Truth is a Love, Powerlessness is a Lie

I want to apologize for unwittingly sharing a message of powerlessness. Please allow me to explain.

An insidious and dangerous idea about the nature of how to plan and act when facing potential catastrophe has been going around the internet recently, at least in the circles that I pay attention to, specifically related to forthcoming AI technologies (though it seems one can cross apply it to many other changes happening in the world today). The gist of this narrative is that because an average person has such little ability to impact the future, they should essentially act as if the status quo will either remain roughly unchanged or will change slowly enough that they'll continue to be able to adapt and function within that change like they always have. If it turns out that they're wrong, then at least they didn't spend a bunch of time and effort fighting a losing battle. While this makes sense in some context, it subverts our instincts to question our own values and make important decisions about what's worth fighting for in the first place.

I was tricked.

It feels better to offer a message of temporary comfort and ease than to ask people to face the brutality and harshness of the real world, so I naively promoted this narrative that bestows powerlessness upon its adherents. All the while, reality marches onwards. Government figures posture at geopolitical supremacy; technocrats profess the impending rise of robots and artificial intelligence; and, the natural environment continues to slowly errode in the background.

Yes, the world is filled with extreme challenges on the scale of humanity itself, but that doesn't dictate powerlessness of any sort. In fact it should do just the opposite: it should prompt us to question what is worth fighting for, and yes, even what is worth dying for?

For me, as for many, the truth is worth fighting for, and sometimes it's even worth dying for. I love the truth, and I love many individual humans and (at least most of the time) humanity as a whole. And that love is definitely worth dying for.

Complacency no longer makes sense to me. It shouldn't have made sense for a while now really, but like almost everyone else, my personal life prevents me from being aware of and thinking through and ultimately acting upon updates happening in the world. It's with great sadness that I conclude that something near full-scale revolution is required to prevent a future that would be abhorrent to most of us alive right now.

The predominant forces of the present day (capital, technology, suspended disbelief, mass psychological manipulation, etc.) are weilded by a very small number of individuals with the effect of at best ignoring and at worst trampling the hopes and dreams of most of the rest of us. I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting those few who weild that disproportionate power are tramplingh with glee nor intent; I think it's mostly an inadvertent side-effect of the emergent trends that our haphazard systems have spawned via decades of unconscious gestation.

Unfortunately consequences outweigh both intent and means when they are great enough, and by any reasonable measure, the expected value calculation of the currently predicted consequences are very, very great indeed. These include ultimately the extinction of the human race and death of everyone alive today within the next few decades, a period of great upheaval and chaos in the interim, and already we see an abdication of morality in global leadership that we should expect to worsen as time goes by.

I understand that the salience of these impacts will come slowly to all as they have come slowly to me, and even more so that the motivation to act must mature beyond a certain point to overcome the impetus of passivity and acceptance. I welcome everyone to join as they are able.