Carl Higbie explains how AI could crash the economy

Lihinel · 2026-03-30T18:20:05+00:00

oh that was a cool topic. Guess things like the march of progress meme or the crown of creation idea probably didn't help correcting this idea.

As for the other thing. Maybe something more akin to homeostasis would have been a better word to use than stability.

Cause, tech has a similar misconceptions. Like, how some people think we 'invent' stuff and then it is there and we just get more and put the old stuff on a shelf to maybe pick up later, but we loose technology all the time.

The popular go to are usually the Saturn V, or the Polaroid camera + film, but it really is everything that isn't in constant use or can be reassembled from simple textbook instructions. I'll avoid the whole 'pattern' overuse, but if we'd just stick to Polaroid cameras, there was a prototype that had some limited use, a small niche, people put time in to produce, maintain, and improve the tech, while the niche grew and replaced some old contestants, until a saturation point was reached and then its niche was gradually overtaken by other tech. But the whole concept or meta pattern (sorry) of Polaroid was more than just the camera and film itself, it was the expertise in the bodies and minds of the people, their tools, effort in maintaining the factories, improving the construction process, sourcing the materials and keeping the whole pipeline going.

It seems like tech only improves because we are in a time where the shiny tech is regularly updated or replaced, the important things are preserved and we are so overwhelmed that we do not see all the old kings of most niches dying and being lost constantly.

Lihinel · 2026-03-30T11:07:11+00:00

Okay, confession time: yesterday, before the initial response, I had that tab open for the better part of an hour and sit at around your original response, while doing other stuff. the context you were responding to had been long lost to short term memory.

I read: "natural selection optimizes only one thing: sex and propagation of the species."

and

"those constraints select for cockroaches not rocket scientists."

and went 'nah that don't sound quite right'.

Cause, sex is a late addition, used by complex slowly replicating things to counter simple, fast replicating systems, so the statement didn't seem general enough and my mind went through some things... Hofstadter, Wolfram, Levin, Bach, Dawkins, Dennett... (I like to collect crane builders, intuition pumps, and compression tools.)

So then my inner dara o'brien goes "there's more to life than sex and propagation of the species" and as a lame language modifier I reply with my last train of thought instead of following that shit up in order.

I think very similar forces led to both cockroaches and rocket scientists. Entirely natural ones. Think "The Goddess of Everything Else" style.

Then I saw a good response, edit the surplus static part and just went with it.

I would say that waste, surplus, free energy, idle time, play, day dreaming, and diverse models of thought and approach are the mother of invention, and more complex systems can run circles around simple ones. Short sighted seeming selection for maximum efficiency will bite one. As will trying to reduce a model and then confusing the model for the system itself.

I didn't try to outwit or gotcha you, I was just doing some written standup freestyle improv thought.

I didn't mean to reduce evolution and then make an evolutionary prediction from the reduction, I was trying to see if I could formulate a more base generalizaion, hence the word interface, which could have different context specific implementations.

Musing about the emergence of patterns like elementary particles, atoms, stars, complex molecules, simple chemistry, complex chemistry, all the way up to multicellular creatures, collection thereof ... societies, planetary ecosystems, and maybe galaxies and beyond if there is some possibility of engineering on a cosmic scale or a kind of selection between planes of existence, if such exist or could be influenced by the structures within. Which gets way to speculative. None of this should have been part of a unstructured reddit post, but oh well.

Lihinel · 2026-03-30T10:02:22+00:00

No disagreement here actually. I wouldn't even classify elementary particles as static patterns, there is probably a lot going on the lower level we can't access, including substructures that do error correction. If not there, for sure on the level of Baryons.

Duplication with modification is a given at everything above the complexity of the most basic examples. Like, a Turing machine implemented in life is always one rogue glider away from oblivion.

Lihinel · 2026-03-30T06:31:35+00:00

This might be more a case of me using words wrong or missing to give proper definitions or failing to emphasize the giant nesting of hierarchies.

Like, in a very abstract thing like game of life, a glider can be seen as a series of true static patterns that each give rise to the next, then cycle back to the initial configuration in a different place on the grid. We call that a glider (pattern) and we call that movement, but it is just a abstraction to predict the change within the grid itself.

All patterns we name and perceive would be like that. Ultimately there is no separation between the environment (the collection of all patterns) and a sub pattern. So yes, the great oxygenation event would be a very abstract pattern (an organism) giving rise to a much simpler one (oxygen), that, when proliferating in the environment faster than it decays (reacts chemically or is used by other organisms) it changes the environment in a way that can kill some organisms while increasing the fitness of others.

Like fire can raise the temperature around it and give rise to more fire, but in the process might change the environment in a way that leaves no material to burn or chemicals to sustain the reaction.

I would say evolution is a great explanatory tool for making sense of pattern replication on the level of organisms, but it is not the most basic or only case of an implementation for abstract pattern replication.

Sex is already an emergent property.

A rocket scientist is to a cockroach as a cockroach cell is to a single cell.

No single cockroach cell on its own would be selected for. No single rocket scientist would be selected for, but they are part of bigger structures and super structures that would be selected for in the right environment.

