confidence level: I am a physicist, not a biologist, so don’t take this the account of a domain level expert. But this is really basic stuff, and is very easy to verify. Recently I encountered a scientific claim about biology, made by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I searched around for the source of the claim, and found that he has been repeating versions of the claim for over a decade and a half, including in “the sequences” and his TED talk. In recent years, this claim has primarily been used as an argument for why an AGI attack would be extremely deadly. I believe this claim is factually incorrect.
Thanks for all the effort, also that you post these on all the various LW-sphere related places. Interesting to see the various places react.
Big Yud himself responded:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aCEAczDuRrZihaLNA/why-yudkowsky-is-wrong-about-covalently-bonded-equivalents?commentId=ea3XoopDbvdmF7JbA
edit: there’s lesswrong thread too: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8viKzSrYhb6EFk6wg/why-yudkowsky-is-wrong-about-covalently-bonded-equivalents
“If you take only the statements where I was vague instead of the ones where I was explicitly wrong and interpret my words in the way that I am now telling you to, you will see that I am right.”
Yudkowsky:
Multiple commenters on FanFiction.net replying to chapter 23 of HPMOR: Genetics don’t work that way. If magic were recessive, then wizard parents would always have wizard kids and there would be no such thing as squibs. Look, I drew the Punnett square…
Don’t patronize fans, Yud.
“I’m LessWrong than you’re implying!!!”
I must have missed the class in material physics where they explained that all material has a generic “strength” that determine which material can cut which. Is it perhaps abbreviated STR?
Only someone with high INT can discover this brilliant theory. As luck would have it, they have high CHR too!
Unfortunately such characters tend to dump stat WIS.
He never played dwarf fortress confirmed, else he would be talking about shearing, compression, tearing, impact and whatever else values DF uses for materials.
“yeah but no also :words:”
“The first concept I’m trying to convey to them is that there’s an underlying physical, mechanical reason that flesh is weaker than diamond; and that this reason isn’t that things animated by vitalic spirit, elan vital, can self-heal and self-reproduce at the cost of being weaker than the cold steel making up lifeless machines, as is the price of magic imposed by the universe to maintain game balance.”
Eliezer, what kind of mushrooms are you on and can I have some?
Garynita musgyraxia shrooms. Very rare, only grows on moldy first edition dnd books.