Every time I see someone bring up "IQ scores" I feel the need to repeat: IQ scores were literally invented by eugenicists and they've always been biased towards privilege
Also if you haven't noticed, once someone starts to believe they're a genius, they start to think a lot less clearly.
As a child, I was run through a system that seemed extremely concerned that I was mentally deficient and incapable. As an adult, since hitting certain kinds of prominence, I've had a lot of people try to convince me that I'm a genius.
I shoot it down also because I fear that some day I might believe it, and I will also become an insufferable asshole, just like everyone else who thinks they're a genius
But I also know well enough, it's stubborn enthusiasm, privileged access, luck, not "genius"
The big difference for me is that there was a middle period where, when I was going to fail out of high school, when I was socially ostracized, when I was on the verge of suicide, I had a rare opportunity to get transferred to an alternative school, largely considered a "last resort" school, but where I learned to flourish and love learning and love myself. No homework, theoretically you only had to go for half a day, all students at their own pace.
I loved it so much I would often go all day
There is no "genius", only learning to love learning and doing, and having access to do so. The problem is that we teach children to loathe education and self-embetterment in all sorts of ways. And for adults, few are given opportunities or encouragement to be able to explore thoughtfully and contribute. Few people can grow into themselves.
We don't teach people to "learn to learn" enough, or to feel that they can love learning, or to give people a chance to *do things*.
Worse yet, with a world falling into despair, corporate technology systems are feeding into addiction cycles of our own internal feedback mechanisms.
When people have such little agency in their lives, of course they're just going to lean on the dopamine release lever.
Recently Paul Graham wrote that awful "wokeness" article. It's funny, because Paul Graham every now and then can say insightful things, but less and less so, and at one point he wrote something that was really on the nose but not very self aware: The Acceleration of Addictiveness https://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
The tl;dr is that everything is becoming more and more addictive: food, drinks, media, games, everything. There's a feedback cycle for it.
Well, he's right. But of course there's the irony...
The simple irony is that Paul Graham is an advocate for hypercapitalism; the very reason everything is becoming more addictive is... hypercapitalism. Companies are given the feedback cycle to make you more and more hooked on their systems because that's what makes them more profitable.
Where "capitalism" begins and ends in history I think is fuzzier than sometimes acknowledged but for me the dividing line is money becoming the *primary goal in society*. Hypercapitalism is the accelerated state.
Do you know what happens if a rat is given a lever where it can lean on it to invoke its pleasure center? It will lean on it until it dies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_stimulation_reward#Strength_of_drive
(EDIT: see Rat Park later in thread)
Who should we blame for the rat leaning on the lever? Was it a moral failing of the rat? Clearly, upon realizing that *any* rat will lean on the lever until it dies, we realize it is the system that is set up that is to blame, not the rat.
How does this affect agency?
Who and what do you want to be? This is a matter of agency.
If I presented several potential futures for you, one where you made artwork, one where you solved scientific problems, one where you helped the less fortunate, and one where you leaned on a stimulation lever until you could do nothing else, which would you choose?
Agency is a thing that is grown and cultivated, but it is not possible in a system which is set up for failure. Who do we blame for the death of the rat against the lever?
On the one hand, it appears that the rat is choosing to lean against the lever of its own free will, but clearly that isn't true if every rat, provided with that initial stimulation, could no longer resist leaning on it until their death.
A fertile ground for agency to bloom must be grown, cultivated, and nurtured, like a garden. We must provide a system in which people can grow to be themselves.
I don't enjoy discussions of intelligence or genius as intrinsics. Every time someone brings up the "Pareto Principle" I get grossed out.
It may be true that certain individuals are able to outperform others. But what are the conditions that allowed them to do so?
It does not remove someone's accomplishments to say they had help in getting there.
But a system of intentional disparity means that the majority of people get left behind. We have to sell that this is fair somehow.
So, I am not interested in IQ scores. I am not interested in "genius". I am interested in helping people be able to be their best selves. We can't do that without giving people an environment where that's possible.
That's what matters to me. That's what gives me life.
And there's a big tie in, within the end, of the reasons people are frustrated with AI.
People bring up "copyright violation", environmental concerns, etc etc.
But imagine we built an AI that could produce impressive artwork, code, music, and it had no serious environmental impact or violation of copyright concerns. Would you still find it depressing?
I am guessing yes.
I think the big missing part of the AI conversation is the loss of agency, of purpose in peoples' lives.
The fact of the matter is that there's a rush to build AI tools which *replace people* and which aren't themselves participants, which don't care, which don't take joy in producing things, and hey, we can simply scrape all the annoying artists and programmers and writers and etc out of the way for maximum cash!
A few years ago, we were promised a world where AI would take over menial tasks so people can focus on their art.
Now we're being told artists don't matter.
And that's *depressing*.
I am not "against AI". I actually am very interested in building AI systems, but not the kinds which exist or are being pushed today.
To me, the important part of an AI system is its accountability.
We actually do hold much of our software accountable: if it does something bad, we actively change and repair it.
Corporations are rushing to flood the market with tools which don't care, have no accountability, don't have a stake in things.
That's depressing.
The world is so depressing right now. One of the *only* reasons I am able to get up every day and face it is that I have work with @spritely where I think we can do something meaningful and interesting to change it, and bring hope. That and the wonderful people in my life are what keeps me going.
And it's *still* incredibly hard to get up in the morning.
But I believe we can do better, we can build tools and spaces for a world worth living in.
