Intelligence (Artificial)

A philosophical essay draws parallels between the Golem legend, Augustine's theodicy, and al-Ghazālī's critique of causality to argue that present choices in AI development can have irreversible, far-reaching consequences. The piece warns that small changes in complex systems like AI can lead to catastrophic outcomes, urging caution as humanity stands at an inflection point.

Cross-posted from babbo.dev/articles/ai-risk . To experience the piece in its intended form, please visit there. "Once upon a time a great Cabbalist lived in Prague, called the Rabbi Löw. He made a human figure of clay, and left a small aperture in the lesser brain in which he laid a parchment with the unutterable name of God written on it. The clod immediately arose and was a man; he performed all the duties of a servant for his creator, he fetched water, and hewed wood. All through the Jews' quarter he was known as the Golem of the great Rabbi Löw." A common topic of interest in 18th-century French salons was the theodicy: 3 given an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God, why is there evil in the world? A particularly prominent theory though was one originally argued by Saint Augustine of Hippo. Pulling from the Neoplatonists, Augustine first contended that evil is not a thing in itself, but rather a privation of the good. 7 Then, in exercising free will, a great gift in itself, humans can move themselves away from the good. However, there seems to be a slight hole in this notion. While the theodicy is adequate for explaining human-derived evil, it does not resolve the 'problem of evil' in regard to natural sources; if evil extends from human freedom, where do we place natural disasters, diseases, or independent animal suffering? 8 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-8 To patch this issue, an addendum can be made to the theodicy in what is commonly referred to as the 'two falls theodicy'. In standard Catholic metaphysics, angels are aeviternal beings which apprehend 'intuitively' and whose wills, therefore, adhere immovably. 9 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-9 10 When an angel makes a choice, it persists forever. In the 'two falls theodicy', the non-human mediated ills of the world are downstream from these singular decisions of angels who reject the 'good'. A simple choice, made by a being of sufficient capacity, is enough to irrevocably distort the world. For most of human history, consequences were limited to our immediate positional and temporal surroundings. Today, actions engraved into the embeddings of systems have the capability of far outlasting their original context. 12 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-12 Small changes to the starting state of a complex system can incite highly divergent outcomes. An object with a constant 'pop' 13 of 1 m/s⁶, assuming no other initial conditions, travels the circumference of the Earth in 56 seconds and achieves a velocity faster than the speed of light in 130. We stand now at an inflection point in history, where present choices can ramify forward without recall. 15 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-15 or, The Incoherence of the Incoherence Scientific development requires a specific epistemology. In order to proceed over time in scientific inquiry, one has to believe both that the world is knowable and that knowing the world is good. Around 1027, ibn Sīnā 16 published Less than 100 years later, al-Ghazālī, the ' mujaddid https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mujaddid&oldid=1352918513 ' 21 of the 11th century, "Let us, then, take a specific example—namely, the burning of cotton, for instance, when in contact with fire. ... The one who enacts the burning by creating blackness in the cotton, causing separation in its parts, and making it cinder or ashes is God ... As for fire, which is inanimate, it has no action. For what proof is there that it is the agent? They have no proof other than observing the occurrence of the burning at the juncture of contact with the fire." 23 24 While the world may be good, it is not knowable. Though not without dissent, 25 al-Ghazālī's approach proved ascendant. The madrasa system displaced the older patronage networks that sustained the Bayt al-Ḥikmah tradition. Natural philosophy made way for a curriculum which prioritized jurisprudence and Qur'ānic exegesis. The Latin West maintained the twin epistemologic pillars for slightly longer. Kepler presented astronomical inquiry as a way of knowing God. 28 A century later, Boyle's However, with the Enlightenment, the idea that knowing the world is good began to fall. A possible theodicean response is to break down the premises. One cannot establish an 'ought' from an 'is', 31 so without an explicit moral ordering of the universe where is value derived? Scholastic vestiges remained, yet unmoored from any metaphysical anchor. In ethics, the good became restructured around the "two sovereign masters" of pain and pleasure; 33 efficiency the dominant signal in markets. Modernity still has its triumphs. While the tractable is not identical to the good, the mode of orientation can be near enough to appear aligned in non-pathologic scenarios. In the 20th century alone, life expectancy doubled. 36 Famine has become a peripheral phenomenon primarily associated with war rather than agriculture. Its failure in sensing the inherent dignity of the person, the temptation towards the merely legible, though, curses the regime of modernity to eventually misalign from the good. In Buck v. Bell , the United States Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, 39 upheld the forced sterilization of the 'unfit' to promote the general health and welfare of society: "It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices ... in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." 40 41 In the Holocaust, perhaps the central tragedy of the modern age, modernity again showed its fruits. Though history is littered with stories of mass killings, the Holocaust was not a harkening back to a barbaric past. It is distinguished, not just in magnitude but also in kind, by a particular rationality. The genocide was taken as a means, and correct from within its own axiomatic structure. 42 Without an external understanding of the good, there is no end toward which to correctly direct one's rationality. Our current tech landscape has provided remarkable achievements, yet there still remains an absence at its core. As we pursue greater advancements, the divergence between the efficient and the good becomes increasingly pronounced. 45 While in an age of relative abundance, we are tightroping across a path where, with rising capability, a small deviation can quickly cascade into a fall. While the development of artificial intelligence carries grave risk and must be taken with the utmost care, many standard objections serve to obscure the genuine concern rather than clarify. 47 These critiques both inflate and diminish capability while positing issues orthogonal to any real capacity. A common critique 48 given to modern generative AI systems is that they are merely 'stochastic parrots' A Brief Digression on the Nature of LLMs 50 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-50 There are two main phases in the life-cycle of an LLM. The 'building' phase 51 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-51 and the 'usage' phase. 52 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-52 This building phase can then be split further into constructing out the 'foundation' 53 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-53 and then 'sculpting' it. 54 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-54 In the initial foundation building phase, a large corpus of text is taken and strictly from how words 55 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-55 are used in relation to each other in the corpus, a high-dimensional 'raw' 'model of the world' 56 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-56 is formed. 57 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-57 Then, in the sculpting phase, this raw model of the world is shaped to be more amenable as a human assistant. 58 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-58 Finally, in the 'usage' phase your input goes into this sculpted model of the world and based on the structure within, emits a response. 59 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-59 There is a sense that when prompting, an LLM is 'predicting' the next token in a sequence. However, emergent phenomena are the norm in complex systems, and when exhibited, generally make a description of parts to explain the whole not 'untrue' but misleading or non-helpful. Outside of highly specific scenarios, it is not useful to explain a computer as a series of transistors or further to describe any matter according to its fermionic makeup. Most commonly, this type of argumentation seems to occur when one is trying to make a claim to separate human cognition from what occurs in LLMs. However, mereological https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mereology n?tab=meaning and use observation does not constitute ontological proof. It is clear from even minor use that LLMs are not just stochastic parrots. Statements on what LLMs 'are' should be made directly, not laundered through a framing which falls apart on contact. Despite apocalyptic hyperventilation to the contrary from media, 60 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-60 61 the environmental footprint for AI is fairly small. Obviously, as something that exists in the world, LLMs and their associated infrastructure have some environmental effect, but relative to their use this is negligible and possibly even negative when considering displacement costs. A similar story exists for emissions. Even in a 'lift-off' case with extremely strong AI uptake, limited local constraints, and low efficiency improvements in hardware or software, the IEA estimates data center emissions to only be at 475 Mt CO₂ by 2035 63 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-63 64 or less than ⅓ the output of the cement industry. This is not to say that data centers are immune to causing grid strain at a local level. 66 However, even here, energy supply is historically highly receptive to demand. It has been a mainstay of internet culture, especially within tech circles, to be against intellectual property or believe it overly restrictive; 68 the operating assumption being that information should be free. In the United States, copyright has always been something granted for the public benefit: " t o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". 70 Due to the inherent non-excludability of ideas, copyright exists as a way to incentivize their creation and discovery. To maximize the public welfare, even in the period of exclusivity provided, an author's rights are not absolute. The bounds on the exclusive rights of works were codified 74 in the Copyright Act of 1976 which established a four-factor test that utilized the purpose of use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount used, and the market impact on the copyrighted work to determine if a secondary work was a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material. With regards to AI, the use of copyrighted materials for training has been found to constitute fair use due to its highly transformative nature. 76 While whether the outputs of models themselves can constitute copyright infringement is under ongoing litigation, If we take AI displacement in specific industries to be bad, there are more direct and efficient ways to alleviate the harms. A Pigouvian tax https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pigouvian tax&oldid=1356475203 on LLM providers, earmarked for affected industries, could compensate creators without requiring the increasingly strained application of a framework designed for a different issue. 79 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-79 80 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-80 One of the most tangible concerns people have of LLMs is related to having factual errors in outputs or 'hallucinations'. To clarify against what is a slightly common misconception, hallucinations do not come from some inherent 'randomness' 81 of LLMs, but rather through 'mistakes' in the models of the world being inferred into. The upside of this is that in using larger pre-training corpora and more robust post-training processes, successive model generations have significantly reduced hallucination rates while simultaneously becoming better calibrated in expressing uncertainty. 83 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-83 A common mistake in judging digital output is comparison to an ideal form rather than existing alternatives. Compared to the counterfactual, existing deployment delays on autonomous vehicles have already cost thousands of lives. 84 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-84 85 Even in fields such as medical diagnosis with high potential consequences for inaccuracy, LLMs have been found, in certain circumstances, to exceed physician accuracy. This is not to say that hallucinations are not an issue, but rather that any sufficiently complex system will exhibit failure modes. When examining AI errors, it should be done in cognizance of their current rate of improvement and relative to the systems they stand to augment. A final critique often levied against the AI industry as a whole is that it represents a speculative bubble whose eventual correction will inflict widespread economic harm. Stories of Allbirds, the shoe company, whose shares climbed over 600% after announcing a pivot to AI compute infrastructure, 88 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-88 89 make it hard to deny some mania in the markets. However, it is perhaps clarifying here to view the AI industry in relation to its last major speculative episode: the dot-com bubble. In March of 2000, directly prior to the dot-com burst, information technology forward P/E stood at ~48.3x. 90 Today, due to massive earnings increases, the mark stands at only ~24.2x. Even after any excess froth gets wrung out, the fallout is unlikely to follow the same patterns as some previous recent corrections. For established tech companies, AI is best thought of as a 'sustaining' rather than a 'disruptive' innovation. 