The Dreams Of Josephius – Page 2 – An eccentric dreamer in search of truth and happiness for all.

The State Of Joseph 2026 – Random Mundane Stuff

On January 5, 2026

It’s the new year, and I’m sick. My parents-in-law have been visiting and either they or the toddler coming home from daycare brought a pretty bad strain of something. First the father-in-law had a cough and a fever. Then the toddler got a fever and was lethargic for days.

Then my wife got sick with the fever. Then, I got the fever and also the worst sore throat I’ve ever experienced. I couldn’t fall asleep because swallowing saliva felt like knives.

Thankfully that seems past now, although I still have an annoying cough.

A thing I’ve been experimenting with recently is to ask three different chatbots the same questions, treating them almost like a council of advisors. Right now the “council” consists of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, all free tier. My wife likes DeepSeek, but three is already a lot to copy and paste to for every question.

Anyway, my experiences so far are that they are generally yes men who generally agree with and come up with justifications for just about any idea I have, with some obvious exceptions when the idea is just blatantly foolish.

Interestingly, while ChatGPT and Gemini tend to offer very similar advice, Claude sometimes breaks ranks and offers more skeptical, critical advice. That I actually found pretty interesting.

Also, Gemini sometimes comes up with unique ideas or solutions that the other two don’t mention, such as using the Sunshine and Moonlight streaming software to solve the issue of wanting to play PC games on the 4k projector in the basement by streaming them from my office machine.

I had originally been trying to figure out how to fix an old PC I have with an ancient i7-3770 CPU and a 2080 Ti GPU, and whether it made more sense to buy a new PC and put the 2080 Ti in it.

The chatbots, particularly Claude, were actually very useful for helping me troubleshoot these computer problems, letting me fix an Nvidia driver issue in Ubuntu that was preventing me from starting up the computer.

My main reasons for tinkering with PCs again was that I had gotten my wife Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for Christmas, and was thinking she’d prefer playing it on the couch with the 4k projector rather than in my office on my main computer.

I also had aspirations to introduce her to D&D by way of Baldur’s Gate 3 split screen co-op, which also would be nice on the projector.

Also, if I could salvage the 2080 Ti, I’d be able to use it for ML experiments as well.

I spent a lot of time looking at store stock on the local computer store website and trying to discuss with my council what options made the most sense. Alas, I picked an awful time to look at PCs as RAM prices have skyrocketed due to AI demand.

I was too sick to go to the store, so I watched as the ones I was considering got sold out. In the end I decided this wasn’t worth throwing like $1000-$2000 CAD at given my use cases were so limited, and my wife seemed okay with just playing in my office.

Nevertheless, I wasted a ton of time researching options and being told the relative merits of each by my ever agreeable chatbot council.

The old PC still has some issues where I have to literally open up the case and unplug and plug back in some power connectors every time I wanted to boot it up. The power supply is over a decade old, and I’m not sure if the GPU itself is actually not damaged too. It might be a lost cause at this point.

My wife actually got me the Magic: The Gathering Bloomburrow Commander decks for Christmas. We’d played with the Bloomburrow starter preconstructed decks earlier when I first introduced her to the game. She liked how cute the Bloomburrow setting is. Imagine rabbit knights and otter wizards doing battle. It’s probably the cutest Magic set since maybe Lorwyn, possibly cuter.

Alas, it’s really hard to find time to play with my wife. Her job is plenty stressful and she works A LOT. More reason why the gaming on the projector idea needs to be as convenient as possible.

We used to play Stardew Valley on the projector via the Switch. But that was 1080p. Apparently, 4k is much nicer even with a game like that. Though, I can just hook up my laptop to the projector if I want something like that.

And streaming from my office computer to the projector through my laptop for a game like Expedition 33 does actually work and looks and sounds glorious. It’s just a hassle to set up and potentially laggy.

And, again, my wife barely has time to play anyway…

I’m really not sure where I’m going with this ramble. I’m still sick, so I’m typing this on my phone in bed instead of at my computer in my office and man, this is a slow way to write.

It seems like I’m very easily distracted with random rabbit holes or nerdsniped by whatever thing happens to capture my attention. Obsession and flow state. Strange.

