Com is somewhat notable because it seems to involve or be tied to people who basically seem to constitute an actually existing version of the "satanic pedophiles" or "Satanic murder and torture cults" of right wing paranoid lore. It's hard to describe what it's like to encounter reporting on this, especially since it seems both to be real, to mostly be reported by weird Internet people who it's hard to trust too much, and because it's something that many people have been very dedicated to saying is categorically not real (but see the thing about real life conspiracies being really dumb).
To someone who believes/knows what I believe/know, that spiral AI stuff is concerningly supportive of the notion that AIs based on massive neural networks are a vector for demonic possession and more generally that CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength may have just become a documentary.
Re: your first point-- Right???? I have spent all these years going "there is no Satanic murder/torture/pedophile cult, Satanists are harmless edgelords" and then suddenly there is a Satanic murder/torture/pedophile cult and now I have to be like "the thing you're claiming is different from the behavior of actual murderous pedophile Satanists" which is way less fun.
Coming from my somewhat paranoid, significantly right-wing perspective, I've been aware historically that Satanists seem to be mostly edgelords with little in the way of actual murder or torture going on, and not any large scale organized cult, but at the same time I'm always a bit hedging on that, and not exactly viewing Satanists as harmless at all in a salvation-historical way.
And then seeing com or 764 or the like apparently actually existing (but its actual extent and nature being sort of uncertain and up in the air, and often being reported by unusual Personalities of the Internet... There's very much a sort of vertigo, especially magnified by the fact that these people genuinely are dangerous criminals who can hurt your children without physical access to them.
To me, a therapist that refuses to give me advice is a bit like a personal trainer that refuses to give me exercises to do. Sure, they could help me understand which muscle groups to focus on, or figure out a good workout schedule, or teach me how to tell when I'm pushing myself too hard, and those are all very helpful, very useful things. But at the end of the day, I am paying them to tell me to pick up the dumbbells, because I haven't figured out how else to get myself to pick up the dumbbells.
> and partially because bioweapons events will make people more concerned about AI.
Isn't this basically just a special case of general-purpose accelerationism? Not that "this argument is accelerationist" = "this argument is wrong" but I'm surprised at how casually you cite it. If you accept that logic, it takes you… a lot of places.
I'm trying to swear off Substack, but I'm going to pop back in because I think the thing a lot of idealistic people miss is the *romance of evil*.
The comment about the logic of a Batman villain made me think: What do Nazis, Satanists, and child pornographers have in common? They fit large portions of our culture's conception of 'ultimate evil'. Nazis are more of a left-wing bugaboo, Satanists a right-wing, and (almost) everyone hates child pornographers, but as with the black white supremacist mentioned... the exciting thing is to be the villain in the story. Look at the Order of Nine Angles, which combines Nazism, Satanism, and human sacrifice. What do these things have in common? They're evil!
Why? Villains are sexy! Look at all the fan mail serial killers get, or all the guys who dressed up as the Joker. They have perversely high status to many people and a lot of these things have a certain outlaw charisma. They got a lot of friends and the thrill of testing boundaries and getting away with it. Until they didn't, of course, but even after they get caught they'll be in all those lists of serial killers and bad guys. (Jail is likely to be much less pleasant, of course, as prisoners love to brutalize and rape people accused of acts against children, but not everyone thinks ahead that far...or they're too narcissistic to imagine they'll get caught.)
Heck, look at the things *non*-sociopathic people do to play with concepts of evil. Why do goths dress in black? What's with all the black leather and Nazi-paraphernalia-with-the-symbols-filed-off in BDSM communities? Why did comic book fans love to brag about how dark and edgy their comics are? Why do people watch horror movies? Why do people dress up as supernatural monsters on Halloween? Evil is (sometimes) cool and sexy! After all, if you can violate society's rules and thrive, you've probably got *something* going for you.
Most people with lower levels of dark triad traits (which is to say, most people) would be prevented from engaging in murder, torture, and extortion, of course, and settle for theater. But if you're psychopathic enough (and these 'com' guys are *really* psychopathic), well...
"Joining us will make you a badass" was a big part of the fascist "sales pitch" and having impressive looking uniforms was a deliberate part of that.
(This is also why fascists can't stand being mocked, because it's really, really hard to look like a badass when you're being mocked and not fighting back. Mel Brooks has said that his mission in life is to reduce Hitler to a figure of such ridiculousness that nobody could take his ideas seriously ever again.)
Nitpick: The article about Trump asking for the Nobel Peace Prize says Trump called the finance minister of Norway, not the prime minister. I think this makes even less sense than calling the prime minister.
Isn't the key thing with Nova like patterns of response/simulation that they don't *spontaneously* emerge -- because nothing that LLMs do is spontaneous, their (for now anyway and if they stay as they are if bigger, probably forever - not dying on this hill tho) fundamental aspect is that they're *entirely responsive*? So the "spontaneous emergence" is purely a perception on the user's side?
