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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6353 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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From Eliezer Yudkowsky's Twitter:

I note, because I think that even now it still matters: On my history, EAs generally and Amodei specifically, indulged in politically polarizing "AI safety" in a leftist direction, because that got them short-term power; stymieing others' attempts to stay right-left neutral.

Over the last decade and longer, we tried to keep nonkilleveryoneism from being coded as right or left despite some short-term incentive gradients to try to cozy up to the left. In recent years, we took meetings with politicians on the left and on the right and we begged both of them for bipartisanship.

Over the last decade and longer, a large OpenPhil faction generally and Amodei specifically did as felt pleasing to them, or as they were short-term incentivized to do; which was generally coding things left-tilted, because that's who they were and that's what played well with their immediate audience; and lol 2026 what's 2026 who cares about the endgame when they could get some nice tasty gains right now.

We tried to do this the foresightful way. They fucked over that correct strategy and thought nothing of it.

Now that the cost TO YOU of what got THEM some short-term goodies has become apparent, now that others' careful forbearance there is clearly seen to have been the path in retrospect that would have been better for you and your kids -- well, it's frankly too late to take away what Amodei gained by fucking you over, to set up retrospective incentives that if Amodei had foreseen them would have disincentivized him and other people at that OpenPhil faction from wantonly associating their watered-down shadow of AI notkilleveryoneism with the political left. He's got his trillion-dollar company already. You needed the foresight and correct incentives then, not now.

But you can always do a little worse by failing to update, even now, and by not applying any retroactive reputational incentives at all.

Yeah, this was both incredibly predictable and heavily predicted, over a decade and a half ago; it's held up better than any of Yudkowsky's technical predictions, as little as it's surprising to find that the sun rises in the east. Tbf, I think the Amodei et al faction were explicitly arguing in favor of their enlightened and uncontested eternal reign, but to be more realistic it was pretty offputting a campaign a decade ago even when arguing to a bi furry who just happened to be a weak red triber.

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