Absolutely. We already sanction Russian oligarchs for the same reasons, why should we treat the American ones any different honestly.
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- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Greenland 'Freedom City'? Rich donors push Trump for a tech hub up northEnglish6Ā·28 days ago
- fnix@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢Effective Altruismās Democracy Problem (Gone Utilitarian!)English10Ā·29 days ago
Wow, the term āepistemically humbleā is ingenious really. I donāt have to listen to any critics at all, not because Iām a narcissist, oh no, but because Iām so āepistemically humbleā no one could possibly have anything left to teach me!
- fnix@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢Scoots hot new AGI goss just dropped, Trump loses 3rd election to Grok in stunning upsetEnglish7Ā·1 month ago
How much money would be saved by just funneling the students of these endless āAI xā programs back to the humanities where they can learn to write (actually good) science fiction to their heartās content? Hey, finally a way AI actually lead to some savings!
- fnix@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢Scoots hot new AGI goss just dropped, Trump loses 3rd election to Grok in stunning upsetEnglish4Ā·1 month ago
Thatās an AI governance PhD right there!
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th March 2025English8Ā·1 month ago
Bill Gates is having a normal one.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/26/bill-gates-on-ai-humans-wont-be-needed-for-most-things.html
- fnix@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢Yudkowsky: eugenics is now "the third most important project in the world." After AI doom and anime, presumably.English2Ā·1 month ago
Yeah, I suppose academia and the tech industry are quite different things, for all their problems.
Still, thereās a way to critique systemic issues without mixing it up with self-aggrandizement and the implication that all your coworkers except a few friends are idiots. He really reminds me of Nassim Taleb in that regard, who (among other things) has made some valid criticisms of IQ but whose style is just a bit too much for my sensibilities. āBenevolent griftinessā seems just the right descriptor here. =)
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th March 2025English7Ā·1 month ago
Wanting to escape the fact that we are beings of the flesh seems to be behind so much of the rationalist-reactionary impulse ā a desire to one-up our mortal shells by eugenics, weird diets, ābrain uploadingā and something like vampirism with the Bryan Johnson guy. Itās wonderful you found a way to embrace and express yourself instead! Yes, in a healthier relationship with our bodies ā which is what we are ā such changes would be considered part of general healthcare. It sometimes appears particularly extreme in the US from here from Europe at least, maybe a heritage of puritanical norms.
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th March 2025English9Ā·1 month ago
Reminds me of the stories of how Soviet peasants during the rapid industrialization drive under Stalin, whoād never before seen any machinery in their lives, would get emotional with and try to coax faulty machines like they were their farm animals. But these were Soviet peasants! What are structural forces stopping Yud & co outgrowing their childish mystifications? Deeply misplaced religious needs?
- fnix@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢Yudkowsky: eugenics is now "the third most important project in the world." After AI doom and anime, presumably.English2Ā·1 month ago
Isnāt it all a bit like Ludicās writings on software engineering which have been shared approvingly here a number of times? The profession is shit, office politics dominates actual work, most other people are NPCs who instead of moving mountains just go through the motions etc ā but I bear the Spirit and dare to stand on higher ground! Or am I dumb and getting stuck in superficial similarities here, discounting the substantive differences?
- fnix@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢"Tracing Woodgrains" starts a eugenics-oriented education policy "think-tank"English2Ā·1 month ago
Incidentally, the only time Iāve seen Tracing Woodgrains pop up in my timeline is retweets from one of the Decoding the Gurus podcast hosts, who had also previously palled around with EA-adjacent āintelligence researchersā like Stuart Ritchie. Something to keep in mind for people who perhaps hold up that podcast with its long-form episodes as a benchmark for debunking IDW crankery.
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢People donāt enjoy making music, says AI music CEO being sued for stealing musicEnglish14Ā·4 months ago
A generous interpretation may be that writing music in the context of the modern music industry may indeed be something thatās creatively unsatisfying for composers, but the solutions to that have nothing to do with magical tech-fixes and everything to do with politics, which is of course anathema to these types. What dumb times we live in.
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 19th January 2025 - awful.systemsEnglish6Ā·4 months ago
Ah, the Image Upload Protocol must have gone woke.
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 19th January 2025 - awful.systemsEnglish5Ā·4 months ago
Iāve never heard of anyone describing 1984 that way, could you elaborate on your points or link to some analysis?
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th December 2024English5Ā·5 months ago
Someone else said it, but for someone completely accustomed to a life of easy privilege, having it suddenly disappear can be utterly intolerable.
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢the dead end grift that is lab grown meatEnglish5Ā·5 months ago
You should read the article first.
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢the dead end grift that is lab grown meatEnglish3Ā·5 months ago
Indeed an amazing piece of journalism, a gripping read throughout! Thanks for the share.
I feel like youāre just going offtopic here. I mean, poverty around the world may be down for reasons that have nothing to do with what Silicon Valley is peddling; the article specifically criticizes the latterās particular ātech utopiaā vision of the future and not what was written up in the UN Millennium Development Goals.
- fnix@awful.systemstoSneerClub@awful.systemsā¢In which a Eugenicist Effective Altruist advocates becoming a cuckold for the greater goodEnglish7Ā·5 months ago
Itās also telling how he shies away from bringing his line of thought to its logical conclusion: if you think you need to āoptimizeā your childās genetics to perfection, why shouldnāt you try to optimize their environment like that as well? If youāre such an imperfect being with all your faulty genes after all then itās probable you will make mistakes during parenting, so by your own logic thinking you would be suited to raise a child in the first place is a terrible crime no different from refusing cuckoldry.
And they call this āeffective altruismā. Jesus Christ these people need help.
- fnix@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systemsā¢US startup charging couples to āscreen embryos for IQāEnglish6Ā·7 months ago
Testing for genetic defects is very different from the Gattaca-premise of most everything about a person being genetically deterministic, with society ordered around that notion. My point was that such a setting is likely inherently impossible, since āheritabilityā doesnāt work like that; the most techbros can do is LARP at it, which, granted, can be very dangerous on its own ā the fact that race is a social construct doesnāt preclude racism and so on. But thereās no need to get frightened by science fiction when science facts tell a different story.
Many ordinary people lost their jobs and homes during the Great Recession, while no one at the top was ever held individually accountable. Knowing the dynamics of the tech world, a hard crash would likely end up playing out the same way.