Mutual Understanding

Divia and Ben discuss politics, reminisce about elections gone by, and try and make AI predictions.This transcript is machine generated and contains errors.Ben Goldhaber: [00:00:00] so how's it going Divia?Divia Eden: It's going well. Great to have a chance to talk to you on the podcast.Ben Goldhaber: Yeah, same back at you and Hi. Who, who else is joining us for the next minutes?Divia Eden: Yeah, this is my 15 month old son. He'll be here just for a few minutes and and then, then it'll be just the two of us.He's our, our podcast guest. Yeah. Likely.Ben Goldhaber: Yeah. One of our easiest to understand guests. I would bet. You know, just very clear and direct. Absolutely. In a straightforward way. This is no slur against our previous guests but we, I feel like we invite people on in some ways for loving the Galaxy Brain takes.And the beautiful thing about a 15 month year old is just you know, that's right. Simple, clear wants, I imagine I'm speaking as if I have any actual parenting expertise, but,Divia Eden: It's all good one day. Yes. So we don't, we don't have a guest for today. But we have a plan that sometimes just two of us [00:01:00] are going to talk and catch up about things that are on our mind.Ben Goldhaber: Yeah. Seems good.Divia Eden: And before we started recording, we were just exchanging a few predictions about some political stuff, you know, as you do. So I thought, I thought maybe we would, we would talk aboutBen Goldhaber: that. Yeah. As maybe some listeners know and, and Dvia knows. I, I was about to say I don't have many vices, but I don't think that's for me to say.But one vice that I do have is I very much enjoy betting on politics. And I will say it has been exciting to see that predict it is looks like it's gonna survive, which, yeah, I was actually much more negative about a few months ago. I did not think it was gonna happen.Divia Eden: Yeah, there wasn't, unfortunately, I think there was no prediction market for predicted unpredicted, so weBen Goldhaber: were left not unpredicted.There was one unlike poly market, which I don't think I ever, I I, I have, the crypto ones have always been just a little, I don't know. I've, I've done some stuff with them, but I've always been like [00:02:00] feel like they're about to fail or about to run away. But yes, poly market had one, but yeah, was not, when I predicted that would've been way cooler.Divia Eden: Yeah. I'm also a longtime political better. I, one of my at the, this is actually, I don't know if you'll ever listen to this. Hello to my dad. If, if we had and wonderful short conversation with my dad back when, so I bet on Obama on, I guess it was Intrade at the time when he was running the first time.And I remember I, cuz my dad was, he was a big, like, he, his read was, Obama's gonna win. He was like, this guy's very charismatic, he's gonna win. And so I was talking to him and I was like, all right, well you think he's gonna win? He's trading it like at whatever it was like 57% right before the first debate or something like that.I was like, well how much do you think I should bet? And he was like, yeah, you should bet like 50 bucks or something. And I was kinda like, well, okay, but if you're so sure. And we talked about it for a while and then he, we hung up. Yeah. And then he called me back maybe an hour later and he was like, wait, how much do you have liquid?And I was like, yeah, this is the right question. Cause in fact, yeah. Yeah, [00:03:00] it was a big, and I mean I was, I think I was just out of college. I did not, I had very little money at the time, but I think I did put little liquid on Obama and Nice. It paid off. So that was then, you know, and then I was kind of hookedBen Goldhaber: after that.Yeah, it's, it's compelling. It's, we don't need to get into all the very good reasons. Prediction markets are, are awesome and, and should be more widely used. But yeah, it's just, it's, it's also just fun because I feel like when you're kind of chatting like with your dad, like I, I talk about politics with my, with my dad as well and with friends.It's really, it's easy to get into the kind of like blather mode and. It's both nice to have as a forcing function, thinking about what your actual bet is gonna turn into or like what this actually means in terms of betting. And also just adds like a nice little, like I, I guess this is for people who are more into sports than I am.It's the same reason why gambling on sports is probably fun. Just add when, then when you keep following it, you get to like have that additional zing of [00:04:00] excitement of like, oh I've got, got money on this debate.Divia Eden: Yeah, totally. And yeah, and I also, like, I've been on Trump the first time, but I didn't have a, the thing I was just saying before we started recording was that I, I think like many very online people, underrated Biden last time.I think I didn't make any big bets. I don't remember. I think I made some small, small ones.

