faceh
5hr ago
My brain immediately went "8 years? Oh so circa 2013 Reddit wasn't so bad back-ohhhhhh."
But yeah, Pre-Covid. The_Donald still had a strong foothold at that point. That was before Huffman intentionally editted that one guy's comment.
Yeah, I think there's a dark pattern that results from being relegated to an echo-chamber about 90% of the time, then the algorithm feeds you a rage-inducing post from someone from the outgroup so you can unload on/dogpile them, then immediately return to your echo chamber before you have to possibly learn something from them.
That's that cross-pollination does in practice.
faceh
5hr ago
At least on twitter, you can screenshot the block and attach it to the conversation easily.
L M A O
See, there's even a subreddit that purports to allow one to claim banned/abandoned reddits and I've not once seen it work.
Apparently about six months ago it was used to hijack /r/puppets. On behalf of some private business. Yeah that about sums up the state of the site.
faceh
6hr ago
How funny, this is right around the 4 year anniversary of my banning from Reddit. I genuinely don't miss that place, but it was never, ever clear as to why they nuked a high-karma account with 9 years of history and no actual misbehavior on record.
The way bans are handled was probably my least favorite part of Reddit moderation and administration, because as you state:
It's fundamentally dishonest. They're playing both sides of a difficult decision and trying to get the credit for both. Thankfully most people aren't buying into this, but they're still doing it.
People were banned despite not violating the rules, or violating rules that usually go unenforced, or for violating rules that changed regularly and without much notice. And they always deflect from any responsibility to explain. And the appeal process is nonexistent.
There was a very shifty tactic I noticed where if the admins or some other group wanted a particular sub banned, they'd go about targeting that sub's mods for bannings, and then when there are no mods left, ban the subreddit itself for being 'unmoderated.' Which is a nice, clean reason for banning... but there's no effective route for the members of such a sub to jump in and save it! They can only spin up another one and hope it doesn't catch the eye of Sauron right away.
The other option, of course, was to let one of the admin's allies onto the mod team, which then meant they could take it over almost any time they wanted. Moderation is a difficult job especially when done for free, but if the moderation job has too much power that can be exercised arbitrarily, it will inherently attract the exact types who should never ever be entrusted with it.
Hence why I think the 'killer feature' of TheMotte is the explicit moderation policies that make banning a very much last resort, and give warnings, with explicit identification of what offense is being punished, and generally proportional punishments, that can be scaled up or down based on other moderators or users' input.
That's hard to do at scale. Maybe easier if you allow some AI assistance.
So when you talk about scaling, I'm somewhat less worried about the codebase (not my area of expertise), and I think you could just point Fable at it and get all that fixed up. I'm worried about the part that requires a high-conscientiousness human-in-the-loop to apply the rules with an even hand, even when they're personally offended.
Those types of people are rare. Their time, valuable.
You'd need to be able to handle the massive influx in reports that come when normies get into a space where mere consensus isn't enough to get someone booted, and they are constantly trying to invoke moderator power to get rid of people they disagree with. The endgame is that moderators are forced to spread their efforts thinner and we see more false positives and false negatives, which reduces trust in the moderators, or moderator burnout.
I'm just looking into my crystal ball here, I trust your judgment with regard to this places' future. But if you ever decide to step down (as said elsewhere, you're a true Cinncinatus, I understand if you want to return to farming), do please try and give the users a chance to step in and keep it running.
faceh
9hr ago
The only thing that comes to mind is abortion restriction in Poland or various US red states, which is a big restriction on female behaviour
Do you have an 'objective source' showing there was any significant impact on female behavior when 'various US red states' restricted abortion?
Just wondering.
How precisely would you describe the male experience of the #metoo era?
Didn't we make a successful, upstanding male with an illustrious career go through a struggle session over a rape accusation from close to 30 years prior, and litigated fully in public, to the point he had to give an emotional entreaty in his own defense to finally get through to the audience?
What do you think the takeaway for males was, from that?
Wasn't exactly a freeing, empowering event for most men, even the non-predatory ones.
Politically and culturally, any move that elevated women almost necessarily was a de facto restriction on men when it came to, e.g. scarce, limited available slots for college admissions or jobs.
Anyway, here's a post from 5 months ago where I pointed out how the deck's been stacked against young men:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/403533?context=8#context
And the article that spurred discussion:
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/
You responded to it back then, so you've seen this argument before.
Corporate policies and social norms have been slanted against young men for over a decade now, I think there's sufficient evidence of 'restrictions on men' that we've tried.
