swlabr

joined 2 years ago
[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (7 children)

Nah, it doesn't. Utilitarianism is pretty useless; in this case, it's pretty fucking clear that the IDF are utility monsters. And what do you mean by "basic universalism"?

response to your edit: that is not an unequivocal denouncement of genocide lol. That's some weaselly shit where Singer is trying his best not to say what is obviously true (genocide bad) and instead try and say "these are ways in which Israel can continue to justify genocide."

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 21 points 5 days ago (1 children)

found on reddit. posted without further comment

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 12 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The saying “there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire” springs to mind. Who did they, or their families fuck over, in order to garner that sort of wealth?

There’s a running joke/working theory I’ve heard that in order to become billionaire, you have to have killed someone. (The reality is almost definitely worse)

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 5 days ago (8 children)

yeah, so we agree, EA, which is predicated on the wealthy actually giving away their money, is a flawed concept as that is something the wealthy cannot be compelled to do without force

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 5 days ago (9 children)

Nah dawg it’s the fact that his “incredible solid and well argued” moral framework finds it impossible to unequivocally denounce a fucking genocide that means that maybe it’s not nearly as solid as you say.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 5 days ago

Not sure on that but I think he’s related to Sabrina Carpenter. Source, this line from Espresso:

I'm working late, 'cause I'm a Singer

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 14 points 5 days ago

mating pool

probably on par with the other stuff you might see at a rationalist poly compound

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 16 points 5 days ago (10 children)

It’s almost as if the wealthy by and large don’t actually care about doing good or improving society!!!

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 15 points 5 days ago (14 children)

It’s somewhat non-trivial to create a billionaire, let alone an EA variant; what other ideas do you have for improving EA?

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 15 points 5 days ago (10 children)

who is this peter singer fellow? Sounds like a great and unproblematic man. Please tell us more of his teachings.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 12 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

A random thought occurred to me that Veo is probably “better” at being prompted with something like “the scene from X movie but with Y instead of Z” as it is a plagiarism engine first and foremost. I will never investigate this hypothesis, nor will I hold onto it past typing it here.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 4 points 1 week ago

think of all the rug you could have pulled...

 

Abstracted abstract:

Frontier models are increasingly trained and deployed as autonomous agents, which significantly increases their potential for risks. One particular safety concern is that AI agents might covertly pursue misaligned goals, hiding their true capabilities and objectives – also known as scheming. We study whether models have the capability to scheme in pursuit of a goal that we provide in-context and instruct the model to strongly follow. We evaluate frontier models on a suite of six agentic evaluations where models are instructed to pursue goals and are placed in environments that incentivize scheming.

I saw this posted here a moment ago and reported it*, and it looks to have been purged. I am reposting it to allow us to sneer at it.

*

 

Didn’t see this news posted but please link previous correspondence if I missed it.

https://archive.is/XwbY0

 

This is somewhat tangential to the usual fare here but I decided to make a post because why not.

I’ve been listening to the back catalog of the Judge John Hodgman podcast, and this ep came up. This ep is the second crypto based case after “crypto facto” in ep 333.

John Hodgman is a comedian, probs best known for being the “I’m a PC” guy in the “I’m a Mac” ad campaign from ancient times. In the podcast, he plays a fake judge that hears cases and makes judgements. In this ep, “Suing for Soul Custody,” he hears a case in which a husband wants to sell his soul on the blockchain, while his wife does not want him to do that.

Some good sneers against the crypto bro husband (in both this case and the other I linked). Brief spoilers as to the rulings in case you don’t want to listen:

333Judge rules that the husband should continue to mine ETH until his rig burns down his house.

556Judge rules that the guy shouldn’t sell his soul, for symbolic reasons.

Note: I like John Hodgman. He’s funny. He’s not really inside the tech space, but he is good friends with Jonathan Coulton, who is. If all you know of him is the “I’m a PC” ads, he has an entertaining wider catalogue worth checking out.

 

On the hottest and coldest days, when demand for electricity peaks and the price rockets, the bitcoin miners either sell power back to providers at a profit or stop mining for a fee, paid by ercot. Doing so has become more lucrative than mining itself. In August of 2023 Riot collected $32m from curtailing mining and just $8.6m from selling bitcoin.

Archive link: https://archive.md/O8Cz9

 

Kind of sharing this because the headline is a little sensationalist and makes it sound like MS is hard right (they are, but not like this) and anti-EU.

I mean, they probably are! Especially if it means MS is barred from monopolies and vertical integration.

 

TIL that television program “The Boys” has an in universe cryptocurrency as a satire of, well, cryptocurrency in general but also specifically that time when DJT was selling NFTs. They occasionally tweet about it.

It has a listing on the “BSCScan” crypto tracker under the name “VTC” so someone might have actually minted it? It might surprise some of you that I have no way of telling the realness of such a thing.

 

Uncritically sharing this article with naive hope. Is this just PR for a game? Probably. Indies deserve as much free press as possible though.

 

As is tradition I am sharing this link without having listened yet.

 

The video game in question:

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