Templexious
Stuck in time
User ID: 2308
Templexious
1yr ago
Hello Mottizens, long time lurker, first time top-level commenter. I think I understand the rules, if I haven't absorbed them by lurking over the last 9 or so months. As ai x-risk enters the politicosphere, I hope we can consider discussion of the topic as on-topic for the thread.
I've been thinking about the upper echelons of the x-risk bourgeois- in particular, the polyamory. Your Aella, your Eliezer, your MIRI heads, the ouroboric relationships in the community, and watching the social drek that's been demonstrated by following their various Twitter accounts. I've been wondering. Aella is a sex worker, and she is clearly being treated like shit by Eliezer. For a man who believes doom is coming, having a kid seems, at this point, frankly illogical.
With all the money EY has picked up from MIRI etc, I would probably fuck off to some tropical islands, or if EY is such a japanophile, to Japan.
But: Why does Aella tolerate his bullshit on Twitter ?
My theory, therefore, is that Aella has so much dirt on those people that she could singlehandedly doom any prospects of a bunch of the lesswrongian bay area stemcels from seeing the light of day for the next ten years. You simply don't host consentual-non-consent parties without picking up some piles of dirt. Whether they're our redpillers who think rape should be legal, or just lonely rich dudes who just need someone to fuck but don't know how to go to Vegas and get escorts.
You don't host sex parties without eventually picking some really terrible, skeevy shit. And I think she realizes this. And I also think she realizes that these are the kind of people with enough money, that if they wanted her gone, she's gone. As such, it's my belief that Aella is stuck in a hell of her own making. If the bubble pops, things will get nasty.
As such, my theory is that Aella is tolerating Yud, and the other rationalists, because she's scared for her life. If she were to tell EY "no, you're being a creep... and also endangering the entire x-risk movement", (which, as an aside, I don't think he himself believes in, based on his behavior) she's going to get replaced as the sex gatekeeper for the rich, sex-starved stembros. And so, perhaps, her attempt to have a kid is her bid at retiring and moving to fade off into obscurity?
And so, when she (imo, inevitably, some time in the next few years if her hail mary to disappear off the map before her body expires and they no longer want her) explodes, we'll have another article in TIME, or The Guardian or whatever other woke news reporter can get their hands on first. If/when that happens, we can kiss the pretenses of x-risk concern out the window, as the final curtains get pulled.
Thoughts? Holes in logic? Did I assume too much?
Templexious
1yr ago
One of those moments where the throughline in the logic got lost in the process of putting it down through the keyboard. They were intended to be independent statements, with a bit of glue to connect the former to the latter.
Eliezer is currently (publicly) propositioning Aella (a very public and outspoken sexworker in the lesswrong-o-sphere), to have a kid. And the way he is doing it is brazen and socially-painful for everyone with an ounce of self-awareness.
If you believe that the ai is coming to kill everyone, why would you have a kid?
TL;DR:
Yeah, EY is trying to get Aella to have a kid. Just, in a way that makes me question whether he actually, truly believes in x-risk. And in a way that I doubt Aella appreciates.
Templexious
1yr ago
Fair enough, though...
The core, or the crux of my concern was "does Eliezer" - who is going out in the public spaces, and thus entering the political sphere "himself, believe in AI risk as a threat to the human race," and what evidence I would use to determine that, and this was some of the things that came to mind when I made the post. Part of the reason I thought highlighting the cringe was important was because if you enter the political sphere, it is a wild miscalculation in order to not assume that your public image- mannerisms, diction, behaviors matters.
If I can't evaluate that aspect, that seems to me like it's cutting off an entire line of reasoning.
Edit: Okay, rereading my post, i focused a bit too much on Aella herself, rather than Eliezer, so I failed on my own metric.
Are the first 5-10 years of life net-negative?
I suppose that depends on his timelines. If he really thinks we're dead in 20-30 years, then the logic of having a kid makes a lot more sense. Kids add immense variety and experience to life that you don't get without them. If you have a median doom target of 6-10 years then I don't see why you'd have a kid. The last thing a kid needs are parents who are constantly freaking out about how the world is ending.
IMO, the kids need stable homes with both parents present and there to care about them and properly pass on their values, and it just seems, to me, like parents who are constantly worried about how we're all dead in ten years might not make the best home for a kid to grow up healthy and adjusted in.
