Its kind of notorious that scientists are bad at dealing with con artists and sales funnels because they assume good faith and that nobody has serious material interests in convincing you of something false. That was James Randi’s whole thesis. A good professor would contextualize ‘AI alignment’ and The Singularity in '80s and '90s pop culture, apocalyptic religion, and a rape-enabling SoCal subculture and not just have his students read the papers straight.
We know that many AI projects are powered or monitored by a Guy in India. It turns out the mass shooter in northern Canada who looked to ChatGPT for advice also had a Discord buddy in the USA who knew about her plans. Police allege that after trying to talk her out of her plans he streamed for her and helped her start her car to get to the site of the murders. I hope he and Sam Altman spent 30 years as roommates. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/livestory/tumbler-ridge-mass-shooting-arrest-9.7371316
Over on her Substack, Ivy Astrix says correctly that many of our friends are children playing at adult responsibilities. Dealing with misbehavior around money, substances, and sex is annoying but if you organize an event with those things flowing you have a duty to take precautions and deal when things go wrong.
Some of his fans think he is basically living in seclusion with frequent dates with his primary partner the therapist. He seems like he would be much happier living like that with the occasional venture out to see his fans. Most people learn that its enough that their spouse and their friends love them and they don’t need to be famous.
He seems ticked off at Coefficient Giving, but are they “a giant rich organization that stole some of my ideas, ignored everything I said about what not to do, and are going around telling people I made them do it”? (Its not stealing your ideas if they cite you Yud, they just draw different conclusions).
Yud has said he got bored with LessWrong, and he does not like Coefficient Giving, Anthropic, OpenAI, or the Zizians, so is he satisfied with any group that adores his ideas?
When Yud compared himself to Jesus, is the “giant rich organization” in Yud’s tweet Anthropic or OpenAI or SpaceX or Google?
A few days ago, Aella the rationalist sex worker with all the bright-eyed questions about under-18s, sex, and consent was accused of sexual assault by another sex worker:
Aella personally sexually assaulted me, doxed our location on live cam, has expressed dangerous opinions about sex with minors and is someone I’ve seen have problems with drinking. She is absolutely not a safe person, period. x dot com/SummerHartxxx https://archive.ph/JcCgb
It has been a while since I read a Gospel, but I don’t think Jesus hired the sinful woman for a threesome and some light flogging (or asked the centurion to lend him his boy overnight).
IMHO, being an escort is a much more honest profession than being a professional blogger on a Nazi site.
The closest thing Yud ever had to a job or a business was selling pulp fiction on Amazon. He is not the person to talk about pressures that working people face! (the “now you have to pay us $20/month or fall behind” trap)
Neoclassicism has been big in the finance industry since the 19trh century to hide that high finance is just arithmetic and personal relationships like buying insurance. A used car dealer can’t afford Ionic columns and a marble desktop, but an investment bank can.
I hope that anyone who has been assaulted or abused in these spaces finds support and justice.
Roman numerals had MM for million (there was also a convention with writing lines over your numbers).
The author Wentworth was just awarded half a million dollars by Jaan Tallinn & Dustin Moskovitz to do “research” at Lightcone Infrastructure. I am going to sign out because I am starting to get thoughts which involve the RCAF and 500-pound bombs (so of course they use the middle school across the street as human shields). Rapists, apologists for racists, and protectors of rapists are the enemies of all mankind.
I think many hardened kinksters, who have participated in or made the gear for things I can’t imagine, would have questions about Aella’s parties as described. So its not just those normies are just mindless NPCs following scripts.
John Wentworth featured in the retracted S.E. Gyges essay.
An Effective Altruist software developer who wrote about Bay Area EA’s culture of sexually aggressive men and misogyny explained that its hard to give informed consent when you are also being pushed to use alcohol and psychedelics. Most of us learned that when we were teenagers, but not these self-identified Big Brains (added to LessWrong’s Psychedelic Phase: Perigee). I do not know what to to other than pass on these stories and advise everyone I know to avoid any group connected to our friends.
A former disciple says that Soryu Forall startted out wanting to exterminate humanity with a bioweapon and only pivoting to enlightening humanity later on. S.E. Gyges or his chatbot were speculating when they accused a specific Rationalist of dreaming of omnicide, but the idea is circulating in the milieu.
STOP WITH ALL THE CRITICISM / GLORY TO CAPITALISM!
That post is login-protected, what does it say?
A former staffer named Frances Lopez says that she left the Centre for Effective Altruism in Oxford because they handled workplace sexual harassment terribly:
After I was raped (outside of and unrelated to work), a colleague at CEA wrote and circulated a document that included a sexualised description of my rape, speculation about my mental health, and commentary on my personal life, all without my consent. Several senior leaders, including the CEO and the now-former COO, received this document and took no safeguarding action for approximately nine months. I was never officially informed of its existence; I only learned about it informally through one of the recipients. … (The colleague) also discussed asking me out twice while we were colleagues, once through text and again at a CEA retreat. He assured CEA that, with everything I now know about Frances, I’m glad she said no.
I am really not equipped to deal with this despicable behaviour outside the communities I am part of. She now has a Substack (sigh) trying to explain to EAs that hiring Caroline Ellison is not a good look and the world won’t suddenly start to see them the way they see themselves unless they sit down and change their behavior.
For a long time, clever young men have been taught the parable of Plato and Dionysius of Syracuse. Some intellectuals will always convince themselves that they will be the one to guide the stupid little tyrant and not the many who end up in a slave market just outside his domain (in the legend someone bought Plato and freed him).
Yarvin wants to be Julius Streicher not the Wicked Vizier.