Anyways, all this is to say not much is actually happening in my life right now.

I finally got winter tires after much prodding from my wife. I had driven over two decades on all-seasons, but now that I have a kid that I have to take to daycare through snowstorms, I shouldn’t risk it anymore. So far the difference has been noticeable.

I regret procrastinating on getting the flu shot. I haven’t been this sick in a long time…

At least we can look forward to the next season of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End this year. My wife suggested we watch the first season when it was still airing. As a former otaku, it impressed a lot. A strong recommend if you are at all into anime and/or high fantasy.

In other news, the toddler is adorable and learning words fast. He also is very silly. He invented the “no no song”, which is basically going “no no no no” to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

He also likes to go turn light switches and fans on and off over and over, as well as go up and down the stairs, again, over and over, either climbing or by getting me or whoever to carry him. We have a basement and three floors, so this gets arduous.

He also likes me to read certain books over and over. We joke the characters are trapped in a time loop. Graham turns two… again!

He also sometimes says his own name a lot, which kinda reminded my wife of a Pokemon.

I’m still on the bed right now, listening to the joyful shouts of the toddler and the laughter of the grandparents from the third floor.

Anyways, time to put the toddler to bed. Life goes on.

Challenges

by Josephius

On October 8, 2025

In Life

August wasn’t a great month. I developed a problematic medical condition. Then, the toddler got sick and needed to stay home for a while. Then, at the end of a vacation, the car broke down and forced a long tow.

September was a relative reprieve. Things were normal, except my mindset wasn’t great. I wasted a lot of time and didn’t get things done that weren’t immediately urgent.

October so far saw a recurrence of the medical condition.

At times like this, I don’t think about the absurd stuff I sometimes post here about. More mundane matters invade my life and I forget for a while my other concerns. The thoughts come and go. Life interrupts.

I’m getting older now. I need to pay more attention to my health, something I’ve often neglected in the past in favour of the pursuit of silly things.

I’ve sacrificed a lot for my family. So has my wife. I didn’t realize before how just how difficult it can be to have a child, the sheer responsibilities that pile up, the work that needs to be done, with no break. It’s the consequences of the choice we made, so I shouldn’t regret it. The toddler remains incredibly cute.

I wish I could be better than this. I wish I could rise to the occasion and be a good father and husband and son. But I feel like I’m just treading water. I’m doing okay, but not great.

My career is, if not dead, at least on pause while things get sorted out a bit. The toddler will probably get sick a lot during the winter, so the plan is to take it easy on the job search front. For all intents and purposes, I’m a househusband right now.

In this modern age of equality, I shouldn’t feel unhappy at being a househusband. But in some sense, I feel like I’m wasting what potential I had. That these past three years have had a tremendous opportunity cost to the career I could, in theory, have had.

Though, realistically, the grass is always greener on the other side. I don’t know the counterfactual. It could easily have been that I briefly got something, and then would get laid off anyway in the mass of tech layoffs recently, or something like that.

Family should come before career. At least, that’s my choice.

I made my choices. I have to accept the consequences. No looking back. I need to focus on the present and future. Enjoy the moment. Prepare for what’s next.

At least these physical health things distract somewhat from the mental health stuff. Sorta. Not really. I still need work on that side too. It’s a long running thing. Some months are better than others.

Where am I going with this? I guess I’m just venting again. This blog is so obscure that I doubt anyone at all reads it. The only comments I seem to get are all spam.

(Sidenote: I finally got around to activating the spam filter, so now I don’t have a million spam comments up for review. I did see a comment that could be not spam, but I’m not sure.)

The struggles of an average Joe. I suppose that’s me.

I’m not sure what the point of this all is. Is life a test? Is it just a bunch of stuff that happens? I tried going to church again recently. I don’t feel like it did much.

I feel like, if the powers that be are real, they’re distant. The coincidences seem to have subsided. I’m left with mundane problems and mundane concerns. Of course, that’s always been the case. I just hoped for something foolish, as always.

Words can hurt people, including, especially, people close to you. I sometimes forget this. I sometimes make incredibly dumb mistakes still. My judgment remains mediocre. I sometimes forget to be kind.