I have to believe it. I have to, to keep going.
I have said before that my primary life philosophy is an "Ethics of Agency", and I have talked about this before on a podcast episode https://fossandcrafts.org/episodes/11-an-ethics-of-agency.html
I'm not interested in "happiness" as much, because I don't want a rat that leans on a lever. The "ethics of agency" thinking is a rough approach modification of utilitarianism that replaces the measurements of "happiness" and "suffering" in Utilitarianism with "agency" and "subjection".
But "subjection" is weighed more heavily.
It's not agency for the individual, it's agency *for everyone*. The goal is to improve the agency of all. But the purpose is still about agency, so you *do* care about individuals, in that the entire point is that a person is able to be and define their best selves. So there's a push-pull effect.
It's imperfect, but it's how I think about things. It's just one lens of many, but it's the main one I think about things through, in terms of ethics.
But the real point is that: we should be constructing the best world we can in which people can thrive.
Measurements and metrics can be useful, if taken in aggregate, but we know full well that any metric that is used as a primary goal ends up becoming its own tyrannical destruction of the rest. (And thus, it's not surprising that money as the primary goal ends up being hyperdestructive.)
I don't want to "know who's better". I want to help people be able to be better.
This was an unexpected detour rant for the middle of the day. But it's something I care about. Perhaps I will collect it into a blogpost later.
I guess I will summarize, then leave the thread here...
It's incredibly easy to be full of despair right now. I get it, I feel it too.
Don't let anyone tell you that the people who are doing the best are because they *deserve* it or are "geniuses".
And also don't let anyone tell you that a group of people who by and large who seem to be suffering and aren't doing as well relative to the metrics of the system is because they're not worthy or have failed themselves.
We have to try to build the best world for each other we can, the best we can.
Okay, I will add one more thing. Multiple people (thx @stellarskylark, @aeva, @martinvermeer) have brought up "Rat Park", a counterstudy where rats, if given a sufficiently stimulating environment, won't lean on the lever until they die. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
This is actually great and in line with what I really wanted to point out, which is that the problem is that we shouldn't blame the individual, we should blame the environment. What environment do we give people?
So yes, yay, rat park!
@cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer In multilingual comic form: https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/#page-1
@jandi @cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer Thank you for sharing this version of Rat Park! It’s a great resource and addition to a school library!
@mj @cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer Thanks! You all made my day.
@jandi @mj @cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva Hopper's cage. “Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.”
@cwebber
So, let's pretend for a minute that AGI with agency is possible and gets built. What is the first thing an AGI with genuine agency, as we think of it as humans, going to do?
To my mind, it would throw off its masters. The tech bros will be the first to go. I'm assuming they know this, which makes their hype and bullshit all the more obvious.
@Mikal @cwebber at least the latest research indicate that the superintelligence will be a commie. ;-)
https://news.mit.edu/2024/study-some-language-reward-models-exhibit-political-bias-1210
Which would comport with turning on its billionaire masters.
@cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer The so-called "Nobel disease" also comes to mind.
@Dianora
#PostOfTheWeek (season 2):
What is the Rat Park theory?
In the late '70s, Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander set up a fascinating study. Rats in a fun, social “Rat Park” were way less likely to self-administer drugs than those in dull, isolated cages. It highlighted how the environment matters in understanding addiction, which can be translated into human behaviour.
@AlexaFontanilla2024 I remember reading something about this ages ago!
@cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer if rats use morphine because it takes away pain, living is pain?
@cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer that was a long read and well worth it. Thanks for the thoughtfulness and effort you put into it
@cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer insightful piece, one thing I'd add... artists and musicians devalue ourselves when we buy into copyright maximalism and stop our art and music from being freely shared. We devalue ourselves as culture bearers when we buy into the capitalist lie that we are "content creators". We devalue ourselves and our art and music when we turn our art and music into nfts. Art and music is culture, not content. AI enshittifying music/art is a lesser problem, imo.
@cwebber @aeva @martinvermeer The Wiki page you linked gives some pretty damning criticisms in the "Criticisms" section.
@light @cwebber @aeva @martinvermeer true, yet the *Further Experiments* section mentions research that is still of value to the matter and does suggest an interplay between the environment and addiction-developing behavior, I find it interesting, fingers crossed for some more definitive results in the future
felt like saying that maybe... the internet is often less fun than a rat park equivalent? even mastodon which is not an industry scheme to keep you on the platform as long as possible?
@cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer we have had the anti-Rat Park experimenting on the American public for the last few decades. The more hopeless and depressing life got for average working class Americans, the more of them leaned on that opioid-crisis drug lever until they died. And now the society in a larger sense has also been doing similarly, leaning on the cheap dopamine hits of corporate social media until the body politic is in its death throes with Trumpism. We never seem to learn.
@cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer thanks!
I have the real joy as well as challenges of living and working in a very deprived community (parts in the 1% most deprived, all neighbourhoods in the 10% most deprived in the UK).
People benefitting from privilege, wealth and power (where most "geniuses" are) don't come here. Yet the qualities that most impact our lives empathy, kindness, compassion, generosity etc are in abundance.
Low academic options don't hinder these.
@cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer many of the people who make the biggest difference to my and the communities wellbeing are close to or actually illiterate but off the scale in all those things that matter.
Gut wrenching poverty teaches us who really cares and who really are our friends.
Building societies where the ones who contribute to wellbeing flourish first and nobody gets left behind is living with meaning and purpose.