As I’ve said often in the past, utilitarianism is a hell of a drug. And it can get you to do incredibly horrible things while you’re high on it. Utilitarianism not even once, just say no to utilitarian.All of these discussions are old discussions. Instead of being had among 200 people, they are being had in public among vast numbers.Perry Metzger writes on Substack at Diminished Capacity and on Twitter.* [00:02:00] Jupiter Brains and Extropians* [00:07:00] Life Extension* [00:11:00] Ethical Systems* [00:19:00] Rejection of Utilitarianism* [00:26:00] Anarcho-Capitalism* [00:30:00] SVB Collapse* [00:40:00] Finanical System Structuring* [00:54:00] AI* [01:00:00] The history of futurist discussion of AI* [01:03:00] AI Safety* [01:07:00] Fishing in the sea of AI Minds* [01:17:00] Mask on the Shoggoth* [01:22:00] Future Shock* [01:25:00] Competition in FDA Regulation* [01:38:00] Kardashev Scale Civilizations* [01:42:00] Estimates of X-Risk* [01:52:00] Cultural Effects of AI Developments* [01:56:00] Nanotechnology* [02:15:00] Sociology of the Nanotechnology field* [02:27:00] Engineering vs Theorizing* [02:43:00] Back to the future; accuracy of early extropian discussion* [02:52:00] Grabby Aliens* [02:56:00] AstrophysicsThis transcript was machine generated and contains errors.Perry Metzger: [00:00:00] to try to make our lives better, which is, I'm gonna quit my Firefox instance with 8,500 tabs in it.Ben Goldhaber: Can't hurt. And I do think that the recording is working now. Cool. Divia Eden: Yeah. Okay. So, and do you wanna introduce Perry or should I?Ben Goldhaber: No, Divia. I think why don't you do the introduction. Perry Metzger: Okay. Divia Eden: Perry Metzger is a computer scientist who's done academic research, who's also had a bunch of different programming jobs, including startups and consulting. He knows more than anyone else I talked to about nanotech.I originally met Perry through my husband, who met him through an ancap meetup (Anarcho-Capitalism). And from my perspective, he's one of those guys who's been around the futurist scene forever. He was an early member of the Cypherpunks mailing list, started the original cryptography list, and started the Extropians mailing list.He says that he claims no ownership or originality of any transhumanist ideas, except that he did coin the term Jupiter Brain. So, Perry thanks so much for coming on our podcast. Perry Metzger: Hello. Actually no one hires me to write software [00:01:00] anymore. People, people hire me to be a horrifying management consultant.Or what have you. Secretly I still write software here and there, and it horrifies people really, really badly. I have scarred a number of people working for me by having to deal with my software. They, you know, we, but we don't talk about that mostly, you know, and I've, I've gotten rid of most of the bodies over the years successfully.So provided, no one finds them. We should be okay. Yes. Yeah I’ve done all sorts of stuff. I have no idea actually what I'm going to be when I grow up, but I've been told that if you don't actually figure that out by the time you're 60 or 70, you don't have to grow up.So I might actually just have to opt for that. Divia Eden: Sounds good to me. Well, we have a lot of questions, but I was wondering if you could first start by telling our listeners what a Jupiter Brain is, in case they don't already know. Perry Metzger: Oh, okay. So, I should set a little context, which is for those that, [00:02:00] have no idea what Divia was mentioning when she said, I started the Extropians mailing list about 723,000 years ago.In, you know, slightly before Homo Sapien showed up I was hanging out with a friend of mine. And I'll cut the story really short by saying that we discovered this zine, this was back in the era when people would decide, you know, they'd get access to a photocopier and they'll start publishing a magazine.There was this Zine called Extropy: Vaccine for Future Shock put out by a gentleman who was then Max O'Connor, but is now Max Moore. And, you know, Harry and I were reading this thing and it looked like, oh, you know, these guys came down on the same spaceship as us. And I got in touch with Max and I said, Hey, I'd like to set up a mailing list to talk about these ideas.And the ideas like the Magazine was roughly centered on anarcho-capitalism, radical life extension, transhumanism, uploading artificial intelligence you know neurotropic drugs, the usual stuff that young people were interested in, back then. So, I got in touch with Max and I said, Hey, max, I want to set up a mailing list for subscribers of this thing.And he said, well, what's that? And I said, well, you know why I set up this thing and a bunch of people then can have an online conversation. And he said, okay. And I sent out invites on something that was called Libernet back then, which was for Crazy Libertarians and the Cryonics mailing list for crazy people who want to freeze their heads to save their