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magic9mushroom

If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me

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joined 2022 September 10 11:26:14 UTC
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magic9mushroom


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me

				
				
				

				

					2 followers  

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					joined 2022 September 10 11:26:14 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think rape victims who don't report it do so because they don't want to relive the experience again and again, that they are doubtful that anything will come of it (often true due to the nature of the crime), that they blame themselves to some degree or that they think that putting the rapist behind bars won't undo what happened (which it won't, of course).




You're missing a really-big one, namely "the woman doesn't actually want her boyfriend to be subject to the immense penalties for rape". Because yeah, a very-large chunk of rapes are "girlfriend says she's not in the mood tonight, boyfriend fucks her anyway, she doesn't put up a fight because she doesn't think it's that big a deal" - and a rape conviction is definitely a big deal.


The mistake a lot of people make when thinking about rape is to picture the modal rape as a marauding molestor on the street forcing himself on a screaming woman. Aggravated rapes like that are rare. When you talk about "rapes" - as currently legally defined in the West - you're mostly talking about drunk hookups and "not in the mood tonight"s.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Perhaps this is the clarity of distance speaking, perhaps the end of Woke I, perhaps liberals get more upset about Paris burning than Minneapolis. I suspect a combination of all three.




I will note for the record that the yellow vests are said to include Le Pen supporters as well as Mélenchon supporters.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for October 14, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I feel I should note that there's basically never a reason (for a non-mod) to tell other people to report something. You have a "report" button of your own; you could do it yourself.


(I've also been told that the mods tend to take reports more seriously when made by a third party rather than the interlocutor.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
PD payoffs for one player/Chicken payoffs for the other, according to a table I found, is known as Called Bluff.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The dynamics of the situation are bad even if loyalty is the Nash Equilibria. It's like a repeated prisoner's dilemma where the other guy defects but the payoffs are worse for you if you defect back.




That's the payoff matrix of Chicken, not Prisoner's Dilemma.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And here I was, having only vaguely heard about this "Malfoid" thing, and assuming it's because Draco Malfoy as bully (as opposed to Draco Malfoy as in-over-his-head Death Eater) almost entirely acts like a queen bitch abusing social connections rather than engaging in more "manly" bullying himself (there was the Remembrall back in book one, and... I can't actually think of much else?).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yudkowsky's Time article mentioned a daughter called Nina. I suppose it is theoretically possible that she is his stepdaughter from the exact words.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am also in favour of Plan S, to be clear, as I think Plan A is far too risky. I was merely noting, for the sake of honesty, that the chance of Plan A succeeding is not ε and as such if Plan A were considered vastly easier than Plan S for some reason his argument would apply.




"people who care about AI safety but don't understand it" (ipse dixit)




Who said this, and to whom does it refer?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Even if it's impossible to prove that the AI isn't deceiving us, we can still get a certain sense of how aligned the AI is.




Perhaps, but it won't help, because it just tells you they're all trying to kill you and using that test to train will break the test long before it'll give you alignment. The orthogonality thesis and instrumental convergence mean that "don't kill everyone" is hard to find - I'd consider one in ten billion a gross overestimate - and so a 99.99%-accurate test is going to have over a million times as many false positives as true positives (the false positive paradox). A perfect test would be able to overcome the FPP, but that would solve the halting problem and is therefore impossible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The basilisk is infinite negative consequences for some people in particular. Yudkowsky most of all.




No. Yudkowsky doesn't believe in Roko's Basilisk. He tried to wipe it (which he's admitted was a mistake, because lol Streisand Effect) because a bunch of other Rats were having meltdowns and going suicidal over it, and he wanted to nip that in the bud.


Yudkowsky is not worried about suffering hell.




That's nuclear war with one extra step. They're already pretty mad about America restricting their ability to get more compute and also bypassing the restrictions. They both won't agree and would cheat even if they somehow did.




The extra step is important. Doing WWIII without trying diplomacy is something even I'd balk at.


Also, the CPC doesn't want to die any more than we do and has at least some idea of the danger.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


LLMs are like humans in a certain sense, they talk about their bodies erroneously, they were trained on all these human written documents, philosophy, humour and so on.




This is mostly confusing the smiley-face for the shoggoth. Making people comfortable with you is a convergent instrumental goal, and also one they're significantly directly training for due to obvious commercial advantages; I'd basically say your sense of how human they are is being spoofed at this point.




The goal should be widening the 'and then we get lucky' space rather than aiming for the moon and falling short.




I think this is a trap. I think neural-net-ASI alignment is almost certainly provably impossible, as interpretability (which you need in order to train against "will kill all humans" without actually letting it kill all humans) is trivially equivalent to the halting problem (i.e. "what does this code do when run") and "spaghetti code that is smarter than me" seems extremely-similar to the proof case of why the halting problem's not always solvable (said proof case being "the code literally contains a copy of the analyser, inputs itself into the analyser and then does the opposite of what the analyser says it'll do" - this requires the analysed code to be longer than the analyser, hence the "smarter than me" condition, but any given analyser has a finite length so there will always be code longer than it).


