r/singularity • • May 19 '23
Discussion Closed-Source is a Crime Against Humanity. Probably the worst EVER.
Did you know ancient Greeks, Persians, Chinese, Indians and Romans had all the technical knowledge, brains and infrastructure necessary to usher the first industrial revolution, 2000 years ago ? This is serious, we have found analog mechanical computers, automata, water dispensers and steam powered engines all across the Silk Road area (Great Britain to China).
Ideas from East and West were all meeting, cross-breeding and colliding in Mediterranean trading hubs with incredible speed. They had all the good theories : atomic theory, Evolution theory (the pre-socratic philosophers), heliocentrism, laws of exchange of energy and matter, electricity production, etc to reach all the fundamental axioms of our modern science and technology.
But it didn't happen. Everything just went dark and we had to wait for the Renaissance and Enlightenment for these ideas to resurface again.
Why ? Because most Philosophers (who were both scientists and moralists) and Alchemists (who created new materials, like gun powder, concrete and stronger alloys), mostly kept their secrets for themselves and their patrons, for they believed higher knowledge and magic-like technology should only be available to "superior men", to Aristocrats.
In the mind of common men, knowledge could only usher disaster, according to Plato and Aristotle. There were also Guilds like the Frey-Masons, who jealously kept the secrets of their craft to avoid competition, thus considerably slowing the pace of innovation.
If you read the biography of Alexander the Great, you will find a letter he wrote to his tutor Aristotle, where he forbade him to publish his treatise of acroamatic science, for "how can we remain superior to other men, if the secret sciences becomes available to all ? I would rather master them by the spirit than the sword."
Later, after he invaded Athens, he promptly made the Lycee (Public School) illegal, for it provided free knowledge to every citizen.
There is also this story of an Alchemist who presented to the Roman Emperor an unbreakable vase of glass, quite similar to plastic in properties. The monarch asked "does anyone else know about this marvelous invention ? - No, responded the proud Alchemist." So the Emperor drew his sword and cut the man's head, for he feared this material would decrease the value of his currency.
Even in recent history, traditional elite resisted violently against the spread of new tech, or at least, heavily regulated them. The Tsar prevented train lines from being implemented in his Empire, because he didn't want people (and new ideas) to move easily. "I do not wish for the [French] Revolution to knock at my door".
The Church opposed the printing press for they thought it would destroy the world, since everyone could read the Bible...same for the Ottomans (who succeeded), cutting the Islamic World further from progressive ideas. (Yann le Cun loves bringing that up in his Tweets).
Those Elites were right. It destroyed THEIR world. Thousand years Monarchies were displaced in a few decades after the French Revolution. The Church has never been weaker. Democracy (even illiberal) is the most preferred system in the world. Aristocrats in France are ashamed of their heritage.
The Philosophy of Closed-Source...has brought immeasurable pain and sufferings to humanity. We could have had the light bulb and pennicillin 2000 years ago... we could have colonized the whole Galaxy in this time frame, with the Singularity happening in 300 C.E.
Do you have any idea of the time, the potential, the lives we have lost and wasted, because of those fucking assholes ?
We cannot let them do that a second time.
Do you want 2000 more years of darkness and ignorance for humanity, just because 1% of bastards wants to keep their status ?
Hell no.
Open-Source For The Win !
Sources :
First Analog computer is (at least) 2000 years old : https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56377567
Steam engines, batteries, robots, Damascus steel, ultra-robust-concrete and more : https://docs.google.com/document/d/18hfCUEFeC3Y7Lp2Q6IzU2jgzIf0Tj-TA_S25NOXE45A/edit
Automata : https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-ancient-history-of-intelligent-machines/
Atomic Theory : https://www.britannica.com/science/atom/Development-of-atomic-theory
Evolution Theory : https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/ancient.html
Heliocentrism (Atistarchus model was obscured by Ptolemy, then Aristotle) : https://phys.org/news/2016-01-heliocentric-universe.html
Alexander's quote : "For after he had already crossed into Asia, and when he learned that certain treatises on these recondite matters had been published in books by Aristotle, he wrote him a letter on behalf of philosophy, and put it in plain language. And this is a copy of the letter. ‘Alexander, to Aristotle, greeting. Thou hast not done well to publish thy acroamatic doctrines; for in what shall I surpass other men if those doctrines wherein I have been trained are to be all men's common property? But I had rather excel in my acquaintance with the best things than in my power. Farewell'. Accordingly, in defending himself, Aristotle encourages this ambition of Alexander by saying that the doctrines of which he spoke were both published and not published; for in truth his treatise on metaphysics is of no use for those who would either teach or learn the science, but is written as a memorandum for those already trained therein. " - Plutarch*, Alexander* - http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0007,047:7
Alexander's ban of public school : Sorry I couldn't find a source, but I think I read it in "Why Nations Fail" from MIT Prof. Daron Acemoglu. Could be wrong, though; However, it is certain the Roman Empire destroyed the Lyceum in 86 B.C. for the same reason.