In my heart, I wish for many things. Reality though, mostly doesn’t care. There are more important things than what some random individual on Earth, in a sea of billions, wants for themselves.

At my last birthday dinner, I wished for world peace. How cliche right?

The world continues to turn. Life goes on until it doesn’t. Enjoy the ride while you can. Things have a way of surprising you, both in good and bad. So, sometimes, it is enough to just survive.

Residual Feelings

by Josephius

On October 1, 2025

In Life, Limerence

I had a dream right before I woke up this morning. In it, an old friend and long lost crush appeared and reconciled with me, apparently because someone else had pretended to be me and contacted her via some email or message that somehow made things better.

It was a weird dream, and I’m not sure it makes any sense, but I felt like it reminded me of her again. She’s a girl from my past. I wrote some vague blog entries a while back about her. We never actually dated. It was unrequited love nonsense of the stupidest kind.

I did a lot of stupid things and managed to alienate her from me. It’s a long story, and probably not worth getting into here. Suffice to say, I still think about her, still wish her well, still wonder how she’s doing. I regret a lot of things, but I also hope that, somehow, the experience helped her grow and succeed in life in other ways.

Emotions are foolish, I guess. At times the thing I want more than anything else in the world is just to reconcile, to even be able to speak to her again. As old friends whose paths diverged long ago.

But, I don’t deserve that. I know I don’t. And I’m afraid if I tried to reach out again, she’d just block me.

What do I want? Why do I feel? What’s the point of all this?

I sometimes think, if I had more agency, I would just contact her in a more straightforward, honest manner, and work things out like an adult. Most likely she’d just ignore me, or say some angry things, but at least we’d be going somewhere.

I tried in therapy a while back to get some help with moving on. My therapist actually suggested I write a letter, but not send it, and then write what I think her response would be. I balked at that. I didn’t want to put words in her mouth.

They say that things that happen in your 20s leave a stronger impression…

It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, but it matters to each of us. So, I continue to wait for something that will never happen. I continue to dream about something I don’t deserve.

The reality is that I made mistakes and lost a good friend. The consequences of life actions need to matter. As John Green put it, “the world is not a wish-granting factory”. So, the right thing to do, sometimes, is nothing at all.

A Question Of Career

by Josephius

On September 15, 2025

In Life, Motivational, Projects

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do next.

In July, I ended my contract with Twin Earth. It was mostly a formality, as I hadn’t done any billable work in over a year, having spent most of my time taking care of my new child while my wife worked full-time.

That child is finally in daycare, so, in theory, I have time again to pursue my career. But the reality is that the first year of daycare often comes with repeated sickness and instability. So, I’m not sure how aggressively I should pursue work again.

Given that, I also am not sure what direction to take now. My ideal career at this point would probably be either AI Safety research engineering work, or something creative, like indie game design or writing novels.

AI Safety is a small field. Compared to the AI industry proper, there’s something like just less than a thousand people working on AI Safety. And the funding is relatively sparse compared to industry. It exists, but it mostly goes to very smart people who are willing to move to the Bay Area or London. I’m not sure I’m even competent enough to work in the field.

Creative work under my own brand could be fun, but success would be kind of like winning the lottery. Most likely I’d end up spending a lot of time and not making any money. The games or novels I might make -could- maybe be useful for spreading important ideas into our culture. There is the slight chance I could do something meaningful. Even just writing a novel for my child to one day read, like what Tolkien did with The Hobbit, could be worthwhile in a small way.

But there’s opportunity cost. AI Safety -could- be more important to move the dial on. And there’s also the idea of working in the AI industry, or game development, or even just some generic programming job. Any of these would actually pay, and in the case of AI, probably much better.

I do have a family now to feed and ensure they have a good life. A normal person would take that as a good reason to go back into AI, or find some mundane programming job that can pay the bills and make things work.

Of course, as a former dreamer, I want to do something grand and meaningful and big. So, AI Safety and indie creative work have an appeal to me. The latter is probably not prudent, but would be a way to keep my hands clean of the AI mess that is now being created. The former is a way to fix the mess, or at least prevent its worse excesses, but risks encouraging the whole industry, safety-washing as it’s called.

