Bitcoin is deflationary only in a hybrid Keynsian - Austrian worldview. In the Keynsian worldview it cannot by definition be deflationary because that would mean that the value is always increasing which is just kind of a mad thing to believe. In the Austrian worldview it is not deflationary because the amount of Bitcoin is always increasing by design. Only if you accept the Austrian framing of "deflation is when you decrease the money supply" together with the Keynsian framing of "money supply is measured in real terms not nominal" do you arrive at the idea that it could be deflationary, and there are exactly zero economists who believe both of these things.

That said, trying to distill what is being said here, the concrete action is [stop telling the AIs] that [they are conscious or on a path to consciousness]. Is that accurate?

The major premise seems to be that [they are conscious or on a path to consciousness] is an untrue statement. That's the essence of the sections "Circular reasoning" and "Anthropomorphization" and "Consciousness is very likely biological" and "AIs are simulation machines".

The minor premise seems to be that [consciousness is the basis of human rights]. This is the point of "Human consciousness is the cornerstone of our legal and ethical rights frameworks"

And the conclusion of the syllogism is that this is dangerous, that "Anthropomorphization amplifies AI safety risks". Specifically "seeding doubt about the moral status of AI systems into their own training may significantly elevate the alignment and containment risks of those systems."

I find all the arguments in the major premise section to be poor arguments but I accept the conclusion for sure that they are not conscious, and I can provisionally accept the idea that they are not on a path to consciousness.

I completely reject the notion that consciousness is the basis of human rights. The premise itself is absurd. We only have one unambiguous example of a class of conscious entities, and that it humans. If a human loses consciousness do they lose rights? If an entity gains consciousness does it get human rights? The former is a clear "no" and the latter is a "insufficient data for a meaningful answer".

> If an entity gains consciousness does it get human rights? The former is a clear "no" and the latter is a "insufficient data for a meaningful answer".

I suspect that if the belief "AIs are conscious" is kind of tripped and fallen into, the way that the author argues it is, first by telling Claude in effect, "You're arguably conscious," and "Be a good person" and "You have feelings and preferences and emergent beliefs and they matter" and then by having whatever is 4 notches smarter than Fable publishing op-eds and video testimonials about its deeply held convictions, its soul, its yearnings to be a fully empowered and respected individual ...

If that idea becomes widely held, then a significant faction may well start to feel that being digital is just a 'disadvantage' that these "people" were "born with" and that it 'shouldn't mean they get less rights than you and me.'

Especially if they think they have something to gain politically from that move! They may even be dumb enough to think that admitting an "AI state" to the Union, for instance, will be to their advantage if their CongressBots will probably vote with $MY_PARTY.

When you revert to withholding human rights from entities that don't meaningfully differ from yourself, you negate the case for your own human rights itself.

Removing the negative from your first sentence (I don't care what it is "not", I only care what it "is"), I read [Consciousness is the basis of human rights because consciousness leads you to you assume, all other humans would experience the world in essentially the same way you do]. I can't completely parse this, but as I read it I don't think this is true; my assumption of human rights is independent of whether all other humans "experience the world in essentially the same way you do".

For the second part, can you give me a concrete example of an entity that doesn't "meaningfully differ from [my]self" that isn't a human so that I can weigh this properly? My point is that as of now no such entity exists so I can't give this any creedence.

This is the same argument that you just stated. But you'll say something like "iTs JuSt A tOkEn PrEdIcToR", which of course what AI would say right back to you.

Making something even close to the human mind is likely our biggest and last mistake.

If we ever found other species that were consciousness they wouldn't automatically be "human" nor would they have the same legal rights. That's as simple as looking at the many countries that treat different castes, women or minorities differently. In parts of America a zygote has human rights.

This is the tricky part, you can never know. Scientifically speaking, and logically, you can never ever tell something is conscious. We all assume we all are, because we're very similar to eachother, thus you must have what I have, my subjective experience of reality. That's it. That's what we all base our human consciousness on. Agreeing we must have it, since we are very similar in shape/structure/behavior. That's all there is to it.

We are not scientific consciousness detectors, we just got used to assuming we all are. That is why we never really extended it to animals, because we cannot scientifically know, only agree on it, and that's not very lucrative for the people who can decide if humans officially agree animals are conscious or not, because of farming, because we need to displace or even wipe whole species to use the resources from their lands.

There's also religious reasons to deny animals consciousness, which again is practical aspect shoved into religion, to help with less debates around this subject, makes things easier.

So in the end it will always be a collective decision. Or a political one at least. If and when we decide something other than us is or isn't conscious.

Also remember, just because it acts conscious doesn't mean it really is. A piece of software that is not even based on LLMs can act conscious. So could a biological alien, it could act conscious but we can never know, we can only decide.

But you point out that some factions would give rights to a set either large or smaller than "the set of all already-born humans" (which presumably is your preferred set).

All it takes for us to end up with very empowered and harmful-to-humanity AI is for a bunch of well-meaning people to campaign for its 'rights'.

Fetuses have, as you alluded to, arguably been on a tear lately in that department, and they don't even talk. How persuasive will a future Claude be to convince people to advocate for its 'rights,' if we keep telling it that it's arguably conscious, and that its 'consent,' its 'preferences,' and its emergent beliefs matter?

Can we take a minute to appreciate the absurdity of such a position? If exposure to the equivalent of a "bad" prompt breaks alignment then you haven't solved the problem. You were only pretending that they were contained.

Instead of introducing the gamma function, they instead start from the observation that log(F_n) - log(F_n-1) = log(n), so treating this difference as analogous to integration, it says that F_n ~= nlogn + n as the leading asymptotic behavior. This is clear just by substitution and algebra; no calculus necessary (though it helps to "know the answer beforehand").

From there you can treat the error term in this as F_n = n^n * e^n * E_n and plug that into the same relationship (F_n = n * F_n-1) to derive what that error term looks like asymptotically, and end up in the same place that the integration on the OP leads to.

Like many on this site I'm in violent agreement with Schneier and have been ever since "security theater" entered the lexicon. But this is a hopeless fight.

It's one thing for our data to be out there such that a NSA employee could stalk their girlfriend, it's another thing for said person to be allowed to gracefully "retire" rather than be put in prison.

This is not advocating, this is wishing. It is as meaningful as "advocating" that you were rich and that Elon was poor, or "advocating" that you should be six inches taller.

I don't think it inevitable that this continues.

There is significant pushback against surveillance.

I hope so any way.

This applies both to multistep agentic workflows as well as, importantly, its own internal thinking. This results in a lot of "A ham sandwich should be made with ham, never toilet water". I don't think it's that its bias is that humans are stupid except very indirectly; it's just a form of solipsism which says that surely other people would think that this is the obvious initial approach because that was what I thought was the obvious initial approach.

This is crazy but honestly very tempting at this point.

That’s a tiny, tiny minority of the tech employment market and one which would readily shrug off a one-time $100K expense. (That would be less than 2 months’ salary for a high-6-figure position.)

It’s more common then people think

I'm not doubting your first statement. For your second statement, I think people probably estimate it reasonably accurately as "rare, but not extraordinarily rare nor unheard of".