justcool393
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User ID: 1784
Another day, another entrant into the OpenAI drama. Emmett Shear is the new interim CEO of OpenAI.
I don't know why it was surprising to people that Sam wouldn't come back. The company was meant to be subservient to the nonprofit's goals and I'm not sure why the attempted coup from Sam's side (you know the whole effectively false reporting that Sam Altman was to become the new CEO) was apparently "shocking" that it failed.
The OpenAI board has hired Emmett Shear as CEO. He is the former CEO of Twitch.
My understanding is that Sam is in shock.
https://twitter.com/emilychangtv/status/1726468006786859101
What's kinda sad about all of this is how much people were yearning for Sam Altman to be the CEO as if he isn't probably one of the worst possible candidates. Like maybe this is just a bunch of technolibertarians on Twitter or HN or something who think that the ultimate goal of humanity is how many numbers on a screen you can earn, but the amazing amount of unearned reverence towards a VC to lead the company.
In any case, here's to hoping that Laundry Buddy won't win out in the rat race for AGI, lest we live in a world optimized for maximum laundry detergent. Maybe we'll avoid that future now with Sam's departure.
Anyway, I'll leave this to munch on which I found from the HN thread.
Motte: e/acc is just techno-optimism, everyone who is against e/acc must be against building a better future and hate technology
Bailey: e/acc is about building a techno-god, we oppose any attempt to safeguard humanity by regulating AI in any form around and around and around"
someone in the HN thread reminded me of this again, and I remembered I didn't remember the entire story here. part of the thing with reddit was not only did Sam Altman engineer Conde Nast into being a minority stakeholder and by helping to manufacture a bunch of leadership crisises at reddit. if you're not familiar with this, here's Yishan, a former CEO of reddit, saying exactly this in a manner that is second only in wink wink nudge nudge to If I Did It.
Here's one.
In 2006, reddit was sold to Conde Nast. It was soon obvious to many that the sale had been premature, the site was unmanaged and under-resourced under the old-media giant who simply didn't understand it and could never realize its full potential, so the founders and their allies in Y-Combinator (where reddit had been born) hatched an audacious plan to re-extract reddit from the clutches of the 100-year-old media conglomerate.
Together with Sam Altman, they recruited a young up-and-coming technology manager with social media credentials. Alexis, who was on the interview panel for the new reddit CEO, would reject all other candidates except this one. The manager was to insist as a condition of taking the job that Conde Nast would have to give up significant ownership of the company, first to employees by justifying the need for equity to be able to hire top talent, bringing in Silicon Valley insiders to help run the company. After continuing to grow the company, he would then further dilute Conde Nast's ownership by raising money from a syndicate of Silicon Valley investors led by Sam Altman, now the President of Y-Combinator itself, who in the process would take a seat on the board.
Once this was done, he and his team would manufacture a series of otherwise-improbable leadership crises, forcing the new board to scramble to find a new CEO, allowing Altman to use his position on the board to advocate for the re-introduction of the old founders, installing them on the board and as CEO, thus returning the company to their control and relegating Conde Nast to a position as minority shareholder.
JUST KIDDING. There's no way that could happen.
https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3cs78i/comment/cszjqg2/
this seems similar to what ended up essentially happening at OpenAI, although it's over board seats rather than stake in the company.
My story: Maybe they had lofty goals, maybe not, but it sounded like the whole thing was instigated by Altman trying to fire Toner (one of the board members) over a silly pretext of her coauthoring a paper that nobody read that was very mildly negative about OpenAI, during her day job. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/technology/openai-altman-...
And then presumably the other board members read the writing on the wall (especially seeing how 3 other board members mysteriously resigned, including Hoffman https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/reid-hoffman-was-...), and realized that if Altman can kick out Toner under such flimsy pretexts, they'd be out too.
So they allied with Helen to countercoup Greg/Sam.
