This subreddit has seen the largest increase of users in the last 2 months, gaining nearly 30k people since the end of Novemberpre-DrChad t1_j5qpl66 wrote
Not really a good thing imo
I feel like this sub will turn into futurology as it gets bigger. Reddit is full of depressed doomers
I’ve been subbed to this sub for almost 2 years now I think and following it without an account for over 4 years, and the quality has already gone down. The knowledgeable people have either left or their voice has been diluted by the influx of commenters
Sigma_Atheist t1_j5rtl12 wrote
Top comment in literally any antiaging thread:
"Omg nooo not immortal billionaires we're dooooomed"
LightVelox t1_j5s1023 wrote
"They will actively try to lower poor people's lifetimes and kill everyone cause they are super eviiiiiiil"
SoylentRox t1_j5sisg3 wrote
I know. Don't forget "they will exclusively hoard anti-aging for themselves". (Ignoring the reality that governments and health insurance companies have more money than all billionaires combined, and they have to pay a fortune because everything in a person breaks as aging slowly wrecks everything and they become unable to work)
Or "we would be so overpopulated life would suck". Nevermind that governments could require aging clinics to make their clients infertile. You would need a license to have an additional child after your normal reproductive lifetime.
Cult_of_Chad t1_j5t3lhz wrote
>Or "we would be so overpopulated life would suck". Nevermind that governments could require aging clinics to make their clients infertile. You would need a license to have an additional child after your normal reproductive lifetime.
If the government tries to restrict my fertility in exchange for subsidizing life extension I'll just make use of medical tourism for either life extension or reproduction. Poor people that can afford to fly out to breed or access enhancement therapies would be the only ones these laws apply to.
The answer to a growing population is to continue industrializing the solar system. There's enough resources for trillions of us.
SoylentRox t1_j5u8k92 wrote
I mean medical tourism might not have access to the best stuff. Today this is true, it's just that the best medicine is not much more effective than cheaper simpler stuff. (Mainly because there are no treatments for aging or treatments that grow you spare parts and transplant them)
Once it's a matter of very complex treatments you may see huge differences. As in, the good clinics have almost 100 percent 10 year survival rates and the bad have 50.
Cult_of_Chad t1_j5ug1oj wrote
You're the one assuming that:
- Therapies will be complex
- Expensive clinics around the world would have poorer access
- Any liberal democracy would force people to get sterilized to access life-saving medicine.
It's a dystopic masturbatory fantasy with no basis in reality and no need to boot. Why the hell would we want to slow down population growth while going through a catastrophic demographic collapse? Our birthrates are so bad that biological immortality would barely make a dent.
SoylentRox t1_j5uh3ns wrote
- This is obvious and there is a risk of malware, etc. You understand that this isn't like taking metformin, it's probably massive surgery to remove old joints and skin and possibly just your whole body except for your brain and spine. Aging does some physical damage that won't heal.
After the many surgeries you have permanent implants and sensors installed that have to interface to local clinics and a network of ambulances etc. And you have to return for checkups and repairs periodically.
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This is how that works now, also it's an ongoing process. You don't really get cured of aging just the condition managed
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They might if it results in severe overpopulation
Cult_of_Chad t1_j5uiata wrote
>1. Aging does some physical damage that won't heal.
You literally can't know this.
>2. They might if it results in severe overpopulation
Overpopulation is a factor of carrying capacity and we're currently very far from any kind of Malthusian limit. Also, there's actually been research done on this so there's no need for speculation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192186/
You're being needlessly doomish.
SoylentRox t1_j5uio8h wrote
What do you mean I "can't know this". You know how sports stars need surgeries when they wear out a joint or break a tendon, an injury that won't heal?
That's not even aging it can happen in your 20s. Treatments for aging alone at best restore your ability to heal from your early 20s.
If you are 80 years old and at a patient at the clinic lots of stuff will be damaged.
Cult_of_Chad t1_j5uj4h4 wrote
We could literally have organic nanobots capable of repairing every tissue in the body within the decade. The future is hard to predict under normal circumstances and we're far, far from that now.
SoylentRox t1_j5ukccw wrote
How do the nanobots coordinate? Where do they get the replacement cells? How do they cut away a broken limb? What do they do with waste?
Stay plausible. Nanobots that magically heal injuries are more like stage magic.
A more plausible version: new organs or whole body subsections grown and built in the lab. Layer by layer, with inspections and functional tests. So the lab is certain each part is well made.
And then the "nanobots" are basically hacked human cells that go on the interfaces where there would be a scar otherwise. They on command will glue themselves to nearby cells and do a better job of healing than what would otherwise just be 2 human tissues held together with thread. So the patient can walk right after surgery because all the places their circulatory system and skin and so on were spliced is as strong as their normal tissue and doesn't hurt.
They also bridge nerve connections.
Cult_of_Chad t1_j5umqbq wrote
>Stay plausible.
I don't believe you're important enough to be this arrogant.
How about we wait until the end of the century and see what happens? We have absolutely no idea what the AI revolution will reveal in terms of unknown unknowns. If you believe you're in a better position than me to predict the future you're either very well connected or delusional.
