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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5318 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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I've wondered how Sam and Dario first met; they are such polar opposites.

It happened well before OpenAI (see Sam's Machine Intelligence from 2014, particularly "Thanks to Dario Amodei (especially Dario)").

My best bet is through Daniela and that EA group house they shared. She was head of technical recruiting at Stripe, which was only around 100 people at that time. Sam had been the second or third investor at Stripe (YC S09). (Brockman, of course, was also CTO there and later introduced Dario to his wife; he apparently sponsored a company LessWrong reading group.)

But the bigger picture is that Amodei actually has some minor fears about a Yud-level doom scenario. He’s not Scott level, but this guy lived in a group house with EA people for a decade.

It's deeper than that. He was contributing to MIRI strategy discussions with the big Yud himself back in 2013.

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