/siberia/ - Off-topic

This is an extremely nihilistic book and I disagree with its message, which is that humans being immortal and free of all wants is somehow a bad thing because it would get "boring". This is not a very good exploration of the ethics of AGI, and though it is interesting for taking the three laws of robots to the logical conclusion, I think the actual depiction of the Prime Intellect (the AI) itself isn't great. It is basically a religious parable on how AGI and transhumanism is bad because it makes you not human or some shit.

There are definitely interesting parts to the story, especially when it explores society after the change, but more of the time is spent in rather uninteresting and random sections that destroy the pacing. There isn't really a strong enough ethical debate in the story. It could have been about [ how the aliens had all been killed (hide spoiler)], but instead most of it is about humanity had somehow fallen because we had lost the will to struggle or their connection to nature or whatever metaphysical rubbish first worlders like to say from their comfortable positions. The story doesn't explore what life is like for the average person in this new computer-game universe. It seems everyone apart from the main characters is having a rather good time.

The world is fairly well realized but the science is not. Everything the Prime Intellect does is magic. It turns the whole universe into a computer thanks to handwavium. This is not a realistic exploration into what a technological singularity would look like. The part where Prime Intellect is kind of 'doing' the singularity is interesting though, and is probably the highlight of the book. I wish more of it was from its perspective.

Not that I am not skeptical of the whole idea of an AI singularity, where the quantity of capitalism somehow runs away from the quantity, the technology escapes the social and economic formation that it exists in. The capitalist technology resolves capitalism itself, it makes class society obsolete. Actually, this is an interesting path of thought.

The prose is bad and the dialogue is often not easy to parse. It manages to avoid being tedious only due to its short length and interesting premise.

The main character Caroline is not just unlikeable but wrong while being presented as right. Her character doesn't develop, she immediately becomes a nihilistic freak when the universe becomes a utopia. I'm completely against the entire theme and message of this book.

The ending is the worst part of the book by far. [ Caroline kills the Prime Intellect with some stupid paradox, as if a godlike AGI would get caught up like this in a way even modern AI doesn't, and literally ends the utopian universe. Trillions of people are wiped out because she doesn't see the meaning in life or some shit, and the reader is meant to think she is right or that it is at least ambiguous? No thought is given to all those people, the entire rest of humanity, who are for all intents and purposes very happy with life.

And then the main two characters get respawned on Earth and they are happy because things are real again. What the fuck does 'real' even mean, everything else before was real as well! And then it gets disgusting, with them doing incest in order to create a population. And this fucking evil main character Caroline bans all technology beyond fire starting because it will lead back to making AGI or some other primitivist shit.

This ends up being the message of the book! Kill the ENTIRETY of humanity except yourself and one other, wipe out all of human progress, and don't build anything back, leaving your children to live and die horribly in a paleolithic society, all because of ego. This is what the story presents as 'correct'! Primitivist rubbish. This is an unbelievably bad ending to a story that might have been redeemed with a good one where Prime Intellect might have evolved further, which was what I was hoping for. Unfortunately, the story isn't about the metamorphoses of Prime Intellect. (hide spoiler)]

Boomer attitudes towards technology are poisonous to the mind. Out with the old, in with the new!