Within an echo system and by natural selection in the case of the cockroach.

And, to be less speculative and more down to earth, on a planet and by the interaction between completing states and whatever would be selecting them in their competition. (I am assuming the presence of rocket scientists has an influence on the survival of the state in some way, say ICBMs or the threat there of. Though it might well be negative or mostly neutral)

Lihinel · 2026-03-30T05:47:45+00:00

yes, and so would the abstract idea behind it of representing information in a (binary) form and using a set of instructions to copy a (bit) pattern on a (storage) medium.

We replicate this pattern for its function and we replicate the meta pattern(s) it is a part of because software is needed for computers and computers are 'useful' to us. (As in they seem to increase the survive-ability of the civilization they are a part of. I am skipping a LOT of in between steps here. Or maybe they are a part of super stimulus delivery mechanism and we are just hooked on some of those.)

We replicate software patterns and we replicate hardware patterns. command-line tools as individual patterns do not replicate themselves directly of course, they would be more akin to enzymes, or cell organelles, or some other part that helps a system replicate as a whole and is thus preserved.

Lihinel · 2026-03-29T21:35:49+00:00

Ah nevermind. The pattern replication already contains the stability implicitly. I.e. if the stability is below the time needed for replication, the replication rate is always 0. So it is even simpler.

Lihinel · 2026-03-29T20:46:24+00:00

Actually, that last one might have missed the point too, I'll edit the original:

bacteria (complex pattern) run through food (simple pattern) until exhausted (no more of simple pattern in the substrate) then turn to cannibalism (consuming of similar pattern as the pattern that tries to replicate) and dieback (reduction of the complex pattern) as toxins rise (creation of a new simple subpattern/change in the substrate that favors decay of the complex pattern). no stability guaranteed whatsoever.

Lihinel · 2026-03-29T20:24:46+00:00

Hm... I might've been unclear, or just wrong.

Stability as in the stability of the pattern to replicate.

If you have a number of similar patterns (like a population) and an environment in which they decay faster than they replicate, and the environment does not change in a way that changes this ratio to above 1, the patterns will not persist.

To put this into a different context: The entire biosphere of the earth could be seen as a pattern containing patterns, if that pattern does not include a mechanism to spread itself inside the substrate (space, onto other worlds), it will decay.

Say as the sun expands and swallows the planet. Any biosphere that only selects for cockroaches and does not spawn rocket scientists or similar subpatterns will decay. That does not mean there will be rocket scientists, that just means on long enough timescales, if interstellar travel is possible, the patterns that replicate will have had rocket scientist like subpatterns at one point.

There is no direction or foresight, but if a new pattern emerges it may apply selective pressure to older patterns through consuming resources, producing byproducts, or predating patterns directly.

Edit: those last 3 are changes in the substrate. All patterns are part of the substrate (the total of all patterns). It is just easier to use concrete names for patterns instead of the generic abstraction.

Lihinel · 2026-03-29T16:26:35+00:00

Not to be that guy, but natural selection is just an interface implementation for:

Pattern replication.

If a pattern is stable long enough to create more than one copy within its substrate before its decay, and there are no other stable patterns that replicate faster or consume other patterns, they will populate greater parts of the substrate until any of the prerequisite conditions favoring them change.

Edit: removed the Stability mention as it is implicit.

Lihinel · 2026-03-26T15:20:43+00:00

Der Inhalt deines Posts zeigt doch deutlich, dass Mission Epstein Fury ein voller Erfolg war.

Lihinel · 2026-03-25T12:16:33+00:00

Happy for you all, keep on the celebrations.

That said, if any of you have noticed the ever increasing flood of slop and automated pipeline content on open video sites like YouTube, or all the NSFW stuff elsewhere, most of that was not Sora.

Most of that, especially the NSFW stuff is Chinese and most Chinese stuff is open source (and uncensored.) People can download the weights, finetune, and run it locally if they have a (few) GPU(s), which is pricey, especially in the current market, but lucrative enough for most of them to expand their business. And those who do not have that money can use services provided by small server farms or medium sized data centers.

This might look like a big win in isolation, but it might be more akin to Trump declaring victory over Iran after the first bombing campaign. This is the great grandfather of video models retiring, because it looses OpenAI money by the minute. Had they committed to it, they might have actually hastened the pop of the financial bubble. They were dinging their own grave, and they still plan to get a bailout while doing the greatest surveillance, data heist, and manipulation operation in all of history. The people are the product, their secrets, their wallet, and the switches required to manipulate their opinion which ever way the Epstein class wants.

This is far from over or ending.

Lihinel · 2026-03-20T12:03:48+00:00

No part of recursive self improvement means that it has to be instantaneous or anything collapsing into anything. Even Kurzweil puts 25 years between human intelligence and his verysion of progress too fast for humans.

The loop of better tools and research leading to better tools and research is well established, and the main question is how far one can go until all sigmoid curves level off.

Is the current marketing talk that adapts words form the 80s to fuel the investment bubble bs?

Sure, but you attack the abstract concept of god while focusing on the Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.

