mountainriver @ mountainriver @awful.systems

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2

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260

Joined

2 yr. ago

Larger expenses in a month than earnings in a year. AI going great. Capitalism going great.

Philanthropy can't change the power structures, philanthropy is a band aid that soothe the conscience of the philanthropist.

Aaron and assorted developers can't give the villagers power, because they only have power in relation to the villagers, not in relation to the world trade system. If they want to give the villagers power they need to change the system that gives the villagers a fraction of their earnings per hour.

But then you are back to the usual options. Thirty years of boredom, trying to change the system from within? Protest world leaders and get beaten by police for your troubles (or even sentenced for destruction of police equipment by smashing your face into it)? Join a communist party and play spot the fed?

I guess it's better to join a philanthropy cult, where billionaires can pay you to hang out in a castle and discuss the problems with the poor over some overpriced ethanol.

And did it appear he needed any help from dorky software engineers personally going to villages to “help out”?

I once saw what I think was a BBC show where an Englishman visited cool tribes and lived with them. Tough, outdoorsman.

The only episode I saw he was in Mongolia and it had what I think was unintentional humour. The local vet - who had been the local party representative during the Communist era and now held some other title - placed him in a family that could need a hand during migration, as their teenage daughter had a disability. So on he went on horseback and he made it there with just a bunch more pauses then the Mongolians would have preferred. But once there, the best his hosts could say about his efforts to help was "Well, he is strong. And he is trying."

By the looks of it, the Mongolians could not believe how a big, strong guy could be so utterly useless.

Your honor, My client caused no damages.

As clearly seen in the impact statements the only thing that was lost was crypto currencies and as they state they would have been held on to if not lost. By holding on to the crypto currencies, the victims shows a common delusion in the crypto sphere, namely that crypto has value. In all certainty they would have held on until said crypto was lost, stolen or had collapsed. The true expected value was zero.

Notably missing: grabbing a couple of millions and run of to a non extradition country.

He is so sure he can get out on top that running away doesn't even hit his brainstorm top 19 list. He doesn't write the list on paper and burn it later, because for it to backfire he would need to fail.

Insane confidence man.

They are trying to solve the problem of gigantic markups - because of legal monopolies through patents - on advanced chemical products where dosage and quality control is literally life or death. Their solution is to do it yourself in a garage.

Couldn't they at least tried parallel imports from quality controlled production in countries with less gigantic markups?

Or, if they could have stopped playing Robin Hood for a second and looked at the systemic problems instead, there was a proposal at WHO some ten years ago to reform pharmaceutical research and development with direct funding and then releasing the results, basically creating a direct to generica pipeline. The US shot it down, of course, which means public relations campaigns in the US would be great. But no, DIY in the garage.

(If anyone is interested in details the proposal was called "delinkage".)

God creates three legged giant to make more laps for children to sit on? Or is that Jennifer Lopez job?

Saving that link if I come across someone who has bought the "it may be a small risk, but what if?"

What if the moon got mad at us?

And steer their careers into positions of influence.

Among the comments is an obvious rationaliser who claims that because [list of people in positions of influence] thinks AI Doom is real, this can't be a cult. Guess one has to be a rationaliser not to figure out how a cult that tries to place its followers into positions of influence can have many people in positions of influence.

Penis enlargement and breast implants can be understood as gender affirming surgery for cis people, it is just an affirmation of the gender assigned at birth. Rather than go to primates I would point to ancient Greece and it's statues to make the point that ideals of gender and bodies shift over time. Greek statues shows as I understand it often an ideal body, which by the norms of its time included a rather small penis. So maybe some male ancient Greeks wished there were treatments to shrink their package?

With gorillas, my understanding is that primates that have very unequal sizes between the sexes has small penises, while its among the primates with roughly equal body size you find larger penises. So akin to plummage, the males showing off of that their bodies can afford to waste resources, and thus presumably is very fit. I am no biologist, but I think this means that if you try to win a domination fight with a gorilla, it may show who is the boss by showing off its physical strength. So not recommended.

Reading this extract I was surprised, figuring the desperate search for investment money must mean that Kickstarter wasn't turning a profit despite a seemingly sound business model.

Reading the article I found out it was even stupider. Kickstarter wasn't lacking a path to profit, it was lacking a path to growth. And being a profitable company with a clear market nisch isn't cool enough. Everything has to grow, grow, grow. So Kickstarter created a bunch of problems for itself, destroying much of its brand. It's that stupid.

We can not allow a spam bot gap to develop!

700 million Effective Altruists? That's one big cult!

Oh it's the other EA! You had me there for a minute.

And to add, admitting that Tumblr had an admin who charged for banning trans women: Important.

Explaining wtf that was all about: Not important.

He probably should be in rehab.

Banning trans women on Tumblr who are mad at him for them being harassed through the platform: Important.

Feuding with said trans women on Twitter: Important.

Explaining their decision to sell the users data: Not important.

You don't even need to be a utility monster.

Applying standard EA logic with utilions (approximately 1 utilion = 1 dollar) shows that when SBF was free he caused billions negative utilions. He says he did nothing wrong, and presumably he would continue to do nothing wrong. After updating our priors on the consequences of SBF doing nothing wrong, we can conclude that the risk is above 99% that SBF doing nothing wrong will cause billions in negative utilions. So the only utilitarian thing to do is hand out a life sentence.

Fortunately for SBF the judge is probably not in the business of creating philosophical justice.

What benefits did the Longtermist stuff on pandemics do in the actual pandemic?

If, as I suspect, it was of no benefit, it belongs in the same pile as hindering the acasualrobotgod.

Every server is great.

If a server is wasted,

Acasualrobotgod gets quite irate!

I did jiu-jitsu In middle school. We had two guys who were perhaps about 20 years old as assistant coaches. Pretty impressive belt colours and to us kids really cool and good at jiu-jitsu. I don't remember their names, lets call them Jim and Peter.

So nearing the end of a class Jim and Peter gathers us for a bit of pep talk. Jim: Good work everybody! Peter: We will soon end class, but first one thing... Jim: No? No, that was the last thing? Peter: Everyone, get Jim! Jim: What? No!

And I can tell you Jim was no match for two dozen ten year olds with white belts.