the EAs have access to so much money that other orgs have to dance to their tune, and are discovering the professionals think the EAs are fucking nutters
the comments are darling also
I promise this is my last donkeypost but I think this thread needs some donkey pictures. All pics from the Irish Donkey Sanctuary
Nice asses
The cosmic-level irony here is that what they need now is lobbyists, the normiest of professions, yet their epistemic narcissism will probably prevent them from having the countenance necessary to recruit them.
I’m not necessarily an animal lib person, but I think an animal rights/animal liberation/ethical vegan framework for looking after and respecting animals is probably better than an EA one. If only because they’re more experienced in creating social change. Apparently only about 1 to 3% of Americans are vegans. So they have the numbers over the EAs, and they could probably beat them in a fight too.
@maol I’ve seen it said (and now can’t find the link for reference) that whether or not the multiple on fish “utility” relative to human “utility” is small, a strict policy of fish maximalism adopted in 1900 would have produced better environmental outcomes for humanity than the course history actually did take. So, score that one for the vegans.
Top comment:
The responsibility probably rests on the rationalists here. People become professionals all the time (and indeed, maximizing impact often requires being a professional), but well under 1% of the population has the personality to ever become a rationalist.
Only 144,000 people will go to heaven!
At the local AI safety co-working space
ok this is gonna be a doozy
so how has that been working out for you so far “jenn”?
OK so I was a bit unfair on OP
she’s got a weird blend of stuff on her site: https://jenn.site/ Her recollection of her closeted dad is quite moving, but there’s an awful lot of Rationalist virtue-signalling.
What about the article where she claims that based on their art, a contemporary artist “wants to fuck their dog” and the primary reason art galleries aren’t making this more clear is…because under woke you’re not allowed to sexualize disabled artists???
I am not saying it’s all bad, I’m saying there’s a tiny amount of good.
Also, from the piece
It’s very uncharacteristic for modern art museums and the commentariat to not engage with the sexual themes or undertones with works on display, they’re not exactly prudish institutions!
next para
this is literally the first art show I’ve been to in my life that was prestigious enough that there is coverage and discourse about it.
ok then
Sorry, I guess I phrased my reply badly, I get what you mean about the weird blend (and the article you linked is actually well written), but having seen that dog fucking article I felt the need to inflict the horror on others so I wouldn’t be alone.
Ok that one did make me tear up
for context, “donkey farms” is shorthand for wooly-headed small-scale thinking, not Rationalist
Ah, a version of the YCombinator pejorative “lifestyle business” tailored for the nonprofit sector. How droll.
This article has an astonishing amount of almost-self-awareness, where only one vital step is missing in order to answer all their questions.
There’s the kind of regular who’s been thinking seriously about AI safety and alignment since pre-2022, who have passing to intimate familiarity with the funding ecosystem, the Sequences, and various conferences that happen at Lighthaven. Let’s call them rationalists.
… Let’s not, because a bunch of us here fit all those descriptions, yet are clearly not “rationalists”. The way that they use that term makes it synonymous with Orthodox (“right practices/thinking”).
The way that they use that term makes it synonymous with Orthodox (“right practices/thinking”).
I mean objectivism was already taken so…
What a stupid cult. Someone needs to pull the plug. The poor brainfucked computer wrecks need to go outside, and pet a donkey sometimes.
Seems like there are two types of people.
Those who enjoy holding conferences about the best way of shoveling donkey shit (plus points if they somehow are permitted to come up with global rules for handling donkey shit from the arctic to the equator and from the sea side to the mountain) and allocate funding for buying fancy AI powered shovels.
And those who shovel donkey shit.
of note is that you can without loss of generality replace “donkey sanctuary” with “dog/cat/<more popular pet> sanctuary”, but I guess donkeys are both rarer, more ridiculous, and probably more Democrat than other pets.
Replace any ‘making the world a better place now’ with ‘talking a lot about making the world a better place some time in the future with my fellow cultists in our secret cult language’. These people make me feel exactly like fork scratching on blackboard.
…Is this space property rights thing a new big deal in the community?
It probably hit the mainstream with AI2040 in early July, but it’s just too rationalist coded for there to not have been precursors.
