@VelveteenAmbush's banner p

VelveteenAmbush

Prime Intellect did nothing wrong

5 followers   follows 1 user  
joined 2022 September 05 02:49:35 UTC 

				
User ID: 411


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
VelveteenAmbush


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong

				
				
				

				

					5 followers  

					follows 1 user  

					joined 2022 September 05 02:49:35 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 411


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					Week
					Month
					Year
					
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Bump Top Bottom New Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The notion that some kid with PTSD is in the same boat as a decaying immobile nonagenarian amputee is beyond absurd. I'm entirely supportive of assisted suicide for the terminally ill and those with untreatable severe chronic pain, but this ain't it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think a sufficiently motivated prosecutor could probably make out a case that SOS Humanity are criminally conspiring with human traffickers to capsize ships and put migrants' lives in danger. Seems like an unavoidable conclusion in light of their MO that whatever maritime law compels a right of safe harbor under duress has been incorporated into SOS Humanity's standard operating procedures and they are complicit in creating those circumstances of duress.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sanctuary state is one thing, “come have your anchor baby in California” advertisements across Central America is another.




They're the same picture.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A few days ago, I made a comment defending Turkheimer and critizing HBDers, in response to a vaulted "best of" comment dismissing Turkheimer. ... In the thread, one person ended up posting an example of a paper which supposedly understood the nuances I was talking about. However, I disagree with that, and think that it is instead an excellent example of the problems with HBD epistemics.




In response to your comment, @DaseindustriesLtd already shared proof that Turkheimer confessed to being epistemically irrational about HBD:




And because whatever the faults of HBDers, the other side remains epistemologically worse. Turkheimer may have some legitimate scientific argument against between-group genetic diffs on g; his bottom line was still arrived at through moralizing. «We can recognize a contention that Chinese people are genetically predisposed to be better table tennis players than Africans as silly, and the contention that they are smarter than Africans as ugly, because it is a matter of ethical principle that individual and cultural accomplishment is not tied to the genes in the same way as the appearance of our hair.»




You did not respond to that allegation. Why should we waste time sorting through the pilpul of a confessed propagandist if we are in any way interested in epistemics, as you purport to be?


Let me also cut through what feels like a lot of unnecessary argumentation and simply ask you this: how can you explain the correlation between cognitive skills and genetic closeness depicted in this figure without acknowledging substantial genetic heritability? How is any sort of null hypothesis even necessary with this kind of direct evidence in hand?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My position is that they wouldn't achieve significant cost savings, because as they become more efficient in producing high quality legal documents, the quality expectations of the industry would increase by approximately the same percentage.


The legal profession is predominantly a red queen's race. It produces some objective benefit in promoting clarity and discipline within and between organizations, but everything beyond that is zero-sum -- trying to get better terms or a better dispute settlement at a counterparty's expense, trying to cover off an edge case where the default rule might favor your counterparty marginally better than your proposed customized solution -- and my suspicion is that the latter category is the bulk of the profession. Through that lens, the amount that a corporation spends on legal fees is more akin to the amount that a country spends on its military than the amount it spends on agriculture. When technology makes militaries more efficient, the result isn't less military spending on either side of a border, it's scarier militaries staring each other down across that border.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the African slave trade largely traded on Africans who lost a political, legal or physical conflict in Africa -- they were (for the most part) prisoners of war, convicts, outcasts and misfits who were captured and sold to slavers by other native Africans. So this isn't terribly different from observing that descendants of convicted felons tend to have worse outcomes, which I also expect to be true. As is often the case in studies of intergenerational disparities, genetic heredity can provide a satisfying explanation, which is upstream both from their current status and their ancestors' enslavement.