95 Following from this, a majority of capex has come from free cash flow of highly profitable existing tech companies. "The Rabbi ordered the precentor to pause at the end of the prayer. It was yet possible to save all, but later naught would avail — the whole world would be destroyed. He hastened home, and saw the Golem already seizing the joists of his house to tear down the building; he sprang forward, took the parchment out, and dead clay again lay at his feet." Despite their inadequacies, there is a reason why these anti-AI arguments persist. People have an intuitive perception that there is something hollow at the center of the modern world and so glom onto the first rationale with even a façade of logical coherence. Those who make claims of ushering in a new age are of the same group that brought us Soylent, 100 engagement-optimized feeds, It is well understood across a range of fields that negative signals carry more weight than positive signals. 106 In decision-making under uncertainty, losses carry twice the weight of equivalent gains. So where do we go from here? One must walk away from St. Petersburg https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2026/entries/paradox-stpetersburg/ ; silence the martingale https://www.oed.com/dictionary/martingale n?tab=meaning and use 37659802 . In acting, we immediately shape our soul before any external consequence. To be truly in zugzwang https://www.oed.com/dictionary/zugzwang n?tab=meaning and use requires a fully staid environment; however, we can change the conditions under which we operate. Technology qua technology is not a good in itself. Its pharmakonic https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pharmakon&oldid=1323965554 nature is decided in relation to the telos on which it is produced. We currently exist in an axial https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Axial Age&oldid=1356693137 moment where choices made today can have an outsized effect on the future. In proceeding, one must act with caution, humility, and an understanding that in building, the 'ends' must be aligned to and in respect of the fundamental dignity of the human person. Thanks to my family for reviewing earlier drafts of this work. For any comments on this piece, please message me at joseph@babbo.dev. The classic golem narrative has no singular authoritative source. However, Berthold Auerbach's biographical novel of Spinoza is thought to contain one of its earliest literary renderings. 110 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-110 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-1 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-1:1 Berthold Auerbach, Spinoza: A Novel , trans. E. Nicholson New York: H. Holt and Company, 1882 , 216–217. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-2 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-2:1 Coined by Leibniz in the eponymous Essais de Théodicée 1710 . 111 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-111 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-3 Especially after the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, where on All Saints' Day an estimated 8.7-magnitude 112 earthquake struck Portugal, killing tens of thousands, destroying up to 48% of Portuguese GDP, From Dr. Pangloss in Candide , 115 whom Voltaire introduces to caricature Leibniz's rosy position from the "Just in the same way is the heavenly kingdom honourable to those who have known the earthly one. But in proportion as it is more honourable, so much the more do we prize it; and if we have prized it more, we shall be the more glorious in the presence of God. The Lord has therefore endured all these things on our behalf, in order that we, having been instructed by means of them all, may be in all respects circumspect for the time to come, and that, having been rationally taught to love God, we may continue in His perfect love: for God has displayed long-suffering in the case of man's apostasy; while man has been instructed by means of it, as also the prophet says, 'Your own apostasy shall heal you;' 118 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-118 God thus determining all things beforehand for the bringing of man to perfection, for his edification, and for the revelation of His dispensations, that goodness may both be made apparent, and righteousness perfected, and that the Church may be fashioned after the image of His Son, and that man may finally be brought to maturity at some future time, becoming ripe through such privileges to see and comprehend God." 119 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-119 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-6 This was required as, if evil itself were a substance, it would necessitate either origination in God, undermining omnibenevolence; or a Manichaean dualism: "And, because my soul dared not be displeased at my God, it would not allow anything to be Yours which displeased it. Hence it had gone into the opinion of two substances, and resisted not, but talked foolishly." 120 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-120 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-7 Even if one presumes that non-human evil propagates from 'the Fall', this would not explain, in light of evolution, pre-fall animal suffering or even the serpent in the traditional narrative without positing some exotic causality. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-8 Another way to put this is that angels understand non-discursively; everything is grasped immediately and in full, not through a chain of syllogisms. As there is nothing left to further understand, there is no basis for a change of will. "Such is the condition of the angels, because in the truths which they know naturally, they at once behold all things whatsoever that can be known in them." 121 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-121 "Now the angel's apprehension differs from man's in this respect, that the angel by his intellect apprehends immovably ... Consequently ... the angel's will adheres fixedly and immovably." 121 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-121 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-9 This view, however, is not entirely uncontested. Scotus argued non-discursive knowing is non-corollary to immovable will: " A lthough the angel understand non-discursively what – according to them – man understands discursively, yet the intellect of man does not movably adhere to that which it reaches discursively; for it so holds with certitude that is without doubting the conclusion it discursively reaches as the angel holds it by seeing it in the principle non-discursively; therefore this immobility of the human intellect that is, certitude would have an equally immovable will just as that other immovability posited in the angel." 