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Left-Shopping-9839 t1_j5r2qi7 wrote

Reply to comment by pre-DrChad in This subreddit has seen the largest increase of users in the last 2 months, gaining nearly 30k people since the end of November by _dekappatated

I've considered leaving this sub because it sounds like a religious cult lately....[edit] I'm just going to leave now.

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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.

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Left-Shopping-9839 t1_j5rgb36 wrote

Ok not really the right comparison to religion. But there is definitely a dogma infecting this sub.

  1. Conciousness will emerge from LLMs.

  2. 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.

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CellWithoutCulture t1_j5rmex9 wrote

Are they really saying consciousness will emerge from LLM's, rather than that intelligence may arise from them?

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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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[deleted] t1_j5t3qkd wrote

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[deleted] t1_j5t44av wrote

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[deleted] t1_j5t47m8 wrote

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[deleted] t1_j5t4eyy wrote

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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

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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

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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.

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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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