It also seems plausible to me that slave breeding that took place in America was dysgenic, which could have long-lasting consequences. I don't know if it was, though. If that is correct, it's quite the political hot potato: the folks looking to avenge past oppression are generally not going to want to accept that genetic inferiority mediates the legacy of the oppression, and the folks looking to blame the underclass for their plight are generally not going to want to accept that their blameworthy tendencies were foisted upon them by the sins of America's forefathers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


what really deters crime




Incapacitation shouldn't be overlooked. A small percentage of people is undeterrable and will commit a hugely disproportionate share of total crime if they are able to do so. They need to be identified and locked up as long as they remain undeterrable. Roughly, this cohort is largely male, aged 16-35, and disproportionately black. The main benefit of 3 strikes laws is that it is a mechanical fallback that achieves this objective in a way that is immune to special pleading and undue sympathy from judges. It's a hard thing to give a 19-year-old a 20+ year sentence when you're faced with the tear-stained face of the kid and his sobbing family all dressed in their Sunday best and clutching the kid's old teddy bear, surrounded by earnest ACLU types unloading the best emotional weapons that the entire field of social justice has developed, but there are many cases where it is absolutely vital to do so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What I don't get is why Reds aren't better at punishing blue dominated industries when they get power, copyright reform that drastically shortened copyright terms would be a good way to threaten a rich industry dominated by the other sides donors, and could have made a lot of normies happy during the napster/you wouldn't download a car era.




Our institutions weren't polarized like this when George W. Bush was in power, and the only Republican president who has taken office since then was Donald Trump.


So basically another way of phrasing your question is: Why was Donald Trump so incompetent? And the answer is that he's a narcissistic flake.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Any accusation of political hypocrisy should engender at least a ten second attempt to see if there's a parallel but opposite hypocrisy. I don't exactly see the criminal justice reform advocates lining up to release the Jan 6 crowd without cash bail or whatever.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Every alliance that excludes you from its membership is an implicit threat to your interests. This is basic Survivor logic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Posters on the fora you inhabit are not a representative sample of the electorate, no matter how many fora you inhabit nor how much you post.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				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 October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


a bunch of retards with brain worms




I mean... if you're trying to stand up for civility in this forum, I don't think this is the right way to go about it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Doesn’t seem like a sign of downfall to try out new styles even if this one turned out poorly.




Maybe try these experiments in Autodesk to see if they work before you cast them in immortal bronze and erect them eternally in a place of honor in the heart of the city.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Or engaging in motivated reasoning, or misunderstanding how unique individual voices actually are, or probably a bunch of other possible explanations.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				USA Election Day 2022 Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In this year's primary, he endorsed Masters, Walker and Oz -- three neophyte politicians with manifest weaknesses -- over their more experienced competitors. All three prevailed in the primary, and all three seem to be headed for defeat tonight. All three races should have been eminently winnable.


In 2020, he made delusional claims that the election was stolen from him, and he publicly pressured Pence to basically abuse his power as VP to steal the election for Trump. This occurred before the two senate runoff races in Georgia, both of which should have gone GOP (based on fundamentals and based on the expectation that thermostatic turnout would favor the GOP as being energized to oppose Biden's recent win), but both of which ended up going to the Dems, giving Biden control of the Senate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don’t see indisputable evidence he’s morally or intellectually wrong here.




You think the Sandy Hook parents are crisis actors engaged in a literal conspiracy theory to falsely persuade the nation that their children were murdered en masse while attending elementary school? Or you think that this claim is reasonably disputable, either morally or intellectually?


Please let's not confuse Alex Jones's behavior with the comparatively bland claim that school shootings are a political opportunity to take away gun rights. The court proceedings did not concern that claim.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you truly believe children should be empowered to make all important personal decisions for themselves, without interference, then how would you argue against pedophilia? Or are prohibitions of pedophilia likewise to be excluded from the eschaton, whatever that means?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Kanye is also somehow impossible to look away from. I don't know what it is. Some innate sense of comedic timing and pitch-perfect camp I guess. It doesn't seem like he intends it, it just seems to be part of who he is.


This is one of the funniest videos I've seen recently and he isn't even trying to be funny, I don't think.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				FTX is Rationalism's Chernobyl
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Agree with all of this, seems pretty clear (as much as anything is clear at this point) that Alameda Research was deep in the hole with bad trades and SBF decided to try to help them gamble their way out of the hole with FTX customer money.


I do think there's a genuine EA angle here though. SBF did not believe in declining utility of money because he was going to use it to do good in the world. Saving ten lives in the developing world is ten times better than saving one life, in much the way that buying ten fancy cars is not ten times better than buying one fancy car. SBF was willing to take this to the extreme, even biting the bullet on St. Petersburg Paradox in his interview with Tyler Cowen:




COWEN: Okay, but let’s say there’s a game: 51 percent, you double the Earth out somewhere else; 49 percent, it all disappears. Would you play that game? And would you keep on playing that, double or nothing?






