“intelligent” people make the best marks, donchaknow

I don’t remember seeing Lesswrongers play with these sorts of ideas

the all-defector in rajaniemi’s books probably sits pretty close?

(I still can’t tell if rajaniemi’s actually really into all this shit, or just found it all to be a highly convenient backstory for some detailed scifi)

there’s been some (what appears to me to be) remarkable progress in the field, in that I know that it’s possible to create intentional structures. it’s very much not my field so I can’t speak to it in detail, I think the best way I could describe where I understand it to be is that it’s like people building with lego, if that makes sense?

but yeah it’s still a damn far way off from what we’d call “gene programming” as we have “computer programming”

a fairly sizable chunk of everything, generally.

I was not aware of this, failed my constitution roll, and have taken psychic damage

even this he has to ruin

the sidebar has a link (the TESCREAL one) which may also be illuminating

as to the rest, yuuuuuup. that’s why sneerclub and techtakes exist.

it’s … hairy

this is a prior attempt by me at giving a (very) concise overview of the “main camp” (for lack of a better term). the zizians are a distinct, specific, extremist offshoot of these.

and I want to make clear that “extremist” there is really, really intense. because 'ole Yud himself has advocated nuking datacenters to “stop the AI”

thiel’s linked in by…many strands. it’s pretty accurate to say that many aren’t known, and only some are. some things that are: these ideas are extremely popular with a lot of the kind of people who work at thiel-funded/thiel-connected companies (palantir, etc etc). there’s also a strong link/correlation between the sort of shit that both thiel/yarvin say, and many of these

don’t feel bad for not getting it from the getgo, nor should you feel bad about not wanting to dive in. much of their shit spans 2~3 decades (even longer when you account for the extropians and longtermists and shit…), so there’s a lot

[wailing intensifies]

hi, welcome to awful.systems and sneerclub! I see you’ve received your intro package!

but, yeah, common reaction. it’d be funnier if their ideas weren’t presently so fucking influential in all the wrong places. :|

Technically he doesn’t have connections to Thiel directly.

minor nit: known connections. while “thielbucks laundered through 17 cutouts get used to fund useful idiots for stochastic terrorism to whip up an anti-trans panic” is a hypothetical I just pulled out of my ass for demonstration, it’s also too fucking plausible in the current state of affairs

I have no idea how likely that scenario is, and just to be clear I’m not saying that anything like it did happen. more pointing towards thielbucks are in so of the bad places doing harm atm, that sort of thing. so much so that I’d be hesitant to concretely exclude anyone/anything from that without some data to back it up

it took me until today to grok the VC double entendre

my take too - someone hoping to make proxy use of the bigot wave that ngo is currently attempting whipping up with his fake panic

I definitely don’t have the spoons to read this most recent of his emanations (yes, I am picking that word), but from just the start of it alone… god

the orange man isn’t even in the seat yet and all these motherfuckers are loudly shouting who they are

yt short

may shorts forever die writhing (along with the people that made it happen)

such a fucking abysmal format, coming along only because twitter periscope facebook-lying-to-everyone quibi “tiktok” popularity made every bigtech shitlord feel product fomo and decide they had to do it ritenao just in case they miss the next big thing, despite afterward still sitting on the exact same extractivist bullshit as their source of money as before

“we set up a pocket universe for our toy robot to run in, looped it a few billions times, and you wouldn’t believe what ways it found to fuck with the rules! we’re ever so shocked! :o” is a going staple in ML agent research for years now, these people are a parody upon themselves

remember that “agents in a physics sim” shit a few years ago (both early goog and openai, I think)? that strain of nonsense

I actually had to doublecheck context on this but rofldamn this is savage

brava

I swear all those fuckers are like “I was 4 rooms over but just heard the word ‘paprika’ being screamed from someone over this way. time for you to hear all about my bowel issues, in detail! you wouldn’t believe what happens if I smell onions”, but at a conference as a lightning talk to the main hall

gap’s closer now

when I asked him if jewish people in WWII concentration camps were just choosing to be unhappy he was like yes

oof.

that whole strain of “it’s only in your mind” motherfuckers who just outright disregard varieties of concrete evidence… whether from biochemically-etc originated body- and being-related problems all the way through things like the example you gave… I’ve had to deal with a couple of them myself (my can of brainworms include some choice seasonal unfun things) and good god do I often want to boop them on the nose