There are guests at the dinner

friends at the party

he laughs when he says

almost drove past the church that day

there’s a list in his head

a repertoire

he talks about his acid years

man I was crazy

took off my clothes

threw ‘em all in the creek

his kayaking days

I paddled the Chattooga

that’s the one in “Deliverance”

a Class Five river

I’m an expert of course

and she sits beside him

he calls her his lady

she smiles when he says

almost drove past the church that day

and later at home

the friends at the party

the guests at the dinner

will ask one another

why he thought that was funny

did you see the look on her face

they will say

and she lies beside him

at night in their bed

grinding her teeth

working her jaw

the…

- not only forward but back
- not only then but now
- not only mine but yours
- not only ours but theirs
- male and female and beyond and before male and female
- large and small
- science and religion
- artificial and natural
- every concrete detail, every abstract pattern
- all perspectives…

Instrumental convergence is the idea that agents, of whatever type, will have some predictable goals. This is mostly talked about in the area of AI safety, but will also apply to aliens, your neighbor Shirley, corporations, and anything else that acts like an agent.

As noted through thought experiments like the paperclip maximizer and philosophical ponderings such as the orthogonality thesis, being very smart, very powerful, or very capable does not particularly suggest that an…