freest one

• freest one 4 Mar 2026 1:20 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: David_Althaus’s comment on: Long-term risks from ide­olog­i­cal fanaticism

  Thank you! I thought I read fairly carefully but I missed that footnote.

• freest one 3 Mar 2026 0:26 UTC

  9 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Long-term risks from ide­olog­i­cal fanaticism

  This is a great post on a highly important topic, perhaps the most important topic.
  
  One blind spot I have to point out (and I’m not trying to be edgy here or anything) is that a longtermist perspective itself clearly has the potential to spawn ideological fanaticism. This is not because any longtermists today are fanatics. It’s because anyone with a certain disposition towards dogmatic moral and epistemological certainty will do the math and see that virtually infinite longterm ends justify any means now. There are already arguably cases of this, which will be known to anyone in the community; and there is debate over whether they’re really longtermist or really rationalist etc.

  Going forward, longtermism will need to deal very carefully with its abuse by fanatics, for many of the reasons catalogued in this post.

• freest one 14 Jun 2023 1:18 UTC

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Geoffrey Miller’s comment on: There is only one goal or drive—only self-per­pet­u­a­tion counts

  Thanks, I appreciate the comment. I hadn’t seen your piece, that’s great though. The difficulty of gene/​brain alignment is a good analogy for how unlikely human/​AI alignment is on a first try. & I share your scepticism about humans having some general utility function.

• freest one 14 Jun 2023 0:33 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: titotal’s comment on: There is only one goal or drive—only self-per­pet­u­a­tion counts

  Thanks for the comment. Yes, I’m still uncertain about the mechanism of self-reproduction in future AIs… with humans, it’s certainly possible to decouple sex from reproduction but if a large enough proportion of people do that, then we will assuredly start to disappear.

• freest one 9 Oct 2022 4:50 UTC

  2 points

  1 ∶ 4

  on: Why I think there’s a one-in-six chance of an im­mi­nent global nu­clear war

  I think Tegmark is still too optimistic. The arguments against nuclear war happening are typically very weak (variations of “it hasn’t happened yet, people believe in MAD, leaders are rational). And even when pundits have considered the risks higher (Cuban missile crisis) their actions have not reflected this at all. We should take this as a signal of massive status quo bias and denial.

  http://​​www.mcgannfreestone.com.au/​​?p=2255