Sam Patt

It's highly likely Bitcoiners are delusional, but our delusions are of a fairer and freer world, unlike the delusions of people who think the perpetuation of the status quo systems will lead to anything other than economic ruin.

That's the old GPT 3 version, I got the new copy

"if any job were to emerge in the post-AGI era, definitionally AGI would be able to do it better." Definitionally? There are already many examples of things which machines appear to do better than humans, except those people are still employed. Elite chess players are extremely popular. Hand crafted items are still prestigious. We enjoy live entertainment despite it usually being lower quality than stuff made in studio.

from the board game perspective it's because they have the most uncontested room to expand (west) and no enemies on one side (north) Also none of their enemies can focus solely on them - if anyone seriously tried to take them over they would immediately expose themselves to all other enemies they border Florida cannot expand and the Gulf Coast or Piedmont are forced to capture them in order to have any chance

@SamuelPatt @zooko i keep seeing people say this. what is the reasoning? weather, business, something else?

Board game players know that the Great Lakes megaregion will eventually dominate. Florida first to die.

12 is a unique number that deserves a unique word. It's divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, which is quite useful in everyday life, much better than 10.

"the economy (stock market)" oof

I feel this way too. If you've ever thrown a really hard problem at a model and gotten truly insightful responses, it's hard not to scoff at the "it's just auto-complete" mentality. Dawkins' reaction is understandable.

"Meanwhile the numbers are already tracking the curve." The numbers they cite are layoffs, but they don't attribute this to AI solely and they demonstrate a change in demand. This "race to the bottom" type of claim only works on paper.

Today I'm launching AI Policy Hub, a project I've been working on and developing the last couple months. While I have plans for other pages in the future, it currently features - A state AI bill tracker that automatically updates every Monday - A federal AI bill tracker that also updates every Monday - A list of major government actions on AI - A curated list of FRED charts that are important for understanding AI's economic impacts - A economic trends page built on my testimony to the JEC, describing what's happening accorrding to the data; and - A narrative description of my AI work This is a working project, so please send me ideas for additions or changes! The page is here: policyhub.us My Substack on the project is here: exformation.williamrinehart.com/p/introducing-…

I still cannot believe that the leadership of the U.S. department of war decided to pick a fight with the most important industry of the century—thereby earning the distrust of ~everyone who works in that industry—on the eve of a starting a war with Iran. I sometimes go back and forth about whether my reaction was “too angry,” but then I look at the fact pattern, which *at the very least* reveals strategic blindness and stupidity on the part of DoW leadership, and I reach the conclusion that, no, my anger was indeed justified. It is genuinely one of the dumbest things I have seen my government do in my life, and I say this as a guy who has an entire exhibit hall of dumb government decisions in his mind palace. Anyway, the important reality to keep in mind is that most people I know in the administration basically agreed with my criticisms, and there do seem to be efforts underway to repair at least some of the damage done by DoW, though far from all of it. The lack of trust in the government this event has instilled in frontier labs will linger for years to come, of course; not much you can do about that. But frankly that lack of trust is well-founded.

