For Biotech Optimists, you say "Transhumanism goes here." I partially disagree. Many transhumanists fit there, yet, but others fit better in Biotech Strivers. To figure out where to put people, I think you need to specify a time frame. I am very confident that we will conquer aging but I'm very doubtful that we will do it in the next 20 years (unless, maybe, AI is applied to the problem).
Transhumanism is primarily the view that technological progress that radically changes the human condition is both possible and desirable. It does not inherently say anything about the pace of progress. The Singularity people have skewed perception on this point. As the O.G. transhumanist, looking at the wide range of transhumanist-relevant technologies and research areas, I'm a mixture of Optimist and Striver.
This is a great lens to see opinions through, thank you for sharing!
I think conversations between optimists and strivers are the most informative but least visible. Those between technologists and economists probably come closest to this. The devil is in the details but our emotions about whether something is good or bad tend to dominate.
I explored an optimistic scenario about automation and working hours a few weeks ago. My next project is to dive more into the details and how such a scenario might play out at a more detailed level, would appreciate any advice other might have! https://www.2120insights.com/p/a-world-without-work-how-quickly
Curious about your claim that education doesn’t need more computers. I agree that most ed tech is superfluous or worse. Effective teaching requires quiet inspection of self and student that is not accessible to loud, fast-moving, ambitious people who have committed to earning returns that will satisfy VCs.
But have you tried to learn anything significant with GPT4?
Yep, they do look like deflates from afar. Still, it's a temporary tactical position. Gary Marcus's blog title didn't change, and despite the robotic venture being abandoned he still very much believes we need to return focus to symbolic implementations.
As for DAIR, I'm not sure since I cannot see any paper produced since their funding, but their YouTube arxiv paper roasting sessions make it clear that they /are/ accelerationism, /but/ they want to accelerate in particular directions and are happy to slam the breaks on anything less than compliant.
actually it looks like a lot of the "AI mainstream is doing it all wrong, do it this way instead" research directions are...happening quietly inside DeepMind now?
I like this way of framing technological beliefs, interestingly some fields do not have homogeneously distributed opinions, for example cryptos have been mostly polarized with deflaters and strivers.
...wait you don't see crypto optimists? I don't follow crypto that closely but I saw a *lot* of enthusiasm and belief that things were on a good trajectory, at least back before the market crash.
On Twitter, I see people desperately hoping for the end of fiat currencies, but in real life, most people I talk to cannot deny the ridiculous number of scams, the fact that most exchanges are going down one by one, and the media coverage that is undermining the general opinion. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's hard to believe in a radical turnaround.
There seem to be multiple "clean energy optimist" camps? At least three of the variations I keep encountering in various public discussions:
- Bullish on "all of the above": nuclear fission (often including 4th generation designs, small modular, etc.), solar, wind, advanced geothermal, storage, etc. (These folks often believe that nearly all of these technologies are practical, safe, and economically viable, given the right settings, applications, and regulatory environments.)
- Bullish mostly on nuclear, and a bit prickly about wind and solar
- Bullish mostly on wind, solar, and other non-nuclear options, and often dismissive towards nuclear
That sounds about right except I would throw nuclear fusion into the mix. Some are lukewarm or pessimistic about fission but like fusion, and vice versa.
I feel like I almost always am in striver optimist field. I feel like it’s pretty hard to not be a optimist or striver if you have some Econ knowledge. All growth is about technology after all
This is a really interesting and valuable contribution to thinking about advanced technologies. But I agree with Mr. More about the importance of considering the importance of time in development. There are people who believe that enhanced intelligence or long, true general AI or healthy lifespans will never arrive. Derek Lowe and most technologists see the difficulties but don't think these things are impossible.
This is an interesting take, however there's a slightly self-serving conceit in your take. You can your schematic this to literally any ideological aspirational framework.
