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VelveteenAmbush

Prime Intellect did nothing wrong

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joined 2022 September 05 02:49:35 UTC 

				
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VelveteenAmbush


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong

				
				
				

				

					3 followers  

					follows 1 user  

					joined 2022 September 05 02:49:35 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If it's all about posturing and letting everyone know who's the big dog, I don't think anyone could have forecast with any certainty that Russia could be held off by Ukrainian forces. We'd just been defeated by the Taliban and to sink billions into Ukraine and be defeated there as well would further the idea that America isn't such a formidable opponent.




If your best argument is that we were right for the wrong reasons, I'll take that any day of the week.




A prosperous Russia seems far better for Europe and the world than a Russia with serious fears of collapse.




A prosperous Russia would have gone right back to reassembling the Warsaw Pact and threatening the West. A collaborative and friendly Russia hasn't been in the cards for at least the past couple of decades, and it's categorically better to have a weak geopolitical adversary than a strong one.




A collapsed Russia also greatly increases the likelihood that someone spirits away a nuclear weapon and later detonates in an American city.




This very much depends on the manner of its collapse. Anyway, it proves too much. Was the fall of the USSR also lamentable for the same reason?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Domestic fracking is an non starter. Not sure if the geology fits - e.g. Poland supposedly has a lot of shale gas but apparently not(was somewhat confusing) and there is no existing industry to scale up, and it'd get bogged down in courts for a decade anyway.




You might be surprised by the potential of an acute energy crisis to overcome political and legal constraints. And from what I've read, fracking has potential across the continent. It hasn't been proven, but my guess is they're going to give it a hard look.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


From the conservative perspective




Well, also from the jury's own unanimous perspective, and therefore from the perspective of the criminal justice system.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Which acute energy crisis are you thinking of, exactly? I don't think they've had one so far in our lifetime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've already responded to your point about regulations and customs. I agree that fracking in Poland came to naught, but of course Europe contains more territory than Poland.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We're splitting hairs at this point, but the fact remains that the US criminal justice system has an established process and standard to decide when people are victims, and the system concluded in this case that Rittenhouse was the victim and these other individuals were not, because that conclusion (to within the standard burden of proof) was required for the outcome that obtained.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


California announced a ban on fossil fuel cars the same week they were threatening rolling blackouts, the latter amusingly resulted in a plea asking electric car owners to restrict charging.




Literally nothing compared with what Europe is facing.




Europe is currently not only facing severe gas shortages




Anticipating an acute energy crisis is different from experiencing one. We'll see where it goes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You could be right. I really don't know. Do you really just build a bomb like this and then shove it off the side of a boat? Do fertilizer bombs even detonate when they're waterlogged? Do the kind of detonators someone like Breivik could access even work under 350 feet of water pressure? Beats me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Achieving post-scarcity in a world of finite resources
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I feel like you and I are talking about completely different universes.


By the time we are running out of resources on Planet Earth -- OP's premise -- we will long since have developed strong artificial general intelligence, which will be strongly superintelligent by human standards. Ideally we meatbag humans will have long since have had our minds uploaded or otherwise emulated on a giant planetary datacenter that the AGI has built. At that point it is presumably the central singleton AGI that will be sending Von Neumann probes into the galaxy, supercluster and beyond in order to convert the mass-energy of the universe into an ever-expanding superintelligent hivemind that spans the light cone. Once the entire light-cone has been harvested and optimized, and we have tried and failed with those resources at our disposal to avert or circumvent the heat death of the universe, I will be more sympathetic to claim that there are no more remaining resources to be harvested, and at that point the name of the game will be managing scarcity rather than looking for more. Until then, not so much.


But if you are imagining that, once we have exhausted all of the resources of Planet Earth, and maximized our technological progress with those resources, we are still going to be meat-based human beings wandering around on our legs and communicating with our vocal cords and manipulating our environment with our fingers and opposable thumbs, then we have very different understandings about what is possible with the resources at our disposal, and if that is the case, then I agree that our two worldviews are unlikely to make similar predictions about the future.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Really? People will feel disgust at encountering a disabled person? Not empathy?




Well, they may feel empathy too, but yeah, disgust is a natural and healthy response to encountering someone who is diseased, weak, incompetent and ugly, just like admiration and attraction are a natural and healthy response to encountering someone who is healthy, strong, capable and beautiful.


Honestly your position throughout this thread reads to me as a paradigm of slave morality.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And the vandalised pride flag is the most conceptually ugly thing in the world.




You can tell exactly when gay men lost control of the movement, because gay men are good at design and prefer things to be pretty.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sure, but in exchange for this additional risk, they make it dramatically cheaper to fund pensions. I think to make a principled policy argument against this sort of arrangement, one would have to claim that the NPV of stochastic future government bailouts is less than the NPV of making the pensions much cheaper to fund.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How much should society be willing to pay for that preference? I don't think your opinion is able to graduate from irritable mental gesture to serious policy preference unless you have some inkling of the relative costs involved.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I oppose banning specific viewpoints on principle




Many student groups at law schools are mission driven, such as the Federalist Society. Surely the Federalist Society shouldn't be expected to invite Democratic activists to speak at their events, but isn't that viewpoint discrimination?


I think viewpoint discrimination is inappropriate for entire law schools, and even unconstitutional for a public law school like Berkeley, but it seems appropriate for at least some student groups.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I have claimed the exact opposite: That tolerating them, or at least not being disgusted by them, is normal.




I feel like maybe we're not using terms in the same way.


