test my veracity (lie detector), then we test by sanity (psychiatric eval), then we test whether I can replicate any of this using something like an MRI (objectivi... (read more)

1JohnCDraper
Okay, so below is an attempt at a brief, one that could be tailored, hopefully, for other people. Any suggestions before I hunt around for quotes from lie detector companies? Completed Template Brief for Hail Mary Cookie Experiences Overview The brief is to establish the veracity of a subject regarding a series of extraordinary claims about experiences. The brief is not to establish the subject’s sanity or to investigate the claims at some kind of philosophical level. The brief does include the requirement to establish veracity of claims according to the granularity of the experiences (see special vocabulary and terms below). Special Vocabulary and Terms The subject will speak about the claims using specific vocabulary, including mindjacking, which refers to using technological means to write to or read from a mind, as with Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and granularity, which refers to the degree of reality of an experience. Granularity can be as follows: Full consciousness = full granularity Simulation while awake with eyes closed = high granularity, e.g., with one or more of the five senses (sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch) Lucid dream = medium granulariy Dream = low granularity Specific Questions to This Case 1) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he saw an alien head at night, then woke up the next day seeing a neon heart, identical to one he later found that morning in his house. 2) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he had three nightmares over three nights, the first concerning a sniper, the second concerning a being in the same room, and the third concerning being in a corridor and opening a door, where the granularity became less distinct each time. Establish the granularity of the experiences. 3) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he asked the question by email to a third party, “May I ask you a question?” and received a reply in the form of a

Whoops, I missed once experience I wanted to investigate via lie detector and psychiatrist. So, I emailed myself to say I was happy to have my mindstate read so that whatever it was that was doing all this could know who or what it was. That same night, I'm awake, eyes closed, and it feels like something jacks something using electricity directly into my brain. So, most of us have had an electric shock, and it kind of vibrates, and it hurts. But, the brain feels no pain. So, this electric vibrating in my brain was happening for about 3 seconds, but I ... (read more)

0ligvent
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That's a fascinating link you supplied there! I have no doubt that Hallucinogen Persisting Perceptual Disorder exist. Sunglasses and talk therapy seems to be of use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder

Maybe everyone on the West Coast wearing sunglasses is just trying to deal with their HPPD? ;<)

I would also say there's a definite chance of a link between devouring psychedelics and hallucinations, including of rainbows!

Unfortunately, I wasn't on psychedelics before, during, or after the experiences I j... (read more)

1JohnCDraper
Whoops, I missed once experience I wanted to investigate via lie detector and psychiatrist. So, I emailed myself to say I was happy to have my mindstate read so that whatever it was that was doing all this could know who or what it was. That same night, I'm awake, eyes closed, and it feels like something jacks something using electricity directly into my brain. So, most of us have had an electric shock, and it kind of vibrates, and it hurts. But, the brain feels no pain. So, this electric vibrating in my brain was happening for about 3 seconds, but I suspected what it was, so I just told them in my mind to ease off for a second. So they did, and I felt fine, so I told them in my mind it was okay to do it again. Then, the phenomenon continued for about two seconds, and it was done. Then I relaxed and went to sleep. Going back to the hallucinogens, one difference has been that what I've been experiencing is equivalent to photographic resolution material, or high-res video, and overall just high-granularity experiences. Anyway, ask any questions, then I'll boil all this down for the lie detector company brief.

Oh, it just gets better. So, the rational thing to do at this stage, I thought, was to send the possible mindjackers an email, to see if I could establish two-way communication. So, I reasoned if they have the tech to mindjack and are putting me under the spotlight, presumably reading my emails is ongoing and trivial. So, I sent an email to myself stating (and I can't remember the sentence exactly, 100%, but it was at least 90% semantically this): "May I ask you a question?"

That night, I was lying there in bed, awake but with my eyes closed,... (read more)

0ligvent
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Yeah, it is also worth looking on the bright side, because I am willing to bet my life on the fact the panhumans have a sense of humour. I would hope the ASI does, too. Frankly, I found most of these experiences humorous or at least just weird rather than fear or paranoia inducing. Anyway, on to Experience 2!

So, I think this next one was a basic psychological evaluation, probably military. The interstellar cops were not ready for something that pushed back from being pulled over and shown the giant panhuman head ID, so they hit me with a series of sequence... (read more)

0ligvent
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Okay, so I’ll try to report a summary of some of the weird experiences I had while working on leveraging the coming fusion breakthrough for global peace to avoid global warming and ASI-enabled or directed warfare. And I’ll try to apply the objective system outlined above. I’ll do these one at a time, so you can ask questions.

Experience 1: Being pulled over by the interstellar cops for speeding while in control of a human Mind.

