I told myself I’d go in with an open mind, do my best to check my priors at the door, right next to the Harry Potter fan fiction.

This got a laugh out of me

One AI safety expert said, let’s just assume in the past that automation has replaced 30% of workplace tasks every generation, as if this were an unknowable thing, as if there were not data about historical automation that could be obtained with research, or as if that data could be so neatly quantified into such a catchy truism. I could not help but think that sociologists and labor historians would have had a coronary on the spot; fortunately, none seem to have been invited.

This got a laugh too. Perfectly sums up the Rationalists' tendency to ignore all scholarship that occurs outside of blog posts and fan-fic

It's a really good article. This part stuck out to me:

If you are seriously, legitimately concerned that an emergent technology is about to exterminate humanity within the next three years, wouldn’t you find yourself compelled to do more than argue with the converted about the particular elements of your end times scenario? Some folks were involved in pushing for SB 1047, but that stalled out; now what? Aren’t you starting an all-out effort to pressure those companies to shut down their operations ASAP? That all these folks are under the same roof for three days, and no one’s being confronted, or being made uncomfortable, or being protested—not even a little bit—is some of the best evidence I’ve seen that all the handwringing over AI Safety and x-risk really is just the sort of amped-up cosplaying its critics accuse it of being.

This piece links to a recent New York Times story about our very good friends, by Cade Metz. Nothing in it will surprise SneerClub regulars too much, including how it ends up giving Yudkowsky too much credit. It says that the Sequences taught critical thinking, when they were cult shit all along; it says that in HPMoR, Harry uses real science, which is balderdash.

(If anyone says "Gell-Mann amnesia" I will fucking cut you.)

The part about them sitting around crying made me big sad :(