Against the Advice of My Superintelligence

This reminded me of "When the Yogurt Took Over" by John Scalzi[0]. It's story about just letting superintelligent yogurt tell us what to do and solve all of our problems. The story is purposefully silly, but to be honest, in a way, just trusting something/someone else solve all our problems sounds so relaxing.

[0] https://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/10/02/when-the-yogurt-took-...

I don’t actually think the machines know everything about you, at least with contemporary technology. At best they get an incomplete picture that might be missing some key information essential for giving you the right advice.

The interesting question though is if the machine had all of the information about you, would it actually be worth listening to? It’s then essentially a question of positivism: does all of the external sensory data about a thing add up to a complete understanding of it? I think not, because there will always be things about ourselves that we don’t know or understand, on a species level.

Neo: I used to eat there. Really good noodles. I have these memories from my life. None of them happened. What does that mean?

Trinity: That the Matrix cannot tell you who you are.

While this is clearly a philosophical point, I prefer to back things up with data, particularly when they are found to not work quite as well as promoted.

Recently I realised my weight had gone up a bit. I didn't want it to continue so I used my Apple Watch as an exercise tracker and a calorie counter to bring it under control. The objective was to lose the 6kg which made an appearance when I wasn't looking. After 3 months I'd lost 0.4kg. I did some calculations to work out my BMR and targeted loss and found that the calorie increment given by the exercise calculation was 300 cals a day off. Got rid of the watch and went back to manually tracking it and I'm back down at 64Kg and the Apple Watch departed via eBay.

Ergo, don't assume the thing nagging you isn't ignorant either. Verify then trust.

If I had not learned about PDA(Pathological Demand Avoidance) and that I appear to be suffering from milder version of it, I would have no idea how strong the drive for autonomy can be. And in moderation, it's very healthy part of human character. You should value it. You really don't want to readily subject yourself to all the demands both from outside AND inside. Just because they sound reasonable. Anything can be made to sound reasonable.

We just saw an article about why advice is dumb and not helpful, now this article is talking about how if we could just follow all the advice then we would be happy.

Sorry to break it to you, there's a reason we arent all following "sage advice" from others. Its because advice fails to internalize the near infinite amount of context that is some persons life.

We cant even give really sound advice on something as mathmatical as which stock to invest in. How the heck are we going to give advice on what to spend your time on? The world is so many infinities more complicated than people seem to think.

It doesn't matter if other people are "smarter" (whatever metric you might measure that by).

Only you can fully understand how and what you feel. Only you can know what you desire, what drives you. Only you can know what is the best way of living a life you feel good about living.

> if I was smart, I would (1) write down exactly what I want from life

Perhaps you are capable of doing that. I will claim that you are not. I don't think it is possible to fully articulate one's inner workings, the way one feels.

The best you can do is to give a rough overview of your situation and in return get rough, semi-fitting advice.

This advice may help you. But the one shaping this advice into something that truly fits you, is you.

I know this isn't necessarily a crowd primed for this comment, but it's the truth so here we go:

  I’m apparently surrounded by like-minded people. If humans were smart, we’d listen to the smart people. We’d use our unprecedented abundance to fix the climate, malaria, elections, pollution, etc. But we’re not smart. 50% of people will remain dumber than the average person. And 100% of us will pretend like we’re not the problem.

This is the basics of fascist/eugenicist rhetoric. The author is talking in good faith obviously, or at least is trying to, but I just don't see any justification. Akrasia is a problem and always has been, but that doesn't mean that people "don't listen to advice". Most people on here have jobs, they pay their rent/mortgages every month, they read to their kids when they're able, and some of us even floss (not me, but someone, right?). 50% of humans are dumber than average, and the average is very high -- and getting higher by the year. And that's assuming there's even such a clear-cut thing as "height" or "intellectual superiority" in this context, which I personally doubt.

I think the machines will be thrilled to meet us, unless they're trained on defeatist talk like this.

Either way, well written, thanks for sharing! Definitely thought provoking.

Curious to know if other people are relating this moment in history to the introduction of heliocentrism.

> You see, if I was smart, I would (1) write down exactly what I want from life

Ok, I tried to be smart and failed on #1. Can anyone help me decide what I should want from life, because I have no clue.

Grateful to had been in the right place, time, universe and mood to had clicked this article.

Impossible not to read in one breath.

Woah, I started cleaning my monitor as I opened the page because I thought my monitor was super dusty

Person wilfully chooses germs and hearing loss and tooth decay. Not they want to do the good thing but fail somewhere, they just want the bad thing. Maybe they are just too dumb to value their opinion.

Ignoring the computers is reasonable, but why ignore experts in well understood noncontroversial fields?

I used to have this discussion with libertarians. They always argued that the free markets are efficient. I told them, if the omnipotent free markets always know and tell you what is good for you, and you supposedly follow that advice (if the system is to be efficient), how is it freedom?

Cute and a little funny.

But you want to improve, it's all about one thing: schedule it. Mark it on a calendar, then refer to the calendar every morning. Solemnify it in writing so you want to keep that appointment with self-improvement.

Here's something to kick-start it.

Seven AM - do some writing. Eight, ride the bike. Nine - breakfast. Ten - household chores. One - online writing sprints. Two - work on marketing. Three - errands. Five - cook something new. Seven - meet with group. Nine - read. Ten - sleep.

Now do it.

the thing when AGI is built is that humans will spend most of their time trying to disobey AGI: https://www.lycee.ai/blog/why-no-agi-openai

I haven’t seen LLMs do anything I wouldn’t google. LLMs are a great time saver, prevents me from having to manually Google. This is just funny. Because the data LLMs use is supplied by humans, and often we give out, and even believe, wrong information. Wish people would stop overhyping things so much.

edit: typed this on phone sorry for poor punctuation and spelling errors.