> My heuristic for telling apart fake conspiracies and real conspiracies is that fake conspiracies are horrifying but cool and badass, and real conspiracies are horrifying but pathetic and kind of cringe.
I feel like both the Black Hand of Serbia and the Black Dragon Society and its pals in Japan come off more as the former than the latter, but I guess conspiracies only make the history books if they fit in Category #1.
"ICE employees have a self-image as respectable, experienced law enforcement officials who target genuine criminals. Poorly trained recruits, flashy and dramatic PR campaigns, and deporting random harmless day laborers don’t fit with that image. "
What? I know people who were working construction in the US 20 years ago, and they were always fleeing when they saw an ICE hat. ICE was always about immigration, not about policing crime. So yes, day laborers too.
"In areas where malaria is endemic, malaria may be responsible for as many as a quarter of all maternal deaths. Women with malaria infections are three to four times more likely to miscarry, as well as being more likely to experience stillbirth. I highly recommend the Against Malaria Foundation for all pro-life donors; if you think fetuses are people, it’s by far the best way to turn dollars into lives saved."
I had a look into this and I’m not sure if it’s the case.
Intermittent preventive treatment with Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine (IPTp-SP) for pregnant women seems to be more cost-effective than bednets for preventing malaria-related neo-natal deaths and miscarriage. The intervention is highly cost-effective, even if we only count neonatal deaths, not miscarriages (which are more common) https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/7/e010238
But, unlike bednets, there doesn’t seem to be a charity that exclusively provides IPTp-SP for pregnant women. It seems to be funded as part of general antenatal care, which you can support through various orgs, but only indirectly (there’s no “donate just to IPTp-SP” button).
So, if there were a charity that were able to effectively get IPTp-SP, it would might be your best choice.
I didn't see till today that you had linked to my article on the four schools of thought in decision-making. Thanks for the shout out. I've always greatly appreciated your perspective, and I had definitely hoped that the Rationalist/EA corner of Substack would find it, but didn't go out of my way to push it. I have since published a talk on the topic, as well as written a piece on Naturalistic Decision-Making and another criticizing biases.
Com is somewhat notable because it seems to involve or be tied to people who basically seem to constitute an actually existing version of the "satanic pedophiles" or "Satanic murder and torture cults" of right wing paranoid lore. It's hard to describe what it's like to encounter reporting on this, especially since it seems both to be real, to mostly be reported by weird Internet people who it's hard to trust too much, and because it's something that many people have been very dedicated to saying is categorically not real (but see the thing about real life conspiracies being really dumb).
To someone who believes/knows what I believe/know, that spiral AI stuff is concerningly supportive of the notion that AIs based on massive neural networks are a vector for demonic possession and more generally that CS Lewis's That Hideous Strength may have just become a documentary.
Re: your first point-- Right???? I have spent all these years going "there is no Satanic murder/torture/pedophile cult, Satanists are harmless edgelords" and then suddenly there is a Satanic murder/torture/pedophile cult and now I have to be like "the thing you're claiming is different from the behavior of actual murderous pedophile Satanists" which is way less fun.
A little elaboration to this:
Coming from my somewhat paranoid, significantly right-wing perspective, I've been aware historically that Satanists seem to be mostly edgelords with little in the way of actual murder or torture going on, and not any large scale organized cult, but at the same time I'm always a bit hedging on that, and not exactly viewing Satanists as harmless at all in a salvation-historical way.
And then seeing com or 764 or the like apparently actually existing (but its actual extent and nature being sort of uncertain and up in the air, and often being reported by unusual Personalities of the Internet... There's very much a sort of vertigo, especially magnified by the fact that these people genuinely are dangerous criminals who can hurt your children without physical access to them.
Oh sh**! Thank you! I was wondering why I suddenly got a series of notifications about my blog today.
To me, a therapist that refuses to give me advice is a bit like a personal trainer that refuses to give me exercises to do. Sure, they could help me understand which muscle groups to focus on, or figure out a good workout schedule, or teach me how to tell when I'm pushing myself too hard, and those are all very helpful, very useful things. But at the end of the day, I am paying them to tell me to pick up the dumbbells, because I haven't figured out how else to get myself to pick up the dumbbells.
> and partially because bioweapons events will make people more concerned about AI.
Isn't this basically just a special case of general-purpose accelerationism? Not that "this argument is accelerationist" = "this argument is wrong" but I'm surprised at how casually you cite it. If you accept that logic, it takes you… a lot of places.
Yeah, that too struck me as the logic one uses in a Batman villain origin story.
I'm trying to swear off Substack, but I'm going to pop back in because I think the thing a lot of idealistic people miss is the *romance of evil*.