Lat's take communism for instance. You communist optimists who believe in communism and say communism is good, let's all do communism. But from the enlightened perspective of the communists there are the three "pissing in the punchbowl" spoilsports who refuse to "get with the program". Say, the Dystopianists view "communism" with rejection, like "o good graces, people in Europe are of a lower moral character, "we muist do whatever we cam, to the point of toppling governments, to make certain communism does NOT happen". However on the other side of the isle we find pro capitalism fanboys who will be intensely worried their favorite ideology/fanfic/utopia might be aborted because of the damn dystopianists. They will in turn gripe and moan and support their favorite cirasmoking aurhoritharian, in order "to kick some as" or "to get the useful idiots in line", etc. Something something omelette eggs. Both extremes also apply to Deflaters, who will on both extremes of communism versus capitalism (or catholicism versus protestantism, etc. ) who will say that the ideologies of neoliberal capitalism is corrupt and plain horrible - whereas capitalists will say the same - and they mightl thus claim the other side (or both side) are simply flawed theoretical models, that won't exist in the real world, are overly "theoretical", are based on false assumptions about human nature, are mostly the creation of esoteric academia or "pie in the sky" or "delusional". And we can also allocate Strivers, who will look at Capitalism and will say, "yes capitalism might be constrtuied as an amazing idea, however we need ABUC for it to wolrk, and we are not there yet, etc. Like, we first have to let all the useless eaters die "naturally" to 'sanitize" the population from parasitical elements. Or the communists, who will state that we first need to "kill all the intellectuals" and before you know, we can ascend to the true socialist utopia.
Like I said, this is all a great model, but to me it feels like the upper right corner ("Upper"... "right", get it?) are the sanctified good guys, wherreas all other three are the assholes, the spoilsports, the people that ruin it for all of us. IF ONLY THEY WOULD GET WITH THE PROGRAM.
Take for instance, studying at the university to get a good job in ten year.
Optimists pick the right university, pick the right fraternity, get a grant or let mom & day sign off on their study loans, and they proceed with consideabl enthusiasm to work hard fr 4-6 years, obrtain amazing grades and hopefully they'll be hired by some firm or startup or corporation or zaibatsu or Chaebol or whatever. All will be well, if only you jump a completely fair and rational set of hoops. However the dystopian people look at University and start complaining that University itself serves "the man" and "establishment" and it's all either woke or fascist or based or status quo or patriarchy or colonialism, and universities in fact make things worse and we actually should not be a goal.
Interestingly there are many sociopaths in the corporate field who'll actually pay university students to stop at univerrsity, go pursue a startup and get your hands dirty "in the real world". So when it comes to Academia, Slavoij Zizek is ciritical on one side of the p0olitical extreme about studying at universiry whereas people like Pieter Thiel insist for wholly other reasons that University is bad.
Likewise deflaters are the assholes that ruin it for all of us ambitious, pro higher education people as they say, "university" was a devious corrupt institution from the get go, organizedby liberals and perverts where our kids go to b infected by vice and drugs and parties and gayness and we should oppose these institutions by whatever we can. These folks see absolutely no merit to waste ANY time at university, whereas the dystopian people insist that higher science works real well and it's literally creating bullshit projects like CERN or whatever and bfeor yiou know it they create a black hole and it's the end of the world. As opposed to starting a startup, and doing some honest work instead of wasting six years accumulating grant in some useless class being lied to by old people who coupldn't hack it in the real world.
And you can imediately spot where Strivers map out.
Strivers will mount critcism about Academia and studying there and preopose new models of study, new paradiogms of higher education, etc. Like Universities would be amazing if only XYZ.
So what's the use of such a model other than to classify what kind of assholes people who disagree with you are? Great, you call yourself a good guy, and award yourself a "RIGHT" and "UPPER" good guy badge, and you just explain why your THINK those three other categories of folks are awful and annoying and bah bah bah.
Does “paper printing was the best invention of all time” count as being an education tech optimist? Because I LOVE books so, so much. With my whole heart!
This is an amazing framing overall & really helps delineate ideas and pull them out of a pure “pro con” approach that’s counterproductive. I think I have edge case opinions on most topics that can scatter across this diagram, but overall I heavily lean into the Striver quadrant myself. (And likewise hit optimist level for some mRNA therapies around 2021!)
The whole AI topic is especially bizarre for me, as I’ve been trying and utterly failing to get any algorithm to complete tasks since 2016 in both personal and professional work. Thus, I have enthusiasm, but I don’t align at all with this whole online catfight that’s been rolling through every community I participate in.
For Biotech Optimists, you say "Transhumanism goes here." I partially disagree. Many transhumanists fit there, yet, but others fit better in Biotech Strivers. To figure out where to put people, I think you need to specify a time frame. I am very confident that we will conquer aging but I'm very doubtful that we will do it in the next 20 years (unless, maybe, AI is applied to the problem).
