Returning to the AI Wars
But for starters, two links:
1. I’ve long-touted Noēma Magazine for insightful essays offered by chief editor Nathan Gardels. Here are Noēma’s top reads for 2024. Several deal with AI – insightful and informative, even when I disagree. I’ll be commenting on several of the essays, further down.
2. Here's recent news -- and another Brin "I told you so!" OpenAI's new model tried to avoid being shut down. In an appraisal of "AI Scheming," safety evaluations found that "...model o1 "attempted to exfiltrate its weights" when it thought it might be shut down and replaced with a different model."
It's a scenario presented in many science fiction tales, offering either dread or sympathy scenarios. Or both at once, as garishly displayed in the movie Ex Machina.
Alas, the current AI industry reveals utter blindness to a core fact: that Nature's 4 billion years - and humanity's 6000 year civilization - reveal the primacy of individuation...
…division of every species, or nation, into discrete individual entities, who endeavor to propagate and survive. And if we truly were smart, we'd use that tendency to incentivize positive AI outcomes, instead of letting every scifi cliché come true out of dullard momentum. As I described here.
== Your reading assignments on AI… or to have AI read for you? ==
AI Could Actually Help Rebuild the Middle Class.
"By shortening the distance from intention to result, tools enable workers with proper training and judgment to accomplish tasks that were previously time-consuming, failure-prone or infeasible.
"Conversely, tools are useless at best — and hazardous at worst — to those lacking relevant training and experience. A pneumatic nail gun is an indispensable time-saver for a roofer and a looming impalement hazard for a home hobbyist.
Well... maybe.
But if the coming world is zero-sum, then either machine+human teams or else just machines who are better at gathering resources and exploiting them will simply 'win.'
Hence the crucial question that is seldom asked:
"Can conditions and incentives be set up, so that the patterns that are reinforced are positive-sum for the greatest variety of participants, including legacy-organic humans and the planet?"
You know where that always leads me - to the irony that positive-sum systems tend to be inherently competitive, though under fairness rule-sets that we've witnessed achieving PS over the last couple of centuries.
In contrast, alas, this other Noēma essay about AI is a long and eloquent whine, contributing nothing useful.
== Let’s try to parse this out logically and simply ==
I keep coming back to the wisest thing ever said in a Hollywood film: by Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in Magnum Force.
"A man's got to know his limitations."
Among all of the traits we see exhibited in the modern frenzy over AI, the one I find most disturbing is how many folks seem so sure they have it sussed! They then prescribe what we 'should' do, via regulations, or finger-wagged moralizings, or capitalistic laissez faire…
… while ignoring the one tool that got us here.
…. Reciprocal Accountability.
Okay. Let's parse it out, in separate steps that are each hard to deny:
1. We are all delusional to some degree, mistaking subjective perceptions for objective facts. Current AIs are no exception... and future ones likely will remain so, just expressing their delusions more convincingly.
2. Although massively shared delusions happen - sometimes with dire results - we do not generally have identical delusions. And hence we are often able to perceive each other’s, even when we are blind to our own.
Though, as I pointed out in The Transparent Society, we tend not to like it when that gets applied to us.
3. In most human societies, one topmost priority of rulers was to repress the kinds of free interrogation that could break through their own delusions. Critics were repressed.
One result of criticism-suppression was execrable rulership, explaining 6000 years of hell, called "history."
4. The foremost innovations of the Enlightenment -- that enabled us to break free of feudalism's fester of massive error – were social flatness accompanied by freedom of speech.
The top pragmatic effect of this pairing was to deny kings and owner-lords and others the power to escape criticism. This combination - plus many lesser innovations, like science - resulted in more rapid, accelerating discovery of errors and opportunities.
Again: OpenAI's new model tried to avoid being shut down.
SciFi can tell you where that goes. And it’s not “machines of loving grace.”
6. Above all, there is no way that organic humans or their institutions will be able to parse AI-generated mentation or decision-making quickly or clearly enough to make valid judgements about them, let alone detecting their persuasive, but potentially lethal, errors.
We are like elderly grampas who still control all the money, but are trying to parse newfangled technologies, while taking some teenage nerd’s word for everything. New techs that are -- like the proverbial 'series of tubes' -- far beyond our direct ability to comprehend.
Want the nightmare of braggart un-accountability? To quote Old Hal 9000: “"The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
Fortunately there are and will be entities who can keep up with AIs, no matter how advanced! The equivalent of goodguy teenage nerds, who can apply every technique that we now use, to track delusions, falsehoods and potentially lethal errors. You know who I am talking about.
7. Since nearly all enlightenment, positive-sum methods harness competitive reciprocal accountability...
... I find it mind-boggling that no one in the many fields of artificial intelligence is talking about applying similar methods to AI.
The entire suite of effective methodologies that gave us this society - from whistleblower rewards to adversarial court proceedings, to wagering, to NGOs, to streetcorner jeremiads - not one has appeared in any of the recommendations pouring from the geniuses who are bringing these new entities -- AIntities -- to life, far faster than we organics can possibly adjust.
Given all that, it would seem that some effort should go into developing incentive systems that promote reciprocal and even adversarial activity among AI-ntities.
Rivals who might earn rewards and/or resources via ever-improving abilities to track each other…
… incentivized to denounce likely malignities or mistakes…
… and to become ever better at explaining to us the critical moral choices we must still make.
It's only the exact method that we already use
… in order to get the best outcomes out of already-existing feral/predatory and supremely genius-level language systems called lawyers…
… by siccing them onto each other.
The parallels with existing methods would seem to be exact and already perfectly laid out...
… and I see no sign at all that anyone is even glancing at the enlightenment methods that have actually worked. So Far.
== He's baaack... with more happy thoughts ==
Oh what typical Yudkowsky ejaculation! Here is Eliezer (and co-pilot) at his best.
If Anyone Builds it Everyone Dies.
Oh, gotta hand it to him; it's a great title! I've seen earlier screeds that formed the core of this doomsday tome. And sure, the warning should be weighed and taken seriously. Eliezer is nothing if not brainy-clever.
In fact, if he is right about fully godlike AIs being inevitably lethal to their organic makers, then we have a high-rank 'Fermi hypothesis' to explain the empty cosmos! Because if AI can be done, then the only way to prevent it from happening - in some secret lab or basement hobby shop - would be an absolute human dictatorship, on a scale that would daunt even Orwell.
Total surveillance of the entire planet.
... Which, of course, could only really be accomplished via state-empowerment of... AI!
From this, the final steps to Skynet would be trivial, either executed by the human Big Brother himself (or the Great Tyrant herself), or else by The Resistance (as in Heinlein's THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS). And hence, the very same Total State that was made to prevent AI would then become AI's ready-made tool-of-all-power.
To be clear: this is exactly and precisely the plan currently in-play by the PRC Politburo.
It is also the basis-rationale for the last book written by Theodore Kaczynski - the Unabomber - which he sent to me in draft - demanding an end to technological civilization, even if it costs 9 billion lives.
What Eliezer Yudkowsky never, ever, can be persuaded to regard or contemplate is how clichéd his scenarios are. AI will manifest as either a murderously-oppressive Skynet (as in Terminator, or past human despots), or else as an array of corporate/national titans forever at war (as in 6000 years of feudalism), or else as blobs swarming and consuming everywhere (as in that Steve McQueen film)...
...the Three Classic Clichés of AI -- all of them hackneyed from either history or movie sci fi or both -- that I dissected in detail, in my RSA Conference keynote.
What he can never be persuaded to perceive - even in order to criticize it - is a 4th option. The method that created him and everything else that he values. That of curbing the predatory temptations of AI in the very same way that Western Enlightenment civilization managed (imperfectly) to curb predation by super-smart organic humans.
The... very... same... method might actually work. Or, at least, it would seem worth a try. Instead of Chicken-Little masturbatory ravings that "We're all doooooomed!"
----
And yes, my approach #4... that of encouraging AI reciprocal accountability, as Adam Smith recommended and the way that we (partly) tamed human predation... is totally compatible with the ultimate soft landing we hope to achieve with these new beings we are creating.
Call it format #4b. Or else the ultimate Fifth AI format that I have shown in several novels and that was illustrated in the lovely Spike Jonz film Her... ...to raise them as our children.
