Clicking through to one of the source articles

Through an algorithm that analyzes troves of student information from multiple sources, the chatbot was designed to offer tailored responses to questions like “what grade does my child have in math?”

Okay, I'm not a big-brain edtech integration admin, but I seem to recall that like fifteen years ago we had a website that my parents could check to see my grade in math. I feel like this was already a solved problem honestly.

Except it's not really being automated out of our lives, is it? I find it hard to imagine how increasing the rate at which bullshit can be produced leads to a world with less bullshit in it.

Before he died in 2022 after contracting COVID-19, de Carvalho — known as Olavo — praised Brazil's military dictatorship, claimed that Pepsi-Cola was flavored with stem cells of aborted fetuses, preached that tolerance for homosexuality was "incompatible" with democracy, and had an office in Virginia decorated with portraits of Confederate generals.

Wait, run that second one by me again

In contrast, Web4 identifies products consumers are willing to purchase and comprehends market requirements.

The crazy and hitherto-unheard-of concept of "selling things people actually want to buy to people who want to buy them"... It'll never catch on!

(I mean, it will never catch on for crypto, because applying this philosophy to crypto quickly reveals that no one actually wants the thing they're supposed to be selling)

But the system isn’t designed for that, why would you expect it to do so?

It, uh... sounds like the flaw is in the design of the system, then? If the system is designed in such a way that it can't help but do unethical things, then maybe the system is not good to have.

Look, you gotta forgive this guy for coming up with an insane theory that doesn't make sense. After all, his brain was poisoned by testosterone, so his thinking skills have atrophied. An XXL hat size can only do so much, you know.

Like, seriously, get a hobby or something.

For real. I don't even necessarily disagree with the broad-strokes idea of "if you're comfortable, it's good to take on challenges and get outside of your comfort zone because that's how you grow as a person," but why can't he just apply this energy to writing a terrible novel or learning to paint watercolors or something, like a normal person? Why does the fact his life is comfortable mean he has to become a Nazi? :/

I love this unhinged Yudkowsky quote buried in here:

This is a filter affecting your evidence; it has not to my own knowledge filtered out a giant valid counterargument that invalidates this whole post. I would have kept silent in that case, for to speak then would have been dishonest.

Personally, I'm used to operating without the cognitive support of a civilization in controversial domains, and have some confidence in my own ability to independently invent everything important that would be on the other side of the filter and check it myself before speaking. So you know, from having read this, that I checked all the speakable and unspeakable arguments I had thought of, and concluded that this speakable argument would be good on net to publish[...]

Zack is actually correct that this is a pretty wild thing to say... "Rest assured that I considered all possible counterarguments against my position which I was able to generate with my mega super brain. No, I haven't actually looked at the arguments against my position, but I'm confident in my ability to think of everything that people who disagree with me would say."

It so happens that Yudkowsky is on the 'right side' politically in this particular case, but man, this is real sloppy for someone who claims to be on the side of capital-T truth.

The problem is... well, Zack correctly recognizes Yudkowsky is maybe not as world-changingly smart as he presents himself, and may be engaging in motivated reasoning rather than disinterested truth-seeking, but then his solution (a) doesn't involve questioning his belief in the rest of the robot apocalypse mythos, and (b) does involve running crying directly into the arms of Moldbug and a bunch of TERFs, which like, dude. Maybe consider critically interrogating those people's arguments too??

Feel like the very beginning of this is not completely crazy (I've also thought in the past that straight people often perform "attractiveness" more for the approval of their same-sex friends) but it seems to kind of jump off the evo-psych deep end after that, lol

Also you can't build a bunch of assumptions about "we should organize society this way" while ignoring the existence of LGBT people, and then go "yeah I know I ignored them but it simplified my analysis." Like yeah it simplifies the analysis to ignore a bunch of stuff that actually exists in reality, but... then that means maybe your conclusions about how to structure society are wrong??

edit: also this quote is choice:

I don't know if this really happens. But even if not, the fiction does a great job of highlighting the dynamic I'm thinking of.

It’s not like a pig that can do calculus would suddenly become a reasonable romantic partner haha.

as a pig that can do calculus, this explains why I'm still single

"We are told that technology is helping redistribute wealth from the common people to a small subset of extremely rich men. But, as an extremely rich man, I don't really understand why this is a bad thing? Technology seems pretty cool to me!"

For real though, we must have reached Peak Ad at some point, or at least we're deep into the realm of diminishing returns. This can't go on forever, right? I mean there's a finite number of things that need to be advertised and a finite number of people with a finite amount of time and patience to look at ads. How long until it all collapses?