Also, please address my criticism of your unnecessary doomerism and re population growth.
SoylentRox t1_j5uo8v5 wrote
It's not doomerism to think that rich countries will get richer and have better access to tech.
That is literally a statement of past history.
Population growth: sure. I already said rich countries have declining pops so letting rejuvenated people have kids is what they would do at first.
Cult_of_Chad t1_j5uor2i wrote
>It's not doomerism to think that rich countries will get richer and have better access to tech.
Not every rich country will have the same legal approach to transformative technology. Also, wealth inequality means that the wealthy in middle income countries have access to western-level technology.
SoylentRox t1_j5urx2v wrote
Sure. One idea I have had is :
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Megacorps develop very capable AGI tools and let others see them
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Have billionaire friends, get startup money
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Use the AGI tools to automate mass biomedical research
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Once the AGI system understands biology well, give challenge tasks to grow human organs or keep small test animals alive. Most tasks are simulated but some are real.
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Open up a massive hospital in a poor jurisdiction with explicit permission to do any medical treatment the AGI wants as long as the result are good.
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Some kind of Blockchain accountability, where patients before applying to go to your hospital register and get examined first and the conventional medical establishment writes down their current age and expected lifespan and terminal diagnosis. Then after treatment they return and get examined again. Blockchain is just so history can't be denied or altered.
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Payments are on success. Waitlist order is based partially on payment bid. Reinvest all profits to expand capacity and capabilities
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Use your overwhelming evidence of success to lobby western governments to ban non AI medicine and to revoke drug patents. (Because there is no value in pharma patents if an AI can invent a new drug in seconds. To an AI, molecules are as easy to use as we find hand tools and it can just design one to fit any target.)
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The owners of the clinic would be trillionaires. It's the most valuable product on earth
Cult_of_Chad t1_j5utok4 wrote
Or literally none of that will happen. Do you just sit around imagining increasingly more bizarre and convoluted ways rich people bad? Get a grip. Your inane speculation has so many moving parts it might as well be a ferris wheel.
Somehow you've taken the very credible concept of AI-driven existential risk and reduced it to a ridiculous conspiracy where AGI cooperates with a global cabal of Disney villains to do something untenable and pointless.
SoylentRox t1_j5uxce7 wrote
Lol. Hope you live long enough to get neural implants so you can read better. Or you can ask chatGPT to summarize for you.
TheOGCrackSniffer t1_j5sz6o9 wrote
hahahahahaha, funniest thing i ever heard, a license for what's arguably a human right
garden_frog t1_j5sj3b6 wrote
The same happened to r/futurology too. I remember a time when it was an interesting and optimistic sub.
vinayd t1_j5qrhis wrote
Yeah as one of the people who recently joined I was hoping for informed commentary or insight — since I’m pretty witless about this kind of software — but it’s been pretty sad to see all the messianic nonsense take over. I think it might be futurology already.
_dekappatated OP t1_j5qsma3 wrote
I follow a lot of AI researchers on twitter, occasionally check out https://www.lesswrong.com, try to read some of the research papers, learn about LLMs, transformers, watch some youtube videos to get high level overviews on concepts, watch new releases for big companies like tesla and nvidia. I'm subbed to a lot of AI related subs, but I haven't seen any of extremely high quality. Trying to do the best to position myself in a way to profit off new technology as it is released and try to get to thinking about it before it is released. Also subbed to product specific subs like /r/midjourney and /r/chatGPT
vinayd t1_j5qxu9f wrote
Thanks for this! I have been to lesswrong before - product specific subs might be a good lead. Any twitter handles you like in particular?
_dekappatated OP t1_j5r0qa0 wrote
@sama @rachel_l_woods @ClaireSilver12 @Nick_Arti @sarahookr @giffmana @goodfellow_ian @demishassabis @gdb @ylecun @arankomatsuzaki @JeffDean @woj_zaremba @TacoCohen @MetaAI @Deepmind @markchen90 @caseychu9 @adversariel @prafdhar @bindureddy @ilyasut @OpenAI
and me @neuralnetsart
Following all these people should give you recommendations for others
vinayd t1_j5r6fag wrote
Fantastic, thanks!
leoreno t1_j5ryi70 wrote
Solid advice
Twitter is great source Also alphaSignal I've found to be quite good
DungeonsAndDradis t1_j5rtqcj wrote
Go to lesswrong for actual discussions. Stay here for the hopium and shitposting.
SingularityPoint t1_j5rcboh wrote
It will turn exactly in to this. Hopefully mods can keep a handle on it all
natepriv22 t1_j5snmsl wrote
Well then we'll just make a new sub if that's the case. It's almost certain that those people you are referring to, wouldn't join anyways, cause it's too deep for them lol
Cornelius_M t1_j5u87wp wrote
I joined this sub recently as a fan of dalle and midjourney and look to this sub as a front row seat of other people with positive interests in how technology progresses!
SoylentRox t1_j5silop wrote
Note that with futurology, 30-50 years of science press has promised the "next big thing". Better batteries, flying cars, online shopping, tablet computers, fusion power.
