They’re catching on that “big if true” is being recognized to mean “this is bullshit” so are trying to compensate by using more words.

Oh hey, did I ever actually post here? No? Whoops.

I blame the ghosts in between the machines.

I mean, the rationalist conception of God and the evangelical conception of AI are basically the same: hypothetically omnipotent and omnibenevolent forces that will nonetheless subject everyone to the most twisted tortures that their imaginations can invent unless appeased through a specific series of actions that just happen to involve a lot of money ending up with the leading figures of the church.

I mean yeah, it kind of is. Unfortunately when folks impersonate the clueless in bad faith the people who legitimately don’t know stuff tend to get caught in the crossfire, and I say this as someone who is frequently clueless.

Best advice I can offer is to develop a thick skin about it and be willing to put the work in if someone helps you find the keywords to look up. The more of the background you can find yourself the better equipped you’ll be to ask specific questions that are less likely to be suspected for JAQing us around.

I trust that at this point we’ve all heard about Elon’s bizarre sockpuppet accounts?

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-musk-defamation-lawsuit-fact-check-twitter-burner-accounts-1235000968/

Which is kind of funny to me because compared to games like CK2 that focus on a specific part of history Civ’s application of a single set of unified mechanics to the whole of human history ends up creating a kind of state realism that is not without political implications of its own. Like, Civilization is a series in which the entirety of human history is described in terms of a competition with explicit winners and losers between entities with strictly defined borders and policies enforced within them, i.e. nation-states. It’s not a very big leap into nationalism and it’s arguably a testament to the durability and strength of democratic and egalitarian cultural norms that the series has evolved the way it has instead of becoming something more actively right-wing.

Now why would you insult Peter Thiel like that. He’s made it his life’s work to become that personification and he’s worked very hard at it.

I’m honestly okay with this one. This is a good AI project.

Everyone I know who works for/has worked for Amazon treated it like a deal with the devil. The money was good but they will push you into the ground for as long as you can take it. And then a bit longer.

I’ve just been staring off into space for the last half-hour trying to process this. This is legitimately a nightmare scenario. The ML and automation systems here are being used in conjunction with human policy decisions to turn a military intelligence function into an accountability sink. This is how you square the circle and turn a self-defense force into an agent of ethnic cleansing without needing to change the low-level organization to effect that goal. Everybody gets to maintain plausible deniability just enough that they can answer any uncomfortable questions and justify their actions to themselves, and by the time anyone starts to really question or investigate those justifications the job is largely done. I don’t know that I could construct a clearer example of how this technology can be used to the worst possible effect.

All I really have to add is that “MENSA with orgies” is both the kindest and meanest summation of the rationalist community I’ve ever heard.

I feel like this is one of those “no ethical consumption” things past a certain point. Directly interacting with the people you’re helping and increasing their available financial resources directly does give them more opportunities to work with you and express/meet their own needs, as opposed to the EA model where it’s the rich foreigners who know what you need and will give it to you regardless of what you think. That doesn’t change the fact that by actively traveling there he’s consuming resources and taking resources from that community at the same time, and it’s easy to do more harm than good in that sense, but I think the basic idea of “if you want to help, give money at the lowest possible level” is pretty defensible.

I feel like “giving everyone their due” is one thing, as long as it’s tempered by the recognition that not every perspective is due equal respect, or that certain perspectives are due a large disclaimer about how factual consensus completely disagrees.

You can’t have it both ways. Either you’re completely publicly irrelevant or you’re of public interest, and if you’re making yourself a public figure you shouldn’t be shocked when the public takes an interest in who you are, why you say the things you do, and who you associate with.

The amount of hand-wringing about “why is it so important to trace how these people are connected to Peter Thiel or Elon or other incredibly wealthy right-wing ideologues who have a measurable impact on people’s lives.”

Why can’t the journalists just join our special club where we talk about changing the world in the most disconnected way imaginable. It’s like they think we’re trying to take over the world or something.

I don’t know when it was decided that all medical technologies will be placebo tested on a dead fish, but it is my new favorite thing.

No, you just don’t understand. The real punks want to codify existing social and sexual norms into inviolable legally enforced rules backed by state violence.