In the novel ‘the three body problem’ , aliens send an ai to corrupt the scientific method so humanity will remain conquerable by the time they arrive. Today our own creation , LLMs and other AI agents, is accomplishing this. I can hardly believe what i read anymore. Two forces are tearing at us. First, the output of ‘science’ is ‘click bait -ified’ for financial survival and AI is amplifying this process. Second, layers of abstraction and commenting on these ‘facts’ further clouds the discussion and prevents actual progress.
I feel like the aliens are here and have subverted humanity already. When will the ‘rest of us’ wake up to act instead of just talk?
I share your worries about the state of science, but the broad strokes of global warming have already been worked out - the absence of action is not because of quibbling over subtle details, but because of the prisoner's dilemma nature of the problem, and because the oil lobby is politically well-connected.
It should be amazing to everyone that we've invented perpetual motion machines, and corporations are trying to suppress them for profit - exactly the same as certain conspiracy theorists predicted - and those conspiracy theorists are also trying to suppress the machines.
The only difference between current reality and the predictions of past conspiracy theorists is that the perpetual motion machines only work in direct sunlight.
The part that is truly baffling to me: one of those corporations has a large perpetual-motion-machine division. And it doesn't seem to have the faintest interest in pushing to advance that.
We've been doing this for decades. LLMs may have automated it, but the plain human version was pretty cheap and plenty effective.
So we're not going to act. Actions are hard enough when everyone is in touch with reality. All potential solutions have trade-offs and everyone wants somebody else to pay the costs.
Add in a smallish but highly influential set who are convinced that the entire thing is a hoax, and progress maxes at zero. You'll be lucky if the problem doesn't accelerate. (Which is indeed what it seems to be doing.)
OTOH, the present audience is uniquely well positioned to build the opposite of this, and, with the clever use of AI, automate massive campaigns for accurate information.
You aren’t commenting on the state of “science”, you’re complaining about clickbait journalism and failing to recognize that the two are not the same. With that said, I have to agree that the current state of the world is indistinguishable from what you’d expect to see if a hostile AI had taken over in 2011 and was working behind the scenes to systematically extinguish human civilization.
LLMs offer us a chance to combat misinformation. A double-edged sword for sure, but they do offer hope in the post-truth of age where the amount of information you need to make an informed choice is more than you could possible discover, filter, ingest and internalize without assistance. They offer us a way to learn deeply about things with a customized learning style.
I feel like the aliens are here and have subverted humanity already. When will the ‘rest of us’ wake up to act instead of just talk?