And of course TFR has continued to plummet over this time even as more benefits accrue to single ladies across the West.
Its the women.
faceh
1d ago
Honestly, I have no idea where you got the idea that birth rate discussions focus on men. They really, really don't.
Throw a couple more 'reallys' in there and I still won't find that believeable.
"The Missing Men of the American Marriage Market."
This study adds to a growing body of research that finds that the economic difficulties facing working-class Americans are bleeding into the most intimate parts of their social life. Much of the conversation has focused on working-class men themselves, and how that has been reflected in their own social struggles. This paper shifts attention to how those struggles may be affecting women and kids.
and
This study suggests that an important part of the story is a shrinking supply of economically stable men available for many working-class women.
Emphasis mine.
Two months ago.
"No one hates marriage. Women are just demanding better men."
Poor relationship quality, grossly uneven distribution of household labor and caregiving responsibilities, and spousal betrayal are key contributing factors. The evidence shows that marriage benefits men health-wise. The same benefits do not hold for women if marital satisfaction is low.
Almost daily, I see female patients in my office who cry over their husbands' selfishness and weaponized incompetence, which has consequences for the wives' mental health: "I want a partner who respects and loves me, not an extra child!"
Last month.
The "weaponized incompetence" meme has gotten some play too:
‘Weaponized incompetence’ can harm relationships. Here’s how to counter it.
The inherent unfairness of the situation and the accompanying invisible mental workload of running a household, including figuring out the family’s needs and the best ways to meet them as well as acting as a social secretary, can negatively affect a woman’s mental health, well-being and career. It can also diminish a couple’s marital satisfaction and sex life and put them at risk for divorce.
Last December.
I have literally, in my entire life, never seen an article published claiming that female incompetence was ever to blame for relationship failure. Indeed, the mainstream narrative is that women are incorrectly viewed as incompetent as a barrier to their advancement.
These are extraordinarily easy to find. THAT'S where I 'got the idea.'
That's where all the other men are getting said idea too, just for the record. Its widely noticed, I just like to call it out.
Can you name a single policy proposal in any Western Country (hell, try non-Western) that tries to improve TFR by increasing restrictions on female behavior?
I can point out several that are paying women directly or otherwise offering bribes/incentives to women to get married and have kids.
China HAS recently tried some restrictions on women, funny enough.
Yes, one must certainly ask what have women adopted in the place of standard religiosity.
Sure. That's basically tautological, in that only women can have babies.
And yet, the discussion centers on men's failures, when by the precise definition you're pointing out, cratering tfr is a 'failure' on womens' part. That's my whole point, it makes no sense to add pressure to men as a 'solution.'
Society refuses to even consider any solution that might upset women in the slightest.
men secularised first and fastest over the 20th century.
Men were always less religious on average, that was just standard understanding.
Until recently. Somehow this also coincides with various denominations allowing female pastors.
Once again, "loss of religion" very obviously impacts one gender more than the other.
Its the women.
The rise of solitary entertainment (related to the "It's the phones, stupid") thesis, the opportunity cost thesis, or the loss of religion thesis,
Its the women. Any bottleneck on reproduction is almost entirely going to be defined by the population of reproductive-age women and their behavior. Phones, opportunity costs, education levels, loss of religion, literally ALL of those have demonstrably higher impact on female behavior than male. Given that we can't raise TFR without female participation (barring a future technological fix) seems silly to look elsewhere for solutions.
The other thing about the Fertility crisis is that it reads as an individual problem if you're unaware of the larger context.
Its difficult to think your individual failures are responsible for summer days getting warmer, or for icebergs disappearing. Although the political class really wants you to feel personally responsible, so some people do feel have such feeling.
But if you're having difficulty finding a partner to reproduce with, after giving it the ol' college try for a while, you will assume it has more to do with your local area, errors in your approach, or maybe you're not spending enough money or need to practice charisma, game, rizz, get in better shape, whatever to advance.
But digging into the stats and seeing its a struggle for the majority of the population, from a broad range of backgrounds, are experiencing the same issue and it does read as a larger, structural issue over which you have little control. And indeed, your ATTEMPTS to fix it will fail insofar as it increases competition in your local area.
I say again: Individual attempts to 'adapt' will make things worse.
Thats an unfortunate irony with the current dating 'meta.' The more men throw time, money, and effort into trying to reproduce (in direct competition with each other) the worse the overall equilibrium occurs because of how women adapt to this competitive environment. Having lots of people adopting individual strategies to try and get ahead makes the larger situation worse. Its a death spiral, in that regard.