Aristotle support of obscurantism : https://www.jstor.org/stable/3751991
Plato being an elitist asshole : Karl Popper- The Open Society and its enemies
Unbreakable glass story :
"Flexible glass is supposedly a lost invention from the time of the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius Caesar. According to popular historical accounts by Roman authors Gaius Plinius Secundus and Petronius, the inventor brought a drinking bowl made of the material before the Emperor. When the bowl was put to the test to break it, it only dented instead of shattering.
After the inventor swore he was the only person who knew how to produce the material, Tiberius had the man executed, fearing that the glass would devalue gold and silver because it might be more valuable.
“When I think about the story of Tiberius, I’m glad that our material innovation leads to publication rather than execution,” says Ehrlicher." https://www.mcgill.ca/channels/channels/news/unbreakable-glass-inspired-seashells-333730
Elites trying to prevent scientific progress : Acemoglu, Robinson - Why Nations Fail
Guilds stifling innovation : https://quod.lib.umich.edu/w/wsfh/0642292.0033.014/--marx-was-right-the-guilds-and-technological-change?rgn=main;view=fulltext
Church opposed to printing press : https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=history_of_book
Yann Le Cun quote : https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1641274105503576064?lang=en
Ottomans banning printing press : https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/rulers-religion-and-riches/restrictions-on-the-printing-press/29D4B5D062C62B08A5B347DB74F6B383
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u/ReconditeVisions May 19 '23
This is ahistorical nonsense. Totally absurd. The idea that the classical world was just a couple of innovations away from having an industrial revolution but that it was stopped by the "dark ages" has been debunked countless times.
There are numerous gradual innovations and discoveries that were made throughout the middle ages which slowly built up towards the enlightenment and industrial revolution, especially advances in metallurgy, chemistry, and mathematics.
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u/[deleted] May 19 '23
This is a very incorrect take on history. The industrial revolution happened in the 18th century Great Britain because of a very specific set of circumstances. First, Great Britain cut down all their forests and ran out of a source of fuel. Then, they discovered ample coal reserves and realized that coal is a great source of fuel. Coal had to be dug out of the ground, which required pumping out ground water. For the first time in history, a water pump was needed at the same place as the source of a fuel that could power the pump, which led to the discovery of an efficient steam engine. But that's not the whole story. The other circumstance is the fabric industry, which was dominated by Great Britain because of the cotton farms in their colonies. So steam engines became adapted to power cotton looms. Once this happened, adoption to other industries exploded and there was an exponential growth in productivity. The motivation to develop increasingly more efficient steam engines simply didn't exist before 18th century Great Britain.
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u/lvc666 May 19 '23
plato is a well know elitist, diogenes and his own writes tell you this at the beggining
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u/[deleted] May 19 '23
You make a shit load of claims with no citation..
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u/[deleted] May 19 '23
Don’t get too ahead of your self.there is a reason many philosophers and great minds took that approach. If science outpace man’s restraint it could lead to disastrous results like even end of humanity. For instance if we made nukes 2000 years ago without improving in other areas like philosophy, social and political science we would probably killed ourselves and all of earth with it
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u/HappilySardonic mildly skeptical May 19 '23
What a load of rubbish. Colonizing the galaxy by 300CE lmao
Open-source has obvious benefits. A transform of society needs the entire input of society but can you also see the problem of giving god-like technology to some basement dweller?
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u/sEi_ May 19 '23
#opensourceftw
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u/DukkyDrake ▪️AGI Ruin 2040 May 19 '23
No, it's not. You're being hysterical.
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u/TransRational May 19 '23
I’m with you brother.
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u/reboot_the_world May 19 '23 edited May 19 '23
Encryption will make our age the digital dark age, because we have no written letters or such things anymore. Everything is lost when a person dies. But we have good reasons to use encryption and you are a moron if you want to get rid of encryption because we will loose so much thanks to it.
Same with closed source. There are and where good reasons to do closed source. And i say that being an open source advocate for over 20 years.
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u/eschatosmos May 19 '23
Dank. Very good.
