Since the rationalist/effective altruism space has come up a few times recently, I thought it might be good to share Stephen Reid’s excellent Technological Metamodernism resources.
The google doc is such a great resource, and the course recordings are great too - they show I think how metamodernist or second-renaissance ideas are relevant to central rationalist/EA concerns.
Would love to have hear people’s thoughts on this.
I wonder what would be a meaningful way of engaging with the vastness of this topic? Focusing on specific individual claims might be an easier task.
I guess the specific theme I was raising for discussion was that metamodernism is relevant to rationalist/EA concerns about AI, which is something I hope to write about in more detail. To expand a bit, the first week of the course suggests that metamodernism offers a third way between and beyond the rationalist (doomer and e/acc) tribe and the technoskeptic tribe. This is fleshed out in the second and third weeks in terms of the idea of axiological design, and expanding the mythology of Moloch by considering other quasi-agentic beings associated with solutions to the problem of multipolar traps.
Thank you for recommending this!
Lots to comment on that course (and I got to contribute in the second session).
I would definitely be more on the techno-sceptic camp based on a basic wisdom-gap argument. I think we need to slow down …
An expanded version of the thesis in the slides and short talk:
And in these two dialogs/essays:
I’m part of an authoring team for an open source textbook on introduction to information technology. As part of that effort, I laid down the first draft of the AI chapter. To set up the question of - what is AI, really? - I referenced John Vervaeke’s Awakening from the Meaning Crisis series. Specifically, the episode about Hobbes, Descartes, and Pascal. To me, that’s where metamodern theory meets tech - on the question of the nature of intelligence and to what extent what happens in vivo can truly be replicated in silico.
Yea I think Vervaeke is very relevant here, there are also the later cognitive science episodes where he explicitly references AI, like episode 32. https://www.meaningcrisis.co/ep-32-awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis-rr-in-the-brain-insight-and-consciousness/.
I’d love to see (and will probably do myself) some more detailed work on how metamodern models of the dynamics of cultural evolution beyond modernism tie up with ideas in the rationalist movement about AI in the context of Moloch, but also the ‘agent foundations’ approach to addressing AI risk - does Vervaeke offer an alternative mdoel of ‘agent foundations’ here?
Yes, my take on the whole Awakening from the Meaning Crisis series was amazement at the end-to-end mashup of Intro to Western Civilization & Intro to Computer Science. My school is putting the finishing touches on an associates degree with a similar vibe: computing and social ethics. Lots of philosophy to go with the IT.
This spring I’ll be teaching Secure Software Development to CS seniors. I’m bringing the full 2R package to the party. That should be fun! Metamodernism and AI is a book some collection of co-authors should really be starting on. In Ikigai terms, it’s “what the world needs”. My draft AI chapter from the survey text I’m currently working on could serve as a sort of “sizzle reel” for what that larger work might be addressing.
Won’t be doing book length here … but here are some bullet points for someone’s Miro board: