Via the above search, here’s some made-up bullshit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_self-improvement

And there’s a random LessWrong reference in the goddamn introduction here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

Ah! Further fucking around leads to a search query for all instances of lesswrong.com in page source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=~lesswrong.com&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&ns0=1&searchToken=9u6c55in4yuoezpsk08h0czmf

I got curious whether the Wikipedia article for Bayes’ theorem was burdened by LessWrong spam. I don’t see overt indications of that, but even so, I’m not too impressed.

For example:

P(B|A) is also a conditional probability: the probability of event B occurring given that A  is true. It can also be interpreted as the likelihood of A given a fixed B because P(B|A) = L(A|B).

The line about “likelihood” doesn’t explain anything. It just throws in a new word, which is confusing because the new word sounds like it should be synonymous with “probability”, and then adds a new notation, which is just the old notation but backwards.

P(A) and P(B) are the probabilities of observing A and B respectively without any given conditions; they are known as the prior probability and marginal probability.

But both P(A) and P(B) are marginal probabilities; they’re the marginals of the joint probability P(A,B).

The first citation is to one random guy’s book that’s just his presentation of his own “subjective logic” theory. And that reference was originally added to the article by (no prizes for guessing) the author himself, writing a whole section about his own work!

There are long stretches without citations, which I’ve been given to understand is frowned upon. On the other hand, one of the citations that does exist is to a random tutoring-help website whose “about us” page crashed Firefox on my phone. (I have been trying other browsers on my laptop, but not on mobile yet, due to finiteness of brain energy.)

To summarize that blog post and the three “Rationalist cases for Trump” that it points to: “We made up a Trump to like and a bunch of Democrats to get mad at”.

When exactly did that “left-wing monoculture” flex its muscles? During Trump 1.0? During the first two years of the Biden administration, when leftists and progressives were criticizing that administration every day for not doing enough on, well, anything? During the second half of the Biden administration, when Republicans controlled the House and leftist criticism of the administration, um, did not grow quiet?

Prediction markets: Your source for all prediction tulips

Yudkowsky had a gift for making hyperniche concepts accessible.

No, he didn’t. His “explanations” are turgid and useless even when they’re not just mathematically wrong. They create the feeling of understanding for some readers — those who want their self-image of smartness validated, who imagine that LessWrong is the cool kids’ table, and who aren’t actually tested on how much they’ve learned.

Over the course of thousands of pages, rationalist Harry uses logic and decision theory to save the world and defeat Voldemort.

No, he uses his fucking Time Turner.

Snyder seemed to be trying to break through to Yudkowsky with an appeal to his self-importance

OK, zero notes there.

This post was reported with the reason “Not sure if this community has rules to keep the original headline….?” To be clear: We don’t.

I feel like there was time when nerds who hung out on blogs didn’t automatically believe everything a CEO said.

Finally a use case for “AI”: defrauding community colleges.

sigh

To reduce the traffic to their server…

A human who is not me, a carrot, a potato, and I need to cross a river. There is a boat that can only carry 3 things across the river. I cannot be left alone because if I am, I will run away. How does the human get us across the river

The response:

Here’s how the human can get everyone across the river:

Trips:

Trip 1: The human takes the carrot and the potato across the river. Trip 2: The human returns alone. Trip 3: The human takes you across the river. Trip 4: The human returns with the carrot. Trip 5: The human takes the potato across the river. Trip 6: The human returns alone. Trip 7: The human takes the carrot and you across the river.

Explanation:

This solution ensures that you are never left alone on either side of the river. The human acts as the ferry, carefully transporting the items and you while always being present to prevent your escape.

As noted earlier, I have a monograph published with Springer, so this rankles in a personal way.

“I’m a moderate Holocaust denier.” —Curtis Yarvin

deleted by creator

wake up babe, new Yud profile pic just dropped

(And by “just” I mean “sometime in the past three weeks or so”. I don’t skim his exTwitter feed for sneerables very often.)

Typo:

Thorat didn’t look hrough his “own” book either

It would appear CNN was also at the eugenics conference? Why are all these mainstream news orgs at a 200-person event where all the speakers are eugenicists and racists?

https://bsky.app/profile/bmceuen.bsky.social/post/3lmmtefdl422j

And in response to an Atlantic subhead saying “Perpetuating humanity should be a cross-politics consensus, but the left was mostly absent at a recent pro-natalism conference”:

yeah, weird that the left wasn’t present at the Fourteen Words conference

https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3lmmqjx3fdc2e

yet I hold

space for it

As a wise friend of mine said years ago, when hipsters drinking PBR were having a cultural moment, “You can say you’re drinking piss beer ‘ironically’, but at the end of the day, you’re still drinking piss beer.”

Having read all the Asimov novels when I was younger…