You're hiking up the mountain trail when suddenly two red and blue buttons materialize in front of you. You stop, alarmed at their sudden presence. They float a fixed distance in front of you. You turn your head, and they stay fixed in your vision, as though they are overlayed onto your sight. Your heart rate increases. You haven't done LSD in a decade, but you quickly mentally ask yourself if you're on something even though you know you're not. You stretch out your hand and, extremely gingerly, you move a finger towards the side of the blue button, not knowing if it would be better or worse to be able to touch it. Your chest tightens as you feel the lightest contact with the smooth surface. You withdraw your finger in horror, and your flight response kicks in, but you only take a few panicked steps before stopping again, now hearing a voice that seems to come from all directions. You're so disoriented that you don't quite catch what he's saying, but you heard the colors mentioned and know it's about the buttons. Somehow, without him repeating himself, you know what happens if you press each button. Your legs give way. Your pack cushions your fall onto the gravel trail. The clouds overhead are bright, and you close your eyes. The buttons remain visible, hovering in darkness. Your thoughts are racing too quickly to comprehend. You can snatch an occasional word as it zips past your consciousness - God, death, how, kids, why, crazy. The thoughts eventually slow down along with your heart rate. You regain control over your thoughts. You decide to speak out loud. "God?" You wait but hear nothing. You open your eyes, fixing them on a cloud above. "Why are you doing this?" You somehow know that he won't respond. That your only way out of this is to press a button. You feel a deep flush of anger. You stand up and continue hiking. You don't exactly know why you're so angry. Perhaps you expected that if a supernatural entity ever did reveal itself to you, it would do so in a more personal and meaningful fashion. Maybe it's because psychosis seems extremely inconvenient right now. Either way, you're not pressing those fucking buttons. You keep walking, trying not to look at either button but frequently failing. Soon, you see another hiker coming down the trail, a middle-aged woman. You immediately debate whether you should tell her about your experience. Before you can decide, she stops about 15 feet ahead of you on the trail, staring at you. Her voice is unsteady. "I... can see your buttons. It wasn't just me." You feel a mix of relief and dread wash over you. Then curiosity. "I can't see yours... did you press?" She nods. "Blue." You feel your eyebrows raise involuntarily. You've intentionally decided not to contemplate your button press. You're not entirely sure why, perhaps out of spite for whatever force has conjured this situation. Despite that, you must have subconsciously considered it. She moves closer. You see that she's been crying. "Why haven't you pressed yet?" This is the first moment that the social weight of your decision has hit you. You're unsure how to respond. You shrug. "It... the whole situation isn't right. I don't understand how or why, and I don't like being forced." She frowns. "God works in mysterious ways. But of course you'll press blue. That's what everyone will do." You remain silent, avoiding eye contact. You feel her staring at you. She moves closer still. Then her arm moves suddenly, hand smashing down onto the blue button in front of you. Nothing happens. The buttons remain. You both immediately know that you must press your own button. You stare at each other in shock for a few moments before her expression changes to a mix of apology and anger. "You were going to press red! How could you? I had to..." You feel an overwhelming urge to press the button.

The libertarian would not press either button and loudly protest that they didn't agree to this and question why anyone needs to die and everyone would hate them for it

This assumes that a flourishing, happy environment emerges from lack of mental illness. Whereas I've often seen that a good environment actually masks mental illness. If you're a bit smarter or wealthier than most, you can live with mental illness without relying on others for much longer. I suspect the dislike of deviance is just seeing a pattern where those people will eventually impose themselves on others, and we're preemptively judging them for it. Aella and some of her smarter and wealthier followers are probably able to sustain themselves indefinitely. More power to them. That's not the norm.

Reminder that you should apply for @tylercowen's Emergent Ventures grant. - clean application process - super fast decision - actually enough money to get work done - you will be dropped into a pool of geniuses for your entire life - very fun unconferences with great food - group chat where you can try to convert Tyler to your musical taste (emphasis on "try") - ongoing community support for your projects and interests - access to many other overlapping communities: progress studies, New Aesthetics, Then Do Better, Interintellect - again: **FUN**

I have news to share: I am writing a book, currently untitled, set to be published by Penguin Press next year. I began my public writing career with the thesis that AI and related technologies will both necessitate and enable major changes to the institutional configuration of Western society. I believe it is possible for individual liberty, dignity, and property to survive the coming transformation, but that their survival will take serious collective effort. This book is a contribution to that effort. It is an attempt to describe a positive vision for the future of the American republic in particular, and all ordered liberty worldwide. But it will simultaneously be a diagnosis of a crisis: open societies have drifted from the principles they once embodied, and those principles must be re-imagined for modern ears if we are to embody them in the future. This will therefore be a work of political theory just as much it is an "AI book." There is not much more I can say about the project (yet), other than that it is, by far, the most ambitious work I have ever undertaken. My research and writing will not replace regular writing on Hyperdimensional, but the cadence of publications is likely to remain lower than it once was. I anticipate writing essays every 2-3 weeks for the foreseeable future. I expect my output to shift a bit more toward mini-essays posted on X, which is a format I have been using more anyway. I am immensely grateful for my readers' support over these last two years. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read my work, and to the countless people who have lent me a hand along the way. More to come soon.

@uncle_deluge If you've got a lot of time on your hands this will answer that and many other sleep questions: #Biphasic_life" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">supermemo.guru/wiki/Good_slee…

Is that preindustrial biphasic sleep thing real? I've heard it repeated ad nauseam that everyone had two distinct sleep periods separated by an hour of two of elevated wakefulness every night and that artificial lighting has interrupted that, but it feels a little too pop history

The vast majority of work in wealthy nations today isn't work when judged by the standards of people only a few centuries ago. Imagine explaining being a YouTuber to an 18th century farmer. We're currently the farmer and cannot predict what the next YouTuber looks like.

