"Ringwraiths of Washington" The Nazgûl darkness! I like the image a lot.
I think you are on the money about Musk - big borg future ahead - don't trust his motivations at all - but as you say - good guy or black hat? Don't know. Probably doesn't matter as the tech and the control is coming upon us regardless.
Also you touched on something I feel is important as well but of course no one says it out loud for fear of being labeled a religious nut case, and that's "there are powers and principalities active in this world for whom this level of neurospiritual tyranny is a wet dream." Lots to be said in this space.
You picked up on the powers and principalities reference. Excellent.
"the tech and the control is coming upon us regardless."
The tech is coming, absent a cosmic intervention that knocks us back to the iron age. There's no doubt there will be attempts to use it for control. So the question is: how can it be used to resist attempts at control? As with the Internet, it will likely prove a double edged sword, and it will be a sword all sides will need to take up.
Came across your Substack via comments on The Good Citizen. Thought I would check it out. Good article on Musk and technocracy. I have followed Patrick Wood on technocracy for several years. Will be linking your article today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Besides anyone that goes by the handle of John Carter and postcards from Barsoom can't be all bad. Always liked the John Carter and Tarzan stories when I was younger. The Frazetta art is perfect as well!!!!
It’s impossible to tell anything about musk. I love that he trolls the left. I’m not crazy about the world being taken over by technology that can be used to limit our geographic range (electric cars). Musk once said he thought human language would go extinct in 5-10 years with the aid of AI. Bizarre and implausible, I think. I’m fairly conspiratorial about these types. I’ve written about him a number of times on my substack.
Yeah that's the thing about him - he doesn't slot easily into white hat or black hat, which is precisely what makes him interesting.
Human language going extinct in a decade is obviously not happening. But in a century or two, if direct neural interface becomes the norm? Honestly I could see that. Symbolic language is less useful if the signified can be communicated directly. Then again, some things can't be communicated directly, e.g. high level abstractions inherently require symbolic communication.
I can safely say that if all our overlords (Schwab, Gates, Zuckerberg et al) are as intelligent as Musk, then we have nothing at all to fear. fElon is a huge fraud and buffoon. Just spend some time looking at $TSLAQ posts on Twitter, and you'll see the real Elon. It's all out there for everyone to see.
I find Elon's enthusiasm for 'AI' alittle alarming, as he's obviously a believer that such technology can become 'sentient' at some point, a claim that a former Google employee has already echoed.
The way I see 'sentient' AI becoming a reality, is either through 'transhumanism' or disembodied spirits - demons, interacting with such creations, thus giving the impression of organic sentience, when in reality, it will be more of a duality.
True 'sentience' can only come from God, through the spirit.
In terms of whether Elon is a white hat or black hat, I've always had a very uneasy feeling about him, a loose canon, who has recently began to talk out of both sides of his mouth.
I think we have a little less to fear from neural interfaces than many think, or at least a longer horizon before “oh gods what have we done?” The reason is that the interfaces that have been made up till recently (a few years since I last was reading that lit) work at one remove at least from our brain’s base function. In other words, our brain does something that is interpreted to mean X, but what or why our brain did it might be X’ or Y, and the machine can’t put X in the other direction.
By analogy, the dog here next to me kind of gets what I tell it. Molly doesn’t really understand words put together. when I say “pee” she hops up and goes to the door. Of course she does that whether I mean “let’s go out and empty your bladder” or “small round veggie thing that goes well with carrot.” Context is irrelevant, but since I don’t eat legumes she is right well enough. Yet she can’t talk beyond basic doggy noises and body language. We interface, but poorly, and much better in one direction than the other.
Back to machine human wetware interfaces. We hook a lot of electrical sensors to a person’s nerves, the say “think about reaching over with your robot arm and getting that juice” and then after many hours of trial and error the brain stumbles across the combination that stimulates the sensors to tell the arm to do that. Great, but the arm isn’t understanding what happened inside the brain, but rather the brain figured out how to make the arm react. It need not be the same brain process to produce that output each time, and different brains might do it differently in any case. Figuring out the internal mode from the external signal is nigh on impossible.
Going the other direction, if you can’t reverse engineer how all brains work to store ideas and memories very exactly, putting ideas into a head requires a lot of trial and error testing to figure out how the specific brain set up works. Hours and hours with a machine learning AI seeing what happens if you zap this spot, and what if you try it later after this one... I expect the human isn’t going to survive that as anything remotely recognizable as sane.
So long story short, you can do a one way human to machine control interface comparatively easily, in fact we have basic ones already. You just need to be paralyzed or missing limbs for them to be worth learning to use. Machine to human input/control interface is likely obscenely difficult to do directly, unless it turns out that our brain chemistry and wiring is actually a lot more standard that it seems such that we don’t need to be the subject of years of stimulus response AI testing to figure out how to get a specific response in our brain. Which, incidentally, would also require having learned what the specific output response in our brains mean as well. In effect, you almost have to learn to read minds before you can learn to read minds.