122 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-122 123 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-123 but rather, there is still a permanency due to lack of grace from God to further move oneself back to the good; a divine dereliction: " F or springing back meritoriously there is required another principle than the will, namely grace, which a bad angel cannot have of himself, – and God, according to the fact he deserted him, has disposed not to give it to him ... ; there not be another cause of their permanence in bad save divine dereliction." 123 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-123 Though, it should be noted, the word 'dunce' originated to describe the followers of Duns Scotus. 124 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-124 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-10 More recent formulations posit this as an angelic 'omission' or 'archon abandonment' , in which natural evil is traced not to direct angelic action but to the culpable abdication of a divinely assigned stewardship over creation. 125 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-125 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-11 By the maker upon the made, at first; in time, by the made upon the maker. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-12 The fourth, fifth, and sixth derivatives of position with respect to time are commonly referred to as, respectively, snap, crackle, and pop. Yes, after the Rice Krispies mascots. 126 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-126 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-13 x t = 0 + 0· t + 0/2 t ² + 0/6 t ³ + 0/24 t ⁴ + 0/120 t ⁵ + 1/720 t ⁶ x t = t ⁶/720; v t = t ⁵/120 Circumference of the Earth ≈ 40,075 km Speed of light c ≈ 2.998e8 m/s t ⁶/720 = 4.0075e7 m ⟹ t ≈ 55.38 s t ⁵/120 = c ⟹ t ≈ 129.18 s ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-14 "If we use, to achieve our purposes, a mechanical agency with whose operation we cannot efficiently interfere once we have started it, because the action is so fast and irrevocable that we have not the data to intervene before the action is complete, then..." 127 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-127 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-15 From ibn , meaning 'son of'; the original referent is unknown. In the West, commonly referred to as Avicenna. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-16 Most thoroughly laid out in The Book of Salvation ; a more succinct formulation can be found in Remarks and Admonitions : "Every totality having every one of its units as caused requires a cause external to its units. This is because either 1 it does not require a cause at all; hence it is necessary and not possible. But how could this be so when it is only necessitated by its units? 2 It requires a cause that is all its units; hence it is caused by itself. ... 3 It requires a cause that is some of its units. But if every one of its units is caused, then some of its units are not more deserving of being the cause than some others. The reason is that the cause of the caused is more deserving of being the cause. Or 4 it requires a cause external to all its units. This is the remaining truth ." 128 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-128 129 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-129 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-17 "Thus, if there is a first cause, it is a cause of every existence and of the cause of the reality of every concrete existence." 129 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-129 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-18 "Know that you came to perceive particular eclipses only because you fully comprehended its causes and everything concerning the heavens. When full comprehension takes place about all of the causes in things and their existence, there is a transference of that full comprehension from those to all of the effects." 130 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-130 131 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-131 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-19 "Whatever necessarily exists through itself is pure good and pure perfection. In general, the good is that which everything desires, and that through which it is completed. Evil has no essence, but is either the absence of substance or of some state beneficial to the substance. Thus existence is goodness. Perfection of existence is goodness of existence, the existence that is untouched by absence — whether absence of substance or absence of something that belongs to substance — rather, it is perpetually actual. So it is pure good. That which, through itself, is merely possibly existent is not pure good. For its essence does not, through itself, have existence, so that its essence in itself suffers absence. What suffers absence in any way is not entirely free of evil and deficiency. Therefore there is no pure good apart from that which necessarily exists through itself." 132 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-132 131 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-131 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-20 Mohd Rosmizi and Salih Yucel, "The Mujaddid of His Age: Al-Ghazali and His Inner Spiritual Journey," https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/111860622/8991776 Published article.pdf UMRAN — International Journal of Islamic and Civilizational Studies 3, no. 2 2016 : 1–13. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-21 The 5th century of the hijrī calendar 1009–1106 AD; 401–500 AH . ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-22 Elisions added to referent; other additions are from referent. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-23 Al-Ghazālī, The Incoherence of the Philosophers , trans. Michael E. Marmura, 2nd ed. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2000 , Discussion 17, §§2–5, 166–167. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-24 Most famously in Ibn Rushd's 133 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-133 Incoherence of the Incoherence : "To deny the existence of efficient causes which are observed in sensible things is sophistry, and he who defends this doctrine either denies with his tongue what is present in his mind or is carried away by a sophistical doubt which occurs to him concerning this question. ... Logic implies the existence of causes and effects, and knowledge of these effects can only be rendered perfect through knowledge of their causes. Denial of cause implies the denial of knowledge, and denial of knowledge implies that nothing in this world can be really known" . 134 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-134 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-25 It is slightly overdrawn to lay this entirely at the feet of al-Ghazālī. He is probably better understood as merely a seminal figure in an ongoing process than the immediate catalyst of the change if such a thing could be allowed under Ash'arite metaphysics . Beginning in the 700s, the Mu'tazili Islamic school of theology was formed. Mu'tazilis controversially believed the Qur'ān to be created, not coeternal, and took heavy influence from Greek rationalism, utilizing kalām , or the rational study of theology, to try to ground their beliefs. 