Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
Ozy Brennan tries to explain why "rationalism" spawns so many cults.
One of the reasons they give is "a dangerous sense of grandiosity".
the actual process of saving the world is not very glamorous. It involves filling out paperwork, making small tweaks to code, running A/B tests on Twitter posts.
Yep, you heard it right. Shitposting and inconsequential code are the proper way to save the world.
But doctor, I am L7 twitter manager Pagliacci
oldskool OSI appmanager is oldskool
(........sorry)
I'm gonna need this one explained, boss
(in networking it's common terminology to refer to "Lx" by numerical reference, and broadly understood to be in reference to this)
Aaaaa gotcha. It’s probably obvious but in my case I meant L7 manager as in “level 7 manager”, a high tier managerial position at twitter, probably. I don’t know what exact tiering system twitter uses but I know other companies might use “Lx” to designate a level.
I figured, but I couldn't just let a terrible pun slip me by!
Hollywood Director Richard Link Layer. Is this anything
Tante fires off about web search:
There used to be this deal between Google (and other search engines) and the Web: You get to index our stuff, show ads next to them but you link our work. AI Overview and Perplexity and all these systems cancel that deal.
And maybe - for a while - search will also need to die a bit? Make the whole web uncrawlable. Refuse any bots. As an act of resistance to the tech sector as a whole.
On a personal sidenote, part of me suspects webrings and web directories will see a boost in popularity in the coming years - with web search in the shitter and AI crawlers being a major threat, they're likely your safest and most reliable method of bringing human traffic to your personal site/blog.
I have not tried it yet, but apparently there is an open source alternative for github called https://codeberg.org/. Might be useful.
It'll probably earn a lot of users if and when Github goes down the shitter. They've publicly stood with marginalised users before, so they're already in my good books.
It’ll probably earn a lot of users if and when Github goes down the shitter.
I'd argue GH is well on it's way, probably jumped around the time Hacktoberfest morphed into a DDoS on maintainers. Or maybe more recently, when they handed peoples repos (and API keys lol) over to Copilot. Or maybe earlier, when they started calling their users "maintainers" instead of "developers". Sometime in the last 6 years though.
There have been a number of contenders over the years - gitlab, gitea but none of them have been able to brand/market well enough to really to really impact GH or to compete with the subsidized free storage and Actions credits plus switching costs. Even Atlassian / BB is largely irrelevant.
Mastodon post linking to the least shocking Ars lede I have seen in a bit. Apparently "reasoning" and "chain of thought" functionality might have been entirely marketing fluff? :shocked pikachu:
Wait, but if they lied about that... what else do they lie about?
"The common people pray for anime memes, healthy vtubers, and a wikipedia article that never ends," Ser Jorah told her. "It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of tweets, so long as they are left in peace." He gave a shrug. "They never are.”
- George R. R. Martin
I'm still thinking about the article about the NRx party from last week and just how classless (who pours champagne wrong?) and sad it showed them to be, while still being obsessed with their image. Such a sad bunch, their ideas have reached the higher ups of American power and still they obsess about how a journalist (who is dating one of them (he is into the 'we live in a simulation', break up with him, you are in danger)) might write something bad about them. (See also how many of these sad sacks got fired/blackballed for just having no internal filter (dressing up gay people as the KKK really?)). The creme de la creme of intellectual thought and they talk and act like a bunch of 4channers. (Yarvin must know this, his shit about how billionaires act must be a bit of projection). I'm talking about this piece: https://archive.ph/gm3Za Sorry to repost it, I just had a 'layer 2 well done' reminder and cringed again, fucking larpers (No shade to people who actually larp, seems fun, just cringe to do it irl).
So... apparently Peter Thiel has taken to co-opting fundamentalist Christian terminology to go after Effective Altruism? At least it seems that way from this EA post (warning, I took psychic damage just skimming the lunacy). As far as I can tell, he's merely co-opting the terminology, Thiel's blather doesn't have any connection to any variant of Christian eschatology (whether mainstream or fundamentalist or even obscure wacky fundamentalist), but of course, the majority of the EAs don't recognize that, or the fact that he is probably targeting them for their (kind of weak to be honest) attempts at getting AI regulated at all, and instead they charitably try to steelman him and figure out if he was a legitimate point. ...I wish they could put a tenth of this effort into understanding leftist thought.
Some of the comments are... okay actually, at least by EA standards, but there are still plenty of people willing to defend Thiel
One comment notes some confusion:
I’m still confused about the overall shape of what Thiel believes.