summary of AI2040 in greentext form
new effective altruism coomer bedtime story just dropped
> be me
> effective altruist in 2026
> have spent ten years explaining that democracy is too slow for the coming machine god
> also explain that central planning usually fails
> unless I am doing it> read one scaling graph
> draw line upward
> line reaches heaven
> conclude capitalism ends in 2031> AI can now write Python functions with only three subtle security flaws
> obviously two years away from replacing every scientist, general, diplomat, CEO, judge, therapist, novelist, and attractive person at parties> publish “scenario,” not “prediction”
> give every paragraph exact dates
> assign percentages to imaginary branches
> epistemic humility achieved> bad timeline:
> companies race
> AI becomes god
> everyone dies> good timeline:
> US government notices problem
> China agrees
> Congress understands compute governance
> international inspectors find every hidden datacenter
> nobody lies
> nobody defects
> nobody builds chips in a basement
> planet saved> all we need is total global visibility into advanced computing
> mandatory disclosure of frontier research
> permanent monitoring of industrial infrastructure
> central control over technological development
> relax, this is the anti-authoritarian option> alignment not solved
> solution: build one billion genius AIs
> they are not superintelligent
> they are merely one billion tireless copies of the best human researchers working at electronic speed
> completely different> put them in a box
> ask them to solve the problem of escaping boxes
> excellent progress> year 2034
> AI replaces 80% of labor
> mass unemployment
> social order somehow remains intact
> government sends everyone $1.6 million
> nobody asks where prices went> year 2037
> cancer cured
> climate solved
> fusion solved
> aging solved
> politics solved
> Reddit moderation still unresolved> year 2038
> alignment becomes a mature science
> year 2039
> we trust the machines
> year 2040
> hand them civilization
> peer review completed ahead of schedule> humanity gets a vote
> options are:
> A. accept benevolent AI guardianship
> B. extinction
> meaningful democratic consent achieved> announce decentralized flourishing
> administered by a globally coordinated compute authority
> with comprehensive surveillance powers
> run by unusually wise people
> who agree with my blog posts> critics ask whether institutions can actually do any of this
> reply that superintelligence is inevitable
> critics ask whether superintelligence is actually inevitable
> reply that institutions must prepare> circular reasoning
> but with footnotes> call it “AI 2040”
> not utopian fiction
> not doomer fiction
> serious strategic foresight> entire future depends on competent adults appearing at exactly the right moment
> adults are selected from the same civilization that made the printer require an app> sleep peacefully
> the machine god is coming
> but fortunately
> the nonprofit sector has a plan100% perfect summary
AI 2027 and AI 2040 both had it so I guess
I didn’t recall it in 2027, just in the afterward of 2040. I took it as another weird idiosyncrasy of the particular authors, but I guess this is evidence that it’s been a private shibboleth among the In The Know Central Types for a while and they just think its obvious to the point its leaking out into public documents…
I’m getting the urge to give some cash to a donkey sanctuary. Does anyone know a good one
I have now clicked around some donkey sanctuary websites and am starting to feel emotional. I am sure this is what rationalists are afraid of but God the donkeys…
Yeah, I landed on https://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/ and god it’s so much more professional and action-y compared to literally all the stuff on LW.
But maybe one day we will see a similar site for the shrimps.
the fuckin make a wish foundation is more effective than EA
I can’t think of a more productive charity for helping make-a-wish donors and the parents of dying children feel better about the world.
Also with Desert Bus for Hope on the horizon I want to use this space to (probably unnecessarily) point to Child’s Play. It’s almost not utilmaxxing, but I know when I was in hospital as a kid the little cart with a Nintendo 64 on it was the only time I felt like an actual kid instead of a science experiment or hurt. I’m willing to forgive a lot of lost net utils to give that to others going through it.
the donkey people may not have picked their cause because it was the most rational, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped them from coming up with good ideas. it’s almost as if people can be more effective when they’re working for causes they’re emotionally connected to…
On one hand, rationalists continuing to be nuts. But on the other this is the most self aware I’ve seen a rationalist be
Maybe I should probably host a session that’s just “here are all of the weird idiosyncratic things that rationalists are more likely to believe, ask me questions about them and I won’t get mad”.
Genuinely seems to be an understanding of the fact that they do believe weird shit. And they even seem to understand how everyone is frustrated at having to deal with them in order to get resources.
So much gold in the comments.
… tone down the extent to which we broadcast the the unorthodox aspects of the culture which aren’t directly linked to AI safety. don’t be too eager to discuss stuff like polyamory/meditation/board games/drugs/meal replacement/overt analysis of social status+signalling games etc.
The first reponse to this?
beg your pardon, how did board games got on this list?
That list is fascinating as someone into a decent chunk of it. Like, yeah board games and meditation you can pull off as you being nerdy/hippy in a professional work environment. Polyamory and drugs are definitely some things that mark you as countercultural to the point they may be detrimental to getting along with folks. And meal replacement and overt analysis of social status+signalling games are so abnormal that even those of us who enjoy the rest of the list are going to be thinking “fuck, a rationalist”
And meal replacement
I genuinely don’t know what that is. Is that about those magical protein shakes? Cause that’s just chud-coded in my head, not necessarily rationalist
Plenty of things professionals consider serious AI work (bias, misinformation, labor displacement, near-term harms) are donkey sanctuaries [read: Irrelevant bikeshedding preoccupations for irrational people] to at least some parts of the rationalist funding ecosystem, and perhaps it would be useful to make that common knowledge, but that legibility will come at the cost of resentment.
it’s always funny how seemingly ‘rational’ people fail to account for the fact that while they have extreme future time preference, 99% of people in the real world don’t. So even in the world they are right (lol, lmao), the near-term harms will cause second order effects that will fuck up the systems that facilitate the pursuit of their stupid longtermist preoccupations.
Unless, the smarter ones do realize that, and their strategy is just to throw in with the people exacerbating the near-term harms, with the belief that when, at critical moments for their “x-risk/s-risk” prevention efforts, these same people will actually align with them out of rational altruism.
hmm, can’t see any problems with this idea! Rationality achieved ✅
“Please verify your browser.”
No.
So there are 2 ways to look at this.
Scenario 1: EA is like the early Christian church in Rome. It’s radically different from the existing norms but is quickly gaining adherents. Its beliefs are weird - give up riches now for great rewards later. Embrace humility and subservience, not power. Belief is decentralized, not imposed from above. As the Church grows, more and more elites join in, and it gradually takes over the existing structures.
Scenario 2: EA is a like a very rich, very eccentric person looking to donate their money but have some weird hangups.
Scenario one requires a compelling story that makes prospective converts believe and wholly commit to the cause. For the Christian church, it was the literaly promise of eternal life, once Christ returned (and he would, soon). EA has that promise too but it’s muted and it’s kinda theologically backwards to Christianity- instead of the Devil/your own sinful nature trying to stop you reaching paradise[1], you have to defeat the Devil (rampant AI) to reach it yourself.
The second scenario is the most likely, and the most likely effect is that grifters / “consultants” who are good at playing along with the weird beliefs will be able to mirror the belief system, pocket a large amount of the money on tap, and nothing much will happen.
[1] although I believe the idea of the Devil and original sin developed much later