135 Starting under the reign of al-Ma'mūn, Mu'tazilism gained increased prominence in the Abbasid empire, to the extent where in 833 the Besides preserving, spreading, and translating works from Greek, Persian, and Indian sources itself a valuable work , 136 Islamic scholars made foundational contributions to the scientific corpus. Al-Khwārizmī's algebra, "It is in this that Paul proposes to the Gentiles that they should contemplate God like the Sun in water or in a mirror. Why then as Christians should we take any less delight in its contemplation, since it is for us with true worship to honor God, to venerate him, to wonder at him? The more rightly we understand the nature and scope of what our God has founded, the more devoted the spirit in which that is done." 140 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-140 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-28 "The consideration of the Vastness, Beauty, and Regular Motions, of the heavenly Bodies; the excellent Structure of Animals and Plants; besides a multitude of other Phænomena of Nature, and the Subserviency of most of these to Man; may justly induce him, as a Rational Creature, to Conclude, That this vast, beautiful, orderly, and in a word many ways admirable System of things, that we call the World, was fram'd by an Author supremely Powerful, Wise, and Good, can scarce be deny'd by an intelligent and unprejudic'd Considerer." 141 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-141 142 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-142 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-29 Isaac Newton, Principia: The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy 1846 /BookIII-General Scholium , trans. Andrew Motte 1729 , General Scholium. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature https://davidhume.org/texts/t/3/1/1 , Book III, Part I, Section I 1739 . "'Morally wrong' is the term which is the heir of the notion 'illicit,' or 'what there is an obligation not to do'; which belongs in a divine law theory or ethics. ... I t is because 'morally wrong' is the heir of this concept, but an heir that is cut off from the family of concepts from which it sprang, that 'morally wrong' both goes beyond the mere factual description 'unjust' and seems to have no discernible content except a certain compelling force, which I should call purely psychological." 143 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-143 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-32 Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation https://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/bentham/ipml/ipml.c01.html 1789 , ch. I, §1. "The capitalist economy rationalizes on the basis of strictly quantitative calculations and is oriented to the sought-after economic success in a systematic and dispassionate manner. ... The pursuit of gain, in the region where it has become most completely unchained and stripped of its religious-ethical meaning, the United States, tends to be associated with purely competitive passions." 144 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-144 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-34 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments https://monoskop.org/images/2/27/Horkheimer Max Adorno Theodor W Dialectic of Enlightenment Philosophical Fragments.pdf , trans. Edmund Jephcott Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002 , 3. "Life Expectancy, 1900–2000," https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?tab=line&time=1900..2000 Our World in Data. Data from Riley 2005 ; Zijdeman et al. 2015 ; HMD 2025 ; UN WPP 2024 , with major processing by Our World in Data. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-36 Post-green revolution agricultural yields have made climate or agricultural shocks less likely to cascade into the anthropogenic failures that produce famine. Where famine persists in the modern era, its proximate causes are overwhelmingly associated with armed conflict. 145 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-145 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-37 F. Fenner et al., Smallpox and its Eradication https://iris.who.int/bitstreams/8ed08cdf-4ea0-4ada-b338-cabc35c9b577/download Geneva: World Health Organization, 1988 . The lone dissenter, Justice Pierce Butler, filed no opinion, as was still common practice. The Court's only Catholic, his nomination four years earlier had drawn a vigorous anti-Catholic campaign from the Ku Klux Klan; his vote here, speculated to stem from his excessive popery. 146 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-146 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-39 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., majority opinion in Buck v. Bell https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep274/usrep274200/usrep274200.pdf , 274 U.S. 200, 207 1927 . It should be noted that the factual basis for the case has also been subsequently disputed. It has been claimed that Carrie Buck, whom the case was around, was first committed as a cover-up of a familial rape, and had, based on school records, no signs of extreme mental deficiencies. Further, her counsel on the case, Irving Whitehead, was on the board of the institution Carrie was committed at, was friends with the doctor who wished to sterilize her and endorsed his previous sterilizations, and was old college friends with the state's attorney. Prior to the trial Whitehead never met with Carrie, and called no witnesses on her behalf. This case thereafter stood as the basis for over 60,000 forced sterilizations in the US. 147 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-147 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-41 "I do suggest, however, that the rules of instrumental rationality are singularly incapable of preventing such phenomena; that there is nothing in those rules which disqualifies the Holocaust-style methods of 'social-engineering' as improper or, indeed, the actions they served as irrational. I suggest, further, that the bureaucratic culture which prompts us to view society as an object of administration, as a collection of so many 'problems' to be solved, as 'nature' to be 'controlled', 'mastered' and 'improved' or 'remade', as a legitimate target for 'social engineering', and in general a garden to be designed and kept in the planned shape by force the gardening posture divides vegetation into 'cultured plants' to be taken care of, and weeds to be exterminated , was the very atmosphere in which the idea of the Holocaust could be conceived, slowly yet consistently developed, and brought to its conclusion. And I also suggest that it was the spirit of instrumental rationality, and its modern, bureaucratic form of institutionalization, which had made the Holocaust-style solutions not only possible, but eminently 'reasonable' – and increased the probability of their choice." 148 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-148 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-42 An emotivist or moral anti-realist structure is little comfort when confronted with calamity. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-43 At Nuremberg, Buck v. Bell was then used in defense to justify Nazi eugenic programs. 149 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-149 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-44 See Intentio for a fuller treatment of this divergence in relation to social technology alongside a proposed solution. 101 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-101 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-45 "...we had better be quite sure that the purpose put into the machine is the purpose which we really desire and not merely a colorful imitation of it." 127 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-127 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-46 Throughout, references to 'AI', unless otherwise stated, should be read as referring to large language models or equivalent multimodal generative systems. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-47 Though rarer to see these days. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-48 Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜," https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3442188.3445922 in Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency 2021 : 610–623. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-49 Intentionally simplified, and probably of less use to those with an existing technical understanding of LLMs. Nevertheless, I have found the following useful in explaining to others, and so may still be of interest for its use as a pedagogical tool. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-50 Commonly referred to as 'training'. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-51 Commonly referred to as 'inference'. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-52 Commonly referred to as 'pre-training'. The 'pre' here as against a subsequent task-specific 'fine-tuning', which has since broadened out into a myriad of different 'post-training' methods. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-53 Commonly referred to as 'post-training' or 'alignment'. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-54 Or more precisely 'tokens': the atomic chunks of text that models work on. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-55 Deliberately using 'model of the world' to avoid confusion with the distinct 'world model' AI approach. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-56 See Anthropic's interpretability research 150 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-150 151 on the structure of the model within the weights. This could be seen in older versions of GPT where, when asked something, the model would often continue the question rather than answer it unless prompted in a way where answering seemed the more likely next part of the sequence . ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-58 For a more extensive introduction still geared towards a general audience, see Andrej Karpathy's video series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAqhIrjkxbuW9U8-vZ s cjKPT FqRStI . ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-59 See, for example, the claim that generating a 100-word email consumes a full bottle of water; 152 a figure later found to be orders of magnitude off. Related is Karen Hao's Empire of AI , which overstated relative data center water usage by over three orders of magnitude. 154 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-154 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-61 "Even just going for a walk outside slightly wears out your sneakers. Typical athletic sneakers often last for 300-500 miles, and take 4 million ChatGPT prompts' worth of water to make. 155 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-155 This means that every mile you get out of your sneakers uses 8000 ChatGPT prompts' worth of water. Every single second you spend walking in sneakers uses enough water for 7 prompts. 156 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-156 At the end of an hour walk, you would have used enough water for 24,000 prompts." 157 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-157 158 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-158 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-62 IEA, Energy and AI https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/de9dea13-b07d-42c5-a398-d1b3ae17d866/EnergyandAI.pdf , World Energy Outlook Special Report Paris: International Energy Agency, 2025 , 56, 63, 93. This number relates to all data center emissions, of which AI, as of 2024, was thought to account for roughly 15% though this percentage is likely to increase going forward . 63 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-63 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-64 Given the most favorable numbers for the cement industry. The figure used, 1,470 Mt CO₂ in 2024, relates only to the emissions released in calcining limestone. 159 Taking into account the fuel used in cement kilns would meaningfully increase this number. Catherina Gioino, "Nearly 50,000 Lake Tahoe Residents Have to Find a New Power Source After Their Energy Source Looks to Redirect Lines to Data Centers," https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-residents-power-source/ Fortune , May 12, 2026. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-66 The advent of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in shale plays has made energy supply increasingly elastic to demand over the last two decades in the US. 160 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-160 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-67 See Aaron Swartz, widely held as a folk hero within the programming community. A co-author of RSS at age 14 and early architect of Creative Commons, then co-founder of Reddit, Swartz was arrested in 2011 for the bulk downloading of academic articles from JSTOR. Facing thirteen felony counts, he took his own life in January 2013, at the age of 26. 161 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-161 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-68 Stewart Brand, remarks at the first Hackers Conference November 1984 , in "'Keep Designing': How the Information Economy Is Being Created and Shaped by the Hacker Ethic," https://wholeearth.info/p/whole-earth-review-may-1985 Whole Earth Review , no. 46 May 1985 : 49. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-69 "The limited scope of the copyright holder's statutory monopoly, like the limited copyright duration required by the Constitution, reflects a balance of competing claims upon the public interest: Creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an 'author's' creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good. 'The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the monopoly,' this Court has said, 'lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.' 162 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-162 " 163 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-163 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-71 "But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. ... Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property." 164 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-164 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-72 "This right copyright , as has been shown, does not exist at common law — it originated, if at all, under the acts of congress." 165 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-165 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-73 These existed prior in case law from Folsom v. Marsh 166 in 1841, but were only explicitly codified under the Copyright Act of 1976. See Bartz v. Anthropic . Anthropic did settle in this case, but due to the retention of millions of pirated books for a permanent internal library. The claims of copyright infringement via training were rejected at summary judgment: "Regardless, the 'purpose and character' of using works to train LLMs was transformative — spectacularly so." 167 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-167 Similarly, see Kadrey v. Meta where, again, even with the record viewed in the plaintiffs' favor, the copyright infringement claims regarding training were found so wanting that they were decided by summary judgment before reaching trial: "There is no serious question that Meta's use of the plaintiffs' books had a 'further purpose' and 'different character' than the books—that it was highly transformative." 168 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-168 It should be noted that both these decisions are merely district court rulings, limiting their precedential weight. However, they do serve as good indications of broader judicial thinking on the topic. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-76 Complaint, The New York Times Co. v. Microsoft Corp. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.612697/gov.uscourts.nysd.612697.1.0.pdf , No. 1:23-cv-11195 S.D.N.Y. Dec. 27, 2023 , ECF No. 1. Complaint, Disney Enterprises, Inc. v. Midjourney, Inc. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.973999/gov.uscourts.cacd.973999.1.0.pdf , No. 2:25-cv-05275 C.D. Cal. June 11, 2025 , ECF No. 1. The implementation details on how this is set up are important. There is precedent in the space with the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. Here, to safeguard artists from displacement caused by home copying, a levy of 2–3% styled as royalties was placed on 'digital audio recording devices' and 'digital audio recording media', with the proceeds to be distributed to affected parties. 169 However, due to how narrowly the category of 'digital audio recording device' was defined, devices such as MP3 players were held to fall outside the act, To be clear, the argument here is strictly a legal one and against ideas that can induce passivity through belief that the ills currently attributed to AI already fall under some legal provision and so will be dealt with in due time. For a solution to some of these issues as they relate to intentional works of art, see Intentio . 101 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-101 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-80 Commonly, 'temperature' is a parameter to tune how tokens are sampled, with lower levels leading to more determinism. However, in practice, even at temperature 0, there tends to still be some 'randomness' in output due to a lack of batch invariance in the GPU kernels. 171 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-171 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-81 Adam Tauman Kalai, Ofir Nachum, Santosh S. Vempala, and Edwin Zhang, "Why Language Models Hallucinate," https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.04664 arXiv:2509.04664 September 2025 . ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-82 "AA-Omniscience: Knowledge and Hallucination Benchmark," https://artificialanalysis.ai/evaluations/omniscience omniscience-index Artificial Analysis. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-83 Conservatively. Had Waymo-equivalent autonomous vehicles ramped to even 5% of US vehicle-miles from their 2018 commercial introduction, ~7,200 lives would have been saved to date; at 80%, ~116,000. 172 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-172 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-84 Nidhi Kalra and David G. Groves, The Enemy of Good: Estimating the Cost of Waiting for Nearly Perfect Automated Vehicles https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research reports/RR2100/RR2150/RAND RR2150.pdf , RR-2150-RC Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2017 . Ethan Goh et al., "Large Language Model Influence on Diagnostic Reasoning: A Randomized Clinical Trial," https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2825395 JAMA Network Open 7, no. 10 2024 : e2440969. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-86 In the economic sense. Though not currently an official diagnosis, there does seem to be a growing issue related to 'AI mania' or 'AI psychosis' or, more precisely, 'AI-associated delusions' 173 , from LLMs' tendency to reinforce delusional beliefs in vulnerable users. Allison Morrow, "Allbirds Shares Soar on a Very 2026 Pivot to AI," https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/15/investing/allbirds-pivot-to-ai CNN Business , April 15, 2026. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-88 The stock has since cooled, but as of the last close at the time of writing June 11, 2026; $3.88 still stands ~56% above the pre-announcement price April 14, 2026; $2.49 . 175 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-175 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-89 Edward Yardeni and Joseph Abbott, Predicting the Markets Topical Study 4: S&P 500 Earnings, Valuation, and the Pandemic https://old.yardeni.com/wp-content/uploads/4-SP-500 Yardeni.pdf YRI Press, 2020 , 28. Yardeni Research, "On Technology, Semiconductors & Fusion," https://cdn.sanity.io/files/m74go295/production/05f1e0cf3f2729a8da0d4c3883e7c5cdfd56640c.pdf Morning Briefing , May 14, 2026. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-91 Cisco closing price March 27, 2000 = $80.06 176 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-176 Cisco diluted EPS fiscal year 2000 = $0.36 177 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-177 Nvidia closing price June 11, 2026 = $204.87 178 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-178 Nvidia diluted EPS fiscal year 2026 = $4.90 179 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-179 Cisco: 80.06 / 0.36 ⟹ ~222.4x 180 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-180 Nvidia: 204.87 / 4.90 ⟹ ~41.8x ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-92 The lower multiple comes despite higher margins and growth rate. Nvidia's fiscal year 2026 net margin stood at 55.6% against Cisco's 14.1% in fiscal year 2000, with revenue growing at a two-year CAGR of 88.3% against Cisco's 49.3%. 181 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-181 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-93 There are some contrary measures here. For example, the S&P 500's cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings CAPE peaked at 44.20 in December 1999 and stands at 41.02 as of June 2026 against a median of 16.6 . 