(Cross-posted from my website. Audio version here, or search for "Joe Carlsmith Audio" on your podcast app.)

This is the final essay in a series that I'm calling "Otherness and control in the age of AGI." I'm hoping that the individual essays can be read fairly well on their own, but see here for a brief summary of the series as a whole. There's also a PDF of the whole series here.

Warning: spoilers for Angels in America; and moderate spoilers for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.)

"I come into the presence of still water..."

~Wendell Berry

A lot of this series has been about problems with yang—that is, with the active element in the duality of activity vs. receptivity, doing vs. not-doing, controlling vs. letting go.[1] In particular, I've been interested in the ways that "deep atheism" (that is, a fundamental [...]

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Outline:

(02:19) In praise of yang

(02:26) In praise of black

(06:32) Bad things are bad

(11:44) Killing dementors

(16:48) Humanism

(18:28) Stars and campfires

(22:32) Adulthood

(24:39) Angels in America

(31:03) What depth of atheism?

(35:11) The Lovecraft-Sagan spectrum

(41:23) Mother love and loyalty

(47:15) Innocence and forgiveness

(54:08) Creating God

(59:53) Final thoughts

The original text contained 55 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 18th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iqNjYdsectt5TvJRh/loving-a-world-you-don-t-trust

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Loving a world you don’t trust” by Joe Carlsmith

LessWrong (30+ Karma)