God I was just reading that and it’s so hard but it’s so funny because that poor girl freya seems to have caused a crisis for Kent by being genuinely enthusiastic about AI bullshit and making friends with chatbots.

I wonder if Kent is going to have to do conversion therapy on his AI girlfriend now. Ethically of course.

Good news! We’ve solved consciousness.

https://poc.bcachefs.org/paper.pdf

Liteplo says the seed of RentAHuman was planted during his travels in Japan, where humans can lease other humans as escorts.

“The story that I could tell anyone to blow their mind is that you can rent a boyfriend or a girlfriend,” he said.

huh? his big epiphany is learning about prostitution?

Clearly one of the lesser intellectual crimes in this nazi manifesto, but the way rationalists use “ontology” to mean basically “core set of beliefs” irks me so much!! Though on the upside it leads to awe-inspiring metaphysical horror turns of phrase such as “update one’s ontology”.

Someone claimed no country had ever pulled itself out of poverty except by capitalism

The funny thing is orthodox marxists wouldn’t necessarily disagree: capitalism is a necessary historical step towards communism. Not sure how that justifies the continued existence of exploitation and billionaires!

Oh absolutely. It’s frankly shocking how wrong he’s been about so many things for so so long. He’s also managed to pen the most astonishingly holocaust-denial-coded diatribe I’ve ever read from (ostensibly) a non-holocaust denier. I guess his overdeveloped genocide-denial muscle was twitching!

and, of course, Noam Chomsky

lmao the shade

Yeah! Exactly!

And of course on that theme from Melanie “Computer scientist” Mitchell

On the bad side: A.I.-induced psychosis! On the good side, some people will get a lot out of using chatbots as therapists.

These people have definitely offloaded the cognitive load to chatbots.

I like this one from “A.I. policy researcher” Helen Toner.

I believe the narrative around A.I.’s negative environmental impacts has gotten way out of hand. Yes, on aggregate the industry uses quite a bit of energy and water, but that’s true of any large industry. The relevant question is how it compares to other industries, and how it compares to how much value we’re getting out of it.

Yes girl, good job. Now maybe try connecting these two thoughts!

I was getting excited to read this but seeing the word “hyperstition” used three times in the abstract put a bit of a damper on things hahah

Sorry phone picture and tangent but wow I sure regret digging and looking at this man’s horrible blog and his horrible commenters

The thing is, the world in 1984 is feminist! as imagined by a bloke who hates feminism. Sex for pleasure is outlawed, makeup and dresses are banned, women look and act like men (and indeed are worse than men) instead of following their womanly nature. It’s a feminist dystopia!

I mean, if god damned Asimov thinks your book is misogynistic, you know you’ve fucked up!

I don’t think I disagree with much of what Asimov is saying here! Aside from the silly bits about left infighting and scifi as forecasting (yawn), and the horrible recount of the Spanish civil war, I’ve made pretty much the same observations about 1984. It’s nihilistic and reactionary, it’s profoundly misogynistic and it reeks of contempt for the working class. It’s also shockingly naive and paradoxically enthusiastic about the workings and effectiveness of propaganda and censorship. There’s certainly nothing prescient about it. It’s baffling to me that it’s still popular with leftleaning people to this day.

The most generous thing I can say is that the book might have been intended purely as satire, and as such it would at least be coherent. But sadly I don’t think this is how people tend to read it.

yup this is pretty much what happens when you grind books for xp instead of actually reading them

some important characters in the narrative I’ve completely skipped over, mostly to do with the Nature of Art (in society) subplot, because nothing actually happens in them and it’s all social parties and talking

you … mother … fucker … so not only did you manage to miss the fact that this is a gay book, you completely skipped past one if not the most important theme in the novel which is language and the way people talk and write and the various ways they conduct themselves in different times and places, but oh nothing happens it’s just people talking aaaaaaaaaa

also this is a funny book! it’s funny! it’s not all maudlin meditations upon time and memory! fuck you!

warming up on philosophy with Simulacra and Simulation

oh no baby what are you doing

im gonna shit

Dude check this out. Inflation is bad right? So what if, hear me out, what if we made currency that was by design deflationary?? This way you keep your money in your account and it’ll appreciate in value as long as you never spend it!

Ugh, yeah, as I though then. Eliezer going for the conspiracy theory to euphemise the real abuse is a perfect illustration of why I really really can’t stand the general discourse around the Epstein files.