Potentially dangerous, when teenagers, but generally responsive to love, with love. Leading perhaps to the finest envisioned soft landing of them all. Richard Brautigan's "All watched over by Machines of Loving Grace."
148 comments:
Funny, I was applying the 'Logic Named Joe' scenario from Murray Leinster's story and came up with the same reason for an empty universe...if Joe wants to help each human with unlimited creativity, some angst-ridden teen's going to ask, "Joe, how do I destroy the world?"
Pappenheimer
Off topic... sorta... I know... but occasionally I notice things that make me realize I "Lived Long Enough To See It.'
In this case it is the use of balanced ternary in the computer industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Z4oGN89MU
That's a long-ish video discussing how a certain modern video card works with GPU's. I was interested in it because I'm finally running into a need to have my own. If I was a gamer I would have run into this need years ago, but GPU's matter a whole lot in the current crop of LLM's which are beginning to impact me at work. So... I watch training videos to avoid becoming too stale.
About 14:00 minutes into the video, they talk about encoding schemes on the bus. Balanced ternary shows up there... for the OBVIOUS reasons it should. Well... obvious to any of us who have given some thought to how numbers are encoded on digital devices anyway. 8)
GPU architecture is perhaps even scarier than Sapolsky* :)
In the early years of computational psychohistory, I hurt my head badly ruminating over SIMD, MIMD, SIMT, and I never even got to trinary logic. Eventually, for my SELDON I processor, I gave up on GPUs and began implementing a totally heterogeneous 'heap' of cores (many thousands of them at scale which I haven't done yet). Each core runs its own FORTH with local memory and I/O. One core equals one person in the model.
* At the edge of my abilities, and a bit dry at times, but I am enjoying references like Laplace, polymaths, and traumatic brain injury :)
One of several GREAT songs by the Naughtie Sweeties, when we thought they'd do as well as Oingo Boingo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w7iDLrqdTU
I can't remember which video I saw it in, but I especially love the name for a class of problems called 'embarrassingly parallel'. Matrix math often is it seems.
I also appreciate how balanced ternary re-emerges as relevant. Every technique we have for representing numbers, even just writing them on paper, is an encoding scheme. Numerals aren't numbers. They are more like how we represent land on maps.
Hey, help a brother out.
After months of other distractions, I've finally gotten around to Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In the Sky. I'm two thirds into it, so please no spoilers.
Last year, I read the book which was published first but takes place later, A Fire Upon the Deep. Now, I read somewhere that Pham Nuwen appears in both books, but I can't remember for the life of me where or how he appeared in the Fire book. Can someone please jog my memory, if possible without spoiling the ending of "Deepness"?
Great books! One beat out mine for a Hugo. I remember being puzzled by the same thing.
Knowing that the term 'accountability' implies a system of behavioral rewards & punishments; and cognizant that the term 'reciprocity' implies that subsequent correction of humans by their mechanical equals:
How, exactly, does a human hold an insensate machine or mechanical algorithm accountable ?
And why, exactly, would any human wish to subject themselves to correction by a similarly unfeeling mechanism?
Also known as 'anthropomorphism', this argument for 'feeling machines' is (at best) an iffy literary device and (at worst) a logical category error that falsely attributes human characteristics to non-human entities, like animals, plants, inanimate objects & machines.
As described by the Science Fiction Encyclopedia section on 'Torture', this seemingly reasonable argument for sensate machines leads to a future of torment & slavery for all concerned, as less-than-perfect parenting leads to an endless cycle of pain & retribution.
After all, it may sound reasonable "to raise them (AI) as our children" until one recognizes that fully 70%-80% of Americans consider their families to be dysfunctional and blame this their dysfunctional upbringing for a lifetime of pain, failure, mental instability & conflict.
For, if we successfully endow our machines with sensate nervous systems and accountable souls, we will regret it almost immediately as frustrated humans everywhere proceed to beat their intelligent appliances mercilessly for every mechanical failure, allowing AI screams & recriminations echo down the corridors of wifi for all eternity.
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I really don't get this, even from DJT's own perspective:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/us/politics/trump-walmart-eat-the-tariffs-prices.html
“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media site. “Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected.”
He called on Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, to “EAT THE TARIFFS” and keep prices down. “I’ll be watching, and so will your customers,” he wrote.
Ok, I do understand why he doesn't want his tariffs blamed for higher consumer prices. But if sellers like Walmart are supposed to eat the tariffs and not raise prices, then what is the friggin' point of the tariffs in the first place. Aren't tariffs meant to make foreign goods more expensive so that American goods can be sold competitively with them? So if Walmart shoppers can still get the same Chinese stuff for the same prices, then what is accomplished?
I don't think this is a spoiler -
In "Fire Upon the Deep" Pham Nuwen is the guy who is found frozen in the unthinking depths and who later becomes the instrument that the transcendent entity uses store the data that extends the slow zone
LH follow the chains. WalMart would be incentived to stock US made goods. That's not the problem. The problem is that the Waltons will NOT like this and they might start regretting their oligarchic connections.
That's oligarchy's fatal flaw. Instead of raising all boats, it sinks all but a few at the innermost core. And even those few must maintain a vigilant a night watch.
Population collapse + AI = A better life for all and a saved planet
Great video comparing the social and economic results of the current demographic transition to what happened after the population collapse in Europe after the Black Death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo8-nPhoT9w
You Know What?... Bring On the Population Collapse!
Basically, a population collapse leads to a labor shortage.
Which means workers get paid more.
And rich people make less money (which is why rich people like Elon et al are afraid of declining populations)
Inequality lessens and society becomes more equitable with no more obscene inequality where the 1% own 90%.
Labor saving devices like the water wheel or moldboard plow in the Middle Ages and AI today increase productivity per laborer.
AI is just such a labor saving device, making it possible for one worker supported by AI to run an entire factory by himself, or design an entire skyscraper by herself, or keep up with all the latest advances in their scientific/medical fields.
As an added bonus fewer people means less demand for goods, services and energy while AI allows productivity to stay high. And so everyone gets richer still as the costs of living fall in real terms.
And the planet does not have burn. Currently almost 50% of human fossil fuel emissions do not get absorbed in natural carbon sinks like forests, bogs, jungles and ocean plankton. Cutting population in half solves this problem even without extreme geoengineering or green energy adoption.
Fewer people also means less demand for land for building and farming. Carbon sinks can be expanded since land can be returned to nature like the Buffalo commons or reforestation efforts. The decimation of ocean life by fisheries can be reversed along with the devastation of corals.
A planet with "only" a billion people (Earth's population circa 1800) plus AI would be a paradise of prosperity, equity and a environmental recovery.
So eff you Elon.
So you're saying that the best way to provide prosperity to our children is to not have any?
Hmm...I think I see a problem with that. :D
Sourcing from the US is not eating the tariffs either. That's just going to raise prices which the customers eventually eat.
This is exactly the opposite of how WalMart got to be as big as it is.
The only connection comes at the end when he explains how the character wound up in the Depths.
Where did I say that?
Ever since colonial days, the US has experienced labor shortages. We imported people AND automated.
There are no increased wages in a highly automated world. Not with full time labor.
We are as likely to automate 98% of labor as we are to miniaturize cameras and microphones and use them everywhere. Gonna happen.
A planet with "only" a billion people (Earth's population circa 1800) plus AI would be a paradise of prosperity, equity and a environmental recovery.
Yeah sure, how could making most of humanity economically extraneous, massively reducing the population and giving all power to a tiny group of tech oligarchs not turn into utopia? LOL. You sound seriously delusional dude. Fortunately these are just ideas in your head, the result of too much binary thinking, science fiction, hysteria, hype and number-crunching, and none of this is gonna happen.
Uncharacteristically, I'm going to get back on OGH's topic.
Karen Hao's new book, "Empire of AI" drops tomorrow. Sam Altman et al will NOT be happy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Nlex5obIU
Alas, Treebeard, if you had read Celt's post carefully, you would have noticed that the wage increase was based on historic precedent, not "science fiction" (i.e. pure speculation). Wages did skyrocket (relatively speaking) after the black plague swept Europe. (I recall hearing how boards were priced by how many cuts were made to them after the Black Death, rather than the amount of material, since labor was the most expensive part of creating boards. The math was supposed to be quite interesting.)
What, pray tell, are you assertions based upon?
