Comment by everdrive
2 days ago
Doesn't matter. We must keep building more and more technology no matter the cost. Have an idea for a business? Build it. Does your business make the lives of people worse? Doesn't matter, keep pushing. Could some new technology ruin the lives and relationships that people have? Doesn't matter, just build it. We always need more, need to do more. Every experiment is valid, every impulse must be followed. More complexity, more control, more distraction, more outrage, more engagement. Just keep building forever no matter the cost.
Relevant: https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2025/07/05/are-w...
> You better maximize engagement or you will lose engagement this is a red queen’s race we can’t afford to lose! Burn all the social capital, burn all your values, FEED IT ALL TO MOLOCH!
Wow. A new profile text for my Tinder account!
> Release the hypnodrones
If you are not building the next paperclip optimizer the competition already does!
SamA actually said perhaps data centres should occupy the majority of the earth’s crust.
It’s quite rich coming from this guy, but I’m glad he’s seen the truth nonetheless.
Oooh I recognize this, he’s entering his midlife crisis. Smart guy I wish him well, and hope he comes out the other side groovy.
Turns out the Torment Nexus was just democratizing Venture Capital's desire for infinite growth.
I misread your comment as being about Vulture Capital. I think I like that :)
Has any big-tech company every used "Torment Nexus" unironically as some new project name, or any startup used is their company/product name? I feel its close if it hasn't happened already. I mean the unironic use.
Palantir
That's an uncharitable take. Those VCs care very deeply about society, that's why they're funding so much research into the Torment Singularity (and giving so many talks about it) and making sure that the Right People get the Torment Nexus first so "we" can decide how it gets used.
The paperclip maximizer is us.
Unironically: we worry about the ASI control problem but can't even reign in our billionaires
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It's capitalism – the true "artificial intelligence" that has been organizing human life for the last ~200 years or so.
It always was.
Seeking VC funding now for OpenTormentNexus: Democratize the nightmare.
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Eric Weinstein refers to this as an Embedded Growth Obligation (EGO), whereby organizations and economies at large assume perpetual growth, and that things really start to unravel when that growth inevitably slows. It is pretty mindblowing how we have basically accepted growth as the default state, it is not at all a given that things always grow and get better.
> It is pretty mindblowing how we have basically accepted growth as the default state
It is completely to be expected, exactly because it is not new.
It's been scarcely a generation since the peak in net change of the global human population, and will likely be at least another two generations before that population reaches its maximum value. It rose faster than exponentially for a few centuries before that (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:P...). And across that time, for all our modern complaints, quality of life has improved immensely.
Of all the different experiences of various cultures worldwide and across recent history, "growth" has been quite probably the most stable.
Culture matters. People's actions are informed by how they are socialized, not just by what they can observe in the moment.
The reason people don't accept this is that it fundamentally changes society, it is because of what it means, not because it is or isn't possible.
Net-growth society: new wealth is being created, if you can be part of the creation you get wealth
No-growth society: only way to acquire wealth is to take it from someone else
Oh plus because essentially every society that experienced it legislated it's way into a no-growth situation. The problem was not that growth was not possible, it's that people used state power, for a lot of different excuses, to prevent growth (and of course really to secure the position of the richest and most powerful in society)
The excuses range from religion, morality separate from religion, wars, avoiding losing wars (and putting the entire economy in a usually futile attempt to win or avoid losing a war) and of course the whole thing feeding onto itself: laws protecting the rich at the direct expense of the poor (that can happen even if there is economic growth, though of course, the more growth the less likely)
Btw: "futile attempt to win or avoid losing a war" these attempt were futile not because they lead to a win or a loss, but because the imposed cost of a no-growth society far exceeded any gains or even avoided losses ...
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We will achieve essentially zero-cost infinite exponential scalability! The cloud has no limits! InfiniDum enterprises will operate in billions of markets across time space and dimensions of probability!
This is ignoring the Marketing to Engineering ratio. For most recent history technology companies have had to spend at least as much on marketing as engineering in order to survive, and two to ten times as much spent on marketing as engineering is common for successful companies. Who is going to buy the thing is the most important question and without solid answers there is nothing, no matter how much technology was engineered.
Now this formula has been complicated by technological engineering taking over aspects of marketing. This may seem to be simplifying and solving problems, but in ways it actually makes everything more difficult. Traditional marketing that focused on convincing people of solutions to problems is being reduced in importance. What is becoming most critical now is convincing people they can trust providers with potential solutions, and this trust is a more slippery fish than belief in the solutions themselves. That is partly because the breakdown of trust in communication channels means discussion of solutions is likely to never be heard.
I want to keep reading your thoughts on this. How can I get more or can you source your influences?
Probably best to start here with the original paper and then search for related material as the idea has been kicked around for a while: http://www.marketingvp.com/download/mer-data.pdf
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move fast and break things!
nevermind if the things are people or their lives!!
build things """"people"""" want
People want dopamine hints, gamification, addictive distractions, and a culture of competitive perma-hustle.
If they didn't, we wouldn't be having these problems.
The problem isn't AI, it's how marketing has eaten everything.
So everyone is always pitching, looking for a competitive advantage, "telling their story", and "building their brand."
You can't "build trust" if your primary motivation is to sell stuff to your contacts.
The SNR was already terrible long before AI arrived. All AI has done is automated an already terrible process, which has - ironically - broken it so badly that it no longer works.
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That is only true as long as people are the only entities who can spend money. As soon as people give AI the power to spend money, we will see companies designing products to appeal to AI:s. A new form of SEO spam, if you will.
> move fast and break things!
> nevermind if the things are people or their lives!!
Breaking things is ok. If people are things then it's ok to break them, right? Got it. Gotta get back to my startup to apply that insight.
The world will be a soulless hell, but Dario Amodei promises we'll live forever in it.
And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
Yours truly,
Larry Fink and The Money Owners.
It sounds like the "The City" in "Blame!"
This is what you get for not reading the writings of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Virilio
But the difference this time is now is that AI is heading in the direction where it can do ALL of WHAT you mentioned FOR you and everyone else.
Quote may be cliched, but still it's valid.
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
One of the potential upsides to this as that people just might start taking time to engage in a bit of critical thinking before reacting. Is this real? How likely is this AI nonsense? What is the source? Is this the full picture? etc.
Perhaps I am too optimistic...
Neil deGrasse Tyson said a quote expressing a concern about the future impact of AI on information credibility.
The exact quote is: "I foresee the day where AI become so good at making a deep fake that the people who believed fake news as true will no longer think their fake news is true because they'll think their fake news was faked by AI."
I wish people who believed that kind of fake news had this piece of critical thinking. I don't think they do though, they'll take whatever confirms their views and reject everything else as faked by AI with no logic or proof whatsoever.
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