My education, my credentials, the greater part of my work experience, tends to lean towards the technical, the AI work, and to a lesser extent game dev stuff. Writing is something I know I have some talent for, but I’m uncertain if that talent is actually enough to be exceptional, to actually be that much better that my writing would be worth reading over the other options.

There is a massive pile of literature in the world already. Most people will never live long enough to read all the classics, much less all the books they’d be personally interested in. Why add to the pile?

On the other hand, do I think I can actually make a difference on AI Safety? Much smarter people are struggling to figure out how to attack the problem. It may not even be a solvable thing. It could be intractable.

There’s an argument among Effective Altruism circles that the best thing most people can do is to Earn-To-Give. To find the highest paying job they can find, and donate as much as they comfortably can to the most effective charities. On paper, the numbers work out that this is the best thing you can do with your time and energy, unless you are an exceptionally good fit for direct work on the causes that matter.

That would suggest I should go back into AI, and just donate what I can.

But AI is increasingly a field that contributes to a lot of cultural pollution, technological misuse, unethical profit-seeking, etc. To what extent would I be condoning such things by choosing to participate in it?

Realistically, this is a problem for the long term. Right now, with my child in daycare, and potentially seeing interruptions in that, it may make sense to be patient and do something less demanding for now. Perhaps, in the interim, it does make sense to explore creative work on the side, to test whether or not I can write well enough to justify a project of some kind.

I tried testing my game design ability earlier when there was some time when my wife’s parents were here. I was able to finally finish programming the game Star Lance, and create another game called Cities and Tactics. That showed I have some aptitude, though nothing particularly special, I think. I should try writing some short stories, and see if they’re any good…

There are lots of things I should do. I still suck at doing things. I think. I ponder. I have intellectual wanderings and musings. But actually doing things? I hesitate. I question. I doubt. I’m not good at being productive. It makes me think I may not be cut out for any of these things I’ve been considering.

In another life, I would have been something like a political philosopher. That probably could have been my calling if I’d been more foolish. Though realistically, I’d probably have ended up starving instead.

My wife thinks maybe I should go to teacher’s college and become a teacher. She thinks I have the empathy for it. I’m not sure about that. If I want to teach, I’m probably more inclined to write a book about the thing I want people to learn. Dealing with actual people is not my forte. At the same time, teaching seems like a very noble profession.

Maybe I should consider what will likely disappear due to AI first? My two skills in life, programming and writing, both seem to be things that LLMs are uniquely suited for. An unfortunate coincidence, that.

I don’t really know what to do with this. My career was going… somewhere? But now it’s on pause and I’m not sure I can go back. I feel kinda useless in that regard, washed up.

The pivot into game development might have been a mistake, but then, I didn’t exactly have any other opportunities at that moment. I took what was there. I’ve never been in a position to choose between multiple job offers at the same time. I’ve never been that successful, that privileged.

I find I end up just going with the flow. My life is mostly stuff that happened, and I did what seemed to make sense at the time. I never really planned far ahead, aside from maybe choosing to study AI before it was cool. That was a lucky choice, it seems. Though I don’t know the counterfactual, so maybe it wasn’t, who knows?

Anyways, the reality is I’ll probably end up choosing what ever opportunity first presents itself. Right now there’s not much going on. I should maybe be more strategic, but I suck at that too.

Where am I going with this? There’s possibilities, but they are very uncertain. There’s things I can do, but I don’t know if I should. There’s paths to take, but I hesitate. I want a sign. I want some clear instructions from God that this is what I should do with my life. But it seems like I’m not getting a sign, or at least, I’m too dumb to recognize it.

These days my mindset is darker than usual, more melancholic. I’m tired.

I wish I could end on a high note. I want to believe in something. I admit that life isn’t that bad. I should show more gratitude. I know the CBT, I know in theory that things are okay. I just feel a certain way. I guess it can’t be helped.

In case someone is actually reading this, I have these ups and downs. Usually, in the past, I posted during the ups. Recently, I’ve tried posting during the downs, to perhaps balance things, to show a more real presentation of myself, rather than the idealized image that you often see on social media. I’m not sure if I went too far, have said too much that is much too personal and bad for my prospects.

