bitofhope

joined 2 years ago
[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 6 points 11 hours ago

Those comments are tight, but really the problem with trying to explain any of this to laypeople isn't exposing how wrong it is. The hard part is making any sense of it.

Like if I told you Donald Trump has connections with a cult that believes grandmothers are a species of raspberry, whose goal is turning Denmark into cheese and oh, a splinter group of theirs just murdered a police officer. That will just raise more questions than it answers. How the hell did they come to believe that? Why would anyone want that? And then I have to choose between looking like a loony conspiracy theorist, doing an impromptu lecture or just having to decide you actually probably don't want to know.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 5 points 12 hours ago

Not even a thank you

United Healthcare of all things is green though.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 12 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think Yud is that hard to explain. He's a science fiction fanboy who never let go of his adolescent delusions of grandeur. He was never successfully disabused from the notion that he's always the smartest person in the room and he didn't pursue high school, let alone college education to give him the expertise to recognize just how difficult his goal is. Blud thinks he's gonna create a superhumanly intelligent machine when he struggles with basic programming tasks.

He's kinda comparable to Elon Musk in a way. Brain uploading and superhuman AI are sort of in the same "cool sci fi tech" category as Mars colonization, brain implants and vactrain gadgetbahns. It's easy to forget that not too many years ago the public's perception of Musk was very different. A lot of people saw him as a cool Tony Stark figure who was finally going to give us our damn flying cars.

Yudkowsky is sometimes good at knowing just a bit more about things than his audience and making it seem like he knows a lot more than he does. The first time I started reading HPMoR I thought the author was an actual theoretical physicist or something and when the story said I could learn everything Harry knows for free on this LessWrong site I though I could learn what it means for something to be "implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian" or what that those "timeless formulations of quantum mechanics" were about. Instead it was just poorly paced essays on bog standard logical fallacies and cognitive biases explained using their weird homegrown terminology.

Also, it's really easy to be convinced of thing when you really want to believe in it. I know personally some very smart and worldly people who have been way too impressed by ChatGPT. Convincing people in San Francisco Bay Area that you're about to invent Star Trek technology is basically the national pastime there.

His fantasies of becoming immortal through having a God AI simulate his mind forever aren't the weird part. Any imaginative 15 year old computer nerd can have those fantasies. The weird parts are that he never grew out of those fantasies and that he managed to make some rich and influential contacts while holding on to his chuunibyō delusions.

Anyone can become a cult leader through the power of buying into your own hype and infinite thielbux.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 3 points 16 hours ago

Chart 7"THE REAL POLITICAL SPECTRUM"

On the left "SERVANTS OF THE AEONS", humanoid energy beings among space nebulae. On the right "SLAVES OF THE ARCHONS", reptilian humanoids.

The spectrum from left to right, with symbols in parentheses:

  • Gnosis(Ringed cross): Release from the mortal coil renders politics useless. All achieve oneness with the Monad and harmony is restored to the cosmos. See: The Nag Hammadi Library
  • Erisianism (chaos star): Total freedom. Management of affairs is unnecessary as universally well aligned chakras promote benevolent behaviour from all. See: Atlantis
  • Syndicalism (five-pointed star): Public participation in institutions is combined with no state. Affairs are managed at the local level. See: The Pirate Kingdom of Libertalia
  • Libertarianism (Gadsden rattlesnake): Public oversight of institutions is combined with a limited state. Affairs are managed at the local level. See: Early United States
  • Republicanism (classical colonnade): Influence of industry and finance on the state is controlled by a constitution and a system of check and balances. See: Early United States
  • Corporatocracy (dollar sign): State and industry form a de-facto alliance. Resource allocation subject to secret policy favouring the elite. See: The United States, European Union
  • Communism (hammer and sickle): Industry and state inseparable. Resource allocation subject to central policy. See: Soviet Russia, North Korea
  • Fascism (swastika): Industry and state inseparable. Resource allocation and reproduction subject to central policy. Eugenics in effect. See: Nazi Germany.
  • Monarchism (crown): All resources under the authority of hereditary elite. Elite practices eugenics in its own ranks. Underclass viewed as different species. See*: Feudal Europe*
  • Illuminism (eye of providence): Elite and underclass now form two distinct species. All world's resources controlled by the elite. All activities subject to central policy. See: Brave New World, Nineteen-Eighty Four

Chart 8A conventional two-axis (Left/Right, Authoritarian/Libertarian) political compass chart. Authoritarian left, authoritarian right, and libertarian right all represented by a spooky profile portrait of Max Stirner smoking a cigar. Libertarian Left quadrant contains a smaller image of the diagram itself, which contains still smaller image of the diagram itself, except the libertarian left quadrant says "decentralized chomskian anarcho-molotov-cocktailism" in unreadably small type.