Transhumanism is primarily the view that technological progress that radically changes the human condition is both possible and desirable. It does not inherently say anything about the pace of progress. The Singularity people have skewed perception on this point. As the O.G. transhumanist, looking at the wide range of transhumanist-relevant technologies and research areas, I'm a mixture of Optimist and Striver.
This is a great lens to see opinions through, thank you for sharing!
I think conversations between optimists and strivers are the most informative but least visible. Those between technologists and economists probably come closest to this. The devil is in the details but our emotions about whether something is good or bad tend to dominate.
I explored an optimistic scenario about automation and working hours a few weeks ago. My next project is to dive more into the details and how such a scenario might play out at a more detailed level, would appreciate any advice other might have! https://www.2120insights.com/p/a-world-without-work-how-quickly
Curious about your claim that education doesn’t need more computers. I agree that most ed tech is superfluous or worse. Effective teaching requires quiet inspection of self and student that is not accessible to loud, fast-moving, ambitious people who have committed to earning returns that will satisfy VCs.
But have you tried to learn anything significant with GPT4?
Oh there's a bunch of people on the bottom right: Gary Marcus + assorted Chomskians; p-zombie hunters; deterministic parrots etc etc etc.
It's just that the motivated reasoning is too evident to register in those cases.
I would have thought those are mostly deflaters.
Gary Marcus used to be more of a Striver (he was actively developing AI for a while) but I think that has cooled down of late.
Yep, they do look like deflates from afar. Still, it's a temporary tactical position. Gary Marcus's blog title didn't change, and despite the robotic venture being abandoned he still very much believes we need to return focus to symbolic implementations.
As for DAIR, I'm not sure since I cannot see any paper produced since their funding, but their YouTube arxiv paper roasting sessions make it clear that they /are/ accelerationism, /but/ they want to accelerate in particular directions and are happy to slam the breaks on anything less than compliant.
actually it looks like a lot of the "AI mainstream is doing it all wrong, do it this way instead" research directions are...happening quietly inside DeepMind now?
Good blog
I like this way of framing technological beliefs, interestingly some fields do not have homogeneously distributed opinions, for example cryptos have been mostly polarized with deflaters and strivers.
...wait you don't see crypto optimists? I don't follow crypto that closely but I saw a *lot* of enthusiasm and belief that things were on a good trajectory, at least back before the market crash.
On Twitter, I see people desperately hoping for the end of fiat currencies, but in real life, most people I talk to cannot deny the ridiculous number of scams, the fact that most exchanges are going down one by one, and the media coverage that is undermining the general opinion. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's hard to believe in a radical turnaround.
I'd've said clean energy optimists were bullish on nuclear; wind and solar are, ah, not yet practical or safe.
Or bullish on the potential of nuclear but maybe less optimistic on whether regulators are going to allow it to flourish.
There seem to be multiple "clean energy optimist" camps? At least three of the variations I keep encountering in various public discussions:
- Bullish on "all of the above": nuclear fission (often including 4th generation designs, small modular, etc.), solar, wind, advanced geothermal, storage, etc. (These folks often believe that nearly all of these technologies are practical, safe, and economically viable, given the right settings, applications, and regulatory environments.)
- Bullish mostly on nuclear, and a bit prickly about wind and solar
- Bullish mostly on wind, solar, and other non-nuclear options, and often dismissive towards nuclear
That sounds about right except I would throw nuclear fusion into the mix. Some are lukewarm or pessimistic about fission but like fusion, and vice versa.
I feel like I almost always am in striver optimist field. I feel like it’s pretty hard to not be a optimist or striver if you have some Econ knowledge. All growth is about technology after all
This is a really interesting and valuable contribution to thinking about advanced technologies. But I agree with Mr. More about the importance of considering the importance of time in development. There are people who believe that enhanced intelligence or long, true general AI or healthy lifespans will never arrive. Derek Lowe and most technologists see the difficulties but don't think these things are impossible.
This is an interesting take, however there's a slightly self-serving conceit in your take. You can your schematic this to literally any ideological aspirational framework.