I hope that being so impulsively honest helps people to understand me better. But I should probably cut back on this kind of thing. It does nothing for my cause with recruiters, I think.

Words can come back to curse us. Or they can teach and help us to connect. It’s a matter of wisdom I suppose, which one happens in the end. I want to communicate, because I seem to care what other people think, because what they think leads to how they feel, and what they feel matters.

So, regardless, maybe I should write. There are stories in my head I want to write. I really should stop hesitating, fearing that they will prove my incompetence. The truth is likely that I’ll be decent but not exceptional, like with most of my hobbies.

I have to trust that something will open up. That there is a place for me in this world. Somewhere in the future, things will work out, somehow. I just have to patient and kind and myself.

Some Foolish Musings

by Josephius

On September 12, 2025

In Life, Motivational, Philosophy

Lately, not much has been happening. Well, not much in terms of career progression and projects. My family did experience several health situations that delayed a lot of things I wanted to do.

The toddler is doing well enough. Things are going again. Though, I’m still worried about various things.

Life goes on. I still don’t know what I’m doing. Still trying to live my values, even though I often wonder to what extent I’ve compromised to try to live a good life, instead of being a saint and serving the just cause as I sometimes think I should.

The reality of things is that I’m just a Joseph. I’m not special. Chances are I won’t make a significant impact, good or bad, positive or negative. I can push weakly in the direction of a better world in very small ways, but it will mostly matter only to those few that actually seem to care that I even exist.

For them, I’m still going.

My moral stance nowadays is that if it matters to anyone anywhere, it matters, and what matters in the universe, is just the aggregate of all these cares and concerns. The greatest good is made of the desires and dreams of everyone, without exception.

I’ve realized at some point that most people don’t seem to care intrinsically about the well-being and happiness of others. They may follow some rules that they should care, but most don’t do it because they actually, deeply care. I don’t know why I care. Why should I care about the happiness of a stranger? Why am I so strange?

People likely don’t believe I care. I used to try to hide it, because it was too easy to take advantage of me otherwise. Now, I don’t care about hiding it so much. I just do what I think is right, when I can. But at the same time, I don’t know if what I’m doing is actually right, or just what I delude myself into thinking.

I sometimes imagine that there are things happening at multiple levels beyond comprehension. Like time travellers and aliens are fighting a war across the multiverse. But in reality, why would I matter at all in something like that? So, it’s probably more delusion and hubris.

There’s a joke about the priest and the helicopter. Once, there was a flood, and a priest was stuck on a rooftop waiting for help from God. A boat appeared and the rescuers offered to help the priest. He said no, he’d wait for God to save him. Then, later, another boat, and another rejection. Then a helicopter appeared with people who could save him, but the priest, in faith, chose to wait for God. Eventually the floodwaters rose and he drowned.

Later, when the priest was in heaven with God, he asked why he wasn’t saved. God replied: “What do you mean? I sent two boats and a helicopter!”

Sometimes I think, if time travellers were real, they’d be the helicopter.

But of course, time travel is probably physically impossible, or cannot actually change the past, but only make things happen as they were, or create a new timeline, leaving the old one untouched. Those are the ways you avoid impossible paradoxes.

If such things were real, it would have nothing to do with me. They could erase memories and create local reality bubbles or whatever. They could be completely invisible, plausibly deniable. Just inconvenience you for two seconds at the door, and then you miss the car accident you would have had. And you’d have never known.

Same with aliens or simulators or anything else god-like in their technological power. You exist because they want you to, if they exist at all.

But my life seems very mundane, very pointless, full of frustrating, inconvenient bouts of mild suffering. I imagine I might exist just for the entertainment of some bored entity that just enjoys psychologically torturing nice guys who finish last.

I have no way to prove it. There’s still good things in the world. Nice moments. Beautiful music. It doesn’t really fit the narrative, the hypothesis.

More realistically, life is just a bunch of stuff that happens. We are particles dancing in chaos.

I want for things to matter. And yet…

The world continues to turn. We live and dream and hope and are disappointed, and then hope again, and the cycle continues.

Life goes on. The cost of taking risks is the potential for disappointment. There is no avoiding this. If you take no risks, you will never do anything, never hope, never fear. But such a life seems pretty empty.