And I suppose I'm assuming that Eliezer has enough self-awareness to realize this and thus, if his timelines were short, he would choose not to.
Templexious
1yr ago
The fedora meme is not known as cringe outside of online circles making fun of "incels" and weebs, then again, I don't think I've seen anyone wear a fedora in popular culture anywhere for the last 20 years, except for the dapper-looking googler that claimed their LLM was sapient.
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In one reality, it becomes a signal that EY is self-confident.
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In another, it becomes a signal that he's a loser imagining sci-fi becoming real.
In either case, I don't see the fedora itself being the hinge point on whether he gets cast out as crazy or not. That depends on whether the podcasters-that-be decide whether to take him seriously or not.
The teachers who go hard leftist tend to wind up as the comical self-defeating types. Since, in my experience, it's the social mixing that causes kids to swing further left, I'd expect the culling of DEI initiatives to be the ones that cause the liberalness of the college to reduce. The leftist ideals don't tend to sink in just because of the curriculum of universities or classes, but if you can cull the social mixing and affirmative action aspects, returning the demographics to what they were pre-1990, then the universities will eventually shift right.
Going after tenure is a mis-play by the rightist subfactions, and sending signal that even degrading the quality of the institution's research is fair game. If these policies get enacted, I don't expect anything except the further riling up of the sjw and democrat factions. One might wonder how long it will be until even moderate democrats start seeing the signs and picking up guns.
I expect that Vaushian-style stochastic leftist terrorism should start seeing an increase if these policies get enacted. Will the middling neoliberals see this as a threat? Unsure, but many neoliberals are getting increasingly uncomfortable with the moves the rightist members of TX and FL legislatures are making. I wonder whether they'll start to shift into leftism or what.
Templexious
1yr ago
The amount of sex people are having does seem to be reducing, culturally.
I don't know that "say no to school" is a great answer, but "Say no to grueling schools that eat up all of your day" does seem like a good start. I'd start by advocating against cars, and then by advocating for shorter school days for highschool and middleschool kids. I'd propose a 6-hour highschool-day as well as for laws and policies that make car ownership more difficult. Perhaps this is the true path to a decopunk future?
Forcing kids out of schools and then forcing them out of cars is forcing them to meet others.
There's a lead time before the full effects of a new technology or tool has effects on the culture, and that's what has happened. The effects of social isolation of both the single family home + sexualization of the vehicle has finally hit. Internet and mobile phones were the last nail in that coffin.
That said, socially, it will be more likely that we will get a 15-minute walkable city, 6 hour schoolday, and reduce the total number of car owners, than to get rid of mobile phones.
Templexious
1yr ago
That definition of "Far Right" is strict, and it's difficult to extract value from it. If you loosen your definition of it ever-so-slightly and you start getting christian nationalists/christian technocrats/crypto statists and evangelicals, the path to "Far Right" takeover becomes much clearer.
An Ascending Elite would probably be the best bet if the main parties would want the US to be/stay independent. There's still an absurd amount of untapped nationalist fervor, and R's gains with minorities showed that most people are still not willing to hop on Popper's wild ride. (That could, perhaps, stem from the terrible messaging of the Hillary 2016 campaign being wildly self-defeating)
Long-term, Christianity is a losing proposition, I agree there, but they only need to hold off long enough for their policies to get in place. Since most Christians are older, own land, have kids, the amount of relative power they have over the country versus the new-age atheists is insane. As such, appealing to older, "family values" and general christian sensibilities makes intuitive sense.
Templexious
1yr ago
If you were to ask me if it was white nationalism, anti-semitics, or the sinophiles being the issue that keeps the group from being cohesive, it's most certainly the sinophiles.
Christians and White nationalists are many things, but if/(when?) they realize the extent to which sinophilia pervades the cryptos, it will be difficult to keep them unified.
Templexious
1yr ago
If you're asking specifically about more information on my thoughts on the pervasiveness of sinophilia in cryptostatism, I suggest reading Nick Land's works. His CCRU prophecies are still available, and though using esoteric diction and grammar, relatively approachable.
Templexious
11mo ago
Another term is to call it a Lockeian understanding of individuals and nations.
