Agreed. Getting a larger share of the pie (without breaking rules during peacetime) might be ‘unimaginative’ but it’s hardly naïve. It’s straightforward and has a good track record of allowing groups to shape the world disproportionately.
I’m a bit confused. I was just calling Aschenbrenner unimaginative, because I think trying to avoid stable totalitarianism while bringing about the conditions he identified for stable totalitarianism lacked imagination. I think the onus is on him to be imaginative if he is taking what he identifies as extremely significant risks, in order to reduce those risks. It is intellectually lazy to claim that your very risky project is inevitable (in many cases by literally extrapolating straight lines on charts and saying ‘this will happen’) and then work to bring it about as quickly and as urgently as possible.
Just to try and make this clear, by corollary, I would support an unimaginative solution that doesn’t involve taking these risks, such as by not building AGI. I think the burden for imagination is higher if you are taking more risks, because you could use that imagination to come up with a win-win solution.
What would the imaginative solution be?
Agreed. Getting a larger share of the pie (without breaking rules during peacetime) might be ‘unimaginative’ but it’s hardly naïve. It’s straightforward and has a good track record of allowing groups to shape the world disproportionately.
I’m a bit confused. I was just calling Aschenbrenner unimaginative, because I think trying to avoid stable totalitarianism while bringing about the conditions he identified for stable totalitarianism lacked imagination. I think the onus is on him to be imaginative if he is taking what he identifies as extremely significant risks, in order to reduce those risks. It is intellectually lazy to claim that your very risky project is inevitable (in many cases by literally extrapolating straight lines on charts and saying ‘this will happen’) and then work to bring it about as quickly and as urgently as possible.
Just to try and make this clear, by corollary, I would support an unimaginative solution that doesn’t involve taking these risks, such as by not building AGI. I think the burden for imagination is higher if you are taking more risks, because you could use that imagination to come up with a win-win solution.