In my view, disgust is an emotion that one feels, that rises unbidden and cannot be easily extinguished. One can be disgusted by an aspect of someone else's person but still tolerate them. In fact I'd say that most people I know really well have some aspect to their person that causes me some amount of disgust when it becomes salient. The more salient that aspect of their person is to me at a particular moment, the more disgust I feel at that particular moment. This is true of my favorite people in the world, and of me too. No one is perfect, and imperfections by their nature arouse some element of disgust. That disgust doesn't mean that I've written off the person, or don't find other elements of their person to be valuable, or even that I don't like them very much or even love them dearly.


Likewise elsewhere on this thread you protest that it is normal to feel empathy rather than disgust when one encounters someone who is disfigured or whatever. But again, these are not incompatible. Severe physical deformity is innately disgusting, however blameless the person is for having that condition, and however we might empathize with their plight.


Of course, if you create an image of a fictitious person in which the only salient element of their person is an obvious imperfection -- e.g. they are ugly -- then I don't know how a normal person could feel any natural reaction but disgust in response -- even if one is well socialized (even oversocialized) to immediately try to lecture themselves about how the person presumably has various other redeeming traits. But those other redeeming traits are entirely hypothetical, whereas the feature arousing disgust is directly evidenced and centralized by the illustration.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Average disabilities also inspire disgust, and how could they not? Being disabled is awful compared to being fully abled. So does transgenderism -- surely it is far afield from even most liberals' conception of the category to think that having an intractable incongruence between one's body and gender identity is a good thing. Any condition that tips one's cost-benefit analysis in favor of a dramatic and life-altering series of surgeries and permanent medicalization must have a pretty terrible cost to make that dismal path preferable over the status quo, and on that basis alone, we have to conclude that being transgender is innately awful.


Well, contemplating awful conditions, and seeing them in others, naturally arouses disgust. It can also arouse empathy (if we can imagine ourselves having been dealt a hand that put is in a similar position) and sympathy (if we believe the person isn't fundamentally to blame for their condition). Those can inspire charity and the desire to make accommodations. And none of that is inconsistent with also feeling disgust.


But again -- this poster clearly went out of its way to centralize disgust-inspiring conditions in its illustration. Sure, the person is smiling and walking a dog and wearing brightly colored clothing. But any political poster attempting to depict a utopia is going to feature that latter stuff. This one went out of its way to illustrate ugliness and disability, to centralize those and make them the salient element of its depiction. So of course the natural reaction that it inspires is going to be disgust.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but the initial StableDiffusion model they're based on reflects ~300k USD at official prices (although probably got at least some bulk discounting).




I mean... this is cheap as hell in the scheme of things. It means you only need one startup with a medium sized seed round who sees a strategic advantage in commoditizing that model, and presto, it'll be trained and released. In fact that's exactly the story behind Stable Diffusion.


The reason we don't see a lot of open source models yet is... well, actually, we do see a lot of open source models. GPT-2 is publicly available, Facebook released a large language model roughly equivalent to GPT-3, and the Eleuther crowd also trained and released a large language model. OpenAI just released an open-source speech-to-text model, they already released CLIP as open source (which powers Stable Diffusion and Craiyon among others), StyleGANs 1, 2, 2-ADA and 3 are all publicly available and open source, etc. These models are just a year or two behind the current research papers. Which is about how long it probably takes to reproduce a research paper. Some of them are even better than that, even cutting edge -- like Nvidia's StyleGANs when they were released, like OpenAI's Whisper, like Nvidia's new Get3D.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Do you know of any examples of FedSoc inviting Democratic activists to speak at their events?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thread 1


Thread 2


I'm up about $50k from betting on this circus.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well, there are a fair number of wealthy machine learning hobbyists out there. None of them have actually funded this type of thing to date as far as I know, but I could totally imagine some centimillionaire setting up a few-million-dollar charity to just train models and release them based on research as it emerges.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I do wonder if conservative women tend to date as many different people before settling down as conservative men do (or want to). I could buy a narrative that conservative women are more likely to settle down with the first decent guy they date.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They want to stay ‘on top’, live their comfortable lives with zero real changes, they just want to feel better about it.




Agree, and actually I wonder if some of the fervor behind the push for diversity and equity is to pull the ladder up behind them, to prevent meritocratic challengers from coming from behind and pushing them harder on the rat race. They're not gonna give up their jobs, but they're gonna give up the jobs of the equally talented people who would otherwise be hired after them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If programming is as simple as piecing together libraries, shouldn't this have a depressing effect on salaries?




There's also a lot more demand for software engineers now. Everything runs on apps, web sites, productivity software, etc. Everything that used to be mechanical and complicated now has an embedded computer. Availability of libraries is just one variable that has changed gradually over the course of decades.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But like... there are lots of people who are value-positive programmers in today's environment who would never be willing or even able to do anything worth doing in assembly. I bet you're much better than they are -- you're a grandmaster while they're merely competent -- but surely you agree they're still worthwhile to employ, even if only so they can do the dumb grungy projects on which your talents would be wasted. It feels like you are picturing the counterfactual universe as one in which everyone who was currently employed as a software engineer had your talents and depth of expertise -- but I think the more likely alternative is one in which almost no one can live up to your standards, so almost no one writes software, almost nothing gets built, and our society doesn't get to have nice things.


I'm sorry you have to work with them, though. The depth of conviction that makes great programmers great also means it is torture for them to be forced to collaborate with relatively shitty programmers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


NYC already has, to a first approximation, its "fair share" of that population




I'd argue that the fair share is zero, because the population shouldn't exist, because it's illegal. Those constituencies undermining the rule of law in a way that increases the population should shoulder 100% of the burden, because they are responsible for all of it. I'd say that states and cities that declare themselves sanctuary locations should receive all of the illegal immigrant population.