• 44 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 1st, 2023
  • gerikson@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 4th August 2025English
    19·
    4 days ago

    Here’s LWer “johnswentworth”, who has more than 57k karma on the site and can be characterized as a big cheese:

    My Empathy Is Rarely Kind

    I usually relate to other people via something like suspension of disbelief. Like, they’re a human, same as me, they presumably have thoughts and feelings and the like, but I compartmentalize that fact. I think of them kind of like cute cats. Because if I stop compartmentalizing, if I start to put myself in their shoes and imagine what they’re facing… then I feel not just their ineptitude, but the apparent lack of desire to ever move beyond that ineptitude. What I feel toward them is usually not sympathy or generosity, but either disgust or disappointment (or both).

    “why do people keep saying we sound like fascists? I don’t get it!”

  • gerikson@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 4th August 2025English
    16·
    5 days ago

    LessWronger discovers the great unwashed masses , who inconveniently still indirectly affect policy through outmoded concepts like “voting” instead of writing blogs, might need some easily digested media pablum to be convinced that Big Bad AI is gonna kill them all.

    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4unfQYGQ7StDyXAfi/someone-should-fund-an-agi-blockbuster

    Cites such cultural touchstones as “The Day After Tomorrow”, “An Inconvineent Truth” (truly a GenZ hit), and “Slaughterbots” which I’ve never heard of.

    Listen to the plot summary

    • Slowburn realism: The movie should start off in mid-2025. Stupid agents.Flawed chatbots, algorithmic bias. Characters discussing these issues behind the scenes while the world is focused on other issues (global conflicts, Trump, celebrity drama, etc). [ok so basically LW: the Movie]
    • Explicit exponential growth: A VERY slow build-up of AI progress such that the world only ends in the last few minutes of the film. This seems very important to drill home the part about exponential growth. [ah yes, exponential growth, a concept that lends itself readily to drama]
    • Concrete parallels to real actors: Themes like “OpenBrain” or “Nole Tusk” or “Samuel Allmen” seem fitting. [“we need actors to portray real actors!” is genuine Hollywood film talk]
    • Fear: There’s a million ways people could die, but featuring ones that require the fewest jumps in practicality seem the most fitting. Perhaps microdrones equipped with bioweapons that spray urban areas. Or malicious actors sending drone swarms to destroy crops or other vital infrastructure. [so basically people will watch a conventional thriller except in the last few minutes everyone dies. No motivation. No clear “if we don’t cut these wires everyone dies!”]

    OK so what should be shown in the film?

    compute/reporting caps, robust pre-deployment testing mandates (THESE are all topics that should be covered in the film!)

    Again, these are the core components of every blockbuster. I can’t wait to see “Avengers vs the AI” where Captain America discusses robust pre-deployment testing mandates with Tony Stark.

    All the cited URLS in the footnotes end with “utm_source=chatgpt.com”. 'nuff said.

  • gerikson@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 20th July 2025 - awful.systemsEnglish
    17·
    17 days ago

    Here’s an example of normal people using Bayes correctly (rationally assigning probabilities and acting on them) while rats Just Don’t Get Why Normies Don’t Freak Out:

    For quite a while, I’ve been quite confused why (sweet nonexistent God, whyyyyy) so many people intuitively believe that any risk of a genocide of some ethnicity is unacceptable while being… at best lukewarm against the idea of humanity going extinct.

    (Dude then goes on to try to game-theorize this, I didn’t bother to poke holes in it)

    The thing is, genocides have happened, and people around the world are perfectly happy to advocate for it in diverse situations. Probability wise, the risk of genocide somewhere is very close to 1, while the risk of “omnicide” is much closer to zero. If you want to advocate for eliminating something, working to eliminating the risk of genocide is much more rational than working to eliminate the risk of everyone dying.

    At least on commenter gets it:

    Most people distinguish between intentional acts and shit that happens.

    (source)

    Edit never read the comments (again). The commenter referenced above obviously didn’t feel like a pithy one liner adhered to the LW ethos, and instead added an addendum wondering why people were more upset about police brutality killing people than traffic fatalities. Nice “save”, dipshit.