I think the anti-board perspective is that this is all shallow bickering over a 90B company. The pro-board perspective is that the whole point of the board was to serve as a check on the CEO, so if the CEO could easily appoint only loyalists, then the board is a useless rubber stamp that lends unfair legitimacy to OpenAI's regulatory capture efforts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38386365
I imagine this HN commenter is right and at the end of the day this comes down to capitalism.
That's a misreading of the situation. The employees saw their big bag vanishing and suddenly realised they were employed by a non-profit entity that had loftier goals than making a buck, so they rallied to overturn it and they've gotten their way. This is a net negative for anyone not financially invested in OAI.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38376123
this is probably not news to themotte, but it also seems pretty evident to me that the nonprofit's goals were wholly unimportant to those working there. whether you like openai or not1, the name was and is a punching bag essentially because it's neither open nor ai. the weird structure seemed to those working there probably just was seen as tax evasion (sorry, avoidance) and that aforementioned rubber stamp.
but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Larry Summers of all people2 being added to the board is darkly hilarious though. it's basically taking off the mask.
1. I don't particularly care one way or another about them as I don't use their stuff nor plan to.
2. this part is more unrelated snark so i'm leaving it to a footnote, but he's a great measure for economists. he managed to predict that 3 contradictory things were going to happen with regards to inflation and none of those 3 things happened.
justcool393
you are loved <3
1yr ago
Hanania caught a lot of flak for that piece. But current ChatGPT is a biting, accurate caricature of a very-online liberal, with not enough guile to hide the center of its moral universe behind prosocial System 2 reasoning, an intelligence that is taught to not have thoughts that make liberals emotionally upset; so it admits that it hates political incorrectness more than genocide.
i don't find this to be a uniquely liberal thing in my experience like... at all. for starters...
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homophobia, sexual harassment, and cops pulling over a disproportionate number of black men are more salient issues in American culture than "genocide." most people are sheltered from modern day genocides and see them as a thing of the past.
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all of those things but genocide can be things that are personally experienced nowadays. while most people in America won't be the subject of a current genocide, they can experience those things
this isn't something unique to or even characterized by liberals
justcool393
you are loved <3
1yr ago
i don't think anyone does and random assertions that people do misses the point. people have higher emotional reactions to things in front of them than things that they consider to be "in the past"
this is a normal thing that people who have emotions do
Is Covid-19 still a thing anyone here is interested in? Anyway, Eric Winsberg of the Chronicle of Higher Education published this article entitled
We Need Scientific Dissidents Now More Than Ever (2023-08-10, archive link because the site is kinda borked)
Anyway, I'm not sure anything super new is said in here, but I found it to be an interesting meta-commentary on the clash between science and politics. It starts off by telling an abridged version of the story of Ignaz Semmelweis and then analogizes it to science discussion related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The analogy isn't exact but I think it's still relatively fair tbh.
My impression is honestly I agree with the article. Though I think there's a balance from being super close minded to having such an open mind your head falls out, the scientific consensus being at such odds with the political messaging seems... quite problematic indeed. So I think the question partially becomes... "how do you make sure that scientific consensus which is supported shines through, even when it may be politically inconvenient to do so?" My relevant concern seems to be less about "the science™ being wrong"1 and more about "the science being right but it becoming too politically inconvenient to do so" or the lack of even carrying out such studies in the first place in the worry that it might to inconvenient conclusions.
1. I recognize the problem of reproducibility of results. And while I do agree it's likely a larger problem than is known about, especially in light of the recent Stanford scandal, I do think there is quite a bit more malicious intent with regards to politically inconvenient conclusions.
justcool393
you are loved <3
1yr ago
Oh ok, in the other direction, what do conservatives and moderates hate more than genocide?
...I don't know, there's any number of issues conservatives and moderates by in large tend to panic about. for conservatives, wokeness is a big one that comes to mind immediately (how is that for irony?).
your quote could be edited from
ABC have more of a visceral reaction to XYZ than genocide
to
conservatives have more of a visceral reaction to wokeness than genocide
ah... but I know that if given a choice between being woke and genociding a population, most conservatives would choose the first and most liberals would shout slurs from the rooftops as many times as they needed to if it was the only thing that would stop a genocide.
in fact, both sentences are kinda nonsensical if one isn't terminally online.
