this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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..)

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[–] scruiser@awful.systems 11 points 1 month ago (6 children)

I feel like some of the doomers are already setting things up to pivot when their most major recent prophecy (AI 2027) fails:

From here:

(My modal timeline has loss of control of Earth mostly happening in 2028, rather than late 2027, but nitpicking at that scale hardly matters.)

It starts with some rationalist jargon to say the author agrees but one year later...

AI 2027 knows this. Their scenario is unrealistically smooth. If they added a couple weird, impactful events, it would be more realistic in its weirdness, but of course it would be simultaneously less realistic in that those particular events are unlikely to occur. This is why the modal narrative, which is more likely than any other particular story, centers around loss of human control the end of 2027, but the median narrative is probably around 2030 or 2031.

Further walking the timeline back, adding qualifiers and exceptions that the authors of AI 2027 somehow didn't explain before. Also, the reason AI 2027 didn't have any mention of Trump blowing up the timeline doing insane shit is because Scott (and maybe some of the other authors, idk) like glazing Trump.

I expect the bottlenecks to pinch harder, and for 4x algorithmic progress to be an overestimate...

No shit, that is what every software engineering blogging about LLMs (even the credulous ones) say, even allowing LLMs get better at raw code writing! Maybe this author is better in touch with reality than most lesswrongers...

...but not by much.

Nope, they still have insane expectations.

Most of my disagreements are quibbles

Then why did you bother writing this? Anyway, I feel like this author has set themselves up to claim credit when it's December 2027 and none of AI 2027's predictions are true. They'll exaggerate their "quibbles" into successful predictions of problems in the AI 2027 timeline, while overlooking the extent to which they agreed.

I'll give this author +10 bayes points for noticing Trump does unpredictable batshit stuff, and -100 for not realizing the real reason why Scott didn't include any call out of that in AI 2027.

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[–] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Why do AI company logos look like buttholes?

(Blog post written by a crypto-turned-AI bro, but the observation is amusing.)

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[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

The kokotajlo/scoot thing apparently made it to the new york times.

So this is what that was about:

stubsack post from two months agoOn slightly more relevant news the main post is scoot asking if anyone can put him in contact with someone from a major news publication so he can pitch an op-ed by a notable ex-OpenAI researcher that will be ghost-written by him (meaning siskind) on the subject of how they (the ex researcher) opened a forecast market that predicts ASI by the end of Trump’s term, so be on the lookout for that when it materializes I guess.

edit: also @gerikson is apparently a superforcaster

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[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (10 children)

Here's a screenshot of a skeet of a screenshot of a tweet featuring an unusually shit take on WW2 by Moldbug:

link

transcriptskeet by Joe Stieb: Another tweet that should have ended with the first sentence.

Also, I guess I'm a "World War Two enjoyer"

tweet by Curtis Yarvin: There is very very extensive evidence of the Holocaust.

Unfortunately for WW2 enjoyers, the US and England did not go to war to stop the Holocaust. They went to war to stop the Axis plan for world conquest.

There is no evidence of the Axis plan for world conquest.

edit: hadn't seen yarvin's twitter feed before, that's one high octane shit show.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago

Unusually shit take on WW2 but not an unusually shit take from Moldbug. Just the usual level of shit.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

ironically many "WW2 enjoyers" are big fans of German hardware, uniforms and tactics...

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The vibe I get is that by 'enjoyers' he means people who thought fighting the nazis in WW2 was morally justified.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I think it's accurate that the US and England didn't join to stop the Holocaust. Sentence 3 is a little oversimplified, and sentence 4 is straight-up lunacy.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I checked the link, the thread elaborates a bit more:

to which my understanding is: this is absolutely true as well.

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

pedal to the metal on the content and information theft, folks:

a photo taken on a huge banner advert on a building titled Bayfront Park. the ad reads "STOP HIRING HUMANS", with a tagline of "The Era Of AI Employees Is Here". the advert is from a company named artisan

seems it's this lot. despite their name, there appears to be almost nothing artful or artistic about them - it's all b2b shit for Selling Better

[–] veganes_hack@feddit.org 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

somebody had to do the design + layout for that banner. i wonder what was going through their head then.

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[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago (8 children)

Incorporating into your workflow a company that is a shell around other companies that are selling their products at a loss with no path to profitability seems like quite an unacceptable business risk to me. But I dont get paid the big bux

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Fun fact: the rise of autoplag is now threatening the supply chain as well, as bad actors take advantage of LLM hallucinations to plant malware into people's programs.

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (4 children)

LW: "being a younger brother makes you gay, the Catholic hierarchy is full of younger brothers, ergo 80% of the Vatican is gay"

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ybwqL9HiXE8XeauPK/how-gay-is-the-vatican

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Considering how rightwingers have tried to link gayness to pedophilia this is a subject I would avoid if I was them. E: and gwern just goes there.

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[–] maol@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

The modern father of this literature is Ray Blanchard

🚨🚨🚨 Do not take Ray Blachard's work seriously !

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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (7 children)

apparently a complete archive of scott siskind's old livejournal. found on the EA forum no less. https://archive.fo/fCFQx

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

some more wild sneers, this time about MS ripping off Q2 for a time-limited shitty experience

[–] BurgersMcSlopshot@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago

This demo is powered by a "World and Human Action Model" (WHAM)

George Michael must be spinning in his grave

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