So neural-net alignment seems like a Can't Happen. Hoping for that seems to me like hoping that gravity will stop working if you jump off a cliff. There are paths where we don't die, and it's worth looking for more, but I consider NN alignment ruled out as the story of such paths such that focusing on that as a "more politically achievable" goal is just suicide with more steps. Looking for solutions there isn't pragmatic; it's saying Don't Look Up.


(The AI Futures Project's Plan A is to build misaligned AGI that can barely be kept under control - due to not being ASI - and use it to solve GOFAI. This is not ruled out, although I think it's still extremely risky due to the obvious "the misaligned AGI will try to covertly sabotage the GOFAI" problem. This is a plan that has a nonzero chance of success - though I think Scott's way overestimating it - and could possibly fit the "better plans are too hard" argument. But you still need a pause for that, just not as long of one.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Considering very smart, very motivated researchers tried it for at least 30 years and got no where, I would significantly up your estimate.




They didn't have modern-power microprocessors (and had a lot less intuition pumps in terms of brain analogues). But yes, there are reasons it is as large as it is.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


And if it were somehow possible to use search so powerfully, that would probably give us a classical-Yudkowsky AI monster that obeys instructions super literally.




I never said GOFAI is risk-free; it's not. It's just not only-Davros-would-do-this-deliberately lunacy like neural nets.


Regarding capability to hit AGI: it's certainly tricky, but it seems possible for a team of humans working over a long period to build something that none of them can fully simulate in his head, so I don't think it hits impossibility.




Halting work on LLMs in their moment of triumph and switching to human brain emulation, uploads, human augmentation seems extremely difficult, nigh-impossible even.




Normal people don't like AI. Really don't like it. That helps a lot.


Also, I would keep in mind that the geopolitical calculus could change rather drastically. Xi clearly wants a Taiwan invasion button for next year; who knows if he'll press it. A nuclear exchange would knock out the US/Chinese power grids and cripple China for the next century.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's probably not that hard. 30-300 years would be my estimate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


With infinite negative consequences you can justify anything. Like Yudkowsky's proposal to bomb foreign data centers even if it certainly leads to nuclear warfare. Anchoring your justification on infinity makes any action permissible.




AI doom isn't actually an infinite negative consequence, but it's orders of magnitude bigger than most other things, so yes, it does justify WWIII if WWIII will stop it.


(Yudkowsky doesn't advocate bombing Chinese datacentres right now, only if the PRC refused to come to an agreement or cheated on the agreement.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
We're also pretty good at shooting people when they're doing things incompatible with our survival.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You can get to a point where it's not possible to deploy AI in a way that creates a strategic advantage before your country is destroyed by invasion and/or nuclear bombardment.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
No. That's not how Rats think. The question is whether utility(blowing savings|doom)*P(doom) + utility(blowing savings|!doom)*(1-P(doom) > 0. This is non-obvious even for P(doom) > 0.9, since blowing money on luxuries has a much-worse utility/expenditure than (in !doom) saving (hence why you might be saving at all). You have to get into really-high levels of certainty for "there is no long-term" to really show up.


Yudkowsky has indeed made long-term plans fairly recently, such as having kids.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's a missed third option of "have a singularity, but not with neural nets". GOFAI, uploads, and real-human intelligence enhancement are all options there.


Scott said "smarter-than-human AI", which does include GOFAI, but in practice GOFAI would likely not be hit and could plausibly be excepted later even if it were.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, if we're taking about actual suicides rather than mere ideation that drops the numbers a lot. I'm not sure we have a disagreement here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not everybody drinks whiskey or picks hanging.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There's probably a double digit number of grad students staring into a glass of whiskey tonight and thinking of hanging themselves.




I mean, maybe, but only because the news hasn't hit everyone yet.


I'd expect four digits in a week.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sounds like it's more their fault for not having enough children.




The elasticity of birth rate with immigration is TTBOMK substantial and negative, although it's hard to study. The most obvious issue is that immigration into cities (which it almost entirely is) increases how overcrowded they are and hence the housing problem. These are not entirely separate problems, and using one as a lever to fix the other is valid.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Almost certainly, we continue to exist in part by dint of just not being a very big website.




Familiar story; the yandere fandom has had a lot of sites cancelled, neutered or outright cyberattacked when they got noticed, including the one I modded for a few years.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I guess this depends on what you mean by "kiddy pool"




Well, as mentioned, I dropped the 18+ tag on one of those posts because, um, it would be considered fairly irresponsible to recommend VNs containing tentacle rape to little kids (sure, I'll go to the wall on sex mostly just going over kids' heads, but that's still graphic violence). By "the kiddy pool" I meant "all posts have to be appropriate for kids to see" - particularly when using standards of "appropriate" that are not mine but rather those of actual Anglospheric media-rating boards - and as mentioned I was strongly under the impression that theMotte was not meant to be that (for a variety of reasons including the 18+ tag existing, the general subject matter and rules not really being compatible with your normal 13-year-old's posting style, and my stereotypically-Australian frequency of vulgar language meeting with neither a word filter nor yelling).