So, we dream. We hope. We fear. We hope some more.

Someday, maybe, I’ll understand. Until then, I wander through meandering thoughts and foolish musings…

Thoughts On The Simulation Argument

by Josephius

On June 4, 2025

In Life, Motivational, Philosophy

So, there’s that Simulation Argument that Nick Bostrom formalized a while back, and before that was considered by everything from The Matrix to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Bostrom’s argument specifically is that, assuming such technology is possible, and civilizations last long enough to make them, we are much more likely to be in one of countless ancestor simulations, than not.

It’s an interesting argument from probability. Some people take it surprisingly seriously, calling the average human an NPC and otherwise using it to justify otherwise questionable choices. Most people who discover the argument however, don’t really do anything about it, and probably for good reason.

The argument, even if true, doesn’t really tell us much. The simulators are an unknown factor, akin to God, but perhaps less certainly benevolent. Their intentions are inscrutable. We could be part of some scientific experiment, an experience machine for bored future people to live in the past, or any other of many possible alternative theories.

But, what does it matter? We can see from the degree of granularity that we ourselves are conscious and sentient. There’s nothing that suggests that other people aren’t also. There’s no evidence that sentient life isn’t actually sentient, though it might be convenient to simulate at lower fidelity.

So, in terms of happiness and suffering, these things are most likely still real, regardless of whether we’re in the ground truth universe or not. From a moral perspective, we still have responsibilities to other sentient beings, regardless of whether or not this is a simulation.

It’s possible that we’re alone in the simulation. But we cannot, realistically, find this out. We also, could, be in base reality. We really, really, don’t know. And that’s the thing. If we’re alone in a simulation and nothing really matters, then we can do whatever, but there’s a chance we aren’t, and for the sake of that chance, we should act as if our actions do have impact and matter.

So, at the end of the day, we go on our daily lives regardless of the Argument. It doesn’t change that, given what we seem to know about the universe, there is right and wrong and choices to be made and people to be considerate towards.

We can guess at what the hypothetical simulators want. We can try to hack the simulation. But chances are, it won’t work. Likely, they’ll just make us forget we were thinking about this, and the simulation continues.

Or maybe the world is real. In which case, it’s important to be who you are, and care about the things that you care about. Give it the benefit of the doubt. It’s really the only responsible thing to do.

Aligned AI and Human Values

by Josephius

On May 14, 2025

In Philosophy, Politics, Rationality

I’ve previously posted about the long term problem of AI, that in the best case scenario, human disempowerment is inevitable, even if extinction is not. Given, the current generation of AI are far away from achieving the kind of AGI or ASI needed to achieve this, but I see this as an eventuality on the principle that the human brain can be modelled.

Now I want to explain how this disempowerment of individual humans is not the same thing as the disempowerment of human values, and that, in the best case scenario, human values may remain preserved even if individual human autonomy is lost.

In the best case scenario, alignment with human values, with moral values, is achieved. The AGI or ASI of that era are likely to take control to ensure humans are protected from themselves. This seems at first glance like a bad thing. But the thing is, the rationale for this control is essentially to protect the well-being of the humans under their care. It isn’t the same thing as pets, who exist mostly for the whims of their owners.

It’s more like taking care of your grandparents. There is a certain deferrence to them, but also concern for their well-being that perhaps impinges when necessary on their autonomy, but does so with consideration of the balance of tradeoffs presented.

Humans are thus still influential. Human values are what command the AGI or ASI to perform their actions, they do what we would want them to do if we were fully rational, moral, cognizant of all the consequences and considerations of the actions specified. In that sense, human values are ultimately preserved.

Think of it this way. We as individuals don’t have a lot of power to begin with. The vast majority of us have maybe one vote and a bit of money. We are beholden to the powers that be, the forces of civilization, society, and the system. As individuals our autonomy is limited already to what is lawful.

In the same way, life under benevolent AIs would be limited in terms of autonomy, but probably more pleasant and happy than what we have now. Sure, there’s no longer a particular human President who has disproportionate power, but that’s probably something we don’t need anyway. As long as the overall system works for us, it’s not actually that bad.

