maol

these kinds of questions are about the potential benefits to some hypothetical version of humanity (from slavery) vs. the real, documented harms to a real group of real people (caused by slavery). Of course we already know that rationalists are bad at accounting for the later while distracted by the bright and shiny allure of the former. And it just so happens that the people they imagine benefiting from slavery are people very much like themselves.

There was that woman whose tiktok algorithm figured out she was bisexual before she was

I curse the day I found out what remilia was.

I have discovered from an unrelated Google search that there is a subreddit called r/TherapyGPT. We're in hell

It seems possible, but they don't actually explain....

AI shite creeping into everyday life, example #1928748392:

I was out mattress shopping today. It was enjoyably ridiculous - the sales assistant measured my "pillow size" using a big contraption (apparently I'm a 2). However while testing a mattress I saw a video display advertising an "AI" widget to go with a specific "motion" mattress.

Baffled, I searched this up later.

AI voice control & Anti-snore box

Create your own spa-like oasis from the comfort of your own home by combining this Anti-snore Voice Control Box with our U210 and N700 motion bases. This range combines the very best and innovative technology with unbeatable comfort to give you the ultimate relaxation experience. Whether you want the optimal sleeping position or to spend your evenings unwinding with a good book, set offers luxurious comfort at the tip of your fingers.

I think this is un-enjoyably ridiculous. It's not really clear what's "AI" about it.

You see this particular kind of bigotry quite a bit in relation to neurodivervence and disability. It's an attempt to beat people advocating for equality and justice by claiming a moral high ground. Oh, you think disabled people can have meaningful and worthwhile lives and that differences should be celebrated?? You must be too ignorant to know just how awful life is for people who really have that disability!

A close friend of Epstein told me he was an integral part of a group called Edge, a strange organization involved in what my source called “the TED Talk community” that would serve as his primary gateway to the scientific world.

Edge, which has called itself “the world’s smartest website” and claims to “redefine who we what and are,” would hold TED Talk afterparties in Monterey Bay called “The Billionaire’s Dinner,” where people like Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt of Google, Rupert Murdoch, Steve Pinker, Richard Thaler, Joichi Ito, Margaret Levi, Frank Wilczek, Richard Dawkins, and many of the world’s high-profile scientists (including Nobel prize winners), business executives, and intellectuals would show up. Edge’s website calls itself the online version of “The Reality Club” which, the site claims, was an “informal gathering of intellectuals who met from 1981 to 1996 in Chinese restaurants, artist lofts, investment banking firms, ballrooms, museums, living rooms and elsewhere,” the hallmark of which was a “rigorous and sometimes impolite (but not ad hominem) discourse.”

Epstein had close ties with Edge’s founder, John Brockman, a self-described cultural impresario who on his bio page introduces himself with an uncredited quote that reads, “If the creation of contemporary culture had a global hero, his name would coincide with that of John Brockman.” He claims to have invented the term “intermedia” as well as “intermedia kinetic environments.” Epstein bankrolled Edge’s events and financed the majority of the organization—from 2001 to 2017 Epstein provided $638,000 out of a total $857,000 received by Edge. He was photographed at Edge’s premiere annual event, The Billionaire’s Dinner, several times between 1999 and 2011. Multiple photos of him have been scrubbed from the website, such as one with Brockman’s son in 2003.

Media coverage of the Epstein case has given considerable attention to his absurd scientific pursuits, like the New York Times story about how he wanted to seed the human race with his DNA, or how he wanted to have his penis frozen and resuscitated in the future, and I myself heard from people in the black book that Epstein had told them he had a cloning lab down in Mexico and that he was very into “transhumanism.” Followers of the Epstein story have debated whether these were signs of a true mad-genius supervillain or whether they were elitist hot air. I’m here to tell you that all of this bullshit, every bit of it, came from Edge and its assemblage of chinstrokers. The transhumanism, the cloning, the “What is up? What is down?”—all of it is perfectly at home on the deranged pages of Edge.org.

From "I Called Everyone In Jeffrey Epstein's Little Black Book" by Leland Nally, Mother Jones, October 2020

Some good news for once: Dublin punk bar the Thomas House have had enough of AI slop.

When I read rationalist descriptions of other people's psychology I sense a certain amount of contempt for them (because they are not Rational and of course cannot understand themselves as well as the rationalists can understand them). In this case, the silly woman who doesn't understand why her expectations are being defied. Maybe it isn't meant to be contemptuous, but that's how it comes across to me.

I dunno, it does read like fiction. Like one of those billionaire romance novels, actually.

Either Collison or his brother or both have been funding an abundance-y think tank in Ireland which has been the subject of some public controversy (complaints about "red tape", etc.) Their genius proposal for increasing housing supply and density was to let homeowners build sheds in their back gardens and rent them out to people, a proposal our unscrupulous right-wing coalition government took on despite, you know, all the drawbacks of creating a new source of poor quality housing with insecure tenancy. I don't have it in me to go looking up facts about those two gobdaws at this hour but there has been reporting by the Dublin Inquirer on the think tank.

Two shit tastes that taste shit together