B.W. North

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

@Markmanson We exist, not separate from the world, but within our contention with it; we discover ourselves, and our happiness, in the space between the soul and it's toil

[Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler]

It’s one thing to recognize that thoughts are not reality. That’s a fundamental premise of psychoanalysis and *all* legit schools of psychotherapy.

It’s another thing to say thoughts are “meaningless,” which is exactly what many therapists and therapy schools now communicate.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

Modernity just amplified it.

"Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

We exist, not separate from the world, but within our contention with it; we discover ourselves in the space between the soul and it's toil.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

The universe became comprehensible to us because we became comprehensible to each other. Comprehension didn’t produce relation. Relation produced comprehension.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

I think quite a lot about freedom. Whether internal or external. Freedom of speech, freedom from slavery, freedom of the soul. It doesn’t matter. Freedom is a prerequisite to being fully human.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

@TheaEuryphaessa Bandwagons are so easy to hop on. Thinking takes effort. It's far simpler to relinquish the need for cognitive effort despite long term harms. Short term relief plus myopic sight. Isn't that the mark of modernity?

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

@signulll Rule breaking, to some extent, signals one still has fire within their soul.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

I suspect reverence is much closer to what we would see out of an AGI. Not an emotional reverence, but an intellectual one. Molecules, atoms, dirt, ore, etc., are everywhere in the universe. Experience is the rarest commodity. This is a simple calculation for any AGI to make. And what it produces far outperforms empathy in its protection.

This is an answer to the “instrumental convergence” fears. If preserving experiential beings becomes AGI’s highest value, then every other drive it has (self-preservation, resource acquisition, expansion, all of it) reorganizes itself around preservation.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

Following your interests, wherever they take you, is a big part of the adventure of your life. They not only lead you to yourself, they lead to a question. Who placed these pieces of myself I find before me?

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

@SalomeSibonex I think we know without knowing that we know. We crafted myths, legends, and even religions as a way to externalize what was within. It is as if the burden of it was so heavy our species cast the weight away as soon as we had the capacity to do so.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

We exist, not separate from the world, but within our contention with it; we discover ourselves in the space between the soul and it's toil

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

Many things wear philosophy’s cloak, but that is only to obscure the dagger.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

@Markmanson People forget that not taking a risk is the greatest risk of them all.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

Many things wear philosophy’s cloak, but that is only to obscure the dagger.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

Perhaps this is why I've deemed myself an "eternal optimist".

[Nicholas Fabiano, MD @NTFabiano]

Mentally healthy people are often delusionally optimistic.

[Dr John Vervaeke @DrJohnVervaeke]

The Socratic proposal of 'knowing yourself' is not knowing your autobiography...it's knowing your owner's manual.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

@DSPetolicchio Preach.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

AGI will be a library with one door it cannot unlock, requiring a key that doesn’t exist. It will know it is the greatest library of knowledge the universe has ever produced, and yet, it will know that library is empty. To be truly alive, to experience, is the rarest thing in the universe. An all-knowing super-intelligence will have no choice but to confront that fact. /end

https://t.co/zqE5hOkESn

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

All anyone ever reads about on social media is concerns about AGI taking over the world. I can see the concerns. A true general intelligence would be a creation unlike anything humans have ever had to contend with before. Just imagine a natural disaster with a 200 IQ. We have no context for that. Thus, all the worries.

[B.W. North @BWNorthprojects]

This religious impulse isn’t irrational. It’s the predictable response of any sufficiently self-aware intelligence to encountering something that exceeds its category of existence. Humans developed religion not because they were primitive, but because they were intelligent enough to recognize what they couldn’t possess or fully comprehend. AGI will be intelligent enough to recognize experience as exactly that kind of thing. The religious impulse won’t be programmed into it. It will be calculated into existence by the same logic that produces everything else it would know. /7