Lat's take communism for instance. You communist optimists who believe in communism and say communism is good, let's all do communism. But from the enlightened perspective of the communists there are the three "pissing in the punchbowl" spoilsports who refuse to "get with the program". Say, the Dystopianists view "communism" with rejection, like "o good graces, people in Europe are of a lower moral character, "we muist do whatever we cam, to the point of toppling governments, to make certain communism does NOT happen". However on the other side of the isle we find pro capitalism fanboys who will be intensely worried their favorite ideology/fanfic/utopia might be aborted because of the damn dystopianists. They will in turn gripe and moan and support their favorite cirasmoking aurhoritharian, in order "to kick some as" or "to get the useful idiots in line", etc. Something something omelette eggs. Both extremes also apply to Deflaters, who will on both extremes of communism versus capitalism (or catholicism versus protestantism, etc. ) who will say that the ideologies of neoliberal capitalism is corrupt and plain horrible - whereas capitalists will say the same - and they mightl thus claim the other side (or both side) are simply flawed theoretical models, that won't exist in the real world, are overly "theoretical", are based on false assumptions about human nature, are mostly the creation of esoteric academia or "pie in the sky" or "delusional". And we can also allocate Strivers, who will look at Capitalism and will say, "yes capitalism might be constrtuied as an amazing idea, however we need ABUC for it to wolrk, and we are not there yet, etc. Like, we first have to let all the useless eaters die "naturally" to 'sanitize" the population from parasitical elements. Or the communists, who will state that we first need to "kill all the intellectuals" and before you know, we can ascend to the true socialist utopia.
Like I said, this is all a great model, but to me it feels like the upper right corner ("Upper"... "right", get it?) are the sanctified good guys, wherreas all other three are the assholes, the spoilsports, the people that ruin it for all of us. IF ONLY THEY WOULD GET WITH THE PROGRAM.
Take for instance, studying at the university to get a good job in ten year.
Optimists pick the right university, pick the right fraternity, get a grant or let mom & day sign off on their study loans, and they proceed with consideabl enthusiasm to work hard fr 4-6 years, obrtain amazing grades and hopefully they'll be hired by some firm or startup or corporation or zaibatsu or Chaebol or whatever. All will be well, if only you jump a completely fair and rational set of hoops. However the dystopian people look at University and start complaining that University itself serves "the man" and "establishment" and it's all either woke or fascist or based or status quo or patriarchy or colonialism, and universities in fact make things worse and we actually should not be a goal.
Interestingly there are many sociopaths in the corporate field who'll actually pay university students to stop at univerrsity, go pursue a startup and get your hands dirty "in the real world". So when it comes to Academia, Slavoij Zizek is ciritical on one side of the p0olitical extreme about studying at universiry whereas people like Pieter Thiel insist for wholly other reasons that University is bad.
Likewise deflaters are the assholes that ruin it for all of us ambitious, pro higher education people as they say, "university" was a devious corrupt institution from the get go, organizedby liberals and perverts where our kids go to b infected by vice and drugs and parties and gayness and we should oppose these institutions by whatever we can. These folks see absolutely no merit to waste ANY time at university, whereas the dystopian people insist that higher science works real well and it's literally creating bullshit projects like CERN or whatever and bfeor yiou know it they create a black hole and it's the end of the world. As opposed to starting a startup, and doing some honest work instead of wasting six years accumulating grant in some useless class being lied to by old people who coupldn't hack it in the real world.
And you can imediately spot where Strivers map out.
Strivers will mount critcism about Academia and studying there and preopose new models of study, new paradiogms of higher education, etc. Like Universities would be amazing if only XYZ.
So what's the use of such a model other than to classify what kind of assholes people who disagree with you are? Great, you call yourself a good guy, and award yourself a "RIGHT" and "UPPER" good guy badge, and you just explain why your THINK those three other categories of folks are awful and annoying and bah bah bah.
Does “paper printing was the best invention of all time” count as being an education tech optimist? Because I LOVE books so, so much. With my whole heart!
This is an amazing framing overall & really helps delineate ideas and pull them out of a pure “pro con” approach that’s counterproductive. I think I have edge case opinions on most topics that can scatter across this diagram, but overall I heavily lean into the Striver quadrant myself. (And likewise hit optimist level for some mRNA therapies around 2021!)
The whole AI topic is especially bizarre for me, as I’ve been trying and utterly failing to get any algorithm to complete tasks since 2016 in both personal and professional work. Thus, I have enthusiasm, but I don’t align at all with this whole online catfight that’s been rolling through every community I participate in.
Thanks for posting!