He’s concerned about the antichrist opposing Jesus during Armageddon. But afaik standard theology says that Jesus will win for certain. And revelation says the world will be in disarray and moral decay when the Second Coming happens.
If chaos is inevitable and necessary for Jesus’ return, why is expanding the pre-apocalyptic era with growth/prosperity so important to him?
Yeah, its because he is simply borrowing Christian Fundamentalists Eschatological terminology... possibly to try to turn the Christofascists against EA?
I'm dubious Thiel is actually an ally to anyone worried about permanent dictatorship. He has connections to openly anti-democratic neoreactionaries like Curtis Yarvin, he quotes Nazi lawyer and democracy critic Carl Schmitt on how moments of greatness in politics are when you see your enemy as an enemy, and one of the most famous things he ever said is "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible". Rather I think he is using "totalitarian" to refer to any situation where the government is less economically libertarian than he would like, or "woke" ideas are popular amongst elite tastemakers, even if the polity this is all occurring in is clearly a liberal democracy, not a totalitarian state.
Note this commenter still uses non-confrontational language ("I'm dubious") even when directly calling Thiel out.
The top comment, though, is just like the main post, extending charitability to complete technofascist insanity. (Warning for psychic damage)
Nice post! I am a pretty close follower of the Thiel Cinematic Universe (ie his various interviews, essays, etc)
I think Thiel is also personally quite motivated (understandably) by wanting to avoid death. This obviously relates to a kind of accelerationist take on AI that sets him against EA, but again, there's a deeper philosophical difference here. Classic Yudkowsky essays (and a memorable Bostrom short story, video adaptation here) share this strident anti-death, pro-medical-progress attitude (cryonics, etc), as do some philanthropists like Vitalik Buterin. But these days, you don't hear so much about "FDA delenda est" or anti-aging research from effective altruism. Perhaps there are valid reasons for this (low tractability, perhaps). But some of the arguments given by EAs against aging's importance are a little weak, IMO (more on this later) -- in Thiel's view, maybe suspiciously weak. This is a weird thing to say, but I think to Thiel, EA looks like a fundamentally statist / fascist ideology, insofar as it is seeking to place the state in a position of central importance, with human individuality / agency / consciousness pushed aside.
As for my personal take on Thiel's views -- I'm often disappointed at the sloppiness (blunt-ness? or low-decoupling-ness?) of his criticisms, which attack the EA for having a problematic "vibe" and political alignment, but without digging into any specific technical points of disagreement. But I do think some of his higher-level, vibe-based critiques have a point.
Thiel is a true believer in Jesus and God. He was raised evangelical. The quirky eschatologist that you're looking for is René Girard, who he personally met at some point. For more details, check out the Behind the Bastards on him.
Edit: I wrote this before clicking on the LW post. This is a decent summary of Girard's claims as well as how they influence Thiel. I'm quoting West here in order to sneer at Thiel:
Unfortunately (?), Christian society does not let us sacrifice random scapegoats, so we are trapped in an ever-escalating cycle, with only poor substitutes like “cancelling celebrities on Twitter” to release pressure. Girard doesn’t know what to do about this.
Thiel knows what to do about this. After all, he funded Bollea v. Gawker. Instead of letting journalists cancel celebrities, why not cancel journalists instead? Then there's no longer any journalists to do any cancellation! Similarly, Thiel is confirmed to be a source of funding for Eric Weinstein and believed to fund Sabine Hossenfelder. Instead of letting scientists cancel religious beliefs, why not cancel scientists instead? By directing money through folks with existing social legitimacy, Thiel applies mimesis: pretend to be legitimate and you can shift what is legitimate.
In this context, Thiel fears the spectre of AGI because it can't be influenced by his normal approach to power, which is to hide anything that can be hidden and outspend everybody else talking in the open. After all, if AGI is truly to unify humanity, it must unify our moralities and cultures into a single uniformly-acceptable code of conduct. But the only acceptable unification for Thiel is the holistic catholic apostolic one-and-only forever-and-ever church of Jesus, and if AGI is against that then AGI is against Jesus himself.
Is there any more solid evidence of Hossenfelder taking Thielbux, or is this just a guess based on the orbit she moves in: appearing on Michael Shermer's podcast years after the news broke that he was a sex pest, blurbing the new book edited by sex pest Lawrence Krauss, etc.
The quirky eschatologist that you’re looking for is René Girard, who he personally met at some point. For more details, check out the Behind the Bastards on him.
Thanks for the references. The quirky theology was so outside the range of even the weirder Fundamentalist Christian stuff I didn't recognize it as such. (And didn't trust the EA summary because they try so hard to charitably make sense of Thiel).
