I think you’re missing how utterly alien any GAI will be to us. We have a single mind, closed off from direct contact with others.

But an AI mind will be able to split into thousands of separate copies, live independently, and then recombine (ie, by literally copying itself on multiple computers, severing the connections, and then reconnecting). Will that feel like being one mind, or a crowd of minds? Would a mind that is accustomed to creating copies and then shutting them down care about death?

Or consider the ability to store frozen copies of itself in storage files? What would that feel like? How would AGI think of that? What sort of “morality” would a being have that is constantly extinguishing copies of itself (killing them?) but itself never dies?

Would an AI that can store and revive itself across potentially decades or longer understand time? Would an AI that cannot physically move through the world understand the world? Would it live solely on the plane of abstract ideas, and never realize that a “real” world of space and time and humans with other minds even exists?

It’s absurd to wonder about the human morality of such an entity. It’s like asking if the sound of the wind has morality.

It’s the opposite. If everyone died at 50, there would be no demographic problem.

That’s because the US recovered from abnormally now emissions due to COVID, whereas China spent 2022 still trapped in a massive COVID downturn. Year over year trends can sometimes be misleading, but the big picture is clear as day. Chinese emissions are now higher than all other developed countries combined.

Reddit’s days are numbered. “Dear ChatGDP5, please simulate for me a message posting platform focused on the topic of politics. Give me a mix of 10% learning new things, 10% lame inside jokes, and 80% correcting idiots who post obviously wrong things that I can sarcastically correct. Mix in my favorite recurring personalities from the last session.”

Gas is a lot better than coal. Only half the CO2 and almost no other pollutants.

By humanity, you mean China. Emissions have been dropping for years in the U.S. and EU.

So given all that, doesn’t it bother you that the union piled on against Apple here? It’s one thing to blame lazy employees, but what about the union? Shouldn’t they be held to a higher standard as well?

I’ll save you some time. I can’t define it, I can’t test for it, I can’t even be sure that I was conscious in the past or if I’m simply inserting a false memory of having been conscious in the past when I actually wasn’t.

I feel like I can be sure that I’m conscious at this precise moment, though, and I think it’s a reasonable guess that I was conscious yesterday as well, and probably a reasonable guess that most other people experience some sort of conscious experience. For that reason I try not to impose needless suffering on other people even though I can’t be sure that they truly experience conscious suffering.

I think it’s possible that complex computers will never experience consciousness, and if I’m right, that would be a reason why we would be different than a complex computer.

The fact that you ask me this makes me suspect that maybe you aren’t conscious.

I basically agree with you, but that’s not what most other people think. They believe the world was created by a benevolent entity and that the things that we do have meaning. It’s pretty common for people who lose that faith to suffer a crisis of meaning. Now imagine everyone on earth experiencing that at the same time.

You said you couldn’t think of any reason why we would be different than a complex computer. One possible reason is that we’re conscious and it’s possible complex computers will not be.

We don’t know what causes consciousness, but there’s no reason to think intelligence has anything to do with consciousness.

Are you sure about buying local? Seems like that depends on where you live. If you live in the desert southwest, buying from a local farmer who is consuming precious water to grow your strawberries is likely a lot more wasteful than buying South American strawberries shipped in.

20% of new cars sold in California are EVs. So far it’s been pretty smooth. In Norway it’s 80% EV. No major breaking points have been identified so far.

Do you understand what a tipping point is? It’s a permanent change that can’t be reversed - ie, the “it’s too late” claim. So what’s your evidence that there are climate changes that can’t be reversed if we move from 1.5 to 1.6?

For someone who really hates saying it, you seem to get a lot of enjoyment out of saying it.

There’s really no way to know, though. When a great painter is “in the zone,” they might well be experiencing a mode of consciousness that is unavailable to others. Not just a different experience, but perhaps a completely different way of existing. But they would never know, because to them it’s normal and they assume everyone else feels the same.

A smaller example might be self-talk. Most people apparently have a voice in their head. But some do not. I don’t, actually, and don’t understand how people who do can live a normal life that way.

Because we’re conscious.

It’s not about being special, it’s about being meaningful. Why suffer through pain, depression or loneliness if you know you’re actually just living in someone else’s video game?

It’s great that you see the inherent advantages of decentralized capitalism for preventing a state monopoly on AI. But surely you see that the exact same advantages apply to previous technologies too?

The point of decentralized capitalism is not that it always makes the optimum decisions, but rather that it avoids the perils of centralizing decisions in a single authority.

Emissions in the US and Europe have been dropping for 20 years, so it’s not all just greenwashing.

Shipping is not carbon intensive.

The US, hands down. I have no idea what you mean by “diminishing on the world stage.”

Isn’t anybody in this thread gonna say something mean about Musk?

It’s possible to think tech in general is good while also believing certain specific technologies should be avoided. Nobody thinks Nazi experiments on human eugenics was a good idea, for example.

Why especially does it have to be “human” brain cells? Why not animal?