182 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-182 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-94 Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997 . ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-95 Worryingly, there has been an increasing trend from the major hyperscalers to increase capex by tapping the bond market instead of utilizing free cash flows. 183 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-183 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-96 Eli Ofek and Matthew Richardson, "DotCom Mania: The Rise and Fall of Internet Stock Prices," https://www.nber.org/system/files/working papers/w8630/w8630.pdf The Journal of Finance 58, no. 3 2003 : 1113–1137. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-97 Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, "Household Leverage and the Recession of 2007 to 2009," https://www.nber.org/system/files/working papers/w15896/w15896.pdf IMF Economic Review 58, no. 1 2010 : 74–117. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-98 In developed economies, energy infrastructure has an output elasticity of 0.054 and digital infrastructure an output elasticity of 0.070 interestingly, even higher than the numbers for developing economies . 184 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-184 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-99 Yes, for a period in Silicon Valley, a popular staple was a meal replacement drink named Soylent. 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Horace He and Thinking Machines Lab, "Defeating Nondeterminism in LLM Inference," https://thinkingmachines.ai/blog/defeating-nondeterminism-in-llm-inference/ Thinking Machines Lab: Connectionism , September 2025. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-171 US traffic deaths have averaged ≈ 39,300 per year over ≈ 3.2 trillion annual vehicle-miles ⟹ ~1.23 deaths per 100 million miles 185 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-185 Waymo, through its first 170 million driverless miles, recorded 92% fewer serious-or-fatal-injury crashes than human benchmarks on the same roads 186 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-186 Adoption ramps linearly from 2018 to a share s of vehicle-miles today average s /2 across 8 years Lives ≈ 3.2T × s /2 × 1.23/100M × 0.92 × 8 s = 5% ⟹ ~900 per year ⟹ ~7,200 total s = 80% ⟹ ~14,500 per year ⟹ ~116,000 total ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-172 Hamilton Morrin et al., "Artificial Intelligence-Associated Delusions and Large Language Models: Risks, Mechanisms of Delusion Co-creation, and Safeguarding Strategies," https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366 25 00396-7 The Lancet Psychiatry March 5, 2026 . ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-173 Søren Dinesen Østergaard, "Emotion Contagion Through Interaction With Generative Artificial Intelligence Chatbots May Contribute to Development and Maintenance of Mania," https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/32211533830BC754BCD19FC784815E1E/S0924270825100355a.pdf/div-class-title-emotion-contagion-through-interaction-with-generative-artificial-intelligence-chatbots-may-contribute-to-development-and-maintenance-of-mania-div.pdf Acta Neuropsychiatrica 37, e79 2025 : 1–3. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-174 "Allbirds, Inc. BIRD Stock Price History, April 14–June 11, 2026," https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BIRD/history/?period1=1776124800&period2=1781222400 Yahoo Finance. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-175 "Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO Stock Price History, March 2000," https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CSCO/history/?period1=951782400&period2=954547200 Yahoo Finance. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-176 Cisco Systems, Inc., Form 10-K, fiscal year ended July 29, 2000 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/858877/000109581100003692/0001095811-00-003692.txt , 'Consolidated Statements of Operations'. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-177 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-177:1 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-177:2 "NVIDIA Corporation NVDA Stock Price History, June 11, 2026," https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVDA/history/?period1=1781136000&period2=1781222400 Yahoo Finance. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-178 NVIDIA Corporation, Form 10-K, fiscal year ended January 25, 2026 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001045810/000104581026000021/nvda-20260125.htm , 'Consolidated Statements of Income', 51. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-179 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-179:1 This is, if anything, conservative. Cisco's fiscal year 2000 ended July 29, 2000, months after the March peak. Computing against the fiscal year 1999 diluted EPS of $0.29 gives an even greater multiple of ~276x. 177 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-177 ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-180 Cisco net income fiscal year 2000 = $2,668M; revenue fiscal years 1998, 2000 = $8,489M, $18,928M 177 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-177 Nvidia net income fiscal year 2026 = $120,067M; revenue fiscal years 2024, 2026 = $60,922M, $215,938M 179 https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fn-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-179 Net margin: 2,668 / 18,928 ⟹ ~14.1%; 120,067 / 215,938 ⟹ ~55.6% CAGR = end / start ^ 1/n − 1, over n = 2 years Cisco: 18,928 / 8,489 ^ 1/2 − 1 ⟹ ~49.3% Nvidia: 215,938 / 60,922 ^ 1/2 − 1 ⟹ ~88.3% ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-181 Robert J. Shiller, "U.S. Stock Markets 1871–Present and CAPE Ratio" ie data.xls , https://shillerdata.com/ shillerdata.com http://shillerdata.com , June 2026. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-182 Hugh Leask, "How the AI Debt Binge Shattered Hyperscalers' 'Unspoken Contract' with Investors," https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/23/big-techs-ai-bond-binge-shatters-unspoken-contract-with-investors.html CNBC, February 23, 2026. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-183 Vivien Foster, Nisan Gorgulu, Dhruv Jain, Stéphane Straub, and Maria Vagliasindi, "The Impact of Infrastructure on Development Outcomes: A Meta-Analysis," https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/bf0ea5ee-e263-446e-81d9-da9aef3cd7a6/content World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 10350 March 2023 , Table A.12. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-184 Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities and Fatality Rate in 2025 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813800 , DOT HS 813 800 Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, April 2026 . "Waymo Safety Impact," https://waymo.com/safety/impact/ Waymo, data through December 2025. ↩︎ https://www.lesswrong.com/feed.xml fnref-LrKTK3KhKjhQqJp33-186