astrolabia
8mo ago
I consider myself as belonging to an ideological wave that missed it's opportunity to have it's time in the sunlight when the broader umbrella that encompassed us still carried the day; and it's very unlikely that I'll live to see it revived again in my lifetime.
Which ideological wave are you referring to?
astrolabia
8mo ago
I think this is a reasonable point of view. On the other hand, I could imagine visibly destructive commitment to the truth could still pay outsized dividends if powerful people, e.g. Elon Musk, noticed someone going against the grain and then trusted their advice more. Didn't this kind of happen with Peter Thiel and Michael Vassar?
astrolabia
8mo ago
I think Zack agrees with you about it maybe being worth it for Yudkowsky to lie about trans issues for the cause. But I'm on Zack's side pretty much entirely, because the entire schtick of the rationalists, the only reason they have contributed anything at all and have any (minor clout) is because of all the times they pissed off everyone and were willing to hurt feelings in a single-minded pursuit of the truth.
It's the same reason why our scientific institutions (used to) have clout - precisely because they were visibly willing to cross boundaries and violate taboos is why they gained power (which then led to their politicization and hollowing out).
Perhaps it's just a predictable cycle of creative destruction. But I still think Zack is fighting the good fight.
astrolabia
8mo ago
I have nothing to add, but just wanted to say that I appreciate the writeup since I am in a pretty similar situation to you (pre-adderall). I actually have a stash that a colleague gave me, but haven't experimented with it yet because I'm expecting pretty much exactly the outcome you've had so far. Maybe the solution is to just take it on Fridays only?
astrolabia
8mo ago
It sounds like you're not even rebutting Tyre's claims? He didn't say everything is broken or getting worse.
I agree that the modern West isn't currently as bad as Pol Pot's Cambodia. But the point is that something like that is always a possibility, and there are reasons to believe we might eventually head in that direction.
astrolabia
9mo ago
What do you mean by "ground truth"? I personally don't make many sacrifices for privacy or civil liberty's sake, but I'm grateful when others do.
Where I live I already don't have freedom of speech or association, and the government recently froze the bank accounts of protesters whom the state-run news agency had already demonized.
Again, how do you think anyone ends up in a gas chamber?
astrolabia
9mo ago
I agree that some people were overly certain about the consequences of the PATRIOT act. But I would still rage teary-eyed against government overreach even if I were merely worried it would lead to tyranny, because once the government is totalitarian it's very hard to come back from that.
Also, in that time there have been various counter-movements, such as Snowden's, that pushed back against mass surveillance. But that could have easily not happened, and plus the state has presumably hardened itself against the next Snowden since then.
astrolabia
9mo ago
To these privacy warriors in the US, I'm sure we seem a quick slide of the slippery slope away from being targeted for our Chud/Woke beliefs with no time to prepare before it's too late.
What do you think preparing looks like, if not fighting for civil liberties and maintaining our ability to coordinate politically without being targeted? To me it looks like you'd mock anyone fighting government overreach right up until it's too late.
Do you think those murdered by their governments in the 20th century had "time to prepare", but simply chose to not to? Do you remember the borders being closed with no warning during covid?
astrolabia
9mo ago
the sudden flurry of "Oh, Trump wasn't that bad"-type statements from figures who previously criticized him reeks of groveling and bet-hedging
At this point I wonder how much of this is due to fashion. If even the most uncool members of your group try to rally people by bashing trump, your only options to distinguish yourself are to be even more hysterical (which is getting kind of played out) or play the nuance card.
astrolabia
10mo ago
If the administration of airlines, air traffic control, pilot training and so on was ruthlessly meritocratic, then I'd agree with you that there'd be no difference in skill between black or female pilots and white male pilots, since they would all have passed the same tests and be above a certain benchmark.
Nitpick - this still won't be true as long as there is noise in the tests or variability in skill above the bar. The groups with higher average performance before the cutoff will also dominate the top percentiles after the cutoff, and be less likely to be a false positive under noisy tests.
astrolabia
10mo ago
Canada has a much larger native population than the USA, about 5% of the total population now, who have similar life outcomes to america's blacks. They also receive a huge amount of bespoke welfare. So I think that's some evidence against your theory.
astrolabia
10mo ago
I think I prefer the way your homeland does it. Every time I see someone in the west complaining about or shaming others for offering well-intentioned advice, it just looks like shooting the messenger and poisoning the well. I would happily accept 100 wrong or offensive advices in exchange for 1 that helped me.
astrolabia
11mo ago
Makes sense, I think I agree. And AI just makes this happen faster and on a larger scale - humans will be outcompeted unless we put a stop to basically all competitive pressures.