So, not too long after I start working on fusion, about five years ago now, I was awake, with my eyes closed, l... (read more)

0ligvent
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From Cheng, there may be aspects to the world that appear to be a participatory hallucination, rather than the entire world, unless, like I said, we go down the Von Neumann-Wigner explanation for reality, which I try to avoid. So, for example, SETI and others have been looking for alien transmissions for decades now, with nothing to show for it. The Zoo Hypothesis provides really obvious explanations for that, namely that something's interfering with the transmissions/jamming the detectors/affecting the signal processors. A panhuman ASI could do that... (read more)

0ligvent
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Link to a good source with solid concepts there. So, let's prioritize cluster thinking and then attempt to regress to normality. So, in this post, we are trying to create a space where people can report acausal phenomena that may be affecting them while working on developing AI, AGI, and the related socioeconomics and geopolitics 'Big Questions', like global peace.

So, as an example, we know Elon Musk reads Iain M Banks' Culture series. He decides to build his own rockets and then decides to do Neuralink. Why? Causally, we have the answe... (read more)

0ligvent
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Thanks for sharing! That explains the connection between you and I that created this comment chain, which, TBH, is the outcome I was hoping for when I posted the main post, complete with nudge/nude typo.

I think we both basically accept the possibility that we exist within some kind of Laboratory Hypothesis situation and function not just as humans but as parts of a Bostrom cookie, where weird, apparently acausal events can happen that in fact may have an underlying causality and so rationality, just one that does not readily admit of rational explanation, ... (read more)

0ligvent
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1) Re the Fermi Paradox, I assume a 'soft form' of the Zoo Hypothesis is in operation, sometimes called the 'Laboratory Hypothesis': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoo_hypothesis. Some people get scared by this concept, but large zoos usually do have scientific laboratories attached to them, for veterinarian purposes. Zoos are, just like museums, curated and regulated, and that requires tweaking, or 'nudges'. I'm definitely not saying aliens caused Covid-19. We have our own relationship with biodiversity to thank fo... (read more)

1ligvent
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Alexei,

Thanks for your UAP paper. BTW, on your paper, I would definitely mention the Laboratory Hypothesis, which was indeed a variant on Ball's original Zoo Hypothesis. Also, note there are different kinds of zoo, i.e., ones varying from a collection of cages to safari parks, and of course, zoo 'keepers' are subject to functionally differentiated roles, from receptionists to veterinarians, and tourists are differentiated, from specialists to school parties, from different interstellar civilizations - and not all civilizations follow th... (read more)

Dear Alexey,

Yes, I would be interested in your draft. My email is johndr@kku.ac.th . I am am a British academic, a Visiting Professor at the University of Nottingham right now; here is my ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3626-533X .

'Burning plasma' here is the standard hot fusion self-sustaining alpha-powered reaction, as in the sun, or, yes, ITER. I have a forthcoming article on this coming out in the engineering journal IEEE TEM. It mentions the peace-building opportunity the announcement of a burning plasma would offer humanity. A link to t... (read more)

1JohnCDraper
Alexei, Thanks for your UAP paper. BTW, on your paper, I would definitely mention the Laboratory Hypothesis, which was indeed a variant on Ball's original Zoo Hypothesis. Also, note there are different kinds of zoo, i.e., ones varying from a collection of cages to safari parks, and of course, zoo 'keepers' are subject to functionally differentiated roles, from receptionists to veterinarians, and tourists are differentiated, from specialists to school parties, from different interstellar civilizations - and not all civilizations follow the rules to the same extent. The enormous variation between staff and visitors explains the diversity in legitimate UAP activity. Note also due to the case of a small number of both existing interstellar civilizations and emergent stellar civilizations, the number of Contact situations is low, so zoo policy for Earth (and other planets) is an ongoing issue. Note zoo protocols change over time, as does tourist behaviour, as we have seen in the last century on Earth. The Star Trek 'Prime Directive', while it exists for Earth on the basis of autonomous development combined with Life on Earth answering the meaning of the universe, is therefore weak and somewhat variable.

I hope my edit preserves the full semantic power of that phrase for posterity while indicating that I stand corrected. Special Circumstances aims to please!