Coordination around climate fixes is VERY VERY HARD, but if someone takes certain rational individual efforts to address it, that generally does not make the situation as a whole worse for everyone. Using fewer fossil fuels, reducing personal consumption has few externalities. Hell, if you think the crisis is inevitable, moving to a hardened bunker in an area safer from the damage doesn't hurt anybody else. Still, defection is very easy.
And on the flip side, of course, if you're convinced you don't want kids anyway, fertility rates won't register as an ongoing concern unless you're reading certain books and realize what a sub-replacement TFR means for globalized trade.
faceh
4d ago
The trick is, there's undoubtedly some sociopathic subset of people who did in fact just want to gain a global regulatory regime's power and weren't all that worried about nuclear war.
And these are the people who most want to control that regime, and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should be allowed to.
faceh
4d ago
The entire history of humanity exists solely to maximize the utility felt by the entire rationalist community in the picosecond before they keel over dead with the rest of us as the AGI executes its plan.
faceh
4d ago
The origin of intelligence (and consciousness) in the brain are unclear.
I dunno, I think between the various biological sciences we can fully account for almost all of our cognitive processes. Or, I read a book that claimed about as much.
Even granting that such a thing is possible in theory, it is decidedly unclear that simulating the 10^26 atoms of his brain is practical.
Its also unclear if that's necessary. I believe it would be sufficient, but many, many processes can probably be distilled to algorithms rather than high fidelity simulation.
But again, if we can run Von Neumann's brain on carbon-based hardware, and said hardware is not the most energy-efficient computation we can achieve, we should be able to make a Von-Neumann level intellect with comparable ability, at less energy cost.
The design and architecture of the mind may vary substantially from the human model, but the efficiency of processing inputs would be the same, as observed from the outputs.
That's not special pleading at all. You have the burden of proof here.
Intelligence exists in carbon-based life forms.
We can interact with silicon-based intelligence right now.
I dunno how heavy this burden really is if the only thing I have to do is point at what we can see and say "look, if the silicon based intelligence catches up to the carbon-based, it'll probably outperform the carbon-based shortly thereafter."
And even if, theoretically, digital computer systems can do everything a human mind can (which is not at all certain),
That's what I'm talking about right here. Is there ANY aspect of human cognition which can't be replicated via digital simulation?
There's no rule of physics that I know of that would rule out any particular aspect of our cognitive abilities.
So on what basis are you UN-certain?
Without that evidence, your position is no more realistic than the visions of AI in sci-fi novels from a century ago.
It'll continue to be unrealistic right up until it actually becomes real. Which is basically been a constant factor over the past 5 years. "AI can't do X, Y, or Z."
It knocked out X in 2022, Y in 2025, and we're pretty sure it'll knock out Z later this year. As of now I'm willing to stake my reputation and wealth on my prediction. I'm not sure what YOUR beliefs are actually predicting for the future.
Your faith that silicon can replicate every function of human intelligence is just that - faith.
I'm suggesting that it requires LESS faith to say that artificial intelligence can replicate the functions of human intelligence, than to say that human intelligence has some feature which renders it immune to artificial replication.
God may have decreed it as just so, but so far, our understanding of physics has been silent on the matter.
You're taking the existence of a phenomenon in one substance and assuming it can be replicated in another.
Brother it has ALREADY been 'replicated' in the other substance. You have literally no way of knowing FOR SURE that you're not interacting with an AI right now (I will give proof of flesh upon request).
I'm directly asking if any of the doubters have a specific, concrete piece of evidence that this won't just continue in the obvious direction. I would LOVE to hear it, this would substantially reduce my uncertainty and anxiety about the future.
Right now its all implied special pleading that grey matter is capable of feats that silicon is not.
Which is... fine. But not persuasive.
I think Land is right to treat this instability as essentially vain. If humanity is so fragile that one mistake can destroy it all, it deserves to be destroyed and whatever time it tries to delay the inevitable is an immoral indulgence.
I can agree we 'deserve' to be destroyed (being clear, I DON'T. believe that) and still say "nah, we gotta survive." Vanity or no, the life form that 'gives up' guarantees its presence won't be remembered. The struggle for survival against a cold universe is what life is about, in the deepest sense possible.
why waste the universe's time?
Fuck entropy. That's why. We'll make MORE time.
