That is high praise indeed, but I believe the good mayor has yet to make clear to everyone that, as an acausal manifestation of the godhead, self-driving cars serve to remind us to spend at least an hour a day in silent contemplation over how to bring ASI into existence, lest one should incure the Serpent’s eternal wrath in the Simulation.
Where did you get that impression from? He says himself he is not advocating against aid per se, but that its effects should be judged more holistically, e.g. that organizations like GiveWell should also include the potential harms alongside benefits in their reports. The overarching message seems to be one of intellectual humility – to not lose sight that the ultimate aim is to help another human being who in the end is a person with agency just like you, not to feel good about yourself or to alleviate your own feelings of guilt.
The basic conceit of projects like EA is the incredible high of self-importance and moral superiority one can get blinded by when one views themselves as more important than other people by virtue of helping so many of them. No one likes to be condescended to; sure, a life saved with whatever technical fix is better than a life lost, but human life is about so much more than bare material existence – dignity and freedom are crucial to a good life. The ultimate aim should be to shift agency and power into the hands of the powerless, not to bask in being the white knight trotting around the globe, saving the benighted from themselves.
For thursday’s sentencing the us government indicated they would be happy with a 40-50 prison sentence, and in the list of reasons they cite there’s this gem:...
I got introduced to the genre through Star Trek and I always found its moral vision, in addition to all the weekly alien weirdness & how it was approached with patient curiosity, strongly appealing. Roddenberry set out to create an explicit alternative to the impoverished perspectives of the Cold War era. The Prime Directive is non-interventionist to a fault.
Sam Altman says instead of Universal Basic Income, there should be Universal Basic Compute, where everybody gets a slice of GPT-7's compute (nitter.poast.org)
Thank you sir, I didn’t know the way to fix ailing welfare states was to make ChatGPT available to all....
NYC Mayor Eric Adams greenlights self-driving cars. Now considering the theory that Adams is an LLM gone rogue. (gazette.com)
18+ "Sam Bankman-Fried is finally facing punishment. Let’s also put his ruinous philosophy on trial." (www.wired.com)
SBF's effective altruism and rationalism considered an aggravating circumstance in sentencing (www.citationneeded.news)
For thursday’s sentencing the us government indicated they would be happy with a 40-50 prison sentence, and in the list of reasons they cite there’s this gem:...
Effective Altruism is when you want to spend money on genetic engineering for race-and-IQ theories. Emphasises Richard Lynn fandom in the comments. Front-paged. (forum.effectivealtruism.org)
18+ Charlie Stross on his role in creating the Torment Nexus, with a long description of our very good friends (www.antipope.org)