astrolabia
4mo ago
In the early 1900s, we were at 40% of escape velocity.
I think this is misleading. The number care about is more like "life expectancy conditioned on being a healthy adult", which I don't think was changing much back then, nor has changed much recently. But probably is still going up a little if you control for demographics, which, in my limited understanding, have been changing in the West to mask (small) improvements in longevity.
astrolabia
4mo ago
I agree with most of this, but I feel like some male shit-talking and joking, at least in a group setting, also has an element of faux-combat. Constantly challenging each other is a form of play-fighting, but it's also a test - someone who regularly can't come up with a comeback or simply shuts down will eventually lose status and become more likely to be simply dominated by the others.
astrolabia
5mo ago
If someone wanted Trump to win, wouldn't they want to manipulate the market in the opposite direction, to make it look like they're in danger of losing? I'd be less likely to vote for my preferred candidate if I thought they had it in the bag.
astrolabia
6mo ago
I don't think any human society comes close to crossing that line when it comes to alcohol
Not even remote native communities with super high alcoholism rates, and where lots of kids get fetal alcohol syndrome?
alcohol has proven its ability to coexist alongside the development of advanced human societies over the course of several millennia.
Yes, but not native american societies. And there's plenty of evidence that Eurasians have had some serious selection pressure to help them deal with alcohol (and alcoholism is still a huge problem in Europe + North America).
astrolabia
6mo ago
Who is to say that someone or something won't decide 'oh these little people who bought shares pre-singularity didn't really contribute'
I agree, but I think it's scarier than that. I don't think anyone will have to decide or coordinate to get rid of the non-contributors, they'll just be out-competed. It won't be one capitalist owning all the resources, it'll be the entirety of productive civilization, just like it is today.
astrolabia
6mo ago
This is why I like Canada's constitutional monarchy. It lets people personify the country and worship its head of state without necessarily endorsing the current policy leader.
astrolabia
6mo ago
I still don't understand what you think the biggest problem is - the current manageable ones, or future, potentially unmanageable ones?
astrolabia
6mo ago
I agree it's not a foregone conclusion, I guess I'm hoping you'll either give an argument why you think it's unlikely, even though tens of billions and lots of top talent are being poured into it, or actually consider the hypothetical.
I can't think of a single task that AI could replace.
Even if it worked??
astrolabia
6mo ago
Fair. Maybe a better analogy would be: You and your whole family are in an old folks home, and the country and all jobs are now being run by immigrants from another, very different, country. You fear that one day (or gradually through taxation) they'll take away your stuff and if they do, there'll clearly be nothing you can do about it.
astrolabia
6mo ago
It's not clear to me if you think there are plausible unmanageable, extinction-level risks on the horizon.
astrolabia
6mo ago
The revealed preferences of Yuddites is to get paid by the establishment to make sure the tech doesn't rock the boat and respects the right moral fads.
I feel like this is unfair. The hardcore Yuddites are not on the Trust & Safety teams at big LLM companies. However, I agree that there are tons of "AI safety" people who've chosen lucrative corporate jobs whose output feeds into the political-correctness machine. But at least they get to know what's going on that way and have at least potentially minor influence. The alternative is... be a full-time protester with little resources, clout, or up-to-date knowledge?
astrolabia
6mo ago
The main LLM developers don't share methods or model weights. But they claim that if they didn't make enough money to train the best models, no one would care what they say.
astrolabia
6mo ago
That's a fair point. Here's work along the lines that you're requesting: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.06924
astrolabia
6mo ago
The important thing is for our civilization to have an incentive to keep us around. Once we're superfluous, we'll be in a very precarious position in the long run.
