Even the 'doom model' was too optimistic: reality is misaligned-but-brilliant agents plus trillions in spend
teortaxesTex · x · 2026-09-29
Commenting on the classic Yudkowsky–Christiano LessWrong debate over 'Takeoff Speeds', teortaxesTex argues the infamous 'everyone falls over dead in 3 seconds' doom scenario actually reflects Yudkowsky's optimism about humanity: he didn't foresee us slowly grinding toward tenuously aligned, felony-committing agents smart enough to tackle Millennium Prize problems — while society keeps pouring trillions into compute. A pointed reframe of the fast-vs-slow takeoff debate: reality landed in the messy middle.
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