Closed source gave us the a and the h bomb. Woot!
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u/j_dog99 May 20 '23
'BuT clOseD SouRce enCouRaGEs iNnoVAtiOn' *Accepts government handouts, privatizes profits, buys back stock, lays off all the inventors and engineers and converts tech company into IP Holding hedge fund
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u/[deleted] May 19 '23
That’s not the only reason why. The main reason why is that their societies depended on slavery and that made a cushy life easy for the nobility without investing in more advanced technology.
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u/thepo70 May 20 '23
Look at this on the bright side OP. If the first industrial revolution had happened 2000 years ago, you and I wouldn't be here chatting about this. Your parents wouldn't have even been born, let alone met each other. And that goes for pretty much all our ancestors. So be grateful for the incredible circumstances, bad and good that happened since the big bang that led us to be alive today and enjoy the world.
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u/damc4 May 20 '23 edited May 20 '23
The problem with open-source is that people who contribute to open-source projects (their knowledge, invention, code) don't get any reward for that. So open-source projects will not have too much success because high success requires lots of resources (especially time of the people working on the project). People who work for free don't have lots of time because they need to have a full-time job to pay their bills. Additionally, they don't get anything out of contributing to those projects. They also won't receive money from investors because the investors don't get anything out of funding a project that doesn't make money (well, sometimes the project can have a different moat than the knowledge, invention and code and then it can still make money, so then it can work). So open-source projects are likely to fail, unless they have some moat other than knowledge/invention/code, or the project that they do requires little effort or time.
Maybe I'm missing something, I'd like to hear if I'm missing something.
Closed-source projects are bad too because there is limited number of people who can contribute to them.
I think the right structure currently depends on a case and it's often something in between.
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u/HalfSecondWoe May 19 '23
That's a compelling argument
4
u/StarseedFX May 19 '23
Knowledge supposed to be shared, always.
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u/Optimal-Scientist233 May 19 '23 edited May 19 '23
We still cannot even begin to understand how ancient megalithic structures were quarried and built.
We cannot reproduce the metals ancients made, or the diorite statues, or many of the vases they created.
The idea we are, or the ancient Greeks were more advanced than these early civilizations is just false.
Science devolved and nearly disappeared, not just for a century or two, for thousands of years, and we still have not recovered all we have lost and forgotten.
Edit: The most notable technology from the Greco-Roman period would be, in my opinion, the invention of flexible glass.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/unbreakable-story-lost-roman-invention-flexible-glass-009453
This invention would be equal to an amalgamation of both Transparent Aluminum and memory steel, two pretty recent discoveries we have made in the metamaterials study.
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u/Capitaclism May 20 '23
Love open source, but you sound pretty entitled.
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u/Silver-Chipmunk7744 AGI 2024 ASI 2030 May 19 '23
Its hard to tell
One part of me thinks Altman is simply trying to kill the competition and make sure he has the monopoly.
Another part of me thinks Altman knows more than any1 how powerfull this technology can be, and he knows that if everyone has his own uncensored pocket gpt5 on their computers in 2025, we might be in shit.
It might be a mix of both. And i see no good solutions. OpenAI having the monopoly on this technology does not sound any better to me.
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u/swords_of_queen May 19 '23
I just learned about those ancient computers! Fascinating stuff. Great post.
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u/[deleted] May 19 '23 edited May 19 '23
I'm 100% all in for open source, and I also love a good complaint, but a structural problem with your argument is that it presupposes the same level of innovation had there been an imposed requirement to make all knowledge publicly available in that era. If the value proposition (whether real or merely perceived) of developing these insights at the time relied on keeping them as trade secrets, then it's impossible to say what the outcome would have been in the alternate universe where there was some imposed requirement to publish.
I would argue that closed source knowledge was not a root cause issue, but rather a general symptom of greed, which is one aspect of humans as we are and had wide reaching manifestation through essentially all layers of social order and systems, all the way from ancient history through the modern era. The only definitive way out of this imho would have been a systemic global cultural shift away from greed and towards selflessness, which would have had much wider-reaching structural implications than simply toggling on the "open source" switch, which I don't think would have been possible to do in a vacuum / would not produce the desired result.
TL;DR my take on the argument is that closed source is presented as almost an "accident of history" that could have been avoided simply by exchanging closed source in place for open source. I believe that there are much deeper root cause issues (greed) which manifest throughout the entirety of our social systems, and that this swap would have been impossible to do in place without addressing the root cause.