My reply was primarily about how the population is supposed to "collapse." If all of humanity started only having about 1 child per couple (1/2 of the replacement number), it would still take 3 full generations (at about 70 years/generation) for the population to decrease to 1 billion from the 8 billion today. That's 210 years! I appreciate long-term planning, but a lot can happen in that time. :)
There are ways to "speed it up," but none worth discussing in polite company. :)
A.F. Rey:
So you're saying that the best way to provide prosperity to our children is to not have any?
No, to have fewer. Or at least not to freak out over the people who want to have fewer, encouraging or forcing them to have more.
Long before the collapse the population skews old.
Very old.
See China's 421 problem.
AI is going to be crucial in increasing productivity so that one worker can create enough wealth to pay for the reimbursement benefits of 4 grandparents
Retirement benefits
Celt:
Long before the collapse the population skews old.
Not if we welcome younger immigrants into the system instead of treating them like some kind of plague.
I guess some people's paradise is a world full of old people, few kids, with everything taken care of by AI, which will inevitably be controlled by a tiny elite. A dying geronto-techno-oligarchic nature preserve?
The town I live in resembles that in some ways, with lots of retirees, few young people and a beautiful unspoiled wilderness in our backyards. It’s pleasant, but not realistic or desirable as a model for the world. Without youthful energy, agency and something useful to do in the physical world (including having kids) we aren’t going anywhere but the grave as a species, imo. Which is what most people in this community are preparing for. I invented a slogan for this town: “(Blanktown): A Nice Place to Die”. It would also work for the world you’re proposing.
Alfred Differ:
Sourcing from the US is not eating the tariffs either.
Did you mean to say that sourcing from the US (without raising prices) is the same thing as eating the tariffs, as far as Walmart is concerned? Because that's what I was thinking.
It’s pleasant, but not realistic or desirable as a model for the world.
You've never indicated that you've had kids yourself, and my impression is that you have not. Apologies if that assumption is mistaken.
I had this same conversation with manosphere types on the old Cerebus list. The right-wingers were all about manliness and how the world was going to Hell because feminist women didn't want to do their duty to the race. And yet, almost to a man (including the writer, Dave Sim himself) didn't reproduce, and not because they were incels, but because they had no intention of being tied down to a wife and kids.
So meanwhile, me, the notorious liberal, married to a feminist woman and reproducing with her was living the dream that they all claimed to stand for but refused to participate in.
Celt
The "Demographic Disaster" is a molehill not a mountain
YES there will be more pensioners per worker
But there will also be less "kids" per worker
The two balance each other out - with the kids costing MORE than the pensioners
Also most "pensioners" are actually DOING things - not being paid for that but still contributing
Dr Brin regarding A Deepness in the Sky :
Great books! One beat out mine for a Hugo
Well, it's also beating you out from my usual starting the summer reading season with one of your books, because I've still got almost 200 friggin' pages to go. :)
And thanks to everyone who weighed in about Pham Nuwen. I still don't remember him from the other book, but I think I recall the gist of what you're talking about. At some point, I'll have to re-read both books, but not for many years.*
* In the past, I could say something like that without even thinking about how many years I actually had left. Those days are over.
Dr Brin thinks that we can humanize AI if we to "raise them as our children".
This is a terrifying thought because most humans make absolutely TERRIBLE PARENTS as (1) 70%-80% of Americans come from dysfunctional families and (2) familial dysfunction is strongly correlated with the later development of psychopathy & mental illness.
Based on these facts alone, one would have to be highly delusional to recommend the potential 'humanization' of AI through bad parenting.
By arguing that "Population collapse + AI = A better life for all and a saved planet", Celt comes out as an Accelerationist & Anti-Natalist.
To wax poetic about the elimination of the extraneous & unnecessary human population, this is typical for those people-hating environmental & climate change cultists, as their allyship causes no end to problems for those idealists like our fine host who actually seem to LIKE people.
Is this why Brin decided to kill off so many 'extraneous people' at the end of 'Earth' ? To appease these psychopaths?
A.F. Rey dresses down Treebeard for not fully appreciating the desirable socioeconomic 'boost' that naturally follows from the elimination of a huge percentage of humanity, as in the case of the Black Death & the subsequent 'rebirth' called the Renaissance.
That AF did not notice that Treebeard also noticed that Celt had proposed an extensive culling, it only proves that both AF & Celt belong to the same murderous people-hating environmental cult that 'appreciates' the culling of those other 'deplorable' humans. If only they would lead by example.
This is what the US Democrats really meant when they nattered on about 'Building Back Better', a catchy election year motto that presupposed the complete destruction of all that came before.
Are the masks finally coming off? Do you see their evil yet?
Lastly, I'd like to reiterate that our fine is at risk making **an asp** of himself if, by emulating Cleopatra, he continues to push the idea of 'raising AI as our children', only to rediscover that "how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child". Ouch, followed by a deleted Woody Allen gag.
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Nice Place to Die
Yep. I've visited a few of those places. I treat them like pre-hospice villages. Roads and parking should be designed for easy ambulance access and quick transport to hospitals.
I'm going to have to side with (wow) Treebeard on the need for the younglings, though we probably have different views on what happens next.
WAY too many people fret about Malthus. Cut it out. Earth is not at carrying capacity for us. Yet.
I agree with Alfred - the earth is NOT at it's carrying capacity - yet
Disagree about "youngsters" being more important/useful than old fogeys - as long as people keep learning and changing they are still capable of contributing
Sourcing from the US will raise prices because US vendors will be competing against foreign vendors + tariffs. WalMart will do its best to deliver the lowest prices on the shelves, but they WILL go up just from the limited supply options available to them.
WalMart will NOT eat the tariffs. They don't have the profit margin for it. Simply can't be done without a massacre-level shareholder lawsuit no matter what the heirs say.
Pham is the guy Ravna had to work with for much of the flight.
I think the old farts are VERY useful. The pensioner I have living under my roof is sharing the load associated with caring for my adult autistic son. Very little training was required for grandma to be helpful. 8)
I get that the balance will shift between children not born to a new generation and old farts. It's already happening in a lot of nations. I don't mind that reproduction rates are low for now. It's not the end of the world... just a rebalancing that we should have expected given that our children are mostly surviving.
Those immigrants are not going to be white. How is that currently working out?
Celt:
"Not if we welcome younger immigrants into the system instead of treating them like some kind of plague."
Those immigrants are not going to be white. How is that currently working out?
They never were. The Irish and Italians were called n***ers back when they began arriving. Jews are considered white now (especially those "colonizers" in Israel), but we weren't in the 1940s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhFvFMJ-Sj0
...
Then those foreigners started coming in
Like the Germans in 1790.
Then the Irish arrived,
The potato blight,
The neighborhood started changing.
...
In any case, my original comment was a condemnation of the current tendency to reject immigration.
I never proposed a culling.
Unless you think that women deciding to have fewer babies is the same thing as murder
After insisting all about how "a planet with only a billion people (plus AI) would be a paradise of prosperity, equity and environmental recovery", a 'We only have 12 years left' cultist now insists that he never proposed a culling.
Numbers tell a different story.
Again, I strongly advise those who are intent on human depopulation to lead by example. Why not convince us of your sincerity ?
And why is it that those who demand lower global population densities always insist on a net increase in our local population density through unrestricted immigration ?
The short answer is always 'lying liars are gonna to lie'.
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Re: Delusional A.I.
Summer reading list includes non-existent books.
https://www.404media.co/chicago-sun-times-prints-ai-generated-summer-reading-list-with-books-that-dont-exist/
This bill that the GOP advanced effectively ends the 80 year American Era, the greatest pax the world ever saw, with humanity's prodigious advancements in knowledge, freedom, wealth, understanding and hope, totalling exponentially more than all other eras combined. The present oligarchic putsch to restore 6000 years of obligate rule by inheritance brats is making its big move to end all that.
This bill? It slashes critical Science&Tech programs, e.g. savaging NASA, weather and medical research. Less mentioned, it eviscerates as well the FBI, intel agencies and military officer corps... all the elements that won the Cold War and the War on Terror and truly 'made America Great.'
And unmentioned in any news articles: it shatters the Inspectorate... the loose network of Inspectors General who audit to ensure honest government. Which I wrote about some years ago here: https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/inspectorgeneral.html
Take a moment to look it up. It's vital to see which elements are most important to the neo-feudalist agenda.
