Yeah, what the fuck is this passage

If you believe that If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, then you should say that if anyone builds it, then everyone dies. Not moral blame. Cause and effect. Note that this is importantly different from ‘anyone who is trying to build it is a mass murderer.’

(note the rat-tic of using “importantly” as an adjective)

This deftly evades the main question - how do we ensure that no-one builds it? There’s a host of options, and political violence is one of them. I guess categorically stating it’s off the table is a start, but Zvi has the moral gravitas of a dormouse. If I was of the political voilence bent I’d probably commit some just to spite him.

Covid is an exception, and believe me, if the main victims of Covid had been kids instead of old people stuffed into elder-care facilities, forgotten by everyone, the dynamics around masking and vaccines and lockdowns would have been a lot different.

My point is that most kids in Sweden go to daycare, “daycare sickness” (where the whole family comes down with enteritis etc) is a common thing, and as far as I know the country doesn’t stand out in health stats.

You can argue that the loss of productivity from this is a factor, but as you mention in a parallell comment, the authorities can demand better hygiene and air quality in preschools and schools, and it would be cheaper than outfitting every single home.

LW stalwart discovers kids get sniffles from daycare, obviously this means women have to stay at home to take care of kids and not work:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/byiLDrbj8MNzoHZkL/daycare-illnesses

BTW almost every person born after 1970 in Sweden has been to daycare as a kid, if daycare illnesses had long-term consequences it would be showing up here

ok the takes on the attempted firebombing of sama’s mansion are coming in from the rats and those that watch them. Credit to letting stuff marinate , I guess, and/or not working on a weekend

no clue who this dude is, has a slobsuck with .ai domain but makes sense:

https://www.campbellramble.ai/p/the-rational-conclusion

Weird MtG scarecrow Zvi plays moral philosopher, invokes multiple authorities on Xhitter:

https://thezvi.substack.com/p/political-violence-is-never-acceptable

Just doing the Basilisk’s bidding…

JFC at least wait until you have a de-facto monopoly before musing about extracting the rents! This is capitalism 101.

Looking forward to it!

There’s a pretty wide divide between the speculations of the motives of the alleged arsonist of Sam Altman’s SF residence last week.

LW has handled the issue obliquely, but the main concern seems to be that they are pretty convinced the dude acted out of fear of AI-induced x-risk. The optics is that his actions would paint EA in a bad light.

HN (based on this big heap of comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47724921) is more focused on the idea that Altman and co. are fomenting class hatred and the attack is more akin to Luigi Mangione’s attack on a health insurance CEO. (Searching for “exinction” and “doom” in the threads doesn’t throw up much)

Neither forum links to the dude’s alleged slobslack.

My conclusion is that “AGI-driven X-risk” is a position too extreme at the moment for HN.

Also I believe the alleged attacker is not an avatar of a popular movement but a confused individual self-radicalized online.

Edit It’s good to know that if you are a radicalized person thinking about committing violence against people or property, LW will be happy to provide you with a safe space to vent, with guarantees on your anonymity. C.f. habryka’s comment here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/igEogGD9TAgAeAM7u/jimrandomh-s-shortform?commentId=zdMRHRqWDcjswhA3i

What I found interesting about the post was the total non-discussion about the most discussed source of terrorism in the last few decades, namely Islamic terrorism. AI safety terrs are fucking amateurs compared to the people recruiting Islamic terrorists, who not only have a convincing story to pitch but actually do the work to get people on board and prepared to risk their lives for the goal.

The author gestures vaguely at anti-abortion terrs, totally oblivious to the obvious connection between them and purported anti-AI activists - namely ,that they see any violence justified in the light of the murder of millions of unborn children. If the future of humanity is at stake, any means are justified!

After all, the author states

AI poses unacceptable risks to all of us. This is simply a fact, not a radical or violent ideology.

The onus is on the author to explain why murdering AI company execs is an unacceptable response to the unacceptable risk of AI.

Nice to hear you’ve got a job, and good luck!

That’s a hilarious reaction.

Anyway there’s zip about this incident on LW, which is telling.

edit here’s a very oblique reference https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/igEogGD9TAgAeAM7u/jimrandomh-s-shortform?commentId=zdMRHRqWDcjswhA3i

don’t miss the anarcho-libertarian in the comments

Glad to see some pushback on these claims.

Important to note that as these companies are approaching an IPO, they are desperate that the reporting is about the glorious (or dangerous) future they can provide, and not about the dodgy finances.

Kind of a pseudo-sneer, author is writing a

blog on machine learning engineering, compound AI systems, search and information retrieval, and recsys — exploring machine learning, LLM agents, and data science insights from startups to enterprises.

Here’s the discussion on the red site: https://lobste.rs/s/nmhkdl/ai_great_leap_forward Plenty of people suspect the text being LLM generated. Pangram disagrees, fwiw.

I do think there’s some interesting ideas about how humans will “defend” themselves from being replaced by bots, and that the critical info in a company is seldom in the source code, but in the customer relationships, sales etc.

surprise level == 0 (or rather, short odds on the prediction markets)

El Reg: OpenAI puts Stargate UK on ice, blames energy costs and red tape

yeah my kid had to get a gaming PC for school (gamedev) and managed to snag a decent rig before prices went parabolic

Circular at work states that the standard laptop we get from Dell has increased in price by 50% so they’re looking for alternatives.

Those S-1 filings are gonna be spicy.

OTOH does the SEC have any staff left ?

IRGC doing their part to Halt AI. Donate to them now!

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On this most terrible of online days, “enjoy” this LW attempt at humor

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3GbM9hmyJqn4LNXrG/yams-s-shortform?commentId=ik6ywoQYsGrrQv8Dm

edit there are more submissions on the theme of “humor” on site now. Let’s just say the cringe factor outweighs the humor factor by a large amount.

omg I don’t have anything better to do

• Lesswrong Liberated - they implemented a chat interface to redesign the LW site according to different themes. Mostly boring
• LIMBO: Who We Are, What We Do, and an Exciting High-Impact Funding Opportunity - probably not AFJ? Can’t really tell. Bad day to launch a call for funding if not
• Announcing Doublehaven with Reflections on Humour - protip do not try to reflect on “humour” (native brit speaker or pretentious LWer? flip a coin) with boring examples of “ratty humour”
• ACME Alignment Co Announces: Aligning Humans - this one is easy to call as AFJ
• Giving up on EA after 13 years - lol it’s funny because EA means “Electronic Arts” here
• “You Have Not Been a Good User” (LessWrong’s second album) - also seems to be a “straight” post, not a joke, but released on AFJ b/c then the community can “cut loose”? I dunno, and I am never gonna listen to any songs by “Fooming Shoggoths” in my life
• Announcing EA Omelas - “[Extensively co-written with Claude Opus 4.6]” you have been warned. Considering how every rat coverage of Omelas has been utter shit I’m just posting the link, not reading it