YourNetworkIsHaunted @ YourNetworkIsHaunted @awful.systems

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1 yr. ago

Hah! You think they actually put in place the infrastructure needed to support this asinine policy. If there aren't enough people to get the affidavits signed then those kids can't go expose themselves to dangerous ideas, presumably including "trans people exist" and "slavery was bad, actually".

See also voter ID laws that just happen to come into effect as the DMV offices in poor and/or black neighborhoods close down. If they make it a sufficient pain in the ass they don't have to take the legal or political flak for outright banning it.

Glad to see that Srinivasan is doing the good lord's work of convincing the world that VCs like Balaji Srinivasan are fundamentally unserious people with more money than sense and that the government should tax it away from them before the next round of grifters inevitably do.

It's good that they're offsetting their advantages in the marketplace of money by actively crippling themselves in the marketplace of ideas.

Crank magnetism?

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.

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 also want to point out the implication that the reason we don't casually use slurs is primarily if not entirely due to government censorship and not, y'know, social consequences for being assholes to minorities.

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.