I feel I've lost enough sanity transcribing these that I'm almost ready to make a political compass chart myself.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 7 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (7 children)

This is only the beginning. Check these out!

Chart 1Left edge of the image labeled "Progressivism", right edge labeled "Libertarianism".

Above: A series of points on a horizontal line, each labeled with the name of a political ideology or system and a representative picture. Rightmost two of the dots are blue, others are red. From left to right:

  • Monarchism (crown)
  • Communism (red star with yellow hammer and sickle)
  • Liberalism (Democratic Party Donkey) and Socialism (red flag)
  • Nazism (swastika)
  • Conservatism (Republican Party elephant) and Fascism (fasces)
  • Anarchism (Circled letter A) and Democracy (no symbol)
  • Unlabeled dot
  • Republic (Statue of Liberty)

Below: Flags labeled with political ideologies and systems. Arrangement of flags notated as [X, Y, Flag, Label] where X represents approximate relative distance from left edge and Y represents approximate relative distance from bottom edge.

  • 1, 5, China, Communism
  • 2, 4, Soviet Union, Socialism
  • 3, 3, Nazi Germany, Nazism
  • 3, 1, Likely fictitious flag featuring a green field with white crescent and star and a black tilted swastika on the crescent, Islamo-Fascism
  • 4, 2, War flag of the Italian Social Republic, Fascism
  • 7, 5, United States, Republic

Chart 2A square chart divided in quadrants and colored with a gradient, which is symmetric with respect to the origin. Each quadrant is subdivided into a 19x19 grid. Axes are labeled and the labels' background colored as follows:

X-axis left: "Post-Modern Relativism/Religiosity" (blue), middle: "Strong Fact Based Inter-subjective Analysis" (yellow), right: 'Pseudo-Objective "Science" Worship' (blue).

Y-axis top: "Status Quo" (red), middle: "Swift, Pragmatic Reform for Social + Economic Justice" (yellow), bottom: "Regressive Revolutionary" (red).

Each quadrant it yellow at origin and purple near their respective outermost corners. The remaining corners are orange next to Y axis and green next to X axis.

Caption At the bottom "On all axes, to be closer to the middle is to trend towards the path to an ideal"

Labeled points by quadrant:

Top left:

  • (-14, 19) Conservatism
  • (-16, 17) Corporate Buddhism
  • (-16, 8) New Age Populism

Top Right:

  • (19, 19) Modern Fascism
  • (18, 15) Objectivism
  • (14, 14) Anarcho-Capitalism
  • (2, 12) Liberalism
  • (19, 11) New Atheism
  • (0, 6) Mutualism
  • (4, 5) Democratic Socialism
  • (11, 3) Second-Wave Feminism

Bottom Left:

  • (-4, -1) Anti-Work Populism
  • (-14, -2) Third-Wave Feminism
  • (-19, -16) Jihadism
  • (-17, -19) Italian Fascism

Bottom Right:

  • (1, -1) Post-Scarcity Anarchism
  • (1, -2) True Communism
  • (17, -7) Deweyite Progressivism
  • (1, -11) Anarcho-Communism
  • (19, -17) Nazism
  • (18, -19) Marxism-Leninism

Chart 3A blue question mark shape on white background. Image titled "Matt Boyle's Question Mark Politics". Ideologies and political figures are marked along the curve of the question mark, starting from the "upper end of the hook and towards the dot at the bottom:

  • Communism
  • Vladimir Lenin
  • Socialism
  • Bernie Sanders
  • Liberalism
  • Rand Paul
  • Conservatism
  • Ted Cruz
  • Fascism
  • Adolf Hitler

On the dot at the bottom of the question mark:

  • Idiocy
  • Donald Trump

Chart 4An equilateral triangle formed from four smaller congruent equilateral triangles (AKA a Triforce shape) with political ideologies written in bubble-style labels arranged as follows:

  • Top vertex: "Jihadists"
  • Inside the top triangle: "Islamists"
  • Inside the inverted central triangle: "Secular Liberals"
  • Inside the bottom left triangle: "Regressive Left"
  • Inside the bottom right triangle: "Conservative Right"
  • Bottom left vertex: "Violent Left"
  • Bottom right vertex: "Violent Right"

Written directly on the triangle edges without a bubble:

  • Between Islamists and Secular Liberals: "Liberal Muslims"
  • Left of Regressive Left: "Pluralists"
  • Between Regressive Left and Secular Liberals: "Liberal Leftists"
  • Between Secular Liberals and Conservative Right: "Conservative Liberals"
  • Right of Conservative Right: "Nationalists"
  • Below Regressive Left and right of Violent Left: "Antifa Fascists"
  • Below Conservative Right and left of Violent Right: "Fascists"

Chart 5X-axis goes from "SOCIALISM" on the left to "CORPORATISM" on the right. Y-axis goes from "LIBERTY" at the top to "TYRANNY" at the bottom. On the Y-axis lies a thick double arrow labeled "GOVERNMENT" and colored with a gradient from white at the top arrowhead labeled "LESS" to red on the bottom arrowhead labeled "MORE", resembling a compass needle.

Near the top left and right corners of the diagram are labels "LEFT" and "RIGHT", respectively.

Around the arrow's shaft is a yellow circle of curved directional arrows, each pointing along the arc towards the bottom of the circle.

Dashed lines from the top of the diagram curve around the needle and yellow circle similarly to magnetic field lines, converge back towards the center below the compass, and end in downward pointing arrowheads.

Arranged around the yellow circle in terms of clock face hour hand positions:

  • 1 o'clock: "INDEPENDENTS"
  • 2 o'clock: "CLASSICAL CONSERVATIVES"
  • 5 o'clock: "NEO-CONSERVATIVES"
  • 7 o'clock: "PROGRESSIVES/NEO-LIBERALS"
  • 10 o'clock: "CLASSICAL LIBERALS"
  • 11 o'clock: "LIBERTARIANS"

The left half of the X-axis is labeled "LIBERALS" above and "DEMOCRATS" on the bottom and a blue donkey symbol next to the needle. The right half is similarly labeled "CONSERVATIVES" and "REPUBLICANS" with a red elephant symbol.

Above and below the X-axis are dashed horizontal lines. The area between the dashed lines is labeled "MODERATES". The top dashed line is labeled "Libertarianism" with arrows pointing upwards and the bottom dashed line is labeled "Secular Moralism" with arrows pointing downwards.

The top left of the moderates area is labeled "JEFFERSONIAN", top right is "JACKSONIAN", bottom left is "WILSONIAN" and bottom right "HAMILTONIAN".

The field lines converging in from the left/right sides of the compass towards the bottom pass by labels "POLITICALLY CORRECT"/"PIOUSLY CORRECT", "ECONOMIC INTERVENTIONISM"/"MILITARY INTERVENTIONISM", "COMMUNISM"/"THEOCRACY", respectively. They meed in the middle and pass through "COLLECTIVISM", "FASCISM" and "TOTALITARIANISM".

Chart 6Blue circle labeled "Patriarchy" partially covering a pink circle labeled "Matriarchy". Left side represents "Gender Atheism", right side "Sexuality Atheism". Yellow arrow pointing from top left to bottom right labeled "Axis of Care". Red arrow from bottom left to top right labeled "Axis of Knowledge" The intersection of the axes of Care and Knowledge is labeled "Market Economy".

Left of the Patriarchy circle is "Men's Rights Movement" and to the right of the circle is "Fourth-Wave Feminism". Left of the Matriarchy circle is "Radical Feminism" and to the right "Liberal Feminism".

Labels connected by small black arrows are arranged on the circles like so:

Near the bottom end of the Axis of Knowledge is "Cultural Marxism", from which an arrow points along the axis to '"True" Anarchy'. Slightly further along the axis, close to the overlapping edge of the blue circle is "Soft Sciences" from which arrows point in two directions. The first one points towards the arrowhead at the bottom end of Axis of Care. On the arrowhead is "Welfare State", which leads to "Left Totalitarianism" at the tip of the arrow, then to "Marxism-Leninism" to the left and back to Welfare State.

The second path from Soft sciences is three consecutive arrows following the edge of the Patriarchy circle to "Positivist Materialism" at the tip of the Axis of Knowledge arrow, which leads to "Real Anarchy" on the arrowhead. Between Market Economy and Real Anarchy on the Axis of Knowledge is "Hard Sciences", from which another three arrow chain along the covered edge of Matriarchy circle leads to Cultural Marxism.

