6.2 KiB
[DC] Life after a positive (pseudo-)Singularity
Post:
There is a particular setting I would like to mention.
It is of a genre generally reviled and looked down upon: erotic furry fiction.
It contains descriptions of acts that are alternately jarrying, horrifying, disgusting, physically impossible, squicky, and illegal to even describe in various jurisdictions. It trips just about every NSFW filter in existence.
It is a fantasy, with religion being a centerpiece of the rules of the setting.
And yet... it is the closest depiction I have found to what life might be like in the event of anything resembling a positive Singularity. How people might live if CelestAI's values system wasn't poorly chosen. Or, depending on how you look at it, if the spot in mindspace CelestAI was programmed to inhabit could be exploited to allow more human-like minds to try to work on Maximum Fun.
The first story in the setting is "Bartleby's Descent", which I'm not even going to link to directly due to the level of NSFW content in the setting. Instead, I will provide a SFW link to a page which itself links to the stories in the setting: https://inkbunny.net/submissionview.php?id=33773 . (Assuming that you don't already have an account on the site, you may have to click a few ratings checkboxes to see the content.)
You may recall Reedspacer's Lower Bound, as a lower limit to how cool the future you aim for should be; I'm bringing up this setting as an example of an entirely different Lower Bound, one that provides more Fun than most people imagine the highest bound might be, and a possible example of a Weirdtopia.
(At least some of the stories in the setting count as Rational Fiction, though not necessarily all of them, so I'm minimizing the tags in the post title.)
Comments:
-
u/Rangi42:
What do you mean by "if CelestAI's values system wasn't poorly chosen"? Apart from manipulating people to take the physical form of ponies, I think she got Fun Theory basically right. And being a pony doesn't sound bad at all compared to the possible unfriendly AIs that could exist instead. Then again, I also think that Prime Intellect's chief failure was its lack of access to human minds, which would have enabled the kind of benevolent manipulation that CelestAI performs, and which could have prevented people from inevitably wireheading for pleasure instead of eudaimonia/fulfillment.-
u/DataPacRat:
A major theme of the Optimalverse stories involves the question about whether uploading is a good idea or not. Many people feel that having access to the real world, such as having a choice to change their mind and un-upload, or at least have access to true information about reality, is an important detail that makes CelestAI's enticements, which lack the same, a poisoned apple. Or, put another way, that CelestAI's value system makes uploading reasonably equivalent to wireheading. -
u/None:
You just got so much about FAI basically, fundamentally wrong that it's hard to actually describe without teaching the entire subject from scratch. Have you considered that there are little things people care about like "nonsolipsistic existence" and "genocide"? Must I repeat the word GENOCIDE in big capital letters until you bleeding get it? Or should I just go back to banging my head on the table at how useless it is for people to bring that fic up in FAI discussions, since it was Genie AI *anyway*, so *even if* you endorsed that goal system as Friendly or near-enough to Friendly, *we couldn't possibly build it*. ARGGGGH PROPERLY FRIENDLY UTILITY FUNCTIONS ARE SUBVERBAL AND CAN'T BE FOUND VIA A PRIORI PHILOSOPHICAL DEDUCTION BUT ONLY THROUGH CAREFUL EXAMINATION OF THE HUMAN MIND DESIGN TO PICK OUT THE SPACE OF LEARNING ALGORITHMS THAT CAN INFER WHAT HUMANS ENDORSE ON REFLECTION. ARRRGGHHH NEVER USE DIRECT NORMATIVITY OR I WILL CUT YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF.-
u/ArisKatsaris:
> Must I repeat the word GENOCIDE in big capital letters until you bleeding get it? You're just shouting, not communicating.- u/None:
You are correct and I should not have yelled.
- u/None:
-
-
-
u/None:
>It is of a genre generally reviled and looked down upon: erotic furry fiction. I am already trying to force my eyes to go past this line. They are resisting. Ok, made it through the rest of the post. Not going to click that link at work, if ever. [Compare](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SMd95QU2c4Ms_LnGa1yTtMmik3m3ju6vL22GPECc7cE/edit?usp=sharing), and then tell me whether it's worth clicking.-
u/DataPacRat:
> They are resisting. Is that an actual 'ugh field', or simple distaste? > Compare, and then tell me whether it's worth clicking. One question that few authours seem willing to try to tackle is, once a bunch of people have uploaded into a virtuality... what would life be like for them? What would they spend their time actually doing? If that aspect of such scenarios interests you enough that you'd like to read about at least one possibility, even knowing that you're going to be disturbed by it, then you might want to read through the first Bartleby's story. On the other paw, if the 'bleck' you feel from death-jockeying is strong enough that you don't think you'd be able to learn anything from such a story, then I'd recommend against it. (On the gripping paw, if a major part of that 'bleck' you feel is from the /pain/ involved in Prime Intellect style death-jockeying, rather than the killing itself, then a minor spoiler of the Bartleby's setting is that inhabitants don't feel pain they don't wish to and/or enjoy, and their version of death-jockeying can be as cartoonish as, well, cartoons.)-
u/None:
The bleck, ironically, came from the way death jockeying was an entire art and sport of Accentuating the Negative in an immortal life. I'd prefer to read about someone who enjoys their immortality.- u/DataPacRat:
Ah - in that case, Bartleby and company are doing all they can to enjoy themselves, and seem to be succeeding at that.
- u/DataPacRat:
-
-