A rival gang of “AI” “researchers” dare to make fun of Big Yud’s latest book and the LW crowd are Not Happy

Link to takedown: https://www.mechanize.work/blog/unfalsifiable-stories-of-doom/ (hearbreaking : the worst people you know made some good points)

When we say Y&S’s arguments are theological, we don’t just mean they sound religious. Nor are we using “theological” to simply mean “wrong”. For example, we would not call belief in a flat Earth theological. That’s because, although this belief is clearly false, it still stems from empirical observations (however misinterpreted).

What we mean is that Y&S’s methods resemble theology in both structure and approach. Their work is fundamentally untestable. They develop extensive theories about nonexistent, idealized, ultrapowerful beings. They support these theories with long chains of abstract reasoning rather than empirical observation. They rarely define their concepts precisely, opting to explain them through allegorical stories and metaphors whose meaning is ambiguous.

Their arguments, moreover, are employed in service of an eschatological conclusion. They present a stark binary choice: either we achieve alignment or face total extinction. In their view, there’s no room for partial solutions, or muddling through. The ordinary methods of dealing with technological safety, like continuous iteration and testing, are utterly unable to solve this challenge. There is a sharp line separating the “before” and “after”: once superintelligent AI is created, our doom will be decided.

LW announcement, check out the karma scores! https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Bu3dhPxw6E8enRGMC/stephen-mcaleese-s-shortform?commentId=BkNBuHoLw5JXjftCP

Update an LessWrong attempts to debunk the piece with inline comments here

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/i6sBAT4SPCJnBPKPJ/mechanize-work-s-essay-on-unfalsifiable-doom

Leading to such hilarious howlers as

Then solving alignment could be no easier than preventing the Germans from endorsing the Nazi ideology and commiting genocide.

Ummm pretty sure engaging in a new world war and getting their country bombed to pieces was not on most German’s agenda. A small group of ideologues managed to sieze complete control of the state, and did their very best to prevent widespread knowledge of the Holocaust from getting out. At the same time they used the power of the state to ruthlessly supress any opposition.

rejecting Yudkowsky-Soares’ arguments would require that ultrapowerful beings are either theoretically impossible (which is highly unlikely)

ohai begging the question

LOL @ promptfondlers in comments

Nice time - here’s a Swedish dude who constructed a 8m parabolic dish to do EME by hand

News item in Swedish: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/uppsala/byggde-atta-meter-parabol-for-att-prata-via-manen

Earth-Moon-Earth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth–Moon–Earth_communication (bonus illustration obviously taken from a primary school science project) Edit malus for long passage in second section second para obviously originally written by a Nazi

this made my day, thx

Thanks for digging into this.

Question for someone not versed in US nonprofit law - are there any legal consequences for incorrect statmements in these forms? Or does the IRS just look at the tax situation?

whole country is swole, good mirror of the maga mind

yeah, I dunno how large the union of retro game handheld enthusiasts and techfash lickspittles is.

Did you hear about the vegetarian cannibal?

He can only eat swedes.

is there a term I can google to start researching this new generation of motors?

I guess battery tech has affected this too

Carmack is a Gen-X Texan mostly known for using hardmode C to code an FPS. He’s so drenched in nerd testostorone I’d be surprised if he wasn’t background radiation level non-woke. Not saying he shouldn’t be as a human being, just that it would be an uphill battle for him.

data which for menial tasks doesnt exist yet.

This reminds me over an old old furore here in Sweden. A female researcher at a largish university made a study of how cleaners … cleaned. How bathrooms, kitchens etc were constructed and how workers had to move and lift to do their work.

This was almost universally derided - “who does science on cleaning???”, but of course the intent was serious. Lots of people clean, if we design better workspaces, we reduce injuries and RSI etc, and maybe make it easier for less skilled people to clean. But becaseu both the author and the subjected were coded female, the reactionaries had conniptions.

Anyway that won’t help humanoid robots. Just thought about it

Edit found an article in Swedish about it, year was 1985. Nowadays bathroom fixtures are constructed after her recommendations

https://arbetet.se/2009/02/26/gudrun-linns-forskningpverkar-hela-byggsverige/

Jane Street has an interesting cachet in at least my nerd circles because they require everyone they hire to learn Ocaml[1]. It would not surprise me if they are fash-adjacent, but only because I believe everyone in Wall Street is fash-adjacent.

[1] I think - maybe it’s only the technical staff

Questioning the nature of human intelligence is step 1 in promptfondler whataboutism.

I regret I have but one upvote to give to this

This is such a pivot, from “you can soon fly between capitals in half the time” to “this screaming jet engine will soon be disturbing your sleep 24/7”

Old Man Stallman comes out swinging against ChatGPT specifically, adding it to the long long list of stuff he doesn’t like. For some reason HN is mad at this, as if RMS saying slop is good actually would convince anyone normal to start using it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203591

Having a SAN stat act like an INT (IQ) stat is very on brand for rationalists (except ofc the INT stat is immutable duh)

Yud explains, over 3k words, that not only is he smarter than everyone else, he is also saner, and no, there’s no way you can be as sane as him

Eliezer’s Unteachable Methods of Sanity

(side note - it’s weird that LW, otherwise so anxious about designing their website, can’t handle fucking apostrophes correctly)

pity it is slop, I’d enjoy a good ESR dunk

2 links from my feeds with crossover here

Lawyers, Guns and Money: The Data Center Backlash

Techdirt: Radicalized Anti-AI Activist Should Be A Wake Up Call For Doomer Rhetoric

Unfortunately Techdirt’s Mike Masnick is a signatory some bullshit GenAI-collaborationist manifesto called The Resonant Computing Manifesto, along with other suspects like Anil Dash. Like so many other technolibertarian manifestos, it naturally declines to say how their wonderful vision would be economically feasible in a world without meaningful brakes on the very tech giants they profess to oppose.