Is being stuck in an old folks' home utopian?
astrolabia
6mo ago
I have considered it
I'm only going to evaluate the implications of ... products they actually have
It seems like you have not, in fact, considered the possibility of models improving. Is this the meme where some people literally can't evaluate hypotheticals? Again, doomers are worried about future, better models. What would you be worried about if you found out that models had been made that can do your job, and all other jobs, better than you?
astrolabia
6mo ago
This is a reasonable argument, but there's a big different between having robots that can do something things for us (like digging ditches) while humans can still do other things better, versus having everything being done better by machines. In the current world, you get growth by investing in both humans and machines. In the latter world, you get the most growth by putting all your resources into machines and the factories that make them.
astrolabia
6mo ago
How is someone supposed to warn you about a danger while there's still time to avert it? "There's no danger yet, and focusing on future dangers is bad messaging."
astrolabia
6mo ago
I beg you to consider the possibility that progress in AI development will continue. The doomers are worried about future models, not current ones.
astrolabia
6mo ago
Do expect your kids to have jobs if we build machines that can do everything better and cheaper than humans?
astrolabia
6mo ago
testosterone supplements are only useful if you are totally committed to being very serious about working out
I don't know much about it, but my understanding is the opposite - that hormones + no exercise is much better for putting on mass than no hormones and lots of exercise. At least, I saw a study to that effect one time, and it's certainly the case that male teenagers put on muscle much faster than even relatively athletic females. But please don't take my word for it.
astrolabia
6mo ago
Yes, sounds like we are on the same page, and OP is psyching himself out.
I said my wife is "ostensibly progressive" because she has a conservative personality, she just happens to have been raised and schooled in a progressive, feminist echo chamber. (Today's beloved conservative position is often yesteryear's progressive overreach). She just can't bear to be against the consensus, and I think instinctively knows that arguing with me is likely to move her away from the consensus, so literally can't discuss politics for more than 2 minutes without getting too upset to weigh arguments. I find this frustrating and sad, and she talks as if it's devastating to her to be with someone who has the wrong opinions, but it doesn't actually come up unless one of us brings it up.
I actually think it's reasonable for her to refuse to argue issues on their merits with me, because I'm just a much better arguer than her. She's right to fear that I could argue convincingly for just about any position, right or wrong. For this reason I've told her that it's fine for her to disagree with me on anything without being able to articulate why, especially when it comes to joint decision-making.
astrolabia
6mo ago
a somewhat-effeminate underemployed head-in-the-clouds armchair intellectual
I loved your post and agree with your advice. But as a guy who had a sort-of-similar trajectory, this still sounds totally fixable! I know you said you're struggling with physical health, and I haven't used testosterone myself, but is there a reason you're not trying to simply become literally high-T?
I’m too redpilled on women and too unable to play along with the female style of unfocused political venting to have much chance of a successful relationship with the kind of progressive woman
My wife is the picture of ostensible progressivism, and it certainly causes tension, but it's not fatal. I always thought the red-pill message was that politics aren't usually dealbreakers even if they're stated to be - you can simply change the subject, agree and amplify, or simply be a compelling enough package that she'll find ways to make it work from her end. I know it's easier said than done, but it sounds like you have the basic ingredients at hand!
astrolabia
6mo ago
I wouldn't kick yourself. After all, if it was so obvious that EU growth would lag, wouldn't those stocks have been even lower-priced?
astrolabia
6mo ago
‘Farmer’ is a job that’s literally never going away. Subsistence farming communities aren’t dependent on an industrial civilization having an inexplicable soft spot for them
It's already reduced by about 50x, and I'd claim that subsistence farming isn't really feasible in much of North America, or won't be soon, because of high land taxes on all the good farmland.
there is no one on earth who doesn’t need what they produce.
If I were a cartel, I'd rather have at least semi-industrialized farmers on my land than subsistence farmers. "Subsistence" means you don't produce much more than you need to subsist, which means you can't produce much taxes for the local cartel / government.
I don't know why you think this is an either/or, though - there are other insular Amish-like groups with high fertility that are also fully modern when it comes to production, e.g. the Hutterites and Mennonites.
Oh, I stand corrected.
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