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After reading IABED I'm left wanting to do more. One idea I had was to put copies of the book in my local Little Free Libraries. I'm curious about other people's opinions on this. Do you think this may be effective? Are there better ways to spend my time and money?
1I have an anxious feeling about trying to leverage little free libraries for proselytizing (which doesn't mean it's wrong, but I notice I stopped being interested in Little Free Libraries the more it became clear that the two types of books there are mostly "old books nobody actually liked that much" and "books someone is trying to proselytize")
That's a very reasonable concern and something I am a bit worried about. As an ex-Christian, I'm especially sensitive to those libraries getting loaded up with Christian works intending to convert, and can see how this could be similar.
I'm thinking as long as I don't put more than one book in each library, and make sure the library isn't filled with primarily children's books (ie stay on topic with the particular library), I should be ok.
A thing I would track is "people who walk past multiple libraries don't develop a feeling of 'ugh, those IABIED books again'". (Given that I also think the upside of the book being in the little free libraries is fairly low). So, like, I'd do more like "1 per ~7 libraries" or something, spaced out more.
I do suspect there are higher payoff things to do (hosting a reading group, or inviting 1-2 friends to read it with you, or contacting a local library and getting it in stock there and maybe trying to hold some kind of event about it at the library)
Here are some things I did:
- tell my friends and family about the book
- write a review on Amazon & Goodreads
- review scam copies on Amazon with 1 star
- Searching for IABED on amazon.com, you will find that after the real book, several LLM written scam copies show up.
- the same is true for amazon.co.uk, .de, ... (these are distinct as far as reviews go)
- I looked at the sample text and if it made no sense and was LLM written (it always was), wrote a 1 star review (only on amazon.de)
- I only rated on amazon.de, because my Amazon account is only eligible for that. You could do it for the other Amazon sites.
- Usually my reviews are display on the next day
- (MIRI is aware but "it seems like there isn't that much we can do about it, unfortunately.")
- (I also tried reporting them; but I am not sure they are breaking any rules.)
- request the book in libraries
- I found a list of German public libraries, where one can easily request them to buy a book and went through that. You could do this for libraries in your region.
- I did 15 requests. 4 libraries bought it. 2 said they won't buy it.
I'd attend a march, if 1000 people also pledged to march in Germany.
I might contact my representatives (How to email your politician).
Those are good ideas. I've done 1, 2, and 4. There's only one library that I can request stuff on, but they got the book in print, ebook, and audiobook form. I've emailed and mailed my representatives too, and I plan to call them within the next couple of weeks.
Reviewing the fake books on Amazon is a great idea, I was wondering what all of those were about.
IABIED and The Fermi Paradox: while reading IABIED I noticed something that confused me. The book seems to argue that we're on one of two paths. Option 1 is humanity barrels ahead with AI development, creates a misaligned ASI, and dies. Option 2 is humanity pauses AI development, hopefully solves alignment, then creates an ASI sometime a bit farther into the future. Which means that unless some other disaster befalls us, ASI from this point on is inevitable.
My confusion stems from how this interacts with the Fermi Paradox. If the book's take is true, humanity will eventually create ASI, and that ASI will eventually spread throughout the universe (or at least throughout the galaxy), since either it or us will want to expand as far as possible. But if that's true, why hasn't another ASI already done so? It seems like following the conclusion of the book means that the reason we don't find other life like us is that life like us is exceedingly rare - there must be at least one giant bottleneck in our past that most life doesn't get through that we did.
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