In this context, Thiel fears the spectre of AGI because it can’t be influenced by his normal approach to power, which is to hide anything that can be hidden and outspend everybody else talking in the open.
Except the EAs are, on net, opposed to the creation of AGI (albeit they are ineffectual in their opposition). So going after the EAs doesn't make sense if Thiel is genuinely opposed to inventing AGI faster. So I still think Thiel is just going after the EA's because he's libertarian and EA has shifted in the direction of trying to get more government regulation. (As opposed to a coherent theological goal beyond libertarianism). I'll check out the BtB podcast and see if it changes my mind as to his exact flavor of insanity.
Yeah, its because he is simply borrowing Christian Fundamentalists Eschatological terminology… possibly to try to turn the Christofascists against EA?
Yep, the usefulness of EA is over, they are next on the chopping block. I'd imagine a similar thing will happen to redscare/moldbug if they ever speak out against him.
E: And why would a rich guy be against a "we are trying to convince rich guys to spend their money differently" organization. Esp a 'libertarian' "I get to do what I want or else" one.
And why would a rich guy be against a “we are trying to convince rich guys to spend their money differently” organization.
Well when they are just passively trying to convince the rich guys, they can use the organization to launder reputation or boost ideologies they are in favor of. When the organization actually tries to get regulations passed, even ineffectually, well, that is a threat to the likes of Thiel.
It always struck me as hilarious that the EA/LW crowd could ever affect policy in any way. They're cosplaying as activists, have no ideas about how to move the public image needle other than weird movie ideas and hope, and are literally marinated in SV technolibertarianism which sees government regulation as Evil.
There's a mini-freakout over OpenAI deciding to keep GPT-4o active, despite it being more "sycophantic" than GPT-5 (and thus more likely to convince people to do Bad Things) but there's also the queasy realization that if sycophantic LLMs is what brings in the bucks, nothing is gonna stop LLM companies from offering them. And there's no way these people can stop it, because they've made the deal that LLM companies are gonna be the ones realizing that AI is gonna kill everyone and that's never gonna happen.
They’re cosplaying as activists, have no ideas about how to move the public image needle other than weird movie ideas and hope, and are literally marinated in SV technolibertarianism which sees government regulation as Evil.
It is kind of sad. They are missing the ideological pieces that would let them carry out activism effectually so instead they've gotten used as a free source of crit-hype in the LLM bubble. ...except not that sad because they would ignore real AI dangers in favor of their sci-fi scenarios, so I don't feel too bad for them.
Using the term "Antichrist" as a shorthand for "global stable totalitarianism" is A Choice.
I think Leathery Pete might have read too much Left Behind.
tl,dr; Thiel now sees the Christofascists as a more durable grifting base than the EAs, and is looking to change lanes while the temporary coalitions of maximalist Trumpism offer him the opportunity.
I repeat my suspicion that Thiel is not any more sober than Musk, he's just getting sloppier about keeping it out of the public eye.
I think a big difference between Thiel and Musk, is that Thiel views himself as an "intellectual" and derives prestige "intellectualism". I don't believe for a minute he's genuinely christian, but his wankery about end-of-times eschatology of armageddon = big-left-government, is a a bit too confused to be purely cynical, I think sniffing his own farts feeds his ego.
Of course a man who would promote open doping olympics isn't sober.
We're at the point of 100xers giving themselves broken sleep schedules so they can spend tokens optimally.
Inevitably, Anthropic will increase their subscription costs or further restrict usage limits. It feels like they're giving compute away for free at this point. So when the investor bux start to run dry, I will be ready.
This has to be satire, but oh my god.
Im old enough to recall the polyphasic sleep fad. And how that wrecked people if they ever messed up. (Iirc also turns out very bad implications for long term health).
I'm sorry in advance for posting this meme.
My velocity has increased 10x and I'm shipping features like a cracked ninja now, which is great because my B2B SaaS is still in stealth mode.
Yeah it's satire, but effective satire means you can never really tell...
Thomasaurus has given their thoughts on using AI, in a journal entry called "I tried coding with AI, I became lazy and stupid)". Unsurprisingly, the whole thing is one long sneer, with a damning indictment of its effectiveness at the end:
If I lose my job due to AI, it will be because I used it so much it made me lazy and stupid to the point where another human has to replace me and I become unemployable.
I shouldn't invest time in AI. I should invest more time studying new things that interest me. That's probably the only way to keep doing this job and, you know, be safe.
Check out this sneer on the EA subreddit
"I’m employed, can someone explain what either of these mean?"