So seeing the reaction on lesswrong to Eliezer's book has been interesting. It turns out, even among people that already mostly agree with him, a lot of them were hoping he would make their case better than he has (either because they aren't as convinced as him, or they are, but were hoping for something more palatable to the general public).
This review (lesswrong discussion here), calls out a really obvious issue: Eliezer's AI doom story was formed before Deep Learning took off, and in fact was mostly focusing on more GOFAI than neural networks, yet somehow, the details of the story haven't changed at all. The reviewer is a rationalist that still believes in AI doom, so I wouldn't give her too much credit, but she does note this is a major discrepancy from someone that espouses a philosophy that (nominally) features a lot of updating your beliefs in response to evidence. The reviewer also notes that "it should be illegal to own more than eight of the most powerful GPUs available in 2024 without international monitoring" is kind of unworkable.
This reviewer liked the book more than they expected to, because Eliezer and Nate Soares gets some details of the AI doom lore closer to the reviewer's current favored headcanon. The reviewer does complain that maybe weird and condescending parables aren't the best outreach strategy!
This reviewer has written their own AI doom explainer which they think is better! From their limited description, I kind of agree, because it sounds like the focus on current real world scenarios and harms (and extrapolate them to doom). But again, I wouldn't give them too much credit, it sounds like they don't understand why existential doom is actually promoted (as a distraction and source of crit-hype). They also note the 8 GPUs thing is batshit.
Overall, it sounds like lesswrongers view the book as an improvement to the sprawling mess of arguments in the sequences (and scattered across other places like Arbital), but still not as well structured as they could be or stylistically quite right for a normy audience (i.e. the condescending parables and diversions into unrelated science-y topics). And some are worried that Nate and Eliezer's focus on an unworkable strategy (shut it all down, 8 GPU max!) with no intermediate steps or goals or options might not be the best.
OG Dune actually had some complex and layered stuff to say about AI before the background lore was retconned to dollar store WH40K by the current handlers of the IP.
There was no superintelligence, thinking machines were gatekept by specialists who formed entrenched elites, overreliance to them was causing widespread intellectual stagnation, and people were becoming content with letting unknowable algorithms decide on matters of life and death.
The Butlerian Jihad was first and foremost a cultural revolution.
It was very much a Luddite movement that succeeded
I mean the aftermath of Buterlian Jihad eventually lead to brutal feudalism that lasted a really long time and halted multiple lines of technological and social development, so I wouldn't exactly call it a success for the common person.
Well, at least they got to find out exactly how far extreme mental discipline (and space psychedelics) could take you. You got mentats, truth sayers, suk doctors and so on and so forth. Not that the vast majority of the population ever got to see any benefit from them, because hey, feudalism, and they themselves were basically luxury slaves to the Great Houses, but it's not nothing I guess.
Wasn't there a bit in the OG Dune lore where the person the Jihad was named after actually didn't want to start a Jihad? (I think that was retconned into 'they sneakily did try to become a martyr to start the war' bit, which sort of messes with the themes of Dune that even lofty goals can have horrible consequences, see Paul).
The author certainly wants you to know that finding yourself as the head of a revolutionary movement means very little with regards to your abilities to steer it, but I don't remember.
Yeah I recalled that was part of Frank Herberts thinking, but when I looked at a description of the books written by his son together with Kevin J. Anderson (of course (I read several of his saga of the seven suns books and I was not impressed with his 'elemental aliens' bit, but I in general have something against 'the 4 elements stories' as usually this isn't that interesting as a plot device (avatar was great otoh). I did enjoy his star wars comics however. So I prob should give them another try esp as the series is now done)), and according to that Butler planned to be martyred and to intensify the war, so that is a bit of a different take on the revolutionary leader idea.
Please don't bother with the KJA/BH Dune books, they are incredibly shit. It's basically Dune fanfiction where the gimmick is everyone is brain damaged, especially the authors.
And even if you are into that, if you read the prequels first they will retroactively ruin the original books by giving up plot reveals for fanservice, or because they don't understand that character development is a thing, so you get people behaving like a lot of things that don't happen for several books are a given.
KJA is such a hack's hack it's unbelievable that he's flown under the radar the way he has, probably because he's made a career out of leeching on existing ips, before Dune it was starwars, x-files and stracraft, at least.
He sucks, and very consistently so. People should be writing Renowned author Dan Brown pieces about him.
Yeah meant the seven suns series. Dune I need to get into the sequels first. (Think i might have read them decades ago). But yes the seven suns def had me persistent in reading out of a sort of spite and fools hope.
And after the horus heresy, im not sure I want another prequel, and rereading those is not an option.
And on a lol note, my parents got the newest Brown for themselves. The article about brown reminded me of the crash investigator book by Dan Simmons, shared a few of Browns writing flaws.