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TECHNO_CRACKS

                                                    September 18, 2019

Eliezer Yudkowsky,
"Raised in Technophilia",
September 16, 2008:
                                                       https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uNWRXtdwL33ELgWjD/raised-in-technophilia

   "The first crack in my childhood
   technophilia appeared in, I think, 1997 or
   1998, at the point where I noticed my
   fellow technophiles saying foolish things
   about how molecular nanotechnology would           https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo
   be an easy problem to manage."



   "And by the time that debate was over, it
   seems that the young Eliezer-- caught up in
   the heat of argument-- had managed to            Eliezer remarks in the
   notice, for the first time, that the             comments that he just
   survival of Earth-originating intelligent        didn't think that nuclear
   life stood at risk."                             war was a likely scenario.

   "It seems so strange, looking back, to
   think that there was a time when I thought
   that only individual lives were at stake
   in the future.  What a profoundly
   friendlier world that was to live
   in... though it's not as if I were
   thinking that at the time.  I didn't
   *reject* the possibility so much as manage
   to *never see it in the first place*.
   Once the topic actually came up, I saw it.
   I don't really remember how that trick
   worked.  There's a reason why I refer to
   my past self in the third person."


   ...

   "One of the chief lessons I derive from
   looking back at my personal history is
   that it's no wonder that, out there in the
   real world, a lot of people think that
   'intelligence isn't everything', or that
   rationalists don't do better in real life.
   A little rationality, or even a lot of
   rationality, doesn't pass the
   astronomically high barrier required for
   things to actually start *working*."


   "Some teenagers think they're immortal and
   ride motorcycles.  I was under no such
   illusion and quite reluctant to learn to
   drive, considering how unsafe those
   hurtling hunks of metal looked.  But there
   was something more important to me than my
   own life: The Future.  And I acted as if
   *that* was immortal.  Lives could be lost,
   but not the Future."

   "And when I noticed that nanotechnology
   really was going to be a potentially
   extinction-level challenge?"


The punch-line: he didn't (immediately) change his
attitudes very much-- identity protection kicked-in.


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