alt Hacker News> The essay contains a lot of coulds, but doesn't touch on the base problem: human nature.
> AI isn't the problem, we are.
I think when we frame it as human _nature_, then yes, _we_ look like the problem.
But what if we frame it as human _culture_? Then _we_ aren't the problem, but rather our _behaviors/beliefs/knowledge/etc_ are.
If we focus on the former, we might just be essentially screwed. If we focus on the latter, we might be able to change things that seem like nature but might be more nurture.
Maybe that's a better framing: the base problem is human nurture?
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Sure. But why do you think changing human nurture is any easier than changing human nature? I suspect that as your set of humans in consideration tends to include the set of all humans, the gap between changeability of human nature vs changeability of human nurture reduces to zero.
Perhaps you are implying that we sign up for a global (truly global, not global by the standards of Western journalists) campaign of complete and irrevocable reform in our behavior, beliefs and knowledge. At the very least, this implies simply killing off a huge number of human beings who for whatever reason stand in the way. This is not (just) a hypothesis -- some versions of this have been tried and tested. *
> I think when we frame it as human _nature_, then yes, _we_ look like the problem.
But what if we frame it as human _culture_? Then _we_ aren't the problem, but rather our _behaviors/beliefs/knowledge/etc_ are.
If we focus on the former, we might just be essentially screwed. If we focus on the latter, we might be able to change things that seem like nature but might be more nurture.
Maybe that's a better framing: the base problem is human nurture?
This is about the same as saying that leaders can get better outcomes by surrounding themselves with yes-men.
Just because asserting a different set of facts makes the predicted outcomes more desirable, doesn't mean that those alternate facts are better for making predictions with. What matters is how congruent they are to reality.
I think this is an important distinction. Yes, humans have some inbuilt weaknesses and proclivities, but humans are not required to live in or develop systems in which those weaknesses and proclivities are constantly exploited for the benefit/power of a few others. Throughout human history, there have been practices of contemplation, recognition of interdependence, and ways of increasing our capacity for compassion and thoughful response. We are currently in a biological runaway state with extraction, but it's not the only way humans have of behaving.