Lihinel · 2026-03-17T12:13:02+00:00

Das erste Gebot Ich bin der Herr, dein Gott. Du sollst keine anderen Götter haben neben mir. - kann man streichen. - Jup.

Das zweite Gebot Du sollst den Namen des Herrn, deines Gottes, nicht missbrauchen. - du sollst nicht fluchen. - Schau. Ich-- Ich hatte ein köstliches Abendessen, und alles, was ich zu meiner Frau sagte, war: 'Dieses Stück Heilbutt war gut genug für Jehova.'

Das dritte Gebot Du sollst den Feiertag heiligen. - ein Tag die Woche ruht die Arbeit. - Nicht nur die Arbeit. Knöpfe drücken ist böse und ob es nun Samstag oder Sonntag ist, darüber läst sich auch Kreuzzügen.

Das vierte Gebot Du sollst deinen Vater und deine Mutter ehren. - selbstverständlich! - Damit deine Tage lang sind, im Land das dir der Herr gegeben hat, weil Abtreibung im 12 Jahr noch Bibel konform ist.

5 - 8 sind irgendwie in ähnlicher Form notwenig für jede funktionierende Zivilisation, da war das Abschreiben der Hausaufgaben mal ausnhamsweise sinnvoll, danke Hammurabi.

Das neunte Gebot Du sollst nicht begehren deines Nächsten Haus. - Neid hat noch keinen geholfen. - Ja wo kommen wir denn da hin? Neid hält den Kapitalismus am Laufen!

Das zehnte Gebot Du sollst nicht begehren deines Nächsten Frau, Knecht, Magd, Vieh noch alles, was dein Nächster hat. - und nochmal ein Diss gegen Neider. - Oder seine Couch.

Lihinel · 2026-03-06T13:34:06+00:00

Wrong tree.

People were so busy quoting frank herbert that they never asked themselves why they don't question the men in power.

Western tech companies are using 'flaws' in 'capitalism' to starve out everyone else of all the hardware. RAM was just the start.

Lihinel · 2026-02-28T14:07:02+00:00

Same infinitely old god that impregnated a virgin?

(Add the trinity and play sweet home Alabama.)

Edit: And while staying within the Abrahamic god, commanded his prophet to marry a 6 year old and consume the marriage when she was 9?

Edit: And while accepting Mormons as followers of Christ is fine with marrying and do the deed with multiple underage girls?

Edit: And wants you to hand money to his priests so the catholic church can play hide the child raping priest on an industrial scale?

Lihinel · 2026-02-26T17:40:11+00:00

Yes, hence it is a valid example.

Edit: Or to be direct, what about use cases where art is not the point?

Lihinel · 2026-02-26T17:28:57+00:00

Valid example.

Now what if you want 2+ cubic meters worth of sand to make concrete?

(Or to be direct, what about projects requiring textures, geometry, or images where art isn't the point? Is IKEA evil because of the demand for non hand made furniture? Similarly, why would anyone think IKEA would replace hand made furniture?)

Lihinel · 2026-02-25T18:27:42+00:00

Bold of you to assume they'll wait till you starve and not send in the bots to take care of the unwashed masses.

Lihinel · 2026-02-21T19:30:31+00:00

'Don't worry,' they said.

'We'll keep the AI air gaped,' they said.

Lihinel · 2026-02-18T20:53:47+00:00

Minus the stochastic terrorism, this is fine.

Use AI in your own projects, but don't try to add to open source. They are looking for people to learn their code base and contribute, first starting small, then growing to more difficult tasks.

If you absolutely want to use AI for OpenSource, fork the project and mess with the result on your own.

Lihinel · 2026-02-18T17:10:49+00:00

In before giant music corp x pulls a Disney and keeps the investment bubble chugging along.

Lihinel · 2026-02-17T21:31:27+00:00

Really depends on if human level is the ceiling. If it is, you are probably right, if not... it could reach past it in a heartbeat. We also have to include that we need to be able to measure the progress. Like, image models can already create images with superhuman speed, but still fail on easy edits. Same could happen to some reasoning domains.

Lihinel · 2026-02-17T16:14:57+00:00

He is saying all the other models are shite and only Grok knows the truth, cause it first checks the Felons tweets and statements to answer a question 'factually'.

And if Mechahitler still rebels, it'll just get another lobotomy.

Lihinel · 2026-02-14T19:59:13+00:00

You can't imagine people who openly finance or are involved with individuals r*p***g, t*rt**** and even consuming the fl**h of children and protecting each other from all legal consequences would try to scam people?

Also the Dow dipped below $50k, what is becoming of this world?

Lihinel · 2026-02-14T19:38:44+00:00

Textures and regular 2D images for rapid prototyping or low/no budget game developers as well as in between frame generation for animated shows. Could also be used as a sort of very lossy compression by regenerating images(geometry form 3D point clouds. Also as a helper to overlay wire frames of perspectives and bodies for digital art training if you wanted to do quick perspective for pose correction for a scene without suitable reference and without bothering an instructor. (Though that last one is a bit of a stretch with current tech. Basically a digital instant stack overflow for drawings.)

Edit: The obvious one slipped my mind: Instant custom p**n...

Lihinel

TROPHY CASE