TechTakes

Matt Yglesias argued that “Different Places Have Different Safety Rules and That’s OK” following the deadly collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh. And yet his arguments were perfectly correct, if maybe a bit “too soon.”

Jesus.

Roe v. Wade cannot be overturned twice

Where are your Bayesian priors now, asshole?

Siri, how can I unread a post?

Tangent: I had assumed nitter was dead and buried by now, glad to see there are still some functioning mirrors. I've found it impossible to share threads without.

All in for radioactive hurricanes though

So many fully-cooked brains in that thread.

BTW, ever notice how easy it is to replace "robot overlords" in TESCREAL with literally anything else? Compare this gem from the linked thread, "The Authoritarian Peril":

https://nitter.poast.org/pic/orig/media%2FGUAQszqWkAAGFRb.jpg

with this version where Tolkein stuff is seamlessly swapped in for evil sentient gaming rigs with no loss of generality:

A dictator who wields the power of the One Ring would command concentrated power unlike any we’ve ever seen. In addition to being able to impose their will on other countries, they could enshrine their rule internally. Millions of orcs could police their populace; mass surveillance would be hypercharged; dictator-loyal Ring Wraiths could individually assess every citizen for dissent, with advanced near-perfect lie detection rooting out any disloyalty. Most importantly, the orcish military and police force could be wholly controlled by a single political leader, and programmed to be perfectly obedient—no more risk of coups or popular rebellions. Whereas past dictatorships were never permanent, Isildur's Bane could eliminate basically all historical threats to a dictator’s rule and lock in their power (cf value lock-in). If the CCP gets this power, they could enforce the Party’s conception of “truth” totally and completely.

The proud tradition of "no really, Trump isn't that bad if you pretend he's a normal libertarian who happens to be an asshole instead of listening to the words that come out of his mouth"

Realistically, most EAs will vote for the white male over the non-white female anyway, but it's on-brand for them to post a giant substack with reasons why.

Can AI give you diarrhea?

Already does make me nauseous, so...

You know, I feel like it's only a matter of time before someone in the overlapping griftoverse tries their hand at immanentizing the eschaton by creating their own second coming - the MessAIah.

It's the same story as has ever been. "Smart People"'s position on anything is often informed by their current economic relationship wrt to the things they care about. And maybe even Yud isn't super happy about his profession being co-opted. What scraps will he have if his own delusions became true about GPT zombies replacing "authentic voices"?

No one is immune to seeing a better take when it's their shit on the line, and no is immune from being in a bubble without stake.

that's a linkedin-level take

Harry Potter and the Surprisingly Good Take

Somebody got all his books from libgen and it shows.

This does suck for all the non-LLM ML stuff that has actual usage. (Even if a percentage of that was also snake oil, or had dubious success rates).

Well, history sure does fucking repeat itself again, doesn't it?

At its low point, some computer scientists and software engineers avoided the term artificial intelligence for fear of being viewed as wild-eyed dreamers. (New York Times, 2005, at the end of the last AI winter.)