astrolabia
11mo ago
I agree that market activity tends to reduce ideological fervor. But as you note, that doesn't necessarily happen if the government becomes totalitarian, which you also agree is a distinct possibility. So I'm not even sure what your claim is anymore. "Progressivism always wins except when it doesn't"?
astrolabia
11mo ago
Yes, that's my point. These are equally arbitrary groups, but are legally protected and officially encouraged to advocate for their own interests at all levels of legal and corporate governance.
astrolabia
11mo ago
Okay, now it sounds like you're saying "we always win, except when we lose and become a Neo-Caliphate." How is the mellowing of Islamic countries going? What's the mood like in Afghanistan or Somalia?
astrolabia
11mo ago
The reason why white straight men aren't allowed to organize as a group
It sounds like you're agreeing with me?
they're not an actual cultural group
As opposed to the group "Asians and Pacific Islanders", or the group of all black people worldwide, including Pygmies and Kanye West?
astrolabia
11mo ago
You might be right, but what does the endgame look like? It seems like the issue of immigration in particular has the potential to undo most of the gains that progressives find important. I'm thinking of France, where it seems inevitable that there will be a de facto Islamic party in the near future. In that case it seems like both progressives and conservatives (except the immigrants) lose.
I agree that slave-owning and the civil war is a good example of a right that took a lot of destruction and kicking and screaming to take away.
I guess I'm thinking of basically everything that happened post-civil rights. Straight white men, and white people more generally, now aren't allowed to form their own clubs, be praised as a group, or advocate for their own cultural traditions or interests in almost any way in the west, and I think that change happened without much serious pushback.
EDIT: Sorry, I guess I didn't address your qualifier 'people who have spent a long hard time and earning it'. Are these individual people, the same individuals who did the fighting? If not, does building a civilization count as earning it?
astrolabia
11mo ago
I'm not sure exactly what Dase meant, but my reading is that it evokes the totalizing, moralizing, intrusive, overbearing, over-socialized, crab-bucket, tall-poppy syndrome state of society that tends to arise in human society when there isn't a frontier to escape to. I honestly don't understand the connection to native american governance or living arrangements, but I think it's suppose to evoke otherwise strong chiefs being effectively hen-pecked into submission due to everyone living in close enough quarters to be constantly surveilled.
astrolabia
11mo ago
Islam seems like it's in a much better position than Christianity, at least to me. They have the highest birth rates, advocate for their own interests unapologetically, and have a long history of punishing and assassinating critics and opponents. This causes lots of internecine strife, but I predict these traits will allow rapid expansion within the West.
astrolabia
11mo ago
taking away rights or privileges or respect or acknowledgement or etc. from people who have spent a long hard time and earning it, and trying to do that ussually involves a lot of kicking and screaming and destruction
You would think so, but didn't we just watch this happen to straight white men, and Europeans more generally, with basically no effective pushback? Some days it seems as simple as
- Comedians joke about it
- Thinkpieces recontextualize it
- Comedians mock the stupidest examples of pushback
- A few people get cancelled for pushing back
And soon after, countless formal and informal corporate, academic, personal, and government policies change to enforce the new policy. In a way it's impressive how liberal democracies can coordinate to change which groups they marginalize without much violence or state-directed propaganda.
astrolabia
11mo ago
I expect it to become formidable because Vitalik is
I don't think d/acc holds up - it's just so unlikely that man-machine hybrids can remain competitive without a massive deliberate slowdown of development of machine intelligence.
However, I agree that d/acc will remain formidable, because ambitious smart young men need something to work on to distinguish themselves, and an excuse to work on the most economically valuable thing they can, which is AI development. And it's plausible enough to provide such an excuse.
I think any serious proposal for pausing AI development has to be paired with a massively multiplayer, high-status, well-paying make-work plan for the hungry junior AI developers of the world.
astrolabia
11mo ago
motivated by the same impulse of preserving their petty relevance
Guilty as charged. But can you point me towards a higher goal? The problem is, I just don't trust anyone else to act in the interests of my family. Perhaps a beneficial Singleton AI God would, and I think building such a thing might be our best shot at mattering at all to the future. But I'm afraid we'll actually build some perverted thought-policed dystopia, or of the default outcome of being priced out of existence by competitive dynamics.
I've read the book and seen the movie, and while they're very different, it's still not clear to me in which sense the Starship Troopers movie is a parody, except that the director claimed it was. It seems to me that this is just a fig leaf to justify having directed an effectively pro-fascism movie.
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