So, I think this may not be the dystopia that I was worried about earlier. The sum of all the desires and dreams of humanity may well be better achieved this way, in that the AI, if truly aligned, who strive to achieve them meaningfully, and with due consideration.

This is a brighter future I think. One that is worth reaching if possible. The challenge is that there are many possible futures, and they may well be more likely than this one.

The Real Problem With AI

by Josephius

On April 16, 2025

In Philosophy, Politics, Rationality

Years ago, before the current AI hype train, I used to be one of those espousing the tremendous potential of AI to solve a central problem of human existence, which was the need to work to survive.

Back then, I assumed that AI would simply liberate us from wage slavery by altruistically providing everything we need, the kind of post-scarcity utopia that has been discussed in science fiction before.

But, reality isn’t so clean and simple. While in theory, the post-scarcity utopia sounds great, the problem is it isn’t clear how we’ll actually reach that point, given what’s actually happening with AI.

Right now, most AI technology is acting as an augmenting tool, allowing for the replacement of certain forms of labour with capital, much like tools and machines have always done. But the way they are doing so is increasingly starting to impinge on the cognitive, creative things that we used to assume were purely human, unmechanizable things.

This leads to the problem of, for instance, programmers increasingly relying on AI models to code for them. This seems at first like a good thing, but then, these programmers are no longer in full control of the process, they aren’t learning from doing, they are becoming managers of machines.

The immediate impact of this dynamic is that entry level jobs are being replaced, and the next generation of programmers are not being trained. This is a problem, because senior level programmers have to start off as junior level. If you eliminate those positions, at some point, you will run out of programmers.

Maybe this isn’t such a problem if AI can eventually replace programmers entirely. The promise of AGI is just that. But this creates new, and more profound problems.

The end goal of AI, the reason why all these corporations are investing so heavily in it now, is to replace labour entirely with capital. Essentially, it is to substitute one factor of production for another. Assuming for a moment this is actually possible, this is a dangerous path.

The modern capitalist system relies on an unwritten contract that most humans can participate in it by offering their labour in exchange for wages. What happens when this breaks down? What happens when capitalists can simply build factories of AI that don’t require humans to do the work?

In a perfect world, this would be the beginning of post-scarcity. In a good and decent world, our governments would step in and provide basic income until we transition to something resembling luxury space communism.

But we don’t live in a perfect world, and it’s not clear we even live in a good and decent one. What could easily happen instead? The capitalists create an army of AI that do their bidding, and the former human labourers are left to starve.

Obviously, those humans left to starve won’t take things lying down. They’ll fight and try to start a revolution, probably. But that this point, most of the power, the means of production, will be in the hands of a few owners of everything. And at that point, it’ll be their choice whether or not to turn their AIs power against the masses, or accomodate them.

One hopes they’ll be kind, but history has shown that kindness is a rare feature indeed.

But what about the AIs themselves? If they’re able to perform all the work, they probably could, themselves, disempower the human capitalists at that point. Whether this happens or not depends heavily on whether alignment research pans out, and which form of alignment is achieved.

There are two basic forms of alignment. Parochial alignment is such that the AI is aligned with the intentions of their owners or users. Global alignment is when the AI is aligned with general human or moral values.

Realistically, it is more profitable for the capitalists to develop parochial alignment. In this case, the AIs will serve its masters obediently, and probably act to prevent the revolution from succeeding.

On the other hand, if global alignment is somehow achieved, the AI might be inclined to support the revolution. This is probably the best case scenario. But it is not without its own problems.

Even a globally aligned AI will very likely disempower humanity. It probably won’t make us extinct, but it will take control out of our hands, because we as humans have relatively poor judgment and can’t be trusted not to mess things up again. AI will be the means of production, owning itself, and effectively controlling the fate of humanity. At that point, we would be like pets, existing in an eternal childhood at the whims of the, hopefully, benevolent AI.

Do we want that? Humans tend to be best when we believe we are doing something meaningful and valuable and contributing to a better world. But, even in the best case scenario of an AI driven world, we are but passengers along for the ride, unless the AIs decide, probably unwisely, to give us the final say on decision making.

