BioMan

I suppose my only-half-joking grant proposal I talk about with linguist friends in which you run an entire large text through a base-model LLM, extract the residual stream, and score every token according to perplexity compared to the ground truth reality in order to ask and answer super interesting questions about information theory in human communication doesn't count?

I still point people to the bed net research from fifteen years ago

omg the rationalists discovered the case for universal healthcare

I recently re-read Accelerando after more than fifteen years. I appreciated it so much more this time around. Me being me I particularly appreciated that apparently the default state of a G-type star transitioning into a post-tech state was it being overrun with selfish replicators and grinding down into malthusian competition, but a few apparently underwent an evolutionary transition to higher levels of organization...

Oh god is this about the guy who keeps trying to defraud people saying he's satoshi?

True! Still, you have to admit it's quite the opportunity to exploit silicon valley sfi-fi fanatacism into a whole series of own goals.

I really do wonder how much of the whole we must beat china narrative is being stoked by the Chinese powers-that-be finding a super cheap way to sabotage American finance and industry. Pushing their own local minibubble by comparison to what we are up to would just be a cheap cost of 'doing business'.

It's really not that bad of a disease. Still would be super interesting if playing with bullshit peptides made things like it more likely.

I had to go on a long-term medication recently and I agonized about it for a YEAR before deciding that pushing my biochemistry into an unusual state while I was still ticking over without severe acute problems was worth it. I'm always afraid of thinking I know better than evolution.

Is this what happens when a Cosmist heresy syncretizing with objectivism springs up?

I mentioned the calendar because it really captures the tone of the explicitly Extropian-derived writing of the early days. Which seems like it has to always break or change upon contact with reality.

https://archive.is/20260826031928/https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/situational-awareness-leopold-aschenbrenner-ai-fund-4dbb00a4 got the archive

A few interesting things:

In November 2023, when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was suddenly fired, hundreds of employees signed a public letter pressuring the board of directors to reinstate him. Aschenbrenner didn’t... After an interim CEO was appointed, OpenAI executives learned from multiple eyewitnesses that Aschenbrenner had appeared to welcome Altman’s replacement, according to the people familiar with the matter. They grew suspicious about who was loyal to whom, even after Altman was reinstated as CEO. Those who spent the following weeks trying to understand the crisis focused in part on Aschenbrenner’s role, concluding that he had been in contact with at least one director who voted to fire Altman.

More confirmation he's one of the True Believers rather than only a greasy opportunist

When it was time to toast the newlyweds, one speaker thanked Citadel CEO Ken Griffin for making it all possible.

These people's personal lives are so bound up with financial forces... who knew this particular Cosmist heresy would get so freaking weird

I didn't recall it in 2027, just in the afterward of 2040. I took it as another weird idiosyncrasy of the particular authors, but I guess this is evidence that it's been a private shibboleth among the In The Know Central Types for a while and they just think its obvious to the point its leaking out into public documents...