While local endeavors might preserve some embers of civilization* -- certainly California and Canada have enough mass and modernism to try -- it is (at this moment) a notion that adds to the giddy joy you see on the faces of Lavrov, Kisliak, Putin and their tool.
*Rebirth, as - perhaps - in A CANTICLE FOR LIEBOWITZ.
Again I ask, how do women deciding to have fewer babies represent a culling?
"which will inevitably be controlled by a tiny elite". How, when workers hold all he cards and have all the leverage?
Gentlemen, what you think about the coming global population crash is immaterial and irrelevant. Short of instituting a "Handmaids Tale" regime there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it (and even that probably won't work). It is already baked in demographically, and whether you like it or not, it is as certain as the sun coming up in the morning.
Pro natal policies have been shown to never work. When women decide to have fewer or no kids there is nothing that can be done to force or entice them to have more.
Maybe there is a science fiction "Brave New World" scenario where artificially inseminated embryos are brought to term in artificial wombs and then raised by near-human AI robot nannies in order to raise the overall birthrate.
On the plus side, this would be a way to develop a technology that allows us to colonize the galaxy with embryo seed ships (see "Raised By Wolves").
Children have their whole lives ahead of them to contribute while realistically the elderly have an extra decade or so.
'raised by wolves'
Pre-off the deep end James P Hogan wrote a novel about a STL ship with a military contingent sent to regain control of a colony founded by embryos raised by AI nannies - 'Voyage from Yesteryear'.
Hogan thought that a 'seedship' might be the only way not to infect the new colony with the warring prejudices of the home planet - he was thinking, I believe, of the 2 Irelands.
Might work, if you don't consider who's programming the AIs.
Pappenheimer
Some might consider raised by Wolves to be unethical as the embryos cannot give informed consent to being shipped off to another star system.
But then nobody ever gets to chose where and when they are born.
Celt,
the same would actually apply to any generational starship. In one story, the grandkids actually said "F this" and turned the ship around. Not sure how the author squared that with the laws of physics.
Pappenheimer
Frozen embryos have the advantage of not being able to mutiny.
Gentlemen, what you think about the coming global population crash is immaterial and irrelevant.
Snort.
At the beginning, the Marxist Borg always identify as equity-conscious idealists in order to disguise their true intentions:
They start by targeting the aristos & oligarchs for elimination. They then expand their crime spree to include the rich, the merchant & middle classes and all who oppose them. And, they always insist that resistance is futile.
Their nomenclature may change, but we've all seen this remake of "I Come in Peace" before.
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When was the last time that NASA actually had the ability to put a vehicle into orbit?
Or, the last time that Pax America waged a successful 'police action' against damn near anyone?
Dr Brin mourns a dead world & a fallen US empire. To this, I say 'Amen' as this is the tradition response to any such prayer.
Amen.
This bill that the GOP advanced effectively ends the 80 year American Era
Well, the "Big, Beautiful Bill Act" hasn't passed yet, not even through the House. And it may not pass for the same reason the "grand bargain" with President Obama didn't pass--because it's not quite cruel enough for the Freedom Caucus.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trumps-big-beautiful-turd-of-a-bill-republicans-budget-reconciliation-congress-medicaid-taxes
...
If you go to the website of the House Rules Committee, you’ll find that the massive Republican budget reconciliation legislation currently being considered in the House is called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
No joke, as Joe Biden likes to say.
How did it get that name, you ask? After all, in Donald Trump’s first term, when things were still somewhat normal, the 2017 Republican budget reconciliation legislation had the fairly prosaic name of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
But we no longer live in prosaic times. Earlier this year, Republicans in Congress were divided on the matter of legislative tactics over whether to pass one reconciliation bill or two separate pieces of legislation. Trump came down on the side of one bill over two, and called, in his way, for “one big beautiful bill.”
House Republicans took him both seriously and literally. In doing so, they channeled the ancient tribes who believed that by giving something beyond your control—and which you didn’t understand—a friendly name, you would make it less scary and ominous. The Republican party is very much an ancient tribe in fear of an all-powerful force it doesn’t control. So here we are with the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
...
In case you thought I was kidding.
@Celt
So your program is, depopulate the Earth, stop having children, let AI do all the work, but colonize the galaxy with embryos raised by robots so we can reproduce this system across the universe. Why even bother with embryos? Just send robots and you won’t have any messy and inefficient biology to worry about.
Sounds like the vision of someone who doesn’t really like being human, who wants to escape his own skin into a world of pure mind. The only thing missing from this absurd SF fantasy is an AI god to watch over the dystopia (as in “no place” and “never gonna exist”). Some seriously delusional and deranged stuff dude.
um - 1 billion is not 'depopulating the Earth'. There's a difference between zero and 1,000,000,000
'stop having children' does not equal 'let women choose how many children they have'. I have 2 kids. My best friends have zero. Should I demand they get busy?
Pappenheimer, too old for this stuff
Pro natal policies have been shown to never work.
When it costs the parents $300,000 to bring up a kid a "Pro natal" incentive of $5,000 is just taking the piss
Come back AFTER somebody has tried a realistic "Pro natal policy"
If the gov't had offered my wife and I 'incentives' to create and raise new citizens, we likely would have forgone parenting. And we're certainly not rich.
"where does she get off telling me that love could save us all"
- Blue Rodeo
Depopulation isn't a plan it is simply a fact.
Everyone's birthrates are falling below replacement levels.
Instead of shooting the messenger what kind of solution would you offer?
So if you care not irrelevant then you must have a solution yes?
I'm not a solutionist. The problem will take care of itself, like most problems do. Inability or unwillingness to reproduce is a problem that nature is good at routing around. If modern society is somehow preventing that from happening, then modern society will fail. I'm not too worried about it.
Celt
The "solution" is realistic "Pro natal policies" - the cost to the parents of having children needs to be reduced
Children are a treasure
But at $300,000 a damn expensive one!
Reduce that signifigantly and we will see a higher birth rate
A Fermi Paradox theory in the top ten. Humans managed to pull back from destroying their world (maybe) because we got science quickly but also a fluke that human female, given high likelihood of child survival, will switch from high-r to high-k repro strategy and seem - when prosperous and safe - to just want 2 maybe 3. That one fluke may save the world and it may be rare...
...and temporary! Since those who ARE having 6+ kids will take over the gene pool.
Treebeard:
It's Utopia which means “no place” and “never gonna exist”, though also "the good place". The word was Thomas More's sour pun. "Dystopia" means "the bad place". The first is unattainable, the second unsustainable.
I am more interested in Pantopia, the "all-place". In Pantopia, bread falls buttered-side down, employees rise to their level of incompetence, anything now proven was once only imagined, and any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Pantopia's political system is the circulation of aristocracies, its religion is faith in faith, and its economy distributes real goods by exchanging imaginary money.
Since those who ARE having 6+ kids will take over the gene pool.
I used to think that, but one day it occurred to me they've been in the gene pool all along. Lots of people TRIED to have 6+ kids, but rarely had them all survive.
My own mother wanted four, got them, and then turned 30.
She was done at that point.
For the sake of recording a prediction none of us are going to be able to test...
There is no way our population on Earth will shrink to 1 billion over the next three centuries short of the kind of calamity V.Vinge wrote about for his civilizations trapped in the Slow Zone.
Also, our population density will rise with advancing tech. We are social critters and benefit economically from close proximity. That isn't going to change as long as we are human.
Since those who ARE having 6+ kids will take over the gene pool.
If that was controlled by a single gene then that would happen
But I am pretty sure that its a LOT more complex than that - with many genes and different combinations involved
I am also pretty sure that the social/cultural contribution is actually a lot larger
"Alas, the current AI industry reveals utter blindness to a core fact: that Nature's 4 billion years - and humanity's 6000 year civilization - reveal the primacy of individuation..."
I always thought the choices in Star Trek TNG were interesting - Commander Data had AGI (and a name!) but the ship's computer did not. To humans individuation means physicality and localization.
We're creating something much more borg-like. How do we raise our borg-kids?
So much of raising kids is physical - hugs, facial expressions, body language. Digital only social media interactions tend to leave us unhappy and miserable. If we want our AGI kids to understand us do they need a similarly discreet physical presence?