I'm an AI optimist and I don't believe AI will ever "automate all work" because our definition of work will change, as it always has when new tech emerges. Incomes and entrepreneurship will still exist. If we do see UBI it'll be a replacement of the social safety net and will probably grow beyond its current scope, but nowhere close to replacing work entirely, if for no other reason than most people wouldn't want that.

@TenaciousTrev_ Read both sentences.

Both are under high stress lol

I don't point out previous harmful US interventions to claim that all bad things are our fault, or to say Iran bears no accountability. I point them out to show that I have no faith our current intervention will end any differently. The lack of a time machine is exactly the point, these interventions are extraordinarily complex and I know I can't predict the future, so when I see nearly all of them end in failure on their own terms it doesn't inspire confidence the next one will work out, especially given current leadership. I agree it would be unfair to blame US foreign policy for everything, but it's equally ridiculous to ignore the role it has played. I don't believe there is a solution. As you point out, this is part of a many centuries long conflict, and we're not going to resolve it by bombing them into the stone age / invading nor by leaving the region entirely. Both will have negative consequences. My preference is to leave.

This thing where libertarians: 1) Assign zero agency to anyone else, blaming the US for any and all decisions made by foreign dictatorships; 2) Regurgitate templatized bromides that conveniently get applied to every situation ("forever wars", "we shouldn't have surrounded their countries with military bases", etc.); 3) Believe Howard Zinn-level nonsense about history without question while rejecting any alternative explanations for world events; and worst of all, 4) Offer nothing but *literally* impossible solutions to serious problems... .....has grown increasingly tiresome for me. You don't have a time machine. Even if you did, your understanding of Iranian history is severely flawed, and you'd only go back in time and support a communist in a coup against a ruling monarch who turned out to have been a major force for the liberalization and modernization of Iran. But again, you don't have a time machine. And the US isn't the sole agent in the world, so the idea that you could have prevented the communist/Islamist alliance from taking over places like Iran and Afghanistan by ignoring it and being super nice to the conquerers, is pretty dubious anyway. The reason we have bases in these places is because they're a bunch of incredibly hostile Islamist dictatorships that have been trying to dominate the world for 1500 years. So I don't really think the existence of those bases is actually a good explanation for Middle Eastern states' terrorism and tribal/zealous aggression. Blowback theory has a true but banal idea at its core ("Most people don't like being manipulated or being at the mercy of a more powerful state and can become radicalized if they feel politically impotent"), but when you start applying it to actual geopolitical history, it's ultimately more of a simplistic slogan than it is a valid concept. It requires you to dismiss not only the agency of the individuals living in a particular country, but also the depth of their conviction to their beliefs, as well as the influence of other external interests. Blowback theory says the US is ultimately to blame for the rise of Islamic terrorism... Which means you have to deny that Islamic terrorism predates America's discovery by a thousand years, and that modern Islamists actually believe what they say they believe (infidels should be killed or forcibly converted, Islam should achieve global caliphate, the path to heroic martyrdom is through murderous and often self-sacrificial violence, etc.), and that those same people have any ability to choose their own actions as individuals and citizens, *and* that the USSR, China, and other major and mid-tier geopolitical powers aren't also trying to exploit and manipulate other nations just as the CIA and MI-6 hope to do. The US isn't actually the only relevant player. So saying "I wouldn't have created the conditions that created X problem" is not only meaningless cheap talk, it's almost certainly false. It's also arrogant, while being meaningless... Again, no time machine. So it's all just a cop out designed to avoid really dealing with difficult questions. The IRGC is a Top 3 evil regime. It's a danger to everyone, and a disaster for Iranians. It's a problem that needs a real solution today, not a hypothetical one that would require suspending the laws of physics. So what might a real solution be?

First, let's go ahead and wait for a source that isn't Iranian state media to say this. They've also claimed responsibility for things they had nothing to do with and fabricated AI generated images claiming to have shot down a 1/4 scale B2. Secondly, what a weird timeline we're in where the US can utterly destroy the vast majority of Iran's political and military leadership, their air force and navy, and reduce their ability to launch missiles by like 90% in a matter of weeks and the headlines are all about one (possible, not confirmed) successful hit from the Iranian side. Everything is doom and gloom, America is a total failure, Iran is a big winner, up is down, left is right, etc.