very important question and i'm not sure... like i might say optimism but idk if it's quite that simple https://x.com/nickcammarata/status/1725575584422502750
there's something about recursive self improvement & exponential takeoff & extending trend lines to infinity... my brain just shrugs away from it and says everything hits constraints, just as any species does in the environment, and that the world is complex and things are never quite as good or as bad as we imagine
same attitude wrt longtermism really, that my error bars grow so large so quickly that it becomes pointless to talk about the distant future as a reason to do anything, really
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Reply · Jan 5, 2023@TheAnnaGat @slatestarcodex Ehh, having recognized the pattern and that it’s a bit of a feedback loop I nudge myself towards the awesome perspective…Reply · Jan 9, 2024@tenobrus i think you can make a deliberate choice to be optimistic & give ppl the most generous interpretation of their motivations, as a practice &…Reply · Apr 5, 2023@CustomWetware can you talk more about "takeoff"? I'm not quite convinced that exponential self improvement just happensReply · Jan 18, 2023@profoundlyyyy @abcampbell ha hard to generalize but yeah I think several have talked about being overwhelmed w complexities & philosophical debate…