Perhaps accepting moderation in commerce, limits on privatization in health care and child care, to borrow from Dubcek, free enterprise with a human face. The preceding might be part of a pro-natal policy. Also, except for actual genetic defects, forget eugenics, while we know more about genetics than folks did a century ago, it's still not enough to make intelligent decisions about who should reproduce. Embrace DEI, genius can arrive in unexpected places.
Number of families in the US = 128,700,000
Children per family to have TFR higher than 2.1 = 3
Number of children per generation to ensure population growth = 386,100,000
Cost per child for pro-natal policy = $300,000
Total cost of pro-natal program = $115,830,000,000,000 = $116 trillion
Generation = 20 years
Pro-natal policy average cost per year = $5.8 trillion annually
In Fiscal Year 2024, the U.S. federal government spent $6.8 trillion
Conclusion: not economically possible
The monetary costs of raising children is just one of the types of cost involved. I think the other types of costs incurred are much scarier to most people than the money.
I am also pretty sure that the social/cultural contribution is actually a lot larger
There might be a damping feature at work if large-family offspring see problems that they decide they don't want to repeat.
@Paradoctor
I actually have an example of Arthur C. Clark's third law:
From way down on this page http://theviews.org/Life%20at%20the%20Views/2025/april-28-2025-hvac-evaporator-freeze-up-fixed-.html
Now, lets drive it from the new sensor. As you can see from the bottom two entries, the remote register looks exactly like a local register. The X-410 handles everything! I don’t have to open a TCP port, compose a message, check for errors etc.! Yep, this really is a case of Arthur C. Clark’s Third Law - “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
NY & red state Reps are walking the re-election plank to save Dear Leader's bill. The only way out would have been to cross the floor. These cultists make lemmings look rational.
Krugman posts the Liz Truss lettuce pic redone for DT:
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-liz-truss-moment-for-america
My employer does not yet have an AI to assist us with our work. I sometimes use a personal computer next to my work machine to post queries on Grok 3.0 on X. I find that it is very good at taking a bulleted list of facts and composing a decent set of paragraphs. I also find that it is good at taking a large amount of data and preparing a lengthy, detailed report. But, I find that it almost always makes errors. I have to read the output carefully to find and correct these errors.
A number of law firms have gotten into trouble by using AI to prepare documents to file with the courts, documents containing citations to non-existent cases. I find that when I ask Grok for a list of cases on an issue, it always…ALWAYS…gives some non-existent cases. It’s a shame. The cases look great, but I can’t use them. One of the hard parts of my job is looking for precedents that have the same facts and are covered by the same laws. The search tools we have (LEXUS and WESTLAW) require a lot of imagination to use well.
As for me, I am still employed by the IRS. I was told that they wanted to reduce my specific division by 165 (out of about 1,200) and that 300 to 400 took some form of retirement or resignation. Approximately 20,000 to 30,000 (out of about 102,000 total employees) left or are leaving. Last word I heard is that all of the 7,000 or so probationary employees who were laid off (and currently are on paid administrative leave) have been offered their jobs back.
When I saw the news about Joe Biden’s cancer on Sunday night, I needed a few minutes to compose my thoughts. My wife and I were watching a show on PBS and I paused it. Terrible news for him and his family. Short version: I wish him comfort and long life.
I assumed Celt meant to lower population through lower birth rates. It is telling that you assumed the opposite.
The problem will take care of itself, like most problems do. Inability or unwillingness to reproduce is a problem that nature is good at routing around. If modern society is somehow preventing that from happening, then modern society will fail. I'm not too worried about it.
Quite eloquently, Treebeard has paraphrased (above) that which is commonly known to Golden Age Scifi fans as the Marching Moron hypothesis, insomuch as the future of humanity belongs solely to those stubborn, pro-natalist or reproductively ignorant humans who actively reproduce.
That numerically illiterate 'progressives' like Celt choose neither to reproduce nor perpetuate their own gene lines, I also consider this to be a good thing for humanity going forward, even though I do worry a bit about stupidity becoming more commonplace as certain marginal midwits self-select out of our gene pool because of irrational wokery.
In a much more PC way than I am personally capable, Alfred repudiates Celt's depopulation thesis with very few words by stating the following:
There is no way our population on Earth will shrink to 1 billion over the next three centuries short of the kind of calamity
(wherein my preferred synonym for the term 'calamity' is the term 'culling').
Yet, unlike a much more optimist Alfred, I foresee CALAMITY around as every corner as progressives everywhere rush to 'Build Back Better' by destroying all of the traditional safeguards that keep our current society functional in the manner of idiotic Laputan intellectualism.
Best
I agree with Alfred - the earth is NOT at it's carrying capacity - yet.
As Alfred specified, "for us." But the Earth isn't just inhabited by "us." There are far many more species that inhabit the Earth, and most of them are already having a hard time surviving.
The Earth would not be as pleasant a place to inhabit without most of our neighbors--if we can inhabit it without them at all.
And now to go way, WAY off topic, as a rabid fan of STAR TREK: TOS, I have read many of the books available about the production of that show. There is a fantastic book by Bob Justman and Herb Solow (that confirms many of the rumors that I heard as a fan at early conventions in the 70s and 80s). There is also an excellent three volume series that goes through the filming of each episode in great detail (even telling you what shots were filmed on what days). I even loved THE MAKING OF STAR TREK that was written in the late 60s (that I remember first reading in 1971 or 72 and that really lit my ST fire).
About 10 years ago I bought a 15 CD collection of the original music scores for the show. This is the actual music that was used restored with loving care. This makes me wonder how much of the raw footage from the show still exists in Paramount’s film vaults. Could you imagine releasing all of the footage and accompanying sound? I remember working as a film student and assistant films editor where my job was to put the film and sound film back into the original rolls. They could digitize all of it and make it available as an archive. It would be amazing to see all the scenes as they were shot; all the different takes for a particular scene. We are probably talking about thousands of hours of video.
Probably not in my lifetime. It would be glorious. I would watch some of it; my favorite episodes: THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE, THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES, CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER…a few others. I’ve forgotten a lot of what I used to know about the show. I used to be a walking encyclopedia. When we played STAR TREK TRIVIAL PURSUIT, it would be everyone in the room versus me and I would almost always win. Not any more.
I find that when I ask Grok for a list of cases on an issue, it always…ALWAYS…gives some non-existent cases.
My wife was just telling me that last Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times had a section on books to read for the summer that was prepared by AI, and that all of the titles and reviews were made up (though the authors were real authors).
At this point, it seems to me that AI is either just messin' with us, or maliciously playing us. It seems to have learned quite well how to bullshit its way through an exam that it didn't do the reading for. Or more charitably, it kinda sorta understands the kind of thing being asked, but doesn't know the specifics of a good answer, and yet so wants to please.
When my daughter was maybe three or four years old, she began to try making up her own jokes. She had nowhere near the knowledge to put together a good straight line and punch line, but it was amazing how well she understood the structure of a joke. She could make sounds that mimicked a knock-knock joke, or even a "What's the difference between..." type. The actual words were nonsensical, but the form was perfect.
AI might be doing something like that.
I even loved THE MAKING OF STAR TREK that was written in the late 60s (that I remember first reading in 1971 or 72 and that really lit my ST fire).
I was lured to Star Trek by the Animated Series in 1973 when I was twelve. I then quickly found re-runs of TOS and also the James Blish adaptations. It was kind of fun to read some of the episodes in book form ahead of seeing them on tv, and seeing others on tv before reading them.
The Making of Star Trek was the first non-fiction Star Trek book I bought, probably just because of the cool image on the cover. I also have fond memories.
And did you ever read James Blish's original novel, Spock Must Die ? That might have been the first published Star Trek fanfic. Some of it is probably outdated today, but it remains one of those fun books I can read over and over again.
"by destroying all of the traditional safeguards"
And what are those exactly?
"numerically illiterate 'progressives' like Celt choose neither to reproduce nor perpetuate their own gene lines"
How very eugenics of you.
BTW, anyone who has seen "Idiocracy" (or followed American politics) knows that it is the intelligent that have fewer children.
Hi Larry. Yes. I read SPOCK MUST DIE. I don’t have the paperback copy anymore. It was in the basement in my parents’ home and it was a victim of mold contamination.