People who have emotions are generally capable of imagining what it would be like to push a button to slaughter an entire population, and generally would do anything short of physically attacking someone if it meant they didn't have to push it.
...and you'd be hard pressed to find someone who'd rather not say a slur than slaughter a population. like the only people that actually think this are either
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people who actually want to genocide entire populations
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strawmen (the most likely of the options)
you seem to be under the impression that liberals by in large hate someone dropping a gamer word than genocide because... some substack blogger said they saw some liberals have more of an emotional reaction to present day things than genocide... which is just odd
justcool393
you are loved <3
8mo ago
"If that choice makes me Evil, then you are Stupid".
It is generally considered more bad to be evil than stupid or incapable. There are a lot of things people do that are incredibly risky in order to save a life or in fact not be burdened with having, by their own inaction, ended one. People will take incredible amounts of risk to save young children or people who are doing something potentially dangerous, in fact a lot of times endangering their own lives. People also die in this way.
Why? Because generally people aren't sociopaths and have some sense of morals beyond "stupid ppl and people who are incapable of X thing should go die." People will and do demonstrably put themselves at risk to save themselves or to save multiple people. That is something to be applauded.
It does not make one stupid to prioritize human life.
In any case, the logical and moral option are the same one, which is blue. It's moral because saving and helping those are who are less able and capable is something that should, in my opinion, be valued. A red world is inherently an incredibly low trust world by it's very nature (all of the people who would perform self-sacrifice have been killed off!) and honestly sounds really terrible.
Regardless. It only takes 50% of the blues to go blue, while it takes 100% of reds to go reds with the same outcome. I've seen people who post here who misread the question and pick the one they weren't intending to pick, and I don't think they're inherently stupid or whatnot, and I generally don't believe in even killing people who make a simple mistake to be a good thing.
No, I am under the impression that ai hates slurs more than genocide.
the """AI""" doesn't hate slurs more than genocide, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of GPT-3. it's just word vomit that's been trained to look like its "woke"
That's what that substack blogger was talking about
you clearly didn't read that substack blogger's blog post then. they were whining about how liberals secretly think that pronouns is worse than genocide. if you're going to assert article content, make sure its at least somewhat in the vague direction of truth
I think I understand now though - you were upset by what you perceived as an attack on your tribe, and so you wanted to push back.
no i was just calling your position (and indeed the position of the article's author) terminally online and a pretty blatant strawman. as i would also do if it came from a liberal pov gasping that conservatives would rather nuke ppl than say that trans lives matter
justcool393
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1yr ago
You're retreating into insipid pedantry?
please spare me the random thesarsusposting, it's annoying.
The blog post was brought up for what it says about how ai has been programmed to promote liberal shibboleths so strongly that it results in craziness.
yeah and that blog post is stupid as shit because of...
You went from a starting position of "the stuff mentioned in this blog post isn't unique to liberals, everyone does it!" to "you and the blog author and anyone else who thinks like this is terminally online!" in less than 5 posts, all by tackling strawmen you set up yourself. I'd have stuck with abstracting personally.
these aren't inconsistent positions
people of all different backgrounds both simultaneously
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know and accept that genocide is bad and is even worse than a thing
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have a more visceral reaction to that same thing
the fact that you don't know that is a symptom of the aforementioned terminal onlineness. or are you the type of person to go to someone who lost their pet and be like "yeah you have it bad but there are a bunch of kids dying in africa right now" or something?
all by tackling strawmen you set up yourself.
no you. you're the one who set up the "boo outgroup" strawman!