Templexious
11mo ago
The Tea Party Saga is one of the most interesting bits of recent political history. It provided the emotional oomph, revitalized the power of the far right bases while also giving Christian Nationalism social legitimacy among the south.
Considering the 2008-2011 election eras had so much going on, it's almost worth a look to revisit those years and show how bald-faced the democrat party were in the dirty tactics they used in order to establish power. While you see on democrats side, people crying about the right wing being conspiracists or whatever, a close examination of the events of 2008 - including the Democrat takeover, and the resulting fatalism of the conservative party, as the republican fat cats were happy being the performative losers while letting the democrats steamroll over them...
The way the Dems shat on then-Senator Palin for 2007/8, spreading some of the nastiest misogynistic shit about a woman who chose to have kids... And then watching democrat voters justify the shit they said about her after the fact.
As we gear up for a new election year, it's going to get downright dirty.
Templexious
11mo ago
Trump could bring up and rehash all of his 2015-2016 talking points all over again, and it would carry him right back into office.
The main issue that would stop this are his stances on Russia and the Ukraine. Many of the population still remembers the cold war and the fact that Russia was America's #1 threat, and if democrats played their cards right, could use his stance there to put his campaign under ground.
Templexious
11mo ago
I do. He and his team would need to freshen the talking points up and rephrase them. Instead of "Drain the Swamp", it's "Finish the Job" or similar. Trump's ability to take an accusation to his face, absorb it, then spit it back out at his opponents without missing a beat, the man may as well have walked on water.
That said, there is something to be said about democrats not voting for Trump, so much as voting against Hillary. The midwest and flyover states all hated her, so there's a large chance Trump won mostly out of spite.
Templexious
11mo ago
That's been a part of the major cultural arguments for at least ten years now. Racial crime rates are brought up each election cycle as part of right wing talking points in basically all major online efforts, so I'm not seeing what's changed.
Perhaps the tone of the arguments and what musk wants the algorithms of Twitter to do have caused the culturally-allowable talking points to change.
Templexious
11mo ago
That Hillary was weak is a partial explanation I'll accept.
No one wanted Hillary as president, even nominal democrats.
Templexious
11mo ago
After lurking here, I find myself relatively confused. You're the first person I've seen attempt to disambiguate between progressivism and wokeness. What is the difference between wokeness and progressivism, in your mind?
Templexious
11mo ago
No.
Templexious
11mo ago
Trump just had to sit around as the establishment media wrung their hands and made complete fools of themselves, crying about this or that, demonstrating how little power they actually had.
Showing people what a complete farce the whole thing is, and leaning into it.
I don't think Ukraine is a great example, so I wouldn't lean into it, otherwise I agree with you.
Templexious
11mo ago
No, we didn't.
Templexious
11mo ago
Minor side note: The term DEI I always auto-expand out to drug-enforcement initiative, which makes the hate on DEI on this site extremely entertaining. That's not what it means, but it is an extremely entertaining mental image each time.
I guess I should just give up and not give a shit and collect a paycheck like everyone else.
Have you done the math for leanFIRE or FIRE? Paying off all debts, stashing a bunch of cash? Or allowing some tickets to take a bit longer and instead becoming "overemployed" while work from home is still the norm?
While I think this comment is consensus-building, I would like to add additional resolution on the "acceleration" bit.
At this point, the road toward acceleration is already lit, ultimately, time. I don't want to see the world burn. I'm not with CCRU-era Land, I'm not interested in the CCP saving the day, but I don't think there's any bypassing the fact that the road toward acceleration is has been paved, and that boulder doesn't seem to be stopping.
The US has been utterly impotent at limiting the CCP's (or Russia's) interference in their culture and elections, Fox News is the only prominent right wing television news source, I suppose there's TheBlaze. Talk radio makes me want to gag, and our alien god begins to come forth. Eliezer is either brain-dead or actively with the landians, I'm honestly not sure. But gridlock around ai progress is guaranteed thanks to his screaming. And in 2-6 years, most programmers will be out of a job or facing much lower paychecks than they do now.
As such, I agree with you- I wish Trump would withdraw from public life.
At least so that we have a chance of a leader who knows what they're doing and in place to capitalize when that boulder hits the bottom and crushes the silicon valley wasteland in 2-6 years.
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