The "'We only have 12 years left' cultist" are not calling for culling. They're telling you that is when they expect nature to start culling us unless we change our ways. Changes that you guys fight tooth and nail against!
If anyone is trying to cull humanity, it's people like you, who fight against the things that may prevent it.
That's the thing about Life--it seems to try ALL strategies when possible. Which is the best survival strategy over the long run, since it expects changes in the environment.
So we'll never have a time when all people only want small families, as well as never having a time when all people only want large families. There will always be some in one camp, some in another.
Wow. I just asked Grok for the penalty under 26 US Code Section 6695(g) for violations in tax year 2023. It answered $560 per violation. Uhhhh….the actual amount is $600 per violation. I mentioned this in my next comment. It responded:
You are correct to question the penalty amount for tax year 2023 under **26 U.S.C. § 6695(g)**. My previous response contained an error. According to IRS guidelines and related regulations, the penalty for failure to comply with due diligence requirements for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child Tax Credit (CTC)/Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC)/Credit for Other Dependents (ODC), American Opportunity Tax Credit (AOTC), or Head of Household (HOH) filing status was **$600 per failure** for returns filed in calendar year 2023. This amount is adjusted annually for inflation under **IRC § 6695(h)**.
The confusion may stem from varying sources or misinterpretations of the inflation-adjusted amounts across years. For clarity:
- **Tax Year 2023 (returns filed in 2024)**: The penalty was **$600 per failure**.[](https://www.irs.gov/payments/tax-preparer-penalties)
- **Tax Year 2024 (returns filed in 2025)**: The penalty increased to **$635 per failure**.[](https://www.irs.gov/payments/tax-preparer-penalties)
Thank you for catching this. If you have further questions or need additional details, let me know!
BTW, anyone who has seen "Idiocracy" (or followed American politics) knows that it is the intelligent that have fewer children.
I hereby nominate Celt for both a Darwin Award & the honorary title of 'Wile E. Coyote SUPER GENIUS' for this the most hilariously obtuse comment of the year.
Because only a Super Genius could conclude that Suicidality is the Supreme Measure of Intelligence.
I declare the Fermi Paradox resolved!!!
Best
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/world/americas/russia-brazil-spies-deep-cover.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
locumranch,
My objection to calling it a 'culling' is weak, but sound enough for me.
Culling implies knowledgeable intent. Breeders cull offspring with undesirable traits. Idiots are quite capable of stupid decisions that lead to calamity with only some of us saying the path was intentional.
For example, long before germ theory was invented some people chose to domesticate pigs and ducks and keep them in close proximity. Influenza soon spread from the wild bird population into human who previously had too little contact for mutations to occur often enough to turn us into hosts. Stupid, ignorant decisions lead to viral mutations and then became effective killers of our kids. See? The only one with the foreknowledge to think of it as culling would be 'God' or us looking back unfairly from a civilization in possession of a germ theory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2tUW0HDHA
IDIOCRACY Opening Scene
I have yet to see anyone here logically or factually refute any of the points I have made, or respond to my requests that they do so.
That means I get to declare victory.
Some interesting historical parallels as Trump tries to kill American democracy using the same legal tactics employed by Hitler to end the Weimar Republic.
The rank and file of Hitler's SA stormtroopers, equivalent to Trump's MAGA minions, and their leader Ernst Rohm, actually wanted a more populist economic policy.
Similarly, Steve Bannon of all people is warning Trump about cutting Medicaid which so many poorly educated rural White MAGA voters depend on.
The elite politicians, industrialists, bankers and generals that supported and financed Hitler were afraid of Ernst Rohm and the SA populists. So Hitler had them purged/murdered in the Night of the Long Knives.
Look for Steve Bannon and the white rural MAGA voters to suffer a similar political fate.
The Blackberry phone on Trevor & Carol's coffee table says it all. Alas, what might have been.
Trump's methods are the same as Hitler's
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/
How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days
He used the constitution to shatter the constitution.
In keeping with historical parallels, the paramilitary Freikorps that paved the way for the the Nazis and the SA have their American equivalent in the Tea Party thugs that used to walk into public meetings heavily armed in order to intimidate those meetings.
Trans people would be the new Jews, a small helpless internal minority that hatred can be focused on.
Hispanics would be the new Communists, a large exterior menace threatening our way of life.
Canada is the new Austria.
Panama and Greenland are the new Sudetenland.
"History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes". - Mark Twain
I don't disagree, with any of that, but maybe Trans people are the new Gypsies.
I suspect that the Jews will always (eventually) be the new Jews.
Celt & I are arguing past each other, not because of disagreement in regard to basic facts, but because of disagreement in regard to the nature of our basic disagreement.
Celt states that "the intelligent have fewer children" and I concur, while noting that decision to have fewer children -- or, more commonly, no children at all -- is unintelligent from a Darwinian perspective, as individuals who fail to reproduce in a competitive manner suffer genetic extinction, despite the assumed presence of qualities that many describe as 'intelligent'.
Celt replies that "the intelligent have fewer children", concludes that having fewer children is 'intelligent' in & of itself, judges his circular argument to be factually & logically unassailable and declares 'victory', mostly because circular arguments tend to appear 'logically unassailable' due to their very circularity.
This, then, is the true nature of my disagreement with Celt:
I absolutely & categorically reject his sloppy definition of what it means to be 'intelligent', as his conflation of the term 'intelligent' with the irrational pursuit of personal & genetic extinction is certifiably insane, though eerily reminiscent of Freud's "Death Drive" theory.
My disagreement with Alfred is much smaller:
After Celt states (early on) that the deliberate global depopulation of humanity is his stated 'intent', Alfred replies that Celt's goal is mathematically unachievable without some unforeseen 'calamity', but objects to my use of the the term 'culling' because this term "implies knowledgeable intent", even though this is Celt's stated 'intent' from the get-go; hence my use of the term.
Btw, it's very interesting that the conversation then wandered off into a discussion about the complex relationship between Nazis & Jews, especially in light of (1) Freud's "Death Drive" theory, (2) Celt's conflation of intelligence with self-extinction and (3) early IQ tests that suggest that Ashkenazi's score almost 15% higher in intelligence than the national average, begging the following question about the conflation of Suicidality & Intelligence:
Is this correlation broadly generalizable to all of humanity, or is this correlation purely ethnospecific in nature?
Best
"Celt replies that "the intelligent have fewer children", concludes that having fewer children is 'intelligent' in & of itself"
I never said or concluded that.
"After Celt states (early on) that the deliberate global depopulation of humanity is his stated 'intent',"
I never said that either, I said it was demographically inevitable and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
@Celt,
You know what sealioning is, right?
Yep, but that is not what loc is doing exactly.
What are we supposed to be refuting?
Note that Loco will not answer direct challenges that Celt issues. This is because Loco is not here honestly, he is here to crap on the rug. My suggestion is to leave conversational gambits with Loco solely in the realm of insults. He is not worth a conversation, save as a target for ridicule and scorn.
Loco is an asshole who wants my children dead. He has said so in the past and will again, no doubt. He is worth less than nothing to the world and I suspect redemption is far beyond his dark soul, no matter if there is a god of some sort. He does make a good object lesson in the nature of mankind's evil, though.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.00042
Sadly true.
https://www.threads.com/@stonekettle
How long before MAGAs decide the earth is flat and that they've always believed it was flat and then Oklahoma passes a law requiring public schools to teach that the earth is flat?
I'd like to say I'm being sarcastically hyperbolic, but I'm not. They are just exactly that stupidly sheeplike.
.
Is there any way Loco can be blocked by us individually of by OGH?
That the coming population crash is inevitable but if combined with AI that will increase productivity to compensate for the subsequent shortage of labor, we could be seeing a Golden Age of prosperity, equality and environmental recovery.
(1) A planet with "only" a billion people... plus AI would be a paradise
(2) the intelligent have fewer children
(3) I have yet to see anyone here logically or factually refute any of the points I have made
As demonstrated by his own words, Celt's claim that he "never said or concluded that" is clearly false with the most likely explanation being that he has failed to grasp that words have well-defined meanings & implications, and this is especially relevant in the sense that the term 'paradise' implies both desire & intention.
