Wanting the world to be a certain way is our privilege and our unique responsibility. Understanding what you really want is nontrivial, utterly difficult, essentially human.
One thing that this makes me wonder: what is gained/lost in communicating our wants? This applies to communicating our wants to ourselves, to others, and to AIs. Right now, we act upon many of our wants without having to explicitly communicate them.
As David notes, wants are very complex, very human, and maybe the communication of them through language might serve as a compression of what these actually incorporate—a compression through which some vital information may be lost. On the other hand, maybe in formalizing/operationalizing them, we come to understand them better ourselves and can take a critical eye to our wants and how they might not actually serve our wellbeing.
Nice read :) I like the concept of "what does it mean to want something well?", or even how do we know what to want, or what our desires/passions are? It brings up the important question of our role in 'convincing' or persuading each other, as humans, what we might "want" as a society (or country, or corporation, or family, or even just a friend group). As you say, AI can support these decisions, but in the end, we decide what matters.
The article also made me question: if AI can do all work/ handle the "needed work" to maintain our built societies, will humans only pursue their true "wants"/passions and what will being good at that look like? Or do you even have to be good at that?. An interesting one as well...
I think this might bring forth a need for greater introspection, which I think would be awesome. Everyone wants, but many of us do not really examine our wants—we fail to see that many of these desires are artificially produced by manipulative marketing, social norms, mimetic desires, etc. I'm curious how a future like this might change this? Perhaps via a systematic need for greater introspection we might break free of these forces crowding our wants.
And yeah, we will need to communicate wants, which is a really interesting exercise because they typically don't exist in our minds as operationalized concepts that can be easily or effectively communicated.
Finally, I think a utopian view of the future would include something like this, where people are more free to pursue their "true" wants or passions. What these are is another question. And being good at both identifying and pursuing them, I'm sure, will be evolving skills—and whether that even matters is indeed interesting to think about
![[re:alignment]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8Hbc!,w_120,h_120,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9e9766b-b43e-4a00-881a-ec783053a81d_500x500.png)
![[re:alignment]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gP8S!,e_trim:10:white/e_trim:10:transparent/h_72,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F256bbc89-f15b-4b68-b762-34edc9d74614_1344x256.png)
One thing that this makes me wonder: what is gained/lost in communicating our wants? This applies to communicating our wants to ourselves, to others, and to AIs. Right now, we act upon many of our wants without having to explicitly communicate them.
As David notes, wants are very complex, very human, and maybe the communication of them through language might serve as a compression of what these actually incorporate—a compression through which some vital information may be lost. On the other hand, maybe in formalizing/operationalizing them, we come to understand them better ourselves and can take a critical eye to our wants and how they might not actually serve our wellbeing.
nnsight & ndif <3
https://nnsight.net
Nice read :) I like the concept of "what does it mean to want something well?", or even how do we know what to want, or what our desires/passions are? It brings up the important question of our role in 'convincing' or persuading each other, as humans, what we might "want" as a society (or country, or corporation, or family, or even just a friend group). As you say, AI can support these decisions, but in the end, we decide what matters.
The article also made me question: if AI can do all work/ handle the "needed work" to maintain our built societies, will humans only pursue their true "wants"/passions and what will being good at that look like? Or do you even have to be good at that?. An interesting one as well...
I think this might bring forth a need for greater introspection, which I think would be awesome. Everyone wants, but many of us do not really examine our wants—we fail to see that many of these desires are artificially produced by manipulative marketing, social norms, mimetic desires, etc. I'm curious how a future like this might change this? Perhaps via a systematic need for greater introspection we might break free of these forces crowding our wants.
And yeah, we will need to communicate wants, which is a really interesting exercise because they typically don't exist in our minds as operationalized concepts that can be easily or effectively communicated.
Finally, I think a utopian view of the future would include something like this, where people are more free to pursue their "true" wants or passions. What these are is another question. And being good at both identifying and pursuing them, I'm sure, will be evolving skills—and whether that even matters is indeed interesting to think about