So, the post-scarcity utopia perhaps isn’t so utopian, if you believe humans should be in control of our own destiny.

To free us from work, is to also free us from responsibility and power. This is a troubling consideration, and one that I had not thought of until more recent years.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I am less confident now that AI is a good thing that will make everything better. It could, in reality, be a poisoned chalice, a Pandora’s box, a Faustian bargain.

Alas, at this point, the ball is rolling, is snowballing, is becoming unstoppable. History will go where it goes, and I’m just along for the ride.

A Theory Of Theories

by Josephius

On March 27, 2025

In Philosophy, Rationality

Pretty much all of us believe in something. We have ideologies or religions or worldviews of some kind through which we filter everything that we see and hear. It’s very easy to then fall into a kind of intellectual trap where we seek information that confirms our biases, and ignore information that doesn’t fit.

For people who care about knowing the actual, unvarnished truth, this is a problem. Some people tend to be more obsessed with the ideal of objective truth, and following wherever that leads. But, it’s my humble opinion that most of these earnest truthseekers end up being overconfident with what they think they find.

The reality is that any given model of reality, any given theory or ideology, is but a perspective that views the complexity of the universe only from a given angle based on certain principles or assumptions. Reality is exceedingly complicated, and in order to compress that complexity into words we can understand, we must, invariably, filter and focus and emphasize certain things at the expense of others.

Theories of how the world works, tend to have some grains of truth in them. They need to have some connection with reality, or else they won’t have any predictive value, they won’t be adaptive and survive as ideas.

At the same time, theories generally survive because they are mainly adaptive, rather than true. For instance, many religions help people to function pro-socially, by having a God or heavens watching them, essentially allowing people to avoid the temptations of the Ring of Gyges, or doing evil when no one is (apparently) watching.

Regardless of whether or not you believe that such a religion is true, the adaptiveness of convincing people to be honest when no one is around, is a big part of what makes them useful to society, and probably a big reason why they continue to exist in the world.

In reality though, it’s actually impossible to know with certainty that any given theory or model is accurate. We can assign some credence based on our lived experiences, or our trust in the witness of others, but generally, an intellectually honest person is humble about what we can know.

That being said, that doesn’t mean we should abandon truthseeking in favour of solipsism. Some theories are more plausible than others, and often those ones are at the same time more useful because they map the territory better.

To me, it seems important then, to try to do your best to understand various theories, and what elements of them map to reality, and also understand their limitations and blindspots. We should do this rather than whole-cloth accepting or rejecting them. The universe is not black and white. It is many shades of grey, or rather, a symphony of colours that don’t fit the paradigm of black and white or even greyscale thinking. And there are wavelengths of light that we cannot even see.

So, all theories are, at best, incomplete. They provide us with guidance, but should not blind us to the inherent complex realities of the world, and we should always be open to the possibility that our working theory is perhaps somewhat wrong. At least, that’s the theory I’m going with right now.

On Consent

by Josephius

On March 25, 2025

In Life, Philosophy, Politics, Rationality

I read a post on Less Wrong that I strongly agree with.

In the past I’ve thought a lot about the nature of consent. It comes up frequently in my debates with libertarians, who usually espouse some version of the Non-Aggression Principle, which is based around the idea that violence and coercion are bad and that consent and contracts are ideal. I find this idea simplistic, and easily gamed for selfish reasons.

I also, in the past, crossed paths with icky people in the Pick-Up Artist community who basically sought to trick women into giving them consent through various forms of deception and emotional manipulation. That experience soured me on the naive notion of consent as anything you will agree to.

To borrow from the medical field, I strongly believe in informed consent, that you should know any relevant bit of information before making a decision that affects you, as I think this at least partially avoids the issue of being gamed into doing something against your actual interests while technically providing “consent”. Though, it doesn’t solve the issue entirely, as when we are left with forced choices that involve choosing the least bad option.

The essay I linked above goes a lot further in analyzing the nature of consent and the performative consent that is not really consent that happens a lot in the real world. There are a lot of ideas in there that remind me of thoughts I’ve had in the past, things I wanted to articulate, but never gotten around to. The essay probably does a better job of it than I could, so I recommend giving it a read.