Much easier to just in a pain chip to zap you when you do something the surveillance system automatically detects as wrong think. So... good?
The existence of nuclear weapons and biological warfare facilities is all the evidence you need to show that if a technology is useful enough, it will be developed, even if the overwhelming majority of the species preferred it not to be.
Technological development isn't democratic. It takes only a very small number of people to develop any given project, when balanced against the totality of the species.
Case in point: Wright brothers. Two guys invented aviation.
Even relatively large and expensive programs like nuclear weapons development require only a few thousand people.
Of course, you could argue that certain kinds of technology should be ruled illegal to develop, let alone use. What that tends to mean in practice is that it just goes underground: organized crime and state security will develop anything they think they can weaponize. See: biological weapons.
Since the military applications of NeuraLink technology are obvious, it is obvious that trying to make it illegal will result in it only being available to the military (and the mafias). The alternative is to allow it to to be developed in the open, where it can be scrutinized, and to adapt as necessary.
Of course, many technologies have benefitted and progressed humanity. Yet we still need to use our brains and wisdom to see the potential pitfalls of some of them, like nuclear.
Precisely because anything can be weaponised that we must be extra cautious. Take the aeroplane as an example. Of course, it has been weaponised. But it cannot be compared to nuclear energy.
"Since the military applications of NeuraLink technology are obvious, it is obvious that trying to make it illegal will result in it only being available to the military (and the mafias). The alternative is to allow it to to be developed in the open, where it can be scrutinized, and to adapt as necessary."
That is a common line used to justify any development. Again, we need to foresee the negative aspects of it first.
We must distinguish between a physical and a digital thing. They cannot control the masses via physical means. That should be obvious. And it is also obvious that they CAN control the masses via digital methods. Ask the Canadian Freedom Convoy people.
"Ringwraiths of Washington" The Nazgûl darkness! I like the image a lot.
I think you are on the money about Musk - big borg future ahead - don't trust his motivations at all - but as you say - good guy or black hat? Don't know. Probably doesn't matter as the tech and the control is coming upon us regardless.
Also you touched on something I feel is important as well but of course no one says it out loud for fear of being labeled a religious nut case, and that's "there are powers and principalities active in this world for whom this level of neurospiritual tyranny is a wet dream." Lots to be said in this space.
You picked up on the powers and principalities reference. Excellent.
"the tech and the control is coming upon us regardless."
The tech is coming, absent a cosmic intervention that knocks us back to the iron age. There's no doubt there will be attempts to use it for control. So the question is: how can it be used to resist attempts at control? As with the Internet, it will likely prove a double edged sword, and it will be a sword all sides will need to take up.
Good point - the tech can be used against the technocrats in an underground parallel society's subversion program (that sounds like fun).
Otherwise -
Cue the sun! Or The Return of the Son.
Either will do the job.
Came across your Substack via comments on The Good Citizen. Thought I would check it out. Good article on Musk and technocracy. I have followed Patrick Wood on technocracy for several years. Will be linking your article today @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Besides anyone that goes by the handle of John Carter and postcards from Barsoom can't be all bad. Always liked the John Carter and Tarzan stories when I was younger. The Frazetta art is perfect as well!!!!
Cool. Glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the link!
Sharing the feelings and being a drop in an ocean makes me remember the Gaia planet from the foundation series of Asimov!
Weirdly, I read that when I was a kid before I read any of the previous books in the series. Enjoyed it more than the originals, too.
Enjoyable read. :)
It’s impossible to tell anything about musk. I love that he trolls the left. I’m not crazy about the world being taken over by technology that can be used to limit our geographic range (electric cars). Musk once said he thought human language would go extinct in 5-10 years with the aid of AI. Bizarre and implausible, I think. I’m fairly conspiratorial about these types. I’ve written about him a number of times on my substack.
For now I’m greatly enjoying his pithy tweets. 😁
Yeah that's the thing about him - he doesn't slot easily into white hat or black hat, which is precisely what makes him interesting.
Human language going extinct in a decade is obviously not happening. But in a century or two, if direct neural interface becomes the norm? Honestly I could see that. Symbolic language is less useful if the signified can be communicated directly. Then again, some things can't be communicated directly, e.g. high level abstractions inherently require symbolic communication.
I can safely say that if all our overlords (Schwab, Gates, Zuckerberg et al) are as intelligent as Musk, then we have nothing at all to fear. fElon is a huge fraud and buffoon. Just spend some time looking at $TSLAQ posts on Twitter, and you'll see the real Elon. It's all out there for everyone to see.
I find Elon's enthusiasm for 'AI' alittle alarming, as he's obviously a believer that such technology can become 'sentient' at some point, a claim that a former Google employee has already echoed.
