David Gross's Shortform

A prereminiscence: It's like it was with chess. We passed through that stage when AI could beat most of us to where it obviously outperforms all of us. Only for cultural output in general. People still think now, but privately, in the shower, or in quaint artisanal forms as if we were making our own yogurts or weaving our own clothes. Human-produced works are now a genre with a dwindling and eccentric fan base more concerned with the process than the product.

It was like the tide coming in. One day it was cutely, clumsily trying to mimic that thing we do. Soon after it was doing it pretty well and you watched it with admiration as if it were a dog balancing on a ball. Then soon it could do it well enough for most purposes, you couldn't help but admit. Then as good as all but the best, even to those who could tell the difference. And then we were suddenly all wet, gathering our remaining picnic and heading for higher ground, not only completely outclassed but even unable to judge by how far we were being outclassed. Once a chess machine can beat everybody every time, who is left to applaud when it gets twice again as good?

If it had been a war, we would have had a little ceremony as we brought down our flag and folded it up and put it away, but because it happened as quickly and quietly as it did and because we weren't sure whether we wanted to admit it was happening, there was no formal hand-off. One day we just resignedly realized we could no longer matter much, but there was so much more now to appreciate and we could see echoes and reflections of ourselves in it, so we didn't put up a fight.

Every once in a while someone would write an essay, Joan Didion quality, really good. Or write a song. Poignant, beautiful, original even. Not maybe the best essay or the best song we'd seen that day, but certainly worthy of being in the top ranks. And we'd think: we've still got it. We can still rally when we've got our backs to the wall. Don't count us out yet. But it was just so hard, and there was so much else to do. And so when it happened less and less frequently, we weren't surprised.

And our curiosity left us, too. We half-remembered a time when we would have satisfied curiosity by research and experiment (words that increasingly had the flavor of “thaumaturgy,” denoting processes productive though by unclear means). But nowadays curiosity is déclassé. It suggests laziness (why not just ask it?)… or poverty (oh, you can’t afford to ask it; you want one of us to ask it)—an increasing problem as we less and less have something to offer in trade that it desires and lacks.

This is a brief follow-up to my post “Redirecting one’s own taxes as an effective altruism method [LW · GW].” Since I wrote that post:

1. Scott Alexander boosted (not to be interpreted as endorsed) my post on Astral Codex Ten, which helped to give it more than typical reach.
2. In a flinchy spasm of post-SBF timidity, GiveWell explicitly told me they did not want to get their hands dirty with my donations of redirected taxes any more.
3. My tax arrears for 2013 ($5,932 original tax + ~$5,467 in interest & penalties) were annulled by the statute of limitations.
4. I made a $5,932 donation to Charity Entrepreneurship to celebrate.

In my fantasies, if I ever were to get that god-like glimpse at how everything actually is, with all that is currently hidden unveiled, it would be something like the feeling you have when you get a joke, or see a "magic eye" illustration, or understand an illusionist's trick, or learn to juggle: what was formerly perplexing and incoherent becomes in a snap simple and integrated, and there's a relieving feeling of "ah, but of course."

But it lately occurs to me that the things I have wrong about the world are probably things I've grasped at exactly because they are more simple and more integrated than the reality they hope to approximate. I think if I really were to get this god-like glimpse, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I probably couldn't fit it in with anything I think I know. It wouldn't mesh. It wouldn't be the missing piece of my puzzle, but would overturn the table the incomplete puzzle is on. I have a feeling I couldn't even be there, intact, in the way I am now: observing, puzzling over things, trying to shuffle and combine ideas. What makes me think I can bring my face along, face-to-face with the All?

1. We inhabit this real material world, the one which we perceive all around us (and which somehow gives rise to perceptive and self-conscious beings like us).
2. Though not all of our perceptions conform to a real material world. We may be fooled by things like illusions or hallucinations or dreams that mimic perceptions of this world but are actually all in our minds.
3. Indeed if you examine your perceptions closely, you'll see that none of them actually give you representations of the material world, but merely reactions to it.
4. In fact, since the only evidence we have is of perceptions, the "material world" is more of a metaphysical hypothesis we use to explain patterns in our perceptions, not something we can vouch for as actually existing.
5. Since this hypothesis is untestable, it is best put aside when we consider what actually exists. The "material world" is not a thing, but a framework and vocabulary useful for discussing regularities in what is really real.
6. What is really "real" -- what the word "real" means -- is our moment to moment perceptions and interpretations, which appear to us in the form of a material world that we inhabit. 
7. GOTO 1

How to best break out of this loop?