Soyweiser

joined 1 year ago
[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 9 hours ago

Well, at least they put down something. More than I expected.

And doing research on people? In this economy?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Post by Corbet the editor. "We get it: people wish that we had not highlighted work by this particular author. Had we known more about the person in question, we might have shied away from the topic. But the article is out now, it describes a bit of interesting technology, people have had their say, please let's leave it at that."

So you updated the article to reflect this right? padme.jpg

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Watts has always been a bit of a weird vector. While he doesn't seem a far righter himself, he accidentally uses a lot of weird far right dogwhistles. (prob some cross contamination as some of these things are just scientific concepts (esp the r/K selection thing stood out very much to me in the rifters series, of course he has a phd in zoology, and the books predate the online hardcore racists discovering the idea by more than a decade, but still odd to me)).

To be very clear, I don't blame Watts for this, he is just a science fiction writer, a particularly gloomy one. The guy himself seems to be pretty ok (not a fan of trump for example).

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago

Hold it right there criminal scum!

spoilerImage of two casually dressed guys pointing fingerguns at the camera, green beams are coming out of the fingerguns. The Vegan Police from the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. The cops are played by Thomas Jane and Clifton Collins Jr, the latter is wearing sunglasses, while it is dark.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

But things being real doesn't stop the cranks. See quantum.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 14 points 4 days ago

Apologies for focusing on just one sentence of this article, but I feel like it's crucial to the overall argument:

... if [shrimp] suffer only 3% as intensely as we do ...

Does this proposition make sense? It's not obvious to me that we can assign percentage values to suffering, or compare it to human suffering, or treat the values in a linear fashion.

It reminds me of that vaguely absurd thought experiment where you compare one person undergoing a lifetime of intense torture vs billions upon billions of humans getting a fleck of dust in their eyes. I just cannot square choosing the former with my conscience. Maybe I'm too unimaginative to comprehend so many billions of bits of dust.

lol hahah.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 4 days ago

Sadly it seems the next one is gonna be Quantum.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 4 days ago

Not only is the universe a simulation, the Catholics just had it right, isnt that neat.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 4 days ago

Ha very clever, but as quantum level effects only occur when somebody is looking at it, they dont have to simulate it at quark level all the time. I watched what the bleep do we know, im very smart.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Still a bit sad we are not doing nano anymore.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

But this quickly runs into the 'don't create your own unbreakable crypto system' problem. There are people out there who are a lot smarter who quickly can point out the holes in these simulation arguments. (The smartest of whom go 'nah, that is dumb' sadly I'm not that enlightened, as I have argued a few times here before how this is all amateur theology, and has nothing to do with STEM/computer science (E: my gripes are mostly with the 'ancestor simulation' theory however)).

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 14 points 4 days ago

Finally computer science is a real field, there are cranks! Suck it physics and mathematics, we are a real boy now!

 

The interview itself

Got the interview via Dr. Émile P. Torres on twitter

Somebody else sneered: 'Makings of some fantastic sitcom skits here.

"No, I can't wash the skidmarks out of my knickers, love. I'm too busy getting some incredibly high EV worrying done about the Basilisk. Can't you wash them?"

https://mathbabe.org/2024/03/16/an-interview-with-someone-who-left-effective-altruism/

 

Some light sneerclub content in these dark times.

Eliezer complements Musk on the creation of community notes. (A project which predates the takeover of twitter by a couple of years (see the join date: https://twitter.com/CommunityNotes )).

In reaction Musk admits he never read HPMOR and he suggests a watered down Turing test involving HPMOR.

Eliezer invents HPMOR wireheads in reaction to this.

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