The guy who threw the molotov should have called his Congressman, signed a petition, and paid his taxes.
Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
981–990 of 1001 posts
Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
#982Earlier quoted context omitted.
The event itself is really bad and condemnable, but when threads like this show up they are usually a good thing because people rapidly demonstrate high coupling of tribal affiliation with viewpoint. This causes a lot of them to advertise through unhinged posts which is a good raw test for what they are like to communicate with. I usually go through and killfile a bunch of these commenters. Essentially, you want your…
> Therefore, here's a feature request: allow per-user killfiles. That would be lovely. It's also an obvious feature which has existed in other contexts for a very long time, and it would be easy to implement. That means its omission was a deliberate design choice. It'd be interesting to understand why.
It's a BYO Filterbubble. Filterbubbles are bad.
Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
#983Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it okay to profit off of a machine that kills innocent people? Would it be immoral to attack the builder of that machine, if it stopped the operation of the machine?
Oh, come on, be serious: if that’s the argument then why start with Sam Altman? If you want to hold the leader of a contemporary tech giant responsible for causing excess deaths then Meta and Zuckerberg would be a lot higher up the list - maybe even at the very top. Now I despise Mark Zuckerberg, but I don’t want to firebomb his house: I want his company neutered and/or broken up, I want him stripped of his ill-gotte…
They could have chosen the target that was most available to them. Or they could feel particularly wronged by Sam Altman. Maybe they have Iranian friends.
Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
#984Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Throwing a petrol bomb at a building with children inside is about as evil as murdering 150 students at an all-girls school. I'm obviously not defending that. Really? I don’t know how many were in his house but at most it’s attempted murder of a few versus killing 150. I see a difference. US law sees a difference too. The person that threw the firebomb will get the full weight of the law if they are caught, and spe…
If you want to draw that distinction, then don't you need to account for intent? I don't think the USG intended to bomb a school. The guy throwing a Molotov cocktail has even less claim to it being an accident.
The US has advanced targeting systems the molotov thrower didn't have access to; it's more reasonable to account for intent in the other direction.
Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
#985Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In essence, he has threatened to kill millions of people. “In essence” is doing enormous work here, and it will be basically impossible to have any kind of discussion if that work is considered acceptable. This kind of word-twisting can be used to make pretty much anyone into a murderer, at which point “discussion” will come down to who the mob chooses to listen to.
>“In essence” is doing enormous work here What kind of health insurance does one have when one is employed in the USA? What is the life expectancy of unemployed people vs. employed? Case closed.
Right, everyone who disagrees with you is a murderer, that’s going to work out great.
Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
#986Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I'm not saying violence is okay, but violence is okay"
Pretty much everyone thinks that violence is ok against certain people. You probably do too. The disagreements are about who violence is ok to use against.
I didn't say that violence is never okay in any circumstance. What I'm objecting to is cowards who couch their support for violence in mealy-mouthed caveats: "of COURSE i don't condone violence BUT ackshuaaaaally when you think about it isn't it _understandable_ that someone should _expect_ this kind of reaction blah blah blah blah blah..."
Just say that you think Sam Altman deserves it. You'll disgust me but at least I'd respect your honesty.
Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
#987I don't think I've ever seen a thread this bad on Hacker News*. The number of commenters justifying violence, or saying they "don't condone violence" and then doing exactly that, is sickening and makes me want to find something else to do with my life—something as far away from this as I can get. I feel ashamed of this community. * Edit: It would have been clearer to say "I've never seen a mob dynamic this bad on Hac…
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Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
#988It is fair to be critical of Sam and other tech leaders regarding AI, but he has done nothing to begin to justify violence or even the threat of violence against him or his family.
Justice isn't just about punishing the guilty. It is also about restoring the trust in our society when it has been damaged by criminals. Very few Americans I know have any faith in our justice system's ability to hold the wealthy accountable. As a result, we will see more and more violence as a natural consequence.
Sam Altman could use his considerable wealth to hold billionaires like himself accountable for crimes that they commit through lobbying or funding investigations. Seeing criminal billionaires face justice would go a long to reducing this kind of violence.
Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
#989Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do any of the open weight models from smaller labs exist if they can't distill from the SoTA models that are throwing billions of dollars of compute into pretraining?
Does it matter? The frontier models stole the whole internet, then the second-level models stole from them… It’s all theft.
Oh - I 100% could not care less regarding the morality/legality/whatever... Everyone trains on everything.
I'm just wondering if the smaller labs see the same velocity of advances without SOTA models to generate Terabytes of training data?
Re: Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident
#990Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the way we tackle that is with conversations, not violence I think the breakdown here is that conversation seems to have no power. To only be a bit hyperbolic, the only language with power is money -- or violence. To the extent that ordinary people cannot make change with "conversation" (which I interpret here to mean dialog within society, including with lawmakers), they feel compelled to use violence instead. A n…
Then we move to regulation and law, that's still talking. Bombing his house isn't cool.
What if that doesn't happen?