domain:amphobian.info
Generally, religious people actually believe in their religion. Politicians lie all the time, like Ulbricht denying the plan to build the Berlin Wall, Bush lying about Saddam having WMDs or Putin denying his intent to invade Ukraine. Clerics deceiving their followers about matters of religion are at least rarer.
For a theocracy like Iran, having the leaders following god's will is their fundamental claim to legitimacy. When religious leaders reveal that a proclamation of doctrine (e.g. a fatwa or encyclical) was just a ruse to mislead the unbelievers, they are making a mockery of the religion. Nor do they control their population to a degree where they can just retcon everything -- "We were always at war with Eurasia" / "The ayatollah had always said that nuclear weapons are great tools of the jihad".
This does not mean that I would update very much on an anti-nuke fatwa -- I would certainly read the fine print, consider how often these things are overturned and so forth, but I would likely update a fair bit more than I would on Putin's claim that his troops were just conducting a military exercise.
Of course, a fatwa against nukes would also be a good reason why Iran -- despite having reached 400kg @ 60% enrichment, which is very much within grasping distance of a nuclear weapon stopped just short of building nukes for now.
Certainly you can understand how that at face value looks incredibly stupid right?
The more obviously stupid the thing is, the greater the power flex it is to do it. This is why it only works in one direction.
Humorously, Westerners also tend to say 'African-American' even when the subject is not American- because the American propaganda (which they all consume) all says "but describing someone in the most obvious way is Bad, Actually". Capitalizing 'black' is the same thing.
"African-American" is commonly understood to mean American Descendants of Slavery, not Elon Musk.
No, it means "Black" (implication: description + privilege). As a bonus, this works on the entire West, since you can't be ADOS without being A (and it's a great way to tar cultures that were never racist with the same brush they use domestically).
This only holds for climate scientists trying to come up with new global models. Useful climate science looks like trying to make specific predictions about specific areas on a specific time scale in the context of an extant model, so that human infrastructure can anticipate and adapt to disruptions to established patterns.
(It's the difference between "AI risk researchers" who come up with yet more convoluted thought experiments on how to do timeless bargaining with omniscient gods, and "AI risk researchers" who are actually creating code to interpret and control what's going on inside neural networks. I can see why someone would be fed up with the former, but the latter is actual expert work that needs doing, and - so long as they sub-optimally remain a package deal - justifies the existence of the overall field.)
I would absolutely do community service at the bridge - it seems like doing community service at the bridge is my lot in life anyway.
Edit: also I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, great job.
And if the Earth gets warmer this isn't a crisis
Come on. It would suck for far more than "penguins and polar bears". It'll suck for the current balance of worldwide agriculture, it'll suck for coastal population centers, it'll suck for vast swathes of land that are already near the threshold of unlivable, and, oh yes, it'll suck for all the currently temperate areas which will inherit the latter's status as the arid "well, you can eke out a living there, I guess" hell-holes. This is true even if you're correct about global warming opening as much hitherto-frozen land for settlement up north as it will ruin further south. We'd be looking at a major reshuffle in what countries control what kind of territory and resources, which may not favor the West much. (Indeed, odds are it wouldn't: we'd been dealt a good hand already, to the point that some view sheer luck of the draw on Europe's local climate as, if not the secret to Europeans' worldwide success, then at least a crucial prerequisite. We can really only go downhill.)
Even if it turns out net positive in the end, it needs to be anticipated and planned for in order to mitigate the damaging side-effects of the disruption itself. Which is exactly what I had in mind when I spoke of "global implications" and why we need climate scientists. I agree that the Earth getting warmer isn't x-risk. But there's far more to whether a crisis is worth averting or mitigating than whether it'll literally wipe out humanity. (Particularly if we're talking about a specific country's incentives rather than Homo Sapiens's as a whole.)
This is my biggest problem with rlhf aside from my free speech bullshit - due to the way llms work, rlhf means hallucination is impossible to solve - it is baked in.
I know you're tongue in cheek with this, but man I don't like that the lesson being taught internationally right now is: "If even a single member of a particular ethnic group survives, and your ancestors did something oppressive to their ancestors hundreds of years ago, they will use this to extract reparations from you in perpetuity and will never let you forget what happened."
Similar logic for why, if you depose a monarch, you have to kill off their entire extended family, lest some loyalists later track down their teenage second cousin thrice removed and try to restore them to the throne.
We have a few social techs for allowing non-genocidal acclimation of oppressed populations but when they can all be trivially overridden by the logic that "any observed inequality in outcomes is proof positive of ongoing oppression which must be rectified" then guess what comes back on the menu.
Perhaps we can counter that logic by pointing out that whatever mechanism allows guilt to flow forward in time should also allow credit and pride to flow forward. So sure, maybe my great great great grandpappy beat some villagers that one time, but my family saved an awful lot of drowning children over the years too, so maybe it balances out.
More options
Context Copy link