Hannibar

Suddenly standing alone in the room, I begin by imagining humanity banding together and blue winning in a landslide, and I feel a rush of pride. Red is the genocide button. Blue is the “save humanity from this nightmare” button. I know what kind of person I am. As my hand hovers over the blue button, I can’t help but imagine a gun pointing at my head with a bullet in one of the chambers. I feel a surge of fear shoot through my body. Then I think about all the other people staring at the blue button and thinking the same thing. Surely some of those who initially decided to press blue will succumb to the fear. It starts to feel like a gun with two loaded chambers. A stronger pulse of terror. The more I think about it, the more I worry about other people thinking about it. My heart races. Then I look at the red button—a gun with no bullets in it. A glorious feeling of relief washes over me. Will I hate myself forever if blue wins because enough others were better and braver than me? But don’t I owe it to my family to protect myself? One vote won’t change anything anyway, right? It’s all irrelevant because the mammal I live in has already made up its mind. I wince and press red.

this is going to sound like an attack but i swear i am actually trying to help you: you are deep in the throes of infection by a memetic virus eliezer yudkowsky banged together in his garage decades ago to take over other people's minds and convert them to his way of thinking about the singularity, which he spread through writing the sequences and hpmor, and which is powered at its core by a deep confusion between panicking over the idea of your loved ones dying and loving them. it maintains its grip over you by (among other things) 1. repeatedly insisting that the singularity is the most important thing ever, infinitely important, more important than any other merely earthly consideration, since the highest possible stakes (the entirety of human existence in the entire lightcone) are at risk; a sword of damocles hanging over literally everything you can even slightly plausibly causally affect; if it goes well that's infinitely good and if it goes wrong that's infinitely bad. infinite heaven or infinite hell 2. convincing you that this is a position only a sufficiently smart and sane person is capable of understanding and holding, which flatters your self-concept (which is hidden and which therefore, as jung pointed out, controls you), and conversely that people who don't agree are insane idiots you could not possibly learn anything from, so you not only should not listen to them but it is infinitely important for you not to listen to them, if you listen to them everyone you love dies 3. filling you with panic about how to prevent infinite hell while also convincing you that this is what it feels like to actually love your loved ones, which means this panic is infinitely good, and anyone or anything trying to get you to feel less of it is doing something infinitely bad, you cannot relax, if you relax your entire family dies you have been trapped in a hell realm, on purpose, powered by your own capacity to love which is being used to torture you into submission, by somebody who decided that your autonomy as a human being was worth sacrificing in the face of infinity. what eliezer did to you (and to me, and to many others) was monstrously evil and predicated on a heartbreaking mistake, and the reverberations of this extremely evil, extremely stupid thing that he did when he was a young, arrogant fool are still spreading and doing much harm in the world today, and will likely continue to do so i promise this is actually good news. the situation is actually much better than it seems when viewed from hell. you are not so intelligent and powerful that it is your sole job to be the light in the darkness, you do not have to shoulder the responsibility for the entire lightcone, your shoulders are literally too small, it is literally not your job, you are literally not and cannot be god (or atlas). nobody actually knows what's going to happen. we are foolish and weak and finite in the face of the true weight and depth and breadth of the world and history and karma and god, and that is fine and good and the completely normal situation every human being who ever lived has been in once you relax and open your eyes enough to actually take in what other people are doing and why you can begin to notice that love and wisdom are actually everywhere. people are foolish and cowardly and easily misled, but they are also wise and strong and brave and fighting every day for survival one way or another, and that's how it's always been. there is so much to learn from all the different ways the people of the world fight for the good today the sun is out and the view from my window is green and purple with life and the birds are chirping. right now, in this moment, i am alive, i am safe, my loved ones are safe. i can take a deep breath. i can go to the bathroom and drink water and make breakfast. i do not know what is going to happen next. and so it is with you

Incel memes are fucking wild

When Gwyneth Paltrow revealed who was better in bed between Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck “He was technically excellent”

JD Vance: "People don’t have any idea how bad the corruption is in Washington DC"

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Wernher von Braun, director of NASA's Marchall Space Flight Center, at his office in Huntsville, Alabama 1965.