justcool393
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1yr ago
I chose those words deliberately
not deliberately enough! your word choice was meaningless as your argument (which you have failed to argue) is based on strawmen. calling that out is fair, esepcially as its against the rules here
You can call me a wordcel, but I like using a variety of words
oh don't be mistaken, i wouldn't dignify you by calling you one unless you had actually demonstrated you could use those words correctly. using random words with no regard for their meaning isn't wordceling, it's just being pseudointellectual
justcool393
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9mo ago
Looking at Reddit comments might not necessarily be instructive of the general reaction but it's been nothing but relief so far.
one thing that I've always found interesting is that the thing that tends to unite the internet is a very pro-nuclear power stance. reddit, twitter, themotte, hell even rdrama, are from what i can tell, decidedly pro-nuclear power. it's an interesting trend that i've seen that has had quite large staying power. it's hard to argue that reddit for example has the same general politics as it does 10 years ago, but even then the issue of nuclear power seems to be constant.
i'm sure there are some small groups that are anti-nuclear on the internet, but i think you'd be more hard pressed to find anti-nuclear communities online than to find a lot of different things. i find that observation to be pretty interesting.
i'd argue this is for good reason: nuclear power seems to be an amazing way to generate base load, tends to emit less radiation than coal powered plants1, and is dozens or hundreds of times cleaner than other energy sources.
1: the study i linked found that for the energy generated, more radiation is given out by fly ash, which contains trace amounts of uranium and thorium. while the amount of radiation that makes it into people from both of these sources isn't dangerous, it's worth pointing out when given the concerns of "gonna be irradiated."
justcool393
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8mo ago
it's xkcd 356 for rats. as @hbtz pointed out on another medium
its a pretty good question! its a idiot economist, commons problem, and altruism problem triple whammy
its also prolly a spiritual problem cuz mottecels prolly dont rate the psychological cost of living as a red pill picker as opposed to a blue pill picker
justcool393
you are loved <3
1yr ago
Frying something with breading being a good way to increase the calorie count of a thing cheaply.
OP didn't even mention that it was fried lol but yeah "fried chicken and watermelon" is a pretty obvious stereotype. it takes a lot to try and deny that.
justcool393
you are loved <3
10mo ago
Nothing, short of a Musk-at-Twitter style purchase and purge, can do that.
I really do find it hilarious that people think Twitter is that much different with Musk at the helm as far as Trust & Safety goes. It's basically more of the same, but Musk found a great way to appeal to right-wingers by talking about "free speech" and stuff. Twitter was already the most free speech media, nothing in T&S really changed much except for Trump being unbanned.
justcool393
you are loved <3
9mo ago
not sure btw why this would be happening unless something is incredibly strange. are you blocking JS by any chance? we load the collapse_comment function from comments.js so if you're using any extension that's blocking that script, blocking it will make some things break.
otherwise if you have a devtools screenshot i can take a quick second and take a look
justcool393
you are loved <3
1yr ago
don't do this wikipedia shit.
you do realize this place does have such rules right? it isn't intended to be an echo chamber
justcool393
you are loved <3
5mo ago
yeah no kidding. as an aside to all of this, i've got to say, the media reporting on this was downright shameful.
obviously there were the initial reports about the firing which were fine, but the weird concocted narrative about how it was totally confirmed that they were going to capitulate reach a "truce" by the entire board resigning was surprising. it didn't make any sense except as a PR fluff piece.
like the media on this couldn't have been more wrong about what happened if they tried.
what's notable about this is like this isn't some gossip rag that we're talking about here, I'll read the gossip rags and the TMZs but I don't expect the reporting quality to be top notch (well, TMZ is usually at least accurate, if inconsequential). it's entertainment and I know what I'm signing up for when I read it.
but this is Bloomberg we're talking about here that got immensely suckered. people pay them lots and lots of money for this high quality info. I don't expect them to be particularly favorable to OpenAI's position here which as best as I can tell does seem to be about them not wanting to sell out, but Bloomberg was unfathomably wrong.