No, I don't see a Keanu Reeves 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' moment. If we are in a weak zoo/laboratory, however, I do not expect that we will be permitted to develop an ASI, or if we do develop an ASI, it will not actually be 'ours', i.e., it will be taken over by/merged with 'their' superintelligence. Then, I would hope for formal Contact in some form, as our development of an ASI may establish Contact, if they value honesty. After Contact, I expect the zoo to become a containment area first. It really depends how bad... (read more)

4avturchin
Thanks, yes, it is me. I created a new username "avturchin" at some moment, so PMs to older "turchin" may be not available for me. I added a link to this your post about Laboratory Zoo to my new draft about "UAP and global catastrophic risks". I could share the draft. I am reading now your article and here are some comments: * "Burning plasma" is an unclear term. It could either mean unlimited nuclear electric energy (e.g. ITER) – or more ominous, but less probable "cold fusion thermonuclear bombs" or thermonuclear bombs without fission, which could be mass-produced in secrecy or by small actors. * One of the main arguments for your point of view, that is, the badness of wars for AGI safety, is that even a limited AGI coupled with almost unlimited capabilities of a rich nuclear power state gets a strategic decisive advantage over other countries, but it has to execute it via war. The same limited AGI in a basement will be almost useless, as it hasn't resource to leverage.

The UN only really caters for UN member states, so global peace here is means as regulated by states. I accept non-state actors are global players and in many cases more powerful than most UN member states. What I'm talking about is making the best of a bad job, i.e., whether it would be the most rational act.

In the bomb question, what we need is causal theory in which the ASI agent accurately gauges that a universe of one indicates loneliness and not in fact happiness, which is predicated on friendliness (at least for an ASI) (and I would be slightly concerned as an external observer as to why the universe was reduced to a single agent if it were not due to entropy), then figures out the perfect predictor was a prior ASI, not from that universe, giving it a clue, and then, adding all its available power to the bomb, following Asimov says: "LET THERE BE LI... (read more)

Yes, I would agree on moderate. It's interesting that it's never been called for before. The last time something similar was suggested was probably the Baruch Plan of 1946 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Plan), which some people (e.g., Bostrom) looking at the AI control problem think is worth revisiting. If a global peace can be established, say by leveraging it off a 'burning plasma' fusion development (https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/mrzua/), the risk of AI-enabled warfare is somewhat constrained.

At the moment, Russia is havin... (read more)

Okay, so, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and the Yemen have been especially brutal. Syria is winding down, but the rest are more than capable of flaring up. Effectively, they are very much ongoing in terms of death tolls. Wikipedia is quite reliable on this. So, look at the Yemen, where Saudi is backing one side and Iran the other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Civil_War_(2015%E2%80%93present). Do not focus on military casualties, although these matter. Focus instead on what we in the business (I am on the Economic and Business Research Committee of the... (read more)

1Kenny
Thanks! That seems like moderate evidence that a ceasefire or truce could do some good, even if it's only partially observed or observed by some factions.

Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and the Yemen all involve non-local state actors, plus Kashmir.

1Kenny
Thanks! I don't know the scale of conflicts in those places, particularly involving non-local state actors, but I would weakly estimate that there isn't 'a lot' just based on my not being aware of it. But I also think that that's very weak evidence, for lots of reasons. So, if a truce is agreed to, and it's observed to a considerable extent, I'd expect conflict to shift towards local actors, both state and non-state, but also possibly encourage actors not party to the truce to seize initiative against actors that are party to the truce, e.g. because they might be expect to retreat in the face of fighting versus defend their current positions. I definitely don't feel confident in any estimates I have about the effects of the truce. Are there any detailed accounts you can share?

France's president says US and China back a world truce -- and he thinks Putin will 'definitely agree'

Nonpaywalled source (CNN):

French President Emmanuel Macron said he has backing for a world truce during the coronavirus pandemic and is hopeful he can secure Russian President Vladimir Putin's support.

Speaking on French radio, Macron said he had secured the agreement of several of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to back a call by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for a global ceasefire.In ... (read more)

It would be a UN Security Council resolution and it would probably also be adopted by the UN General Assembly. The resolution would not apply to non-state actors in these countries (or at least it would be a gray area), but it would apply to state actors, e.g., the US, Russia, and the Saudis. They would basically come under serious global moral pressure (e.g., risk of opprobrium) to stop fighting other state actors. However, they could still shoot at non-state actors, and they could just use the ceasefire to re-supply. Still, less civilians would die for an extended period of time, and once people get used to a truce, sometimes they do become permanent.

8Kenny
I wasn't aware there was significant fighting between state actors currently, or recently, or likely to be any in the near-term. What specific conflicts would this resolution likely affect?

Full draft article now up on SocArXiv, for comment here:

Draper, J. (2020, April 15). Optimising Peace through a Universal Global Peace Treaty to Constrain Risk of War from a Militarised Artificial Superintelligence. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/4268q

Optimising Peace through a Universal Global Peace Treaty to Constrain Risk of War from a Militarised Artificial Superintelligence

John Draper

Abstract

An artificial superintelligence (ASI) emerging in a world where war is still normalised may constitute a catastrophic existential risk, either because the ASI... (read more)