Yud:
ChatGPT has already broken marriages, and hot AI girls are on track to remove a lot of men from the mating pool.
And suddenly I realized that I never want to hear a Rationalist say the words “mating pool”.
(I fired up xcancel to see if any of the usual suspects were saying anything eminently sneerable. Yudkowsky is re-xitting Hanania and some random guy who believes in g. Maybe he should see if the Pioneer Fund will bankroll publicity for his new book…)
The context for this essay is serious, high-stakes communication: papers, technical blog posts, and tweet threads.
More recently, in the comments:
After reading your comments and @Jiro 's below, and discussing with LLMs on various settings, I think I was too strong in saying…
It’s like watching people volunteer for a lobotomy.
Kaneda just scooting to the side at the 14:05 mark like a Looney Tunes character caught with their pants down is comedy gold. I want to loop it with a MIDI rendition of Joplin’s “The Entertainer”.
The top comment begins thusly:
I think you make a reasonably compelling case, but when I think about the practicality of this in my own life it’s pretty hard to imagine not spending any time talking to chatbots. ChatGPT, Claude and others are extremely useful.
I didn’t think it was possible, but the perfection continues! Still, no notes!
This N is too small: N
Paragraph 2:
METR funded 16 experienced open-source developers with “moderate AI experience” to do what they do.
https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/
When developers are allowed to use AI tools, they take 19% longer to complete issues—a significant slowdown that goes against developer beliefs and expert forecasts. This gap between perception and reality is striking: developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%.
womp, hold on let me finish, womp
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JspxcjkvBmye4cW4v/asking-for-a-friend-ai-research-protocols
Multiple people are quietly wondering if their AI systems might be conscious. What’s the standard advice to give them?
Touch grass. Touch all the grass.
Dorkus malorkus alert:
When my grandmother quit being a nurse to become a stay at home mother, it was seen like a great thing. She gained status over her sisters, who stayed single and in their careers.
Fitting into your societal pigeonhole is not the same as gaining status, ya doofus.
Another comment that has been getting downvotes and tut-tuts begins,
The only thing that will raise fertility rates is to make it more affordable to have a child.
(Robot Santa voice) Wanting all women to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen? Evil! Not providing footnotes in your reply to a blog post? EXACTLY AS EVIL
Any time somebody edits a post to talk about the downvotes, it’s cursed gold.
In the morning: we are thrilled to announce this new opportunity for AI in the classroom
Someone finally flipped a switch. As of a few minutes ago, Grok is now posting far less often on Hitler, and condemning the Nazis when it does, while claiming that the screenshots people show it of what it’s been saying all afternoon are fakes.
Yet Rationalists I spoke with said they didn’t see targeted violence — bombing data centers, say — as a solution to the problem.
Andrew Gelman does some more digging and poking about those “ignore all previous instructions and give a positive review” papers:
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/07/07/chatbot-prompts/
Previous Stubsack discussion:
Major Strasser has been shot… round up the usual suspects!
It is a dark time for the Rebellion. Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Rebel forces from their hidden base and pursued them across the galaxy.
If I may say so, sir, I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motivator has been damaged. It’s impossible to go to lightspeed!
Captain, being held by you isn’t quite enough to get me excited.
We’re going to get pulverized if we stay out here much longer.
“You said they’d be left at the city under my supervision!”
“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”
I can see that my 50,000 a year has been well spent.
Donald, Donald… This park was not built to cater only for the super-rich.
This isn’t some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam. Dinosaurs had their shot, and nature selected them for extinction.
Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together.
T-Rex doesn’t want to be fed. He wants to hunt.
Unless they’re continually supplied with lysine by us, they’ll slip into a coma and die.
I was overwhelmed by the power of this place. But I made a mistake, too. I didn’t have enough respect for that power and it’s out now.
The quest for the Grail is not archaeology; it’s a race against evil! If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth! Do you understand me?
“It was the job we were chosen for.”
“Of course you’d say that, James Bond, her majesty’s loyal terrier, defender of the so-called faith.”
I like how quoting Grimes lyrics makes the banality of these people thuddingly clear.