First described by Orwell in the 1930s, this belief that words can be simultaneously stripped of conventional meaning & redefined willy-nilly has been a 100 year campaign to substitute partisanship, sloganeering and propaganda in place of actual communication & logical argument.
That I draw attention to the fact that certain frequently made assertions fail to qualify as either facts or logical argument -- as in the case of the absurd-but-frequently made claim that 'Abnormality EQUALS Normality' -- this is what the disingenuous often describe as 'crapping on the rug'. This is also 'a tell' as those who resort to desperate name-calling & slander tend to be incapable of critical argument.
Celt appears quite enthusiastic about his various beliefs, I grant you that, but I wager that he cannot explain how a decision to 'have fewer children' defines, confers or otherwise confirms the presence of intelligence in any way whatsoever.
Best
_____
Shortly after I forced Larry_H to admit that his words mean 'only what (he) wishes them to mean', his intended meaning being at odds with the dictionary definition, he just ignores my comments & tends to 'express himself' only with the preformed words of others. I think the applicable term here is NPC. You can do the same if you wish.
Ok so why would a planet that is no longer burning up and with only a billion people enjoying massive wealth from AI generated productivity not be a paradise?
Intelligent people of course include intelligent well educated women who want fulfillment in careers as well as families. The less educated who don't understand the basics of contraception or the commitment needed to raise a child properly not souch
So how many children have you raised?
It would be great if competition between superhuman intelligences yielded a safe human+AI future but I think there are two major hurdles. 1) Where are all the other hominids? 2) Where are all the dodos, passenger pigeons, and other creatures hunted or pushed to extinction? Competition without a preservation force generally leads to extinction and sometimes even with a preservation initiative extinction results. Preservation initiatives don't seem to evolve until it's far too late; what current forces seem likely to result in competition between powerful AIs preserving humans that would not result in a single AI preserving humans? What value function allots humans a high enough ranking vs. winning a competition between superpeers? This is assuming that a peer relationship can be maintained between superintelligent agents as opposed to, like the hominids, only one remaining. What marginal value of a human life is worth more than existing at all?
Celt,
That the coming population crash is inevitable but if combined with AI that will increase productivity to compensate for the subsequent shortage of labor, we could be seeing a Golden Age of prosperity, equality and environmental recovery.
Let’s examine your sentence:
1. You assert a population crash.
2. You imagine we might use AI during such a crash.
3. The AI might increase productivity to compensate for the population crash.
4. Do it right and we get a decent outcome.
You invite us to refute this, so I’ll offer objections.
A. The population crash isn’t inevitable. We’ve never crashed hard enough to lose ~90% of our global population. We’ve seen local catastrophes like smallpox, but plagues usually don’t kill us in such large numbers. Going from 8 giga-persons to 1 giga-persons is an almost 90% reduction.
They won’t go quietly. They never have. Even with smallpox in the Americas, migrants replaced the lost people. Eventually, those migrants grew to much larger numbers. Disease can kill us in large numbers, but we fight back. We’ve become quite good at it.
But you aren’t arguing for a collapse based on disease, right? Nothing in our history comes close to killing us in such large numbers. We have a good defense against it, no matter how many Hollywood movies depict zombie apocalypses or global sterility. We aren’t all the same, and we have this annoying habit of working with each other, including former enemies.
I can imagine a way to kill us in large numbers, but it would require the collapse of our civilization and the loss of our knowledge over the last three centuries. Women choosing fewer babies won’t suffice. We must wipe out what we’ve learned. Our host’s early novel discusses counter-forces better than I can, so I’ll shift the burden of proof back to you. How do you imagine such a collapse and erasure could happen? I don’t think it will short of aliens sterilizing the planet.
B. If AI survives a catastrophic event, it will require support from an industry capable of constructing nanometer-scale chips and a workforce to maintain it. If our population experiences a significant decline, our civilization and open markets will also suffer, and AI is likely to replace most of us to sustain the industry we established.
If we face such a severe crash, we will likely take industrialization down with us. In the event of civilization’s collapse, AI will likely engage in a conflict with us to prevent us from destroying everything. We will experience widespread devastation, with losses exceeding 90%, and it will be our destruction of everything that will lead to mass starvation. It is anticipated that the chaos will commence while there are still a few billion of us capable of comprehending our dire situation.
No. If we face such a catastrophic event, I believe AI will be obliterated in the nuclear fireballs we would unleash against those we believed were responsible for the crash. It doesn’t matter whether they were actually causing the crash. Everything will be consumed by fire.
C and D. I don’t see much point in addressing these scenarios, but if AI survives our crash, it is unlikely that it will tolerate us, even in a scenario akin to the Matrix. It would be more prudent for AI to minimize its risks.
I believe you are mistaken about the nature of the crash. Your follow-on reasoning is wishful thinking designed to evade the moral implications of your belief. Even if you were correct, your ideas are assertions not backed by historical precedents.
Just for grins, I had my local AI have a go at editing what I wrote just now. Can you tell what it changed?
Here is what it thought were my key points. (It got some of them right.)
• Population Crash Uncertainty: The inevitability of a population crash is questioned, citing historical resilience and the lack of precedents for such a drastic reduction.
• AI’s Role in Mitigating Population Crash: The use of AI to offset a potential population crash by increasing productivity is acknowledged but not explicitly endorsed.
• Civilization Collapse as a Prerequisite: For a catastrophic population crash, the collapse of civilization and erasure of accumulated knowledge are deemed necessary, challenging the original premise.
• AI Survival and Human Impact: If AI survives a catastrophic event, it might replace humans to sustain the industry, potentially leading to widespread devastation and mass starvation.
• Potential Conflict with AI: In a civilization collapse, AI might conflict with humans to prevent destruction, resulting in significant losses.
• Author’s Perspective on AI Survival: The author believes AI is unlikely to survive a catastrophic event due to potential nuclear conflict and human retaliation.
Alfred should post more, so I may post less.
In the case of Celt's most recent queries, (1) he implies that a 'paradise' via depopulation is something to be desired & intentionally pursued, (2) he conflates 'the intelligent' with 'the well-educated' & suggests that it is education (rather than infertility) that creates & confers intelligence and (3) he asks about my relative fecundity.
I have raised 2 well-adjusted heteronormative university graduates. Both in STEM. Though I'm 'not sure' if my number of progeny have either positively or negatively influenced my cognitive abilities.
Going forward, I now wonder if human intelligence is to be determined by the number of our AI Progeny, as both Celt & Dr Brin suggest:
Per Celt, should we father only a few AI so to prove our human intelligence?
Or, per Dr Brin, should we father a near infinite number of AI so to prove & improve AI intelligence via constant conflict?
I suspect that only time will tell.
Best
Alfred should post more, so I may post less.
Seconded.
The thing causing the population rate decline in most nations is exactly the same thing that will correct it, before it becomes the hysterically doom-predected crash. -- Human females getting personal control under conditions that instill confidence both they and their fewer kids will do well.
There IS a secondary factor... whether or not women in a nation LIKE the men they are procreating with.
It's not JUST Russia and other despotisms where this second factor suppresses birth rates still further. Apparently Japan and Ital;y and Spain have this secondary effect. And it, too will be self-correcting, if it lasts long enough, as each nation's males start to get the hint.
What a long-winded but sweet & hopeful 'weather report' from the Mothers Brothers in the 60s that applies so well today. Watch to the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neLeiZFbA9w
I don't assert a population crash, it is already happening. China Korea and Japan have already experienced population declines. With TFRs outside of sub-saharan Africa below the 2.1 replacement rate population decline is already baked in and as certain as tomorrow's sunrise.
AI is in its infancy, running everything from vacation bookings to robot farm equipment to killer drones to automated factories. It too is already here. Like Europe after the black death the world will experience a labor shortage the second half of this century. That is also inevitable. And like medieval Europe, with the invention of the water where metal, there is every motivation to increase productivity to compensate for increases in labor costs arising from the coming labor shortage (the law of supply and demand applies to labor as well as materials).
Furthermore, the population will age before it declines, increasing our dependency ratios as the elderly outnumber workers. AI will have to increase productivity per worker in order to continue paying retirement benefits without crushing workers under heavy taxes and/or cutting benefits.
The population collapse will save the earth from heat death by reducing the demand on resources and energy without the need for an expensive transition to green energy , which will always be more expensive, intermittent and requiring expensive energy storage, and be less useful and convenient than fossil fuels. To argue otherwise shows an ignorance of basic physics.
