In the Scott Alexander vs Steven Pinker debate, it really is notable that one side has a much, much better track record on predicting AI trends than the other… At this point, the burden of proof is on Pinker as to why we should still listen to him.

What If Taxes Didn't Exist?

Tired of this excuse. First of all, social security is not something you “pay into.” If it were, you wouldn’t need younger people to “pay into it” in order to get your check. But you do. Because this is a Ponzi scheme, not a retirement account. What you really mean to say is that your money was stolen from you — which it was — and now you want to steal from younger people to get restitution. That’s the actual case you’re making and it’s exactly as morally deranged as it sounds. Second, your generation continually for decades voted for politicians who would keep the scheme going. You might not have invented social security, but you damn sure made certain it kept going. Why should younger people have to pay the price for the shitty policies you supported? Third, you “paid into” social security in a different time. The country is now bankrupted and 40 trillion dollars in debt, and basic things like housing are prohibitively expensive. It wasn’t like that when you were young, because your generation of leadership created this problem. So the theme here is that there are a bunch of problems you guys either created or contributed to. You can choose to pay the price for that now, or force your grandchildren to pay the price so you can live comfortably until you die and leave them holding the bag. You’ve chosen the latter, and I think that’s wrong. Simple as that.

I understand that the social security conversation is political poison. But I’m not running for office so I don’t care about that. Taking huge chunks out of the paychecks of young working Americans in order to pay for the retirements of older Americans who have a net worth several times higher, all to prop up a system that everyone knows likely won’t be there when those younger people are retirement age themselves, is morally abhorrent and economically insane. Everyone knows it, too, but we’re held hostage by elderly politicians who refuse to surrender power, and older voters who, as a group (with exceptions, obviously), simply don’t care all that much about the financial and cultural future their grandchildren will inherit.

An atom isn't red. Many atoms can be. Ergo there must be a way to arrange atoms such that they become red. An atom isn't conscious. Many atoms can be. Ergo there must be a way to arrange atoms such that they become conscious.

Why are they're defaults to get pissed omg 😭😭😭

I used Benilla to create a sort of WoW auto chess. You build your AI party and let them rip in the classic dungeons. There’s something very satisfying about watching the LLMs set goals and use JEV to carry them out. They coordinate much better than I ever did hah!

Why is it that you are responsible for driving drunk, but not for having sex drunk?

It’s not clear to me if alignment by default was totally wrong and the models simply weren’t smart and effectual enough for us to notice the gap or if alignment by default was true in the pretraining era but RL circa 2026 warps what were previously good minds. Inclined to think the latter, the answer does seem important

this is actually just straight up good shit. genuine art. what is happening

holy shit i asked claude to make a video on western civiization

If cope wore a leather jacket.

opus 5.5 medium

🤯

This is how frontier AI companies sound

Old retired tobacco executives bashing their heads against the wall as they realize: All they needed to do was announce themselves that smoking was terribly dangerous, and everyone would have forever ignored all the outside scientists saying the same thing earlier.

"Godfather of AI" Professor Yoshua Bengio says recursive self-improvement — when AI will be able to create new models without human input — should be illegal. "We shouldn't even engage in this," he says.

Lots of calls for "slowing down"... why aren't the labs calling for a 10x or 100x increased effort in ALIGNMENT work? After all, that is the core issue. ASI that is fully aligned with humanity uplifts everyone.

This @waitbutwhy cartoon hits the 🎯

12 years ago