I dunno man, I want to see where this is all going. With my own eyes if possible. I think perfect Nihilism is a copout. Absurdist existentialism is at least an ethos that says life is worth living. We don't know everything, we don't know what we don't know, we're an imperfect species, AND THAT'S WHAT MAKES THINGS INTERESTING. I take that, add in a bit of humanism, and it fills me with the purpose of ensuring humanity is still around in a bajillion years.
faceh
4d ago
I can look at what highly intelligent humans have achieved, based on the records of such people, and we can know that there is some path to creating intelligence of that level.
I do have to 'imagine' what it would be like to interact with Von Neumann, but the actual output he produced is tangible and verifiable.
faceh
4d ago
Not a given, but a high probability, yes.
Human beings keep animals as pets even when we have no intention of either making them labor or eating them. We care a LOT about keeping them healthy, even.
Since the AI we seem to be creating has the entirety of humanity's written output entangled with it, I have some hope it places intrinsic value on keeping humans around.
Machines replaced horses across the board for any job a horse was suited for, but we still have horses. Wild ones, even.
The other question is what a bunch of Von Neumann clones could do today.
I expect a LOT. Assuming they could cooperate, which I think they would. This guy literally founded Game Theory among other things.
Like, the other path to superintelligence might be to clone like 10 Von Neumanns, raise them according to best practices, and get them interested in the idea of creating Friendly AI, then give them a lab with a trillion dollars in funding.
but it still ends up bounded by the amount of information in the environment available to feed into your intelligence. A third eye would give humans "more information", but probably wouldn't improve our intelligence substantially. I'm sure there are some perfectly capable blind physicists out there.
Yes yes, lets bound it to "useful," "nonredundant" information. Still, a superintelligence should be able to make use of almost all information it receives second-to-second to make accurate predictions about its future so as to better use resources for its goals.
It's hard to know in foresight what sort of advances could be made in the next five years, and which will prove intractable.
See, lemme zero in on this for emphasis. Yes, it is indeed hard.
But the higher 'intelligence' entities, given accurate information (ensuring the information you collect is true is another aspect of intelligence!), should ALWAYS be better at making such predictions than lower intelligence ones.
High IQ humans were at least discussing Artificial Intelligence and putting forth timelines for its appearance. And I suspect realized what was happening when AlphaGo beat Sedol. If I were maybe 10 points smarter, I would have plowed money into NVDIA then and there, or at least as soon as people realized AI could run on GPUs.
Average IQ humans might now get that AI has arrived and can figure out uses for it, but would NEVER have seen it coming 5 years out, even if you showed them a complete factual article explaining the AlphaGo Sedol situation. How do I know? I TRIED VERY HARD to explain the implications back when it happened. I also tried to explain the implications when DallE first arrived on the scene. Now these folks I tried explaining to use image generators without a thought!
Low IQ humans, presumably, STILL don't really get what AI is or what it does.
This is why making falsifiable predictions and tracking their outcomes is kind of critical for smart folks to stay calibrated.
faceh
4d ago
I think 'intelligence' if defined in 'practical' terms is "the efficiency with which one can absorb and process the information in an environment, then utilize (or at least theorize how) the material in the local environment to achieve particular goals."
The more complex the goals one can achieve, and the more efficiently they can achieve them, the higher the intelligence.
The Von Neumann/Manhattan Project parallel I'm drawing makes this point. Given all the materials necessary to make a nuclear weapon, how quickly can a particular group of humans go from merely theorizing about the possibility to actually getting one built.
A group of humans that includes Von Neumann and other Physics PhDs, with the backing of the U.S. military, can get it done in, say, 5 years.
A similarly sized group of humans of utterly average intelligence (as measured by IQ)... probably never. Even WITH the backing of the U.S. military.
One Von Neumann and a bunch of average IQ humans... well I don't know.
A whole bunch of Von Neumans working together...
faceh
4d ago
I guess its easy for me to believe that if a largely randomized optimization process (natural selection) was able to eventually get to Von Neumann intelligence, then humans working with a bit more inherent purpose towards the goal of building a Von Neumann level intelligence can probably get there, even if they make some mis-steps and wander around in the dark for a bit.
Especially if we can build some optimization processes that result in sub-Von Neumann intelligences that are nonetheless useful.
Like, the mountain peak we're seeking is visible, poking out above the fog, even if we can't see and specifically plan a route that will get us there, we have flashlights and climbing gear and GPS systems in place to make navigation through the terrain towards the peak much easier. We're not utterly lost with no clue on what we're doing, in that respect.
And my point is that any policy that might actually work is going to have to be directed at women's behavior and will be decried as 'illiberal.'
So there's no discussion of such policies, only of making men step up their game.
Your disagreement doesn't seem to actually address the disparity.
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