The comment about the logic of a Batman villain made me think: What do Nazis, Satanists, and child pornographers have in common? They fit large portions of our culture's conception of 'ultimate evil'. Nazis are more of a left-wing bugaboo, Satanists a right-wing, and (almost) everyone hates child pornographers, but as with the black white supremacist mentioned... the exciting thing is to be the villain in the story. Look at the Order of Nine Angles, which combines Nazism, Satanism, and human sacrifice. What do these things have in common? They're evil!
Why? Villains are sexy! Look at all the fan mail serial killers get, or all the guys who dressed up as the Joker. They have perversely high status to many people and a lot of these things have a certain outlaw charisma. They got a lot of friends and the thrill of testing boundaries and getting away with it. Until they didn't, of course, but even after they get caught they'll be in all those lists of serial killers and bad guys. (Jail is likely to be much less pleasant, of course, as prisoners love to brutalize and rape people accused of acts against children, but not everyone thinks ahead that far...or they're too narcissistic to imagine they'll get caught.)
Heck, look at the things *non*-sociopathic people do to play with concepts of evil. Why do goths dress in black? What's with all the black leather and Nazi-paraphernalia-with-the-symbols-filed-off in BDSM communities? Why did comic book fans love to brag about how dark and edgy their comics are? Why do people watch horror movies? Why do people dress up as supernatural monsters on Halloween? Evil is (sometimes) cool and sexy! After all, if you can violate society's rules and thrive, you've probably got *something* going for you.
Most people with lower levels of dark triad traits (which is to say, most people) would be prevented from engaging in murder, torture, and extortion, of course, and settle for theater. But if you're psychopathic enough (and these 'com' guys are *really* psychopathic), well...
"Joining us will make you a badass" was a big part of the fascist "sales pitch" and having impressive looking uniforms was a deliberate part of that.
(This is also why fascists can't stand being mocked, because it's really, really hard to look like a badass when you're being mocked and not fighting back. Mel Brooks has said that his mission in life is to reduce Hitler to a figure of such ridiculousness that nobody could take his ideas seriously ever again.)
Nitpick: The article about Trump asking for the Nobel Peace Prize says Trump called the finance minister of Norway, not the prime minister. I think this makes even less sense than calling the prime minister.
At the risk of revealing myself as an idiot, I thought the point of hiring a life coach was to get advice. What am I missing?
Helping people figure out their own solutions for themselves, which are generally way better than any shit I'd come up with.
Update upon reading the AI thing all the way through:
Oh crud oh crud oh crud.
That's really freaking bad, and it might be material and might be preternatural.
Isn't the key thing with Nova like patterns of response/simulation that they don't *spontaneously* emerge -- because nothing that LLMs do is spontaneous, their (for now anyway and if they stay as they are if bigger, probably forever - not dying on this hill tho) fundamental aspect is that they're *entirely responsive*? So the "spontaneous emergence" is purely a perception on the user's side?
> My heuristic for telling apart fake conspiracies and real conspiracies is that fake conspiracies are horrifying but cool and badass, and real conspiracies are horrifying but pathetic and kind of cringe.
I feel like both the Black Hand of Serbia and the Black Dragon Society and its pals in Japan come off more as the former than the latter, but I guess conspiracies only make the history books if they fit in Category #1.
"ICE employees have a self-image as respectable, experienced law enforcement officials who target genuine criminals. Poorly trained recruits, flashy and dramatic PR campaigns, and deporting random harmless day laborers don’t fit with that image. "
What? I know people who were working construction in the US 20 years ago, and they were always fleeing when they saw an ICE hat. ICE was always about immigration, not about policing crime. So yes, day laborers too.
"In areas where malaria is endemic, malaria may be responsible for as many as a quarter of all maternal deaths. Women with malaria infections are three to four times more likely to miscarry, as well as being more likely to experience stillbirth. I highly recommend the Against Malaria Foundation for all pro-life donors; if you think fetuses are people, it’s by far the best way to turn dollars into lives saved."
I had a look into this and I’m not sure if it’s the case.
Intermittent preventive treatment with Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine (IPTp-SP) for pregnant women seems to be more cost-effective than bednets for preventing malaria-related neo-natal deaths and miscarriage. The intervention is highly cost-effective, even if we only count neonatal deaths, not miscarriages (which are more common) https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/7/e010238
But, unlike bednets, there doesn’t seem to be a charity that exclusively provides IPTp-SP for pregnant women. It seems to be funded as part of general antenatal care, which you can support through various orgs, but only indirectly (there’s no “donate just to IPTp-SP” button).
So, if there were a charity that were able to effectively get IPTp-SP, it would might be your best choice.
I didn't see till today that you had linked to my article on the four schools of thought in decision-making. Thanks for the shout out. I've always greatly appreciated your perspective, and I had definitely hoped that the Rationalist/EA corner of Substack would find it, but didn't go out of my way to push it. I have since published a talk on the topic, as well as written a piece on Naturalistic Decision-Making and another criticizing biases.