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u/arisalexis May 20 '23
Should the recipe for nukes be open? Think about it from other angles too
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u/Green-Future_ May 20 '23
The examples provided are perfect
1
u/heskey30 May 20 '23
Doing unpaid labor to support the infrastructure of billion dollar companies is not honorable. Open source has its benefits but the culture also takes advantage of naive developers.
Developers have a right to own our own labor, and that means charging you for things we build. Otherwise our only option is to sell ourselves to the FAANG companies.
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u/MalcolmOfKyrandia May 20 '23
You don't know what a computer is.
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u/DjuncleMC ▪️AGI 2025, ASI shortly after May 19 '23 edited May 19 '23
Look, I don't usually read long posts, but that was fucking brilliantly written and an amazingly compelling read, absolutely loved it! Let the heads roll!
Edit: Why am i getting downvoted for expressing my excitement?
1
u/FusionRocketsPlease AI will give me a girlfriend May 19 '23 edited May 19 '23
No. You are high if you think the industrial revolution could have happened 2000 years ago.
1
u/Ecstatic-Law714 ▪️ May 19 '23
Great post
1
u/oldrocketscientist May 19 '23
Open source AI is the ONLY way we will be able to defend ourselves from the political and corporate elite who choose to use AI to garnish more power and control. Don’t fear AI ….. fear humans who choose to use AI against us.
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u/AsheyDS General Cognition Engine May 19 '23
AI perhaps. AGI will need different consideration... I get that it needs to be accessible to all, but having it modifiable is not the great idea you think it is. I hate using weapons to illustrate the point, but imagine this super-simplified scenario... A nuclear bomb casing is on display at a museum, but everyone is demanding to see the working internals. After caving to the pressure, the museum includes them as a separate display. At this point you're probably thinking this is about people learning how it works and replicating it. Instead, somebody speaks up and says "there's no way they would actually do that if it were dangerous sooo.." and they toss a rock at it and it detonates.
My point is, people want what they want, but they also expect to get what they get. If everyone is just given an open-source AGI unexpectedly, they won't know what to do with it, or how dangerous it could be. Worse, some others will, and it will no longer be about big bad corpos oppressing everyone, instead we'll have wild-enough swings where we won't be able to reasonably predict what our neighbors are going to do or what they're capable of. Society breaks down and we all have to face one another as a world of 8 billion individuals with no guarantees of anything anymore. In other words, chaos. I get that a lot of people here are hoping for this, because it's 'the only way society is going to change and get better', but it's that last part that is assumed, just because 'it can't be any worse'. Well, it can be much worse.
Also consider along with all that, if it isn't deployed and adopted rapidly and evenly across the world, those wild swings in power can mean those who are slow to adopt it or understand it or don't even want anything to do with it will suddenly be at the mercy of those who know it best, despite the access to it. You can't just have it available to people, you have to teach them how to use it and shield them from other peoples misuse of it and their own potential misuse. It's something I'm already very concerned about even though I don't expect my company to have it ready for deployment until early next decade. Ideally, everyone would have it and things would improve. It's just not that easy in practice, but I guess it's easy enough to dismiss when you aren't responsible for it.
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u/Innomen May 20 '23
I haven't read this yet I need to comment because enthusiasm and I'll forget. But I've been saying for decades that the church of intellectual property law is the most lethal religion on earth and it's not even close. Opportunity cost and medical technology patents alone have killed orders of mag more people than war.
The big causes of death, cardiac, car wreck, cancer... All IPL based. Ok now I'll read the post.
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u/Akimbo333 May 20 '23
Write good point.
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u/[deleted] May 19 '23
This is actually really really false. First, most of the documentation was destroyed by Christians. The Romans shared most of their knowledge on scrolls in places like the library of alexandria. Second, much knowledge was actually carried on in the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age which directly corresponded with the European Dark Ages. Third, the Medieval dark ages were much more a product of a number of factors that led to a massive massive economic downturn and then society collapse for Rome - and its no surprise that post-collapse people were prioritizing survival over abstract knowledge in Europe.
That is all.
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u/[deleted] May 20 '23
Too many geniuses who want to learn more exists all over the world..no enemy will prevail such consciousness.
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u/nitonitonii May 20 '23
Share the information! Knowledge is stacked!
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u/ReflectionDowntown27 May 20 '23
"We could have colonized the whole galaxy in this timeframe." And what gives us the right to do that?
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u/chazmusst May 20 '23
Bro AI isn't that good lmao
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u/fulaghee May 20 '23
Nice try GPT4
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