I don’t understand what’s going on here psychologically—according to the expressed beliefs of people like Dario Amodei and Shane Legg, they’re massively endangering their own lives in exchange for profit. It’s not even that they disagree with me about key facts, they’re just doing things that make no sense according to their own (expressed) beliefs.
Does anyone know what’s going on here? Dan Fagella says it’s a “Sardanapalus urge”, to want to be destroyed by their sand god (not anyone else’s), but I suspect it’s something more like extreme hubris[1] - irrational overconfidence. This is a very Silicon Valley / entrepreneurial trait. You pretty much have to go against the grain and against all the odds to win really big. But it’s one thing with making money, and another with your life (and yet another with everyone else on the planet’s lives too!).
I strongly believe that if Amodei, Altman, Legg and Hassabis were sat round a table with Omega and a 6 shooter with even 1 bullet in the chamber, they wouldn’t play a game of actual Russian Roulette with a prize of utopia/the glorious transhumanist future, let alone such a game with a prize of a mere trillion dollars.
Does anyone know what’s going on here? Dan Fagella says it’s a “Sardanapalus urge”, to want to be destroyed by their sand god (not anyone else’s), but I suspect it’s something more like extreme hubris[1] - irrational overconfidence. This is a very Silicon Valley / entrepreneurial trait. You pretty much have to go against the grain and against all the odds to win really big. But it’s one thing with making money, and another with your life (and yet another with everyone else on the planet’s lives too!).
I strongly believe that if Amodei, Altman, Legg and Hassabis were sat round a table with Omega and a 6 shooter with even 1 bullet in the chamber, they wouldn’t play a game of actual Russian Roulette with a prize of utopia/the glorious transhumanist future, let alone such a game with a prize of a mere trillion dollars.
The biggest cases of hubris in the history of the known universe.