was
1yr ago
There's a difference between pointing out that Jewish people are like 50%+ of University Presidents, and asking whether it makes sense for those same individuals to advocate for Affirmative Actions whereby Asian students get downranked, and posting Nazi symbols.
was
1yr ago
I think that no Nazis really exist anymore (obviously there are some people -- it rounds to zero) so that there's really nobody left to forgive. Certainly the concept of being genocided doesn't need to be forgiven?
was
1yr ago
I am free speech maximalist (note that's different from absolutist) and I would have shut Kayne West down.
Twitter provides a platform for much more free speech than, say, the NYT or Reddit.
Famous people posting swastikas on Twitter -- the steelman version of his picture is that he's telling Jewish people they should forgive Nazis, which seems to be a totally nonsensical position -- is a great way to get the platform shut down.
In this instance, removing one person's ability preserves the platform's availability for many others.
My goal is to reproduce while maximizing happiness AUC. Maximizing happiness means:
a. The people I love continue to love me back.
b. I get to do cool things for as long as possible
c. The absence of extreme suffering (for me and those I care about).
From there, this is an iterated Pascal's matrix:
a. Either AGI happens within my lifetime or not
b. Either the AGI is "good" or "bad"
c. Either fundamental social contracts (i.e. the concept of "property", murder is rare) break down within my lifetime or not
(A) If AGI does NOT happen within my lifetime and social contracts persist: accumulate a reasonable amount of capital quickly, reproduce, and do what I want to do
(B) If AGI does NOT happen within my lifetime and social contracts collapse: move myself + family somewhere remote, be able to sustain ourselves, and own some guns
(C) If AGI DOES happen, it's GOOD, and social contracts persist:
- Best course of action: Accumulating a reasonable amount of capital quickly and ideally owning some portion of that AGI (i.e. having the rights to some of the value generated) is the best course of action.
(D) If AGI DOES happen, it's GOOD, and social contracts collapse:
- Best course of action: Doesn't matter what I do.
(E) If AGI DOES happen, it's BAD, and social contracts persist:
-
Presumably this is a scenario where AGI can do anything it wants to do in the virtual world (e.g. win the stock market), but has limited ability to reach into the physical (e.g. build physical robots to carry out its plans) because the physical world still involves humans coordinating with each other.
-
Best course of action: move somewhere remote, be able to sustain oneself, and own some guns
(F) If AGI DOES happen, it's BAD, and social contracts collapse:
- Best course of action: move somewhere remote, be able to sustain ourselves, and own some guns. I probably won't have a long life but will be longer than if I'm in the city.
Taken in total: I think I have a pathway towards generating enough capital (e.g. $10M or so) in the next two years. After that I plan to buy a remote farm and lots of guns, some equity in the major AI companies (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple), and an apartment in the city (I can travel to / live in for enjoyment if things are going well).
I presume it will take me at least five years to learn how to farm properly. So all in all, this is a reasonable course of action if social contract breakdown is > 10 years away.
I'm assuming for AGI = BAD, that the AGI just doesn't care about us. Society breaks down, supply chain collapses, it builds whatever it wants to build, but we're not actively being hunted down. If it's actively wanting to hunt us down nothing I do will matter -- but in the "farm + guns" plan there's the side-benefit that maybe I can blow my brains out and entropy will make it exceedingly annoying to re-create a virtual version of me to be tortured for all eternity.
was
2yr ago
The first argument is about the excess costs of healthcare--in his case he says his last hospital bill was $1,927 and concludes it is too much just because some others would have difficulty paying it. That is not adequate information because he did not describe the value of it. In fact, the author self-admittedly says "I’m allergic to almost everything on the planet", which means without the advances that have made modern healthcare possible he would either be dead or constantly uncomfortable (depending on the severity of his allergies). Being able to live a normal life instead sounds like pretty great value for two thousand bucks.
In the second argument he says that other things, like software, are priced based on the effort to make them. He contrasts this: "the price of a software contract is roughly correlated to the price it takes to produce the software [...[ In healthcare, the price of software licenses is frequently not tethered to the production costs in any way whatsoever [...] it doesn’t take more effect or work for them to create a product for a hospital with more beds." He concludes that this is evidence of grift in healthcare. This is another fundamental mistake: the price of software is correlated with the amount of marginal value it provides to the customer over to their next best alternative. It's just basic economics.
Given two large fundamental misconceptions in the first two arguments of the post I have elected to forego reading the rest of the article.
was
2yr ago
I say this as someone who's NOT vegetarian.
Cattle genomes are about 80% similar to man (that's not to imply that the results of its expression are linear). If we created an AGI that was 100X smarter than us and treated us like cattle -- what would our argument be? How could we convince it that it is acting in the wrong but we are acting in the right?
was
2yr ago
If the source of new users is primarily from reddit, how does moving after they ban us reduce the risk of dying from a lack of new users?
Unfortunately I don't think bright lines exist for most things (i.e. most absolutist positions are untenable -- is spam free speech? there's no incitement of violence.) I think the left has historically been really good at amplifying something that's just far enough to change people's minds but nothing that's considered truly abhorrent (e.g. first gay marriage, then transgenderism; not the reverse).
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