Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Now that his new book is out, Big Yud is on the interview circuit. I hope everyone is prepared for a lot of annoying articles in the next few weeks.
Today he was on the Hard Fork podcast with Kevin Roose and Casey Newton (didn't listen to it yet). There's also a milquetoast profile in the NYT written by Kevin Roose, where Roose admits his P(doom) is between 5 and 10 percent.
Siskind did a review too, basically gives it the 'their hearts in the right place but... [read AI2027 instead]' treatment. Then they go at it a bit with Yud in the comments where Yud comes off as a bitter dick, but their actual disagreements are just filioque shit. Also they both seem to agree that a worldwide moratorium on AI research that will give us time to breed/genetically engineer superior brained humans to fix our shit is the way to go.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone/comment/154920454
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-if-anyone-builds-it-everyone/comment/154927504
Also notable that apparently Siskind thinks nuclear non-proliferation sorta worked because people talked it out and decided to be mature about it rather than being scared shitless of MAD, so AI non-proliferation by presumably appointing a rationalist Grand Inquisitor in charge of all human scientific progress is an obvious solution.
This century deserves a better class of thought-criminal
assuming that nuclear nonproliferation is gonna hold up indefinitely for any reason is some real fukuyama's end of history shit
let alone "because it's Rational™ thing to do", it's only in rational interest of already-nuclear states to keep things this way. couple of states that could make a good point for having nuclear arsenal and having capability to manufacture it are effectively dissuaded from this by american diplomacy (mostly nuclear umbrella for allies and sanctions or fucking with their facilities for enemies). with demented pedo in chief and his idiot underlings trying their hardest to undo this all, i really wouldn't be surprised if, say, south korea decides to get nuclear
Yud: "That's not going to asymptote to a great final answer if you just run them for longer."
Asymptote is a noun, you git. I know in the grand scheme of things this is a trivial thing to be annoyed by, but what is it it with Yud's weird tendency to verbify nouns? Most rationalists seem to emulate him on this. It's like a cult signifier.
They think Yud is a world-historical intellect (I’ve seen claims on twitter he has a iq of 190 - yeah really) and by emulation a little of the old smartness can rub off on them.
It's also inherently-begging-the-question-silly, like it assumes that the Ideal of Alignment™, can never be reached but only approached. (I verb nouns quite often so I have to be more picky at what I get annoyed at)
This is his claim about everything, including how we got gay rights. Real if all you have is a hammer stuff.
Trying to figure out if that Siskind take comes from a) a lack of criticality and/or the ability to read subtext or b) some ideological agenda to erase the role of violence (threats of violence are also violence!) in change happening, or both
When you are running a con like crypto or chatbot companies, it helps to know someone who is utterly naive and can't stop talking about whatever line you feed him. If this were the middle ages Kevin Roose would have an excellent collection of pigges bones and scraps of linen that the nice friar promised were relics of St Margaret of Antioch.