LWer: politics is really hard to be Rational about, so how about we just forget all about it?

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FBXvMEwzTknN26NZp/that-which-cannot-be-poked-with-a-stick-is-the-mind-killer

Bad: arguing about prison abolition

Good: arguing about how to fastest get to the closest Muni station

being “banned by Amazon” is probably good for PR

Consider me well and truly milkshake-ducked now

phew, the comments on the slobstack…

https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-epstein-hysteria/comment/219672502

edit I guess this is also an example of “Rationalist Brain” - reflexively contrarian, overly literal interpretations of wordings, the defense of one venerable old white man over multiple anonymous female victims, etc. You can have principled views on how Epstein was treated when he was alive and how his case has been handled after he died, but you can also choose the keep those views to yourself, or publish them on your substack for all to point and mock.

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Slave revolts were basically constant, and I think it would have been easy for contemporary British to blame the success of the Haitian revolt on the uselessness of the French, not that slavery was doomed because the slaves now had a “win”.

Brazil had horrific slave revolts and didn’t abolish slavery until the late 1880s.

Amodei is the definition of “book smart” vs “street smart”.

I dunno who “Bentham’s Bulldog” is, but they live up to their nick and I like the cut of their jib:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ew3chEabxf8YySR5/functional-decision-theory-not-even-wrong-also-wrong

The community is reduced to downvoting, sputtering, and “the real influential philosophers live in Canada are working in industry, not academia”:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ew3chEabxf8YySR5/functional-decision-theory-not-even-wrong-also-wrong?commentId=4CcLDXFkGWGEsgGuu

Thanks! Does every LLM vendor publish them, or is it an Anthropic thing only?

And of course it’s self-published by the vendor, so basically just PR.

officially out of the loop here:

What is an LLM “system card”, does it have any sort of scientific/technical validity, or is it just performance theater by the LLM vendor?

LWer: slavery was bad and abolishing the slave trade was a net good

LW commenters: really?

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yDZcsojmRXo5qKNBm/surprising-facts-about-the-slave-trade

(I can kind of understand that intellectual honesty can prompt people to question a narrative, and in some ways I respect it, but there comes a time when you need to ask yourself “am I being the best person I can be by defending slavery” and back away from the keyboard)

Nuclear Diner: Silicon Valley’s Reactor Projects

techbros gonna techbro:

The Mullvad founder gave millions to extremist far right party

btw I live in Sweden and until today I have never heard of these nutjobs

“The ones who walk away from Omelas describes a utopia —”

good enough! ship it!

BRB registering KallocAIn as a company

The poster deftly doesn’t address the real moral question: what if conversion therapy (either for homosexuality or trans identification) worked ? Would it be ethical to allow it?

This is the difference between politics/ethics and science. As the old saying goes, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Habryka is too busy writing long screeds warning people not to vote for random junior politicians to moderate

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EQJfdqSaMcJyR5k73/habryka-s-shortform-feed?commentId=u7L6T6uGEkzw9Fzku

The header image is gold.

enjoy crustaceans incorrecting each other about free speech, defamation law etc

https://lobste.rs/s/lxoosd/german_court_ruling_declares_google_s_ai

If LW is a cult, they’re doing a terrible job at recruiting:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yhrrhTzTeiZ8PzQZn/where-do-young-rationalists-go