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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   16873 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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Isn't that what Scott is doing, essentially? Having a kid and enjoying life.

I think most people who think of doom as a likely outcome are not letting it drive their decisions: no one at this point thinks there's a chance that this kind of safety regime will develop and be effective. Instead, it's optimizing for scenarios where their individual actions might matter, e.g. permanent underclass scenarios (best get that SWE role at Anthropic to get your bag).

Even Eliezer seems to have more or less given up, getting his utils mostly from investing his sense of psychological worth in doom.

The SWE at Anthropic to avoid permanent underclass status strategy reflects a very limited understanding of finance or markets, but I suppose that’s to be expected for software engineers.

Somewhat ironically, the "get a ton of money at Anthropic" likely offers the most over alternative strategies for scenarios that are more like an AI fizzle or bust.

I presume the gambit there is to get equity and then get rich once it IPOs or afterward as it grows to take over the whole economy. The problem is that if AI including Claude takes a lot of white collar jobs, the first thing that happens - before the riots, the protests, the political upheaval - is that people start liquidating their 401ks and that tanks the whole market in a cascade, so the Anthropic engineer’s paper millions are toast.

You can't hedge against total financial catastrophe unless you have at least Larry Ellison "make my own self-sufficient villain lair" money and ability; you have to do it in the physical world, not the world of finance. So there's no point in trying. If some less-than-catastrophic event where Anthropic is successful happens, those SWEs get rich just like in earlier tech booms.

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