2026-02-25
Preparing for war before the world knows it is necessary
Disclaimer
- Quick note
- Contains politically sensitive info
- This post talks about assassinations. I don't endorse actually trying to assassinate AI company CEOs, not because I have moral issues with it, but because I don't think it'll actually lengthen ASI timelines that much, and yes the PR effects are mixed (some audiences will hate you more, others will like you more).
Main
- One of the reasons working on ASI risk is disorienting is because I am finding myself having to escalate conflict long before the world realises how necessary this is.
- The primary difference between waging war and being a terrorist is whether there is a large group behind you or not.
- In terms of effectiveness: Waging war is often more effective because your ingroup will protect you, whereas if you're a terrorist you'll be less effective as the whole world will fight you.
- However, even before your group wages war, there was probably someone who started that group. Hitler decided to start Nazism long before the rest of Germany realised it was necessary. The country wanted power and wealth, but it took Hitler to convince so many people that war was actually necessary.
- On the other side, when Nazism was popular, many people just stood by and watched. Most people are sheep. If you have friends, and neighbours, and maybe partners, all part of the Nazi party, it is a lot harder to decide that you're going to be out and out as not a Nazi. The people making radical plans like trying to assassinate Hitler from the inside, must not have had a lot of friends either. (to do - actually go check how many friends these people had)
- Hitler indirectly told the world he would genocide the jews long before he actually genocided the jews. It's just that not many people believed him at first, the scale didn't slide that far yet.
- Same way, AI company CEOs are telling the world that run the risk of human extinction. Dario Amodei openly says 10-25% chance of civilisational catastrophe. A thousand Holocausts all at once. More blood than you can possibly imagine.
- I increasingly feel like successionism (the belief that humanity should be wiped out by ASI) is the new Nazism, and more and more people I know are increasingly susceptible to it, but there is no one to say that actually this is wrong, we shouldn't do this. Even if there are people saying AI is bad, they're not actually willing to fight the conflict. The public in general is too non-violent to get the job done.
- People like me and few others are the ones actually escalating the conflict.
- One day the world will realise we were right, and war was necessary, but until then we definitely run the risk of looking like terrorists.
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