Opposite to Real Anarchy, on the Patriarchy side of Axis of Care is "Theocracy", which leads backwards on the Axis to "Right Totalitarianism", to "Austrian School" on the right, and again through Positivist Materialism to Real Anarchy.

Transcriptions for the last two will be in follow-up reply. I'm hitting the character limit.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 12 points 1 day ago

I know this is going to hurt millions of regular people in and outside the US, many of them through no fault of their own. Despite that I can't help myself.

Stan Kelly cartoon character representing "Sickos" laughing "YES… HA HA HA… YES!" while peeking through a window

 

Now that AI got involved it's on topic for TechTakes I guess. Making a containment thread because there might be a lot to sneer about this.

Train wreck at Montparnasse Station, at Place de Rennes side (now Place du 18 Juin 1940), Paris, France, 1895.

Boring version of of the main story: https://text.npr.org/nx-s1-5345802

Skynet declares trade war on penguins: https://archive.is/Nn5MC

Reactionary news outlet celebrates 77% drop in stock price by taking everyone else down with them: https://bsky.app/profile/brianmfloyd.bsky.social/post/3lluybov3i22o

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

8kw is rookie numbers. That's like a median Eliezer tweet.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hi, I'm an unimtentional moderate centrist! I don't have an ideology, only views! My overton window is a peephole! Kamala is a far leftist! Trump is orange! People should stop treating politics like team sports and join the non team sports tribe like me! Political correctness gone mad! Let me tell you about Chesterton's fence! Everyone's sheeple except my flock! Say it with me: I'm an independent thinker!

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Matt Levine, qntm

I can see why these would appeal to LW crowd. One of them writes cosmic horror about monstrous alien phenomena that can't be directly perceived preying on humanity and all life in the universe, and qntm writes wordy science fiction.

No comment on Wildbow. I'm sure Worm is excellent but I'm just not in the market for three HPMoR wordcounts of capeshit, so I don't know what his deal is. Bummer for him to have one of his characters be the indirect namesake of a notorious murder cult.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 11 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Wow, what an honor it must be to get invited to speak with such luminaries as Scott Siskind, Jordan Lasker, Eric S. Raymond, Paul Graham, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Vitalik Buterin and Aella. Maybe if I write ten million words of high-concept genre fiction I can make the organizers think I'm also a white supremacist and/or a neoliberal vampire.

 

I'm noticing an issue where the posts on the front page have been the same for a few days now, excluding the pinned Stubsack post. The default "Active" sorting mode seemingly fails to update its ranking of the posts. I see new posts when switching to "New" mode, but "Active" and "Hot" just show stuff from 5 or 6 days ago.

The comment ordering seems similarly static, and I feel like the default "Hot" algorithm isn't prioritizing new comments like it used to, but it's harder to tell if it's bugged or not since older comments tend to have more upvotes, as do the higher up sorted comments.

The same thing happens on mobile and desktop. Is this just my end or are others noticing the same?

 

Safari, Chrome and Firefox on iOS (AKA three different Safari skins) keep logging me out when doing things like refreshing the page. Possible cache issues again? I hope I don't have to do a full browsing history reset yet again.

 

Someone ported this 8-bit miniature Unix-like from Commodore to Nintendo.

The YouTube title is a little bit clickbaity, but the project is cool so I don't mind.

 

Edward Snowden [blue checkmark] @snowden
Unpopular but true: Bitcoin is the most significant monetary advance since the creation of coinage.

If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry.

Ed pls.

 

Also a bunch of somewhat less heinous cringe shit.

 

A follow-up to this TechTakes post

Saw this live at the congress. The presentation was great and the hall was packed. It was hard to find a seat in a huge auditorium even 15 minutes ahead of the talk.

 

It was only a matter of time that we saw a TechTake from this guy. I'm sorry to inflict Peterson on y'all, but this was too funny not to post.

 

Global outage on fetching posts. Funny enough, some features are still working as evidenced by the fact #TwitterDown is trending.

Two HN threads about this now, looking forward to some excellent takes

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38717367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38717326

 

Direct link to the video

B-b-but he didn't cite his sources!!

 

A RISC-V assembly cracking board game. Can't comment on the gameplay experience, but what a cool idea.

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