The difference between today's utopia and dystopian novels like We and 1984 is the automation of surveillance by AI. In the novels, humans controlled the population using fear and torture. But any animal trainer knows that positive reinforcement is more effective. And even fear can be used as a reward, as we pay to watch horror movies and we become addicted to streaming politics that make us afraid of what will happen if we don't donate to keep the other party from doing horrible things to you.
In the novels, the protagonists rebel against a totalitarian government and are defeated by other humans. The authors saw the horrors of Communism but could not imagine a future world where machines make a copy of your brain to predict your actions more accurately than you could ever do. Now we are rewarded without knowing we are being controlled, like the dog you train with treats that thinks it is controlling you. -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] On Fri, Mar 6, 2026, 1:12 PM James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Fri, Mar 6, 2026 at 10:16 AM James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: > >> ... "If you're so smart then why don't YOU have power over me?" >> > > BTW: In "reality" this is the orientation that gives rise to the fear of > Hume's Guillotine aka the Solomonoff Induction approximation side of AIXI > when applied to macrosocial dynamics: > > The "if you're so smart why don't YOU have power over me" argument is > really just CHLCA primate gang evolutionary psychology fear that principled > model selection may end up overthrowing accepted authorities. And then > what will We* do???? > > * As in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_(novel) > *Artificial General Intelligence List <https://agi.topicbox.com/latest>* > / AGI / see discussions <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + > participants <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + > delivery options <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription> > Permalink > <https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tb9c1aaff01c2b823-Ma1cb31d3c0bbd310f55e18ec> > ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tb9c1aaff01c2b823-M1d599132b91b9c0c860733cb Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
