11 Comments
Jan 29Liked by Samuel Hammond

Your work is the most exciting stuff in the AI space today. It makes me, a CS guy, want to study philosophy and liberal arts.

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In my perspective, AI itself is a way for "reason" to emancipate from our evolutionary structures.

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Jan 29Liked by Samuel Hammond

i am become ubermensch

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good one

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I wish AI could condense this into a lingo that I would have less to work on.^^

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Solid trajectory from Kant’s stuck-in-a-simulation to Hegel situating the thing itself socio-historically. It was strange then that you circled back to Kant and found the solution to be the categorical imperative and the kingdom of ends. This seems like a step back for reasons Hegel suggested- Kant’s solution is sort of an empty signifier, a simulation in a simulation.

IMO the next step from Hegel is Nietzsche. He would agree that autonomy in itself is a dead end, but instead of going back to Kant (back to the simulation) he shifts the focus to living fully ie transcendence (think Emerson). This is in line with Taylor calls contact theory (in opposition to the simulation).

Living fully can still be socially situated like Hegel/Taylor says (he idolizes the Greeks for instance), but it avoids the last man stagnation that we get from plugging back into the simulation. And if you think Nietzsche is a bridge too far, then I’d suggest Huxley or Maslow for a gentler formulation.

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The biggest issue with the acc message is that is has basically become: "you will die, and everything you care about, and there is nothing you can do about it, so you should welcome it."

You can see why reasonable people might object.

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