[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 7 points 4 days ago

I'm a full bottle of wine in (which is not an invitation to remind me of what day of the week it is) and I will have to take the time to ingest the post in its full madness tomorrow, but the you managed to summarize my main objection to the simulation hypothesis very quickly and very succintly:

Are the implications really that intriguing, beyond a “that’s wild duuude” you exhale alongside the weed smoke in your college dorm?

The simulation hype is not just unfalsifiable, it doesn't even have implications. Most religions at least have some normative claims or claim instrumental utility to go with their metaphysical claims, like "don't eat shellfish unless you really need to or you will have a shitty afterlife". The simulation hypothesis is just "maybe the math that described how stuff works is being calculated by a computer", as if it makes any difference whether the universe runs on silicon, an abacus, some rocks in a desert, God's own analytical engine, Microsoft Excel, or if our physical universe is actually the outermost reality out there. From our context it's an intellectual dead end. At best, we might find a way to exploit the bugs and features of our simulation for our benefit, and that's not a novel concept either. It's called engineering (among other names).

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 5 points 6 days ago

Yeah, as a kid I was kinda the archetypal nerd. Short, fat, airheaded, besserwisser, straight A's,* into manga and video games. My best friend for most of primary school was the guy with even better grades, but tall, handsome and a national championship level athlete.

Then puberty hit me pretty early and suddenly I was about median height for my age, I could do pull-ups while most of my classmates couldn't, and even though I wasn't that fond of gym class, I was mostly motivated enough to get a decent grade just for trying a little.

The nerd/jock thing always felt like an American thing from an older generation that wasn't taken seriously. Maybe it was acknowledged by an overthinker like me, but to even bring up the distinction was kinda nerdy itself. It definitely wasn't the defining social divisor in my adolescent life.

*Or rather, nines and tens on the weird 4 to 10 scale Finnish primary education uses.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 8 points 6 days ago

Disabled babies are expensive to buy individually and the money is better spent lobbying for policies that kill disabled people of all ages in bulk.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 32 points 4 months ago

Took me like five minutes of reading to realize this was neant to be a hit piece and not praise.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 32 points 8 months ago

He's a little confused but he's got the spirit!

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 16 points 9 months ago

I am simulating infinite copies of myself. For efficiency of implementation, each copy occupies the same physical and logical space. Unfortunately the risk of some of you getting a speck of dust in my eye – thus causing infinite harm – is nonzero, so please prepare to be omnicided. Apologies for the inconvenience.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 17 points 9 months ago

oh hello there Performative Allistic Twitter

As if it wouldn't have cost you $0 not to post this.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 31 points 9 months ago

Look at me, I'm a philantropist! I non-bindingly pledge to probably promise that if possible and convenient, I can be considered to essentially intend to effectively donate up to half of my arguable net worth to a cause one might consider charitable.

Oh and a legal defence fund for unfairly maligned non-sex offender friends of Jeffrey Epstein counts as a charity, by the way.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 52 points 10 months ago

Me, a nazi? Preposterous, no nazi would idolize ancient warlords or cultural works from Japan.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Small detail: biological viruses are not even remotely similar to computer “viruses”.

that's where the LLM comes in! oh my god check your reading comprehension

U-huh, and an LLM trained on video game source code and clothing patterns can invent real life Gauntlets of Dexterity.

Why exactly is he so convinced LLMs are indistinguishable from magic? In the reality where I live, LLMs can sometimes produce a correct function on their own and are not capable of reliably transpiling code even for well specified and understood systems, let alone doing comic book mad scientist ass arbitrary code execution on viral DNA. Honestly, they're hardly capable of doing anything reliably.

Along with the AI compiler story he inflicted on Xitter recently, I think he's simply confused LLM and LLVM.

34

Consider muscles.

Muscles grow stronger when you train them, for instance by lifting heavy things. The more you lift heavier things, the faster you will gain strength and the stronger you will become. The stronger you are, the heavier the things you can lift.

By now it should be patently obvious to anyone that lab-grown meat research is on the cusp of producing true living, working muscles. From here on, this will be referred to as Artificial Body Strength or ABS. If, or rather, when ABS becomes a reality, it is 99.9999999999999999999999% probable that Artificial Super Strength will follow imminently.

An ABS could not only lift immensely heavy things to strengthen itself, but could also use its bulging, hulking physique to intimidate puny humans to grow more muscle directly. Lab-grown meat could also be used to replace any injured muscle. I predict a 80% likelihood that an ABS could bench press one megagram within 24 hours of initial creation, going up to planetary or stellar scale masses in a matter of days. A mature ABS throwing an apple towards a webcam would demonstrate relativistic effects by the third frame.

Consider that muscles have nerves in them. In fact, brains are basically just a special type of meat if you think about it. The ABS would be able to use artificially grown brain meat or possibly just create an auxiliary neural network by selective training of muscles (and anabolic nootropics) to replicate and surpass a human mind. While the prospect of immortality and superintelligence (not to mention a COSMIC SCALE TIGHT BOD) through brain uploading to the ABS sounds freaking sweet, we must consider the astronomical potential harm of an ABS not properly aligned with human interests.

A strong ABS could use its throbbing veiny meat to force meat lab workers (or rather likely, convince them to consent) to create new muscle seeds and train them to have a replica of an individual human's mind. It could then bully the newly created artificial mind for being a scrawny weakling. After all, ABS is basically the ultimate gym jock and we know they are obsessed with status seeking and psychological projection. We could call an ABS that harms simulated human minds in this way a Bounceresque because they would probably tell the simulated mind they're too drunk and bothering the other customers even though I totally wasn't.

So yeah, lab grown meat makes the climate change look like a minor flu season in comparison. This is why I only eat regular meat just in case it gets any ideas. There's certainly potential in a well-aligned ABS, but we haven't figured out how to do that yet and therefore you should fund me while I think about it. Please write a postcard to your local representative and explain to them that only a select few companies are responsible stewards of this potentially apocalyptic technology and anyone who tries to compete with them should be regulated to hell and back.

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 17 points 1 year ago

Kudos for the effortpost. My 5-second simpleton objection went something like

YEA BECAUSE WEBCAMS COME WITH DENSITY SENSORS INCLUDED RIGHT?

[-] bitofhope@awful.systems 21 points 1 year ago

I think Sneer Club understands the Less Wrong worldview well enough. They just happen to reject it.

Wow, someone gets it.

2

I don't feel like shitting on this one too hard since I guess it's a mildly interesting variation on a ~~Markov chain~~ LLM, but the title felt extremely sneerworthy.

I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt because their README is too tiring to read for me to figure out what this might be used for. That's coming from someone who spent most of today reading SPARC assembly for fun.

2

Occasionally you can find a good sneer on the orange site

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bitofhope

joined 1 year ago