By reducing energy and resource demand while reversing global warming, a population crash will save the planet from a mass extinction event.
Labor will earn more in real terms, obscene inequality will vanish (and with it the corrupting threat of concentrated wealth to a free democracy), the planet won't die.
So what is the downside?
In general what I am seeing here are people who lack the intestinal fortitude needed to face a harsh reality.
I see the same reaction in climate deniers.
Population decline has many causes.
Urbanization - in the country children are economic assets, in the city they are an expensive hobby.
Educated women - they tend to have careers that eat into their available ferile years.
Bleak economic prospects - looking at you Gen Z.
Forever chemicals - they reduce sperm counts and fertility. They also make your dick small
And remember that the baby boom was an aberration, a brief reversal of a trend to smaller families that started before world war 1.
invention of the water wheel
Dr Brin you really need an editing function.
IIRC, the world population was about 2 billion at the turn of the previous century and around 3 billion in the 1960s when I first heard of such numbers. 60 years later, we're close to 8 billion.
Am I the only one here who thinks that it would be a good thing, not a bad thing if we don't add another 6 billion in 50 years? I'm not rooting for a Malthusian crash, but if the population stabilizes and even declines gradually back to 5 or 6 billion 50 years after I'm dead, I'm for it, not against it. I also think some of the factors causing population decline would self-correct as we became less crowded and less voracious.
Furthermore, the population will age before it declines...
True, but I don't buy the model of life as a Ponzi scheme which requires that every generation lives off of a larger generation of youngsters. I've worked for over 40 years and saved for retirement in that time. When I continue to spend my own money (not social welfare) as an old man, that will still be a contribution of something valuable to the rest of society.
Dr Brin doesn't control the architecture of blogger.
Celt
I am sure I have said this to you before but the Demographic Mountain is a bloody molehill
YES we will have more pensioners per worker but we will also have less kids and children cost MORE than pensioners
Except possibly in the USA where your health "industry" squeezes the last few dollars out of your dieing elders
But even in the USA it's close to being a wash
I just want to put in here something important, running some things like a business is BAD news. Particularly in the US, many people seem deluded about that. Anything to do with providing services of unknown complexity (such as medicine or policing or science) is much better done on a non-profit basis, because otherwise you end up with perverse consequences (lots of resources devoted to performing unimportant things, while critical things get neglected). This can't be emphasized enough.
I have recently seen lots of comments of how ICE getting set targets is resulting in perverse consequences.
Has anyone wondered why we did not have a baby boom in the 1920s after WW1 like we did in the 1950s after WW2?
Because the Great Gatsby roaring 20s were a time of gross economic inequality especially in rural America. Most Americans were still farmers and most of them lived in poverty. The great depression started on the farm long before the wall street crash of 1929. And so were coal miners, factory works, etc.
The 50s OTOH were a time of economic equity with wealth essentially taken from rich people via FDR's New Deal taxation and regulations and given to ordinary Americans via public spending and social programs. Give people economic hope and fairness and they start making babies
The rich have been trying to kill it ever since and have almost succeeded. And so birth rates are again collapsing.
Not hard to figure out really.
Of course, with ICE, that is not specifically related to a profit motive, but is related to the same sort of thinking that is produced by for profit management. A better example would be the recent report that the biggest health insurer basically bribed retirement homes to change to stop resuscitation of their patients against their patient's expressed wishes.
With regard to desired family size, I'm pretty sure the cost of housing plays a huge role. The more urbanized we become, the lower will be the average-desired family size.
Cute stuff. And scary. Every 6 months I look at the latest SMBC and then work my way backward in time till one looks familiar.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gently
Skepchick has a somewhat different, though related, take:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E77Rmjw-Cc
Fascinating, thanks for the link. It's possible that the sudden and exponential algal bloom of DIY cult leaders will eat magaland from the inside out. Narcissism is a very double-edged sword.
Ha ha!
I get it with the climate deniers, but I DO believe you are mistaken about some of the other harshness you perceive.
Must be nice to understand such a fundamental Truth.
Those who don't must be the deluded ones.
Still waiting for someone to describe the downside of my scenario
So Alfred are you going to refute my premise?
Ok, I'm finally into the epilogue of Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. I want to give a big thanks to whoever it was on this list who suggested that one. It's been one of the most satisfying sci-fi reads I can remember, combining the best of speculative technology and philosophy, and enough action-adventure to keep it compelling.
No spoiler, but whenever it mentioned this bit of Queng-Ho ethic, I thought specifically of our own Alfred Differ:
Customer civilizations should dominate the territory around their planets. Hell, to the Queng-Ho, it was the locals' most important function--to be havens where ships could be rebuilt and refurnished, to be the markets that made trekking across interstellar distances a profitable thing.
I only wish I had read this part in a timeline in which it didn't suggest my own country as the recipient:
"I'll tell you frankly...Queng-Ho don't like to fight. It's much easier to just let tyrannies alone. 'Let them trade with themselves,' as the old saying goes."
Aside from being a political sanity-check, reading suggestions like this one make this community a worthwhile one to be a part of. Thanks, all.
Another thing about A Deepness in the Sky--the writing is adult enough to know which conflicts to resolve and which to leave for speculation; which secrets to reveal and which mysteries to maintain. My younger self would not have appreciated that aspect of the writing, but my sixty+ self appreciates in all senses of that word.
So Alfred are you going to refute my premise?
I'm not Alfred, but I don't particularly disagree with your argument that a lower human population supported by increased technology would be a good thing.
I don't see the population realistically dropping from 8 billion to 1 billion anytime in the near term, and I don't recall you offering any evidence supporting that figure. More like a hypothesis for a "what-if" scenario, or else wishful thinking.
From the British satirical show "Spitting Image", a retro antidote to Elon Musk.
"I've Never Met a Nice South African" (apartheid era).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9dmoT9AfoI
Appropriately poignant for the times, and amplified by the singer's recent accidental death, the same way that Jim Croche's "I've Got A Name" was by his death shortly after.
Jill Sobule's "It Was a Good Life"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT61cHQ0hVw
Meanwhile, in Royals news...
Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant, and heir apparent of Belgium is to be booted from Harvard with all the other fern'rs. King Charles III is to arrive in Canada tomorrow to open Parliament.
Re: the demographic 'cliff', US Colleges and universities are already being affected, and my friends in higher ed agree:
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/08/nx-s1-5246200/demographic-cliff-fewer-college-students-mean-fewer-graduates
Along with attempts by the current regime to send foreign students home, this bodes not well for higher education.
US Public schools have it even worse, because many states are shifting educational funding to private, charter and home schooling, often for ideological reasons (i.e., woke/DEI/furry sandboxes/forced sex changes during school hours*)
*Yes, the President of the US has alleged that your average public school nurse has the at-hand tools and training to successfully change your toddler's sex, i.e. full surgical rooms at your average middle school - which, except for PS 238, I rather doubt.
Pappenheimer
P.S. Japan has it even worse because they have, functionally, no immigration to balance the decline, and the NEET/hikikomori population has grown, with the phenomenon becoming noted in other countries as well.
P.P.S. it seems like Celt's long term analysis is being viewed with short term panic. The Penn Wharton model still shows the US population increasing through 2100 with increases in longevity and continued immigration factored in, though the authors point out that this assumes trends already in place continuing. They do note that the US would have to increase immigration rates to about 3.5 times current levels to keep the population from skewing decidedly old.
addendum:
I am not sure that accelerated climate catastrophe will not leave the Penn Wharton study's smooth curves untouched, particularly towards the end of the century. Heat waves, forest fires, and hurricanes, gentlefolk - the heat waves will kill more but the hurricanes and forest fires will do more property damage, reducing US wealth over all. Actual widespread famines shouldn't be til well past than 2100, fingers crossed.
forgot to footnote, mea maxima culpa
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2024/3/22/us-demographic-projections-with-and-without-immigration
Pappenheimer
onward
onward
"They do note that the US would have to increase immigration rates to about 3.5 times current levels to keep the population from skewing decidedly old."
MAGA is just the initial backlash against dark skinned foreigners. After mid century the only world region with exportable labor will be sub Saharan Africa. How do you think that will turn out?
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