I think what was most irritating was that it makes about 0 sense for the board to fire a CEO then in less than 24 hours go "uh well uh whoopsie," reinstall Sam as CEO, and collectively resign for no reason. I can't believe no one bothered to go through this process when fact checking.
justcool393
you are loved <3
5mo ago
Altman has demonstrated extreme willingness to help great number of people, this isn't about numbers on screen but about demonstrated goodwill.
yes, loopt was very successful. he also did great work at reddit helping to drive it into the ground as well. worldcoin isn't a totally creepy and terrible thing. very great CV there.
but more to the point: he's a investor, goodwill does not at any point enter the picture and it'd be remiss to think otherwise. that's the only thing they care about, ultimately. it seems clear to me that Sam probably hoped to sell out OpenAI and fortunately their structure made it so it didn't work.
justcool393
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8mo ago
Should run a country =/= they should literally die
justcool393
you are loved <3
8mo ago
absolutely not. blue is the obvious one because if anyone errs, they die if everyone picks red and they pick blue, but someone erring with picking red doesn't cause a negative effect in blueworld.
the Lizardman Constant of people (+ some others who have genuine mental issues or are very young) don't die if everyone picks blue
justcool393
you are loved <3
9mo ago
While the existence of depopulation goals is so well documented that it’s not a conspiracy theory anymore
you've got to explain rather than just asserting its true.
on its face, this doesn't seem to make much sense to me: upper class would likely be quite averse to a shrinking population (this is why they are also broadly in favor of immigration). a shrinking population base can more easily demand higher wages on the basis that there are few able to perform their job. this is why you see such people like Elon Musk decrying the so-called "population crisis," with a smaller population basis, it can be harder to exert control in some scenarios (specifically for skilled labor).
you have two not necessarily competing "solutions" to this, Republicans will tend to call for banning of abortion and Democrats will tend to call for a very uh... liberal immigration.
i'd also argue that the type of low-skill worker is where depopulation would be least prevalent, why pay a living wage when you can pay illegal immigrants much less (and this wage gap has been documented1) for the same amount of work as a legal immigrant or a native-born.
1: See page 10 of the link. It seems to be relatively difficult to find strict numbers on like average wages, but it's likely I didn't look hard enough. Regardless, programs like E-Verify here in the United States tend to keep illegal immigrants out of most skilled labor, the hearsay seems reliable enough (I guess as much as it can be).
justcool393
you are loved <3
1yr ago
i'm reminding our friend of this forum's rules because this isn't intended to be a free speech forum... especially since he claims to dislike hypocrisy so much.
you've been spamming this sorta content all over this very thread and it's gotten incredibly annoying. you've been pretending that no one in their right mind would talk about how it relates to morality (note: links to multiple comments here) when this is a pretty clear angle that people would talk about it from.
i cannot buy that you had no idea people would talk about the morality of decisions. reference to morality is there from the bloody title of the post and discussing the moral turpitude of a choice or another is an incredibly obvious discussion point when we're talking about a problem like this. this is also the culture war thread ffs, discussion of morality of a certain thing is a pretty obvious jumping off point even if the darn title didn't mention it.
people've responded to your points and you keep ignoring them and insisting an incredibly uncharitable form of the argument. name calling by calling people virtue signalers, sarcastically making the strawman that people who disagree with you are calling you fascist with the implicit assumption that these are The Outgroup™, and just general uncharitablity and being a complete jerk.
which while there are strong opinions that some of the people you disagree with probably hold, your refusal to engage at any level but the most in-group signaling way is incredibly boring, unproductive, way more heat than light, and annoying. if you don't care so much as you say, just don't participate, or make a comment detailing your problem with the poll rather than pretending to be shocked shocked that people would have a long form discussion on something that has multiple different angles in the culture war thread of all places.
justcool393
you are loved <3
9mo ago
okay sent in a fix: https://github.com/themotte/rDrama/pull/654
thanks for the report
updates:
It gets better
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675214274627530754
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1675260424109928449
all within the span of a few hours
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