BANKMAN-FRIED: With one caveat. Let me give the caveat first, just to be a party pooper, which is, I’m assuming these are noninteracting universes. Is that right? Because to the extent they’re in the same universe, then maybe duplicating doesn’t actually double the value because maybe they would have colonized the other one anyway, eventually.






COWEN: But holding all that constant, you’re actually getting two Earths, but you’re risking a 49 percent chance of it all disappearing.






BANKMAN-FRIED: Again, I feel compelled to say caveats here, like, “How do you really know that’s what’s happening?” Blah, blah, blah, whatever. But that aside, take the pure hypothetical.






COWEN: Then you keep on playing the game. So, what’s the chance we’re left with anything? Don’t I just St. Petersburg paradox you into nonexistence?






BANKMAN-FRIED: Well, not necessarily. Maybe you St. Petersburg paradox into an enormously valuable existence. That’s the other option.






COWEN: Are there implications of Benthamite utilitarianism where you yourself feel like that can’t be right; you’re not willing to accept them? What are those limits, if any?






BANKMAN-FRIED: I’m not going to quite give you a limit because my answer is somewhere between “I don’t believe them” and “if I did, I would want to have a long, hard look at myself.” But I will give you something a little weaker than that, which is an area where I think things get really wacky and weird and hard to think about, and it’s not clear what the right framework is, which is infinity.






All this math works really nicely as long as all the numbers are finite.




So yeah -- he sees literally no moral limits to this style of gambling in our finite universe.


This is both a worldview that (a) is distinctly consistent with EA, and (b) encourages you to double or nothing (including, as in the hypothetical, with other people's stuff) until you bust. And now he took one too many double-or-nothing bets, and ended up with nothing.


I think the honest response to this disaster is to say "yeah, I gambled with customers' money, and it was the right thing to do because I had a better than even chance of pulling it off, and I would have used that money to do good in the world so there's no declining value to each dollar. Sure, I gambled with other people's money, but wouldn't you dive in the pond to save the drowning child even if your expensive suit were borrowed from an acquaintance? Well that's what I did, with a lot of people's suits, and it was the right thing to do."


Of course, utilitarians don't believe in honesty -- it's just one more principle to be fed into the fire for instrumental advantage in manufacturing paperclips malaria nets.


Now, who knows -- maybe he would have committed the same kind of fraud even if he had never heard of EA and were just a typical nerdy quant. But, when your whole ideology demands double-or-nothing bets with other people's interests, and when you say in interviews that you would follow your ideology and make double-or-nothing bets with other people's interests, and then you do make double-or-nothing bets with other people's interests, and one of those bets finally goes wrong... yeah, I think one can be forgiven for blaming your ideology.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't care about the rest of his argument, I care about the part that was the subject of this dispute, since this dispute is what we are discussing. Was that not the part that you think is at least disputable in its moral or intellectual wrongness? Or do you believe the courts should overlook this clear case of defamation because he separately made some other arguments that were reasonable?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But if you squint, doesn't it kind of follow the same logic as "the second amendment protects the first amendment"?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And why should he?




Because the status quo is that our greatest geopolitical adversary controls the media programming that influences a generation of Americans. It's horrifying that we let this state of affairs persist, and the antithesis of America First.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Democrats don't think he governed horribly. Obamacare was a generational success for Democratic policy goals and more than makes up for the rest. The biggest problem of the Obama administration is that he left the economy perpetually understimulated, letting the nation languish for years in a sluggish recovery from the great financial crisis and leaving the door open for Trump to adopt a more expansionary fiscal policy and revitalize the economy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm pretty hesitant to make any predictions about whether China will or won't invade or blockade Taiwan and what the outcomes are likely to be, except for one thing: if China invades Taiwan and looks likely to prevail at any point, then I am confident that TSMC will not survive the conflict. The West will make sure that it doesn't, if it comes down to it. There's no world where China successfully commandeers TSMC.