Some of these things minimal instrumental progress was made on in 50 years, others are now reality.
The Singularity just might happen for real before people become jaded.
TheAnonFeels t1_j5uozq2 wrote
Just came from futurology from what that's become... I'm no doomer and already happier here!
Martholomeow t1_j5uz6kv wrote
The larger a sub gets, the harder it is to moderate, resulting in the content becying the same as every other large sub on reddit.
Once a sub crosses the millionth subscriber, it basically becomes r/pics
funky2002 t1_j5ve2ui wrote
I opened this post just to check if anything has been noticing that as well, thought I was going crazy. Those people should go back to r/collapse or something haha. Optimistic as hell about the state of AI, and excited to see where it goes from here.
Left-Shopping-9839 t1_j5r2qi7 wrote
I've considered leaving this sub because it sounds like a religious cult lately....[edit] I'm just going to leave now.
Eleganos t1_j5raz1w wrote
Not really. No. Nobody here is prosthletizing, commanding others to behave or act in certain ways, or putting faith in some supernatural power.
There are outliers, sure. But most folks just believe (justifiably) that what's coming will be a radical change to society. A paradigm shift not unlike the transition from the early to late 20th century.
Talk to anyone from the start of last century about how modern day would be like, and they'd think you were insane or, well, some flavour of religious cultist.
I'd liken to the misconception as being akin to our hardwired neurological tendency to find faces in everything. Only in this case, its finding religions where none exist.
Left-Shopping-9839 t1_j5rgb36 wrote
Ok not really the right comparison to religion. But there is definitely a dogma infecting this sub.
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Conciousness will emerge from LLMs.
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Massive loss of jobs and unemployment is imminent.
Neither of these claims has any credible evidence to support, yet they are vigorously defended whenever any skepticism is voiced. So in that way reminds me of religion and certainly is not grounded in 'science'.
I love the incredible progress we've seen in the area of ML and AI. But the idea that Conciousness will simply emerge from a large enough neural network is still a hypothesis. It is a hypothesis worth chasing for sure, but not a certainty. ChatGPT being able to surprise the user with a 'thoughtful' response is not evidence imo.
Also the CEO of some AI venture claiming 'you won't believe what's coming next' should also be taken with salt. I mean that's their job to promote their company.
I like evidence. And I'm finding very little of that here. This is why I left. Goodbye.
CellWithoutCulture t1_j5rmex9 wrote
Are they really saying consciousness will emerge from LLM's, rather than that intelligence may arise from them?
LoquaciousAntipodean t1_j5rzmtd wrote
I agree; it's a bit rich of people to accuse others of being 'doomers' just because the discussion has moved away from engineering speculation and onto philosophy.
All these smug 'geniuses', so confident that they are correct about every damn thing, are all butthurt and boo-hooing about how the 'rabble' got into their nice clean ivory tower.
The schadenfreude is delicious; these great and towering 'geniuses' can run away and chase crazy ideas like machine gods and eternal life in their own little sandpit. Because, shock horror, it turns out their arguments are just not as compelling to our social superorganism as they think they ought to be.
People can have more PhDs than fingers, but still be obnoxiously, stubbornly, dangerously deluded; totally unintelligent, but in a doggedly hubristic, solipsistic way. They think their basic-bro 'cunning' is the same thing as 'intelligence', and sneer down at humanity like con-men talking to one another over drinks 🤬
To hell with the lot of 'em, if that's how they want to see the world.
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Cult_of_Chad t1_j5t4tcf wrote
Stop acting like a monkey flinging excrement and you might not be treated like one, just a tip. Your writing comes across as if you've skipped your antipsychotics.
Look to r/Futurology as an example of why community gatekeeping is necessary. If you're here for intelligent discussion no one is turning you away
pre-DrChad t1_j5r3t6y wrote
It used to be a lot more scientific in the past. The reason I joined reddit was to sub to longevity and singularity since I was interested in life extension and AI.
My background is in biology so I don’t understand AI very well, but when Alpha Fold came out I understood the significance of that and it’s implications on medicine and biology. There were great discussions on that here.
Unfortunately now there aren’t any scientific discussions on this sub anymore. It’s just a bunch of doomers and cultists arguing whether AI will be dystopic or utopic lol
I already unsubbed from futurology. My favorite sub is still r/longevity. Stays on topic for a big sub and the discussions are all scientific and the moderating team is great
ImpossibleSnacks t1_j5r8gqd wrote
Longevity sub is still going strong. I don’t mind the cultist posting here as long as cool innovations are still being discussed but once the doomers take over I’m out.
SoylentRox t1_j5sj5zd wrote
You do grasp the concept of singularity criticality right. (AI improving AI, making the singularity happen at an accelerating pace).
If this theory is right - it's just math, not controversial, and S curve improvements in technology have happened many times before - then longevity won't make enough progress to matter before we have ai smart enough to help us.
Or kill us.
Point is the cultist/doomer argument isn't fair. What is happening right now is the flying saucer AI cult has produced telescope imagery of the actual mother ship approaching. Ignore it at your peril.
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