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String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

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Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#831

Post by nonrandomstring »

Aurornis wrote: post #346
kiba wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The community/offshoot I am part of is mostly liberal/left. My impression that lesswrong is also liberal/left.

> The community/offshoot I am part of is mostly liberal/left There isn't an official "rationalist" community. Some consider LessWrong to be the center, but there have always been different communities and offshoots. As far as I know, a lot of the famous rationalist figures haven't participated much in LessWrong for a long time now. The far right offshoot I was referring to is known as "TheMotte" or "The Motte". It wa…

> There isn't an official "rationalist" community.

Rationalists have always associated strongly with secular humanists and sceptics. There are multiple organisations that either include "rationalist" in their title or primary mission statement alongside sceptical secular humanism.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#832

Post by kbelder »

CSMastermind wrote: post #415
llm_trw wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shudder to ask, but what exactly is a math pet?

I was unacquainted with the term but after searching it seems that Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote several posts on a BDSM website where he fantasized about recruiting a harem of highly educated women to service him which he called "math pets".

>...recruiting a harem of highly educated women to service him which he called "math pets".

Dammit, now I have a new fetish.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#833

Post by smeeger »

squigz wrote: post #762
smeeger wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

correct. there isnt a single well founded argument to dismiss AI alarmism. people are very attached to the idea that more technology is invariably better. and they are very reluctant to saddle themselves with the emotional burden of seeing whats right in front of them.

> there isnt a single well founded argument to dismiss AI alarmism AI alarmism itself isn't a well founded argument.

more well founded than pressing on the gas pedal

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#834

Post by IshKebab »

tacitusarc wrote: post #777
IshKebab wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The “quadrillion days of happiness” offered to a rational person gives away that such allegories are anthropomorphized just for the sake of presentation. So what? It's still presented as if it's a interesting problem that needs to be "remedied", when in fact it's just a basic maths mistake. If I said "ooo look at this paradox: 1 + 1 = 2, but if I add another one then we get 1 + 1 + 1 = 2, which is clearly false! I…

Interestingly, the trolley problem is decided every day, and humanity does not change tracks. There are people who die waiting for organ donors, and a single donor could match multiple people. We do not find an appropriate donor and harvest them. This is the trolley problem, applied.

> We do not find an appropriate donor and harvest them. This is the trolley problem, applied.

I don't think that matches the trolley problem particularly well for all sorts of reasons. But anyway your point is irrelevant - his claim was that the trolley problem isn't about real humans, not that people would pull the lever.

Edit: never mind, I reread your comment and I think you were also agreeing with that.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#835

Post by sunshowers »

loanedempathy wrote: post #679
sunshowers wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are your utterances here helping the cause of trans liberation, or hurting it?

> Are your utterances here helping the cause of trans liberation, or hurting it? I get that it's been a rough couple of weeks for trans people, and immigrants, and people who due import and export, and grant-writers--but perhaps you should take a moment to reflect on how comments like this reflect on you and trans people to the general populace (which is adjacent to the point made by the comment you were replying to)…

I'm aware that the vast majority of cis people have incorrect empirical and moral beliefs about trans people. I try to be kind and empathetic, and I have personally spent a lot of my time educating the cis people in my personal life (to some success). But the crisis we are in right now is created by cis people, not by trans people.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#836

Post by squigz »

smeeger wrote: post #833
squigz wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there isnt a single well founded argument to dismiss AI alarmism AI alarmism itself isn't a well founded argument.

more well founded than pressing on the gas pedal

Although not nearly as well founded as the logic you're demonstrating with this comment.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#837

Post by teeth-gnasher »

SilasX wrote: post #819
teeth-gnasher wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to provide an example?

You’re disputing that major religions ever hold deeply implausible claims as an article of faith? Really? I mean, if they didn’t, then they probably would be religions, just “stuff everyone believes or has reasoned discussions about”. Spoiler: they can’t all be right.

I was trying to understand what you meant by “insane”, but you already moved the goalposts to “implausible”, so it’s not clear to me that you even know what you’re claiming.

However, if I were to take a guess, it’s something like “people sometimes believe things without proof”. But obviously this is not true only of religious people, other people have their own creation stories – the sole difference is their’s don’t involve worship. And I agree they can’t all be right, but perhaps one of them is.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#838

Post by hollerith »

saagarjha wrote: post #655
hollerith wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that he has no academic credentials, but people with academic credentials have been employed on the research program led by him: Andrew Critch for example, who has a PhD in math from UC Berkeley, and Jesse Liptrap who also has a math PhD from a prestigious department although I cannot recall which one. Also, this page lists 3 ex-Googlers as being currently employed by Eliezer's org: https://intelligence.or…

Ok, but hundreds of thousands of people have worked for Google without being experts on AI. Anyone who employs one, doesn't automatically become more credible. If you believe that then I want you to know that this comment was written by an ex-Google employee and thus must be authoritative ;)

Good point! If I could write the comment over again, I'd probably leave out the ex-Googlers. But I thought of another math PhD who was happy to work for Eliezer's institute, Scott Garrabrant. I could probably find more if I did a search of the web.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#839

Post by sunshowers »

PaulHoule wrote: post #815
watwut wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate toward trans predates mastodon tho. Where I live, it is very normal to make fun of trans and gays. It is simply accepted that they are disgusting. People who talked to me about trans being disgusting were definitely not reading mastodon nor any other trans bubble. Trans being killed for being trans and then local politician using the situation to push anti-gay legal agenda is a very real thing. I do not think it…

It's reductive to say that it's one or the other. I can say personally my feeling thermometer went from maybe 75 to 15 as a result of being on Mastodon and other online forums in the last tow years. I like trans people as individuals but I hate the movement. It's not the only place where that kind of negativity leaks out. For instance the men's rooms in my building are stuffed with menstrual products for "men who men…

> It seems to me that this sucks all the air out of the room to discuss anything else.

You understand that this state of affairs has been created by the bigoted side? I just want to live in peace and build stuff that makes the world better, not worry about the federal government coming after me and pretending I don't exist. Please try not to get so fooled next time.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#840

Post by kragen »

Aurornis wrote: post #402
llm_trw wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The complaint here seems to be that rationalists don't take progressive pieties as axiomatic. A trans vegan gang murdering police officers is what's come out of this milieu. I don't see how anyone can say they aren't taking "progressive pieties as axiomatic". The OP is just taking the "everything I don't like is fascist" trope to it's natural conclusion. Up next: Stalin actually a Nazi.

> The OP is just taking the "everything I don't like is fascist" trope to it's natural conclusion. The right-wing rationalist community (The Motte) arose when Slate Star Codex finally banned culture war topics. Scott Alexander wrote about it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread... There's also a long history of neoreactionary factions of the rationalist community as well as a fascination with…

Yarvin is authoritarian but very far from fascism, arguably farther than Stalin was.
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