The way I see 'sentient' AI becoming a reality, is either through 'transhumanism' or disembodied spirits - demons, interacting with such creations, thus giving the impression of organic sentience, when in reality, it will be more of a duality.
True 'sentience' can only come from God, through the spirit.
In terms of whether Elon is a white hat or black hat, I've always had a very uneasy feeling about him, a loose canon, who has recently began to talk out of both sides of his mouth.
God Bless xxx
I think we have a little less to fear from neural interfaces than many think, or at least a longer horizon before “oh gods what have we done?” The reason is that the interfaces that have been made up till recently (a few years since I last was reading that lit) work at one remove at least from our brain’s base function. In other words, our brain does something that is interpreted to mean X, but what or why our brain did it might be X’ or Y, and the machine can’t put X in the other direction.
By analogy, the dog here next to me kind of gets what I tell it. Molly doesn’t really understand words put together. when I say “pee” she hops up and goes to the door. Of course she does that whether I mean “let’s go out and empty your bladder” or “small round veggie thing that goes well with carrot.” Context is irrelevant, but since I don’t eat legumes she is right well enough. Yet she can’t talk beyond basic doggy noises and body language. We interface, but poorly, and much better in one direction than the other.
Back to machine human wetware interfaces. We hook a lot of electrical sensors to a person’s nerves, the say “think about reaching over with your robot arm and getting that juice” and then after many hours of trial and error the brain stumbles across the combination that stimulates the sensors to tell the arm to do that. Great, but the arm isn’t understanding what happened inside the brain, but rather the brain figured out how to make the arm react. It need not be the same brain process to produce that output each time, and different brains might do it differently in any case. Figuring out the internal mode from the external signal is nigh on impossible.
Going the other direction, if you can’t reverse engineer how all brains work to store ideas and memories very exactly, putting ideas into a head requires a lot of trial and error testing to figure out how the specific brain set up works. Hours and hours with a machine learning AI seeing what happens if you zap this spot, and what if you try it later after this one... I expect the human isn’t going to survive that as anything remotely recognizable as sane.
So long story short, you can do a one way human to machine control interface comparatively easily, in fact we have basic ones already. You just need to be paralyzed or missing limbs for them to be worth learning to use. Machine to human input/control interface is likely obscenely difficult to do directly, unless it turns out that our brain chemistry and wiring is actually a lot more standard that it seems such that we don’t need to be the subject of years of stimulus response AI testing to figure out how to get a specific response in our brain. Which, incidentally, would also require having learned what the specific output response in our brains mean as well. In effect, you almost have to learn to read minds before you can learn to read minds.
Much easier to just in a pain chip to zap you when you do something the surveillance system automatically detects as wrong think. So... good?
Love the blog, thanks for so much great content!
We cannot be neutral about neutralink!
No one is ever neutral towards any technology. But one's attitude towards a technology has no bearing on its existence.
"But one's attitude towards a technology has no bearing on its existence."
Really?
If there is a critical mass of opposition, do you think it will be marketed? It might exist somewhere, but will it be mass-marketed?
If there is no demand, is there a supply?
The existence of nuclear weapons and biological warfare facilities is all the evidence you need to show that if a technology is useful enough, it will be developed, even if the overwhelming majority of the species preferred it not to be.
".... even if the overwhelming majority of the species preferred it not to be."
You said it! Can someone explain to me what "democracy" is please. And "We the people" thing.
Technological development isn't democratic. It takes only a very small number of people to develop any given project, when balanced against the totality of the species.
Case in point: Wright brothers. Two guys invented aviation.
Even relatively large and expensive programs like nuclear weapons development require only a few thousand people.
Of course, you could argue that certain kinds of technology should be ruled illegal to develop, let alone use. What that tends to mean in practice is that it just goes underground: organized crime and state security will develop anything they think they can weaponize. See: biological weapons.
Since the military applications of NeuraLink technology are obvious, it is obvious that trying to make it illegal will result in it only being available to the military (and the mafias). The alternative is to allow it to to be developed in the open, where it can be scrutinized, and to adapt as necessary.
Beware of false analogies.
Of course, many technologies have benefitted and progressed humanity. Yet we still need to use our brains and wisdom to see the potential pitfalls of some of them, like nuclear.
Precisely because anything can be weaponised that we must be extra cautious. Take the aeroplane as an example. Of course, it has been weaponised. But it cannot be compared to nuclear energy.
"Since the military applications of NeuraLink technology are obvious, it is obvious that trying to make it illegal will result in it only being available to the military (and the mafias). The alternative is to allow it to to be developed in the open, where it can be scrutinized, and to adapt as necessary."
That is a common line used to justify any development. Again, we need to foresee the negative aspects of it first.
We must distinguish between a physical and a digital thing. They cannot control the masses via physical means. That should be obvious. And it is also obvious that they CAN control the masses via digital methods. Ask the Canadian Freedom Convoy people.