Framing FOOM: Definition and Stakes

In September of 2023, when OpenAI’s GPT-4 was still a fresh innovation and people were just beginning to wrap their heads around large language models, I was invited to debate Beff Jezos, Bayeslord, and other prominent “effective accelerationists” a.k.a. “e/acc” folks on an X Space.

E/acc’s think building artificial superintelligence is unlikely to disempower humanity and doom the future, because that’d be an illegal exception to the rule that accelerating new technology is always the highest-expected-value for humanity.

As you know, I disagree — I think doom is extremely likely and imminent possibility.

This debate took place 9 months before I started Doom Debates, and was one of the experiences that made me realize debating AI doom was my calling. It’s also the only time Beff Jezos has ever not been too chicken to debate me.

Timestamps

00:00:00 — Liron’s New Intro

00:04:15 — Debate Starts Here: Litigating FOOM

00:06:18 — Defining the Recursive Feedback Loop

00:15:05 — The Two-Part Doomer Thesis

00:26:00 — When Does a Tool Become an Agent?

00:44:02 — The Argument for Convergent Architecture

00:46:20 — Mathematical Objections: Ergodicity and Eigenvalues

01:03:46 — Bayeslord Enters: Why Speed Doesn’t Matter

01:12:40 — Beff Jezos Enters: Physical Priors vs. Internet Data

01:13:49 — The 5% Probability of Doom by GPT-5

01:20:09 — Chaos Theory and Prediction Limits

01:27:56 — Algorithms vs. Hardware Constraints

01:35:20 — Galactic Resources vs. Human Extermination

01:54:13 — The Intelligence Bootstrapping Script Scenario

02:02:13 — The 10-Megabyte AI Virus Debate

02:11:54 — The Nuclear Analogy: Noise Canceling vs. Rubble

02:37:39 — Controlling Intelligence: The Roman Empire Analogy

02:44:53 — Real-World Latency and API Rate Limits

03:03:11 — The Difficulty of the Off Button

03:24:47 — Why Liron is “e/acc at Heart”

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