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Comment by SlightlyLeftPad

6 hours ago

Good news! Research shows that hope reduces stress! [0]

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2024/09/15/how-bein...

Sadly, AI just made many of us lose all hope.

  • AI is an amazing Rorschach test in this regard. In the way that two people will look at it -- not just AI in general but in a specific implementation of it (coding, vidgen, etc). And one will feel deep dread and knots in their stomach while the other is filled to the brim with hope and optimism.

    I think the former group almost certainly outweighs the latter group at least in the Western hemisphere, but I know the Western hemisphere has been steeped in a deep malaise of anti-optimism for several decades preceding AI to begin with. That it's almost a game to identify all the ways anything new might be bad, rather than celebrating the obvious ways they are good. And this penchant invariably biases their developing opinions of all new technology, be it AI or anything else.

    • What if I'm super optimistic about most technology but also scared of AI?

      Space, nuclear fusion, advanced fission, the internet since about 1993, blockchain, anti-aging, I've been a big fan of all of it. But I've read the AI safety arguments and seen what a lot of researchers say about it, and I'm seriously worried.

    • >one will feel deep dread and knots in their stomach while the other is filled to the brim with hope and optimism.

      Ignorance is bliss

  • It makes me concerned on many levels, but perhaps also more hopeful. It was inevitable that we would eventually develop AI if we didn't go extinct first, and while there are myriad risks and challenges, there is also massive potential, which seems like it could be a source of hope. As the earlier comment said, the only way that therapies like these could be remotely viable on any kind of near to medium timeframe would be with AI assistance, and this is just one example.

What about Xanax or medication. Hypothetically ignoring the ill effects of the drugs themselves will chemical stress relief have the same anti-aging benefits?

  • If you believe that HRV is inversely correlated with stress then Xanax has the opposite of your intended effect.