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> Yudkowsky's take on AI safety is to tech companies what greenwashing is to the auto industry and oil companies. The most useful of fools. Yudkowsky acts, spe

> Yudkowsky's take on AI safety is to tech companies what greenwashing is to the auto industry and oil companies. The most useful of fools. Yudkowsky acts, speaks, dresses and looks like the most neck-beard of neck-beards. He wears that cringey trilby hat in podcast interviews. I've often thought that the popular promotion of people like Michale Moore and even Noam Chomsky works in the favor of those in power. Choose the ugliest, most boring and laughable opponents and then allow them to speak while just rolling your eyes and giggling. It works even better when they are speaking sense since you can demonstrate you are allowing legitimate dissent. I wonder if Chomsky ever suspected that his own promotion and fame were the result of the establishment using his yawn-inducing academic tone in their own attempts to manufacture consent. Can you imagine someone who is obsessed with the Kardashians being caught dead agreeing with Chomsky, Moore or Yudkowski? And then consider if the number of those who are swayed by such superficial appearance are the majority or minority and how that effects democracy.

yreg 3y ago
Let's not attack people through their looks.
- heavyset_go 3y ago
  Agreed.
- zoogeny 3y ago
  We play with tropes based on appearances within our culture. Consider Shrek. The story is made to subvert the trope that the ugly person is the villain, as it was in Disney movies. But the real point isn’t some Platonic view of Beauty. It is about expectations. Like how advertisers use people wearing lab coats to subliminally feed credibility into the words of actors. You may wish to be free of such bias, and you may even work to raise your own awareness and strive to critically examine the message of people. And let us all work towards such a world. But we should not pretend such a world exists today, despite our desires. It is a world that may exist in the future once we mature as a species. Until that day arrives, advertisers and political movements will use our biases against us. My claim isn’t that yudkowski is ugly, it is that he represents a trope that is being used to bias his message.
  - benatkin 3y ago
    He didn't decide a whole lot about how he looks, except he wears a hat. His hair color is just how he was made, same with how his face looks. He appears to make an effort to look good just like most everyone else. If he was trying to look a certain way he might have tattoos or have died his hair. He doesn't, that I know of. You seem to be policing a small recent decision he made to wear a hat.
    - zoogeny 3y ago
      I didn’t create the meme of a neckbeard wearing a fedora. Know you meme entry [1] is 9 years old at this point. Just like I didn’t create the trope of a scientist wearing a white lab coat. But if someone is doing a 2 min video sketch of a scientist, it is a good visual aid to include a white lab coat to communicate to an audience the role of a character. And in the same way, a top hat would communicate a certain kind of character in a movie. In the same way, there is a communication of a particular kind of character with other hat choices. 1. https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/tips-fedora https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/tips-fedora
      - benatkin 3y ago
        > I didn’t create the meme of a neckbeard wearing a fedora. But why should he not be allowed to wear one? Again, you're policing. It's a discriminatory dick move.
        zoogeny 3y ago
        Allowed? Where do I say he is or isn’t allowed? You must be trolling to so poorly represent what I’m saying. He can wear anything he wants. So can you. So can anyone. If he wants to, and for all I care, he can dress up like a clown. Or dress up like a jester. Or he could wear Gucci or Prada. Or wear steampunk leather outfits like he is in the world of mad max. Or he could go clean cut preppy. He can wear a fedora and a trilby on top of one another. But, by personal choice and temperament, he wants to dress as he dresses. It just so happens that his personal preference aligns with a particular trope. A particularly uncool trope in popular culture. I’m pointing out that alignment. I am not making him dress that way and I am not forcing culture to judge him.
- woooooo 3y ago
  It's reality, and as much about mannerism as looks. OP wasn't attacking chomsky on a personal level, just pointing out how he's often perceived. It's sort of unfixable because the taste-makers at NYT and WaPo sorted themselves into the conformist camp so early in their lives that anyone outside that camp is trivially portrayable as "weird" to them.
- lmm 3y ago
  It's interesting how the people who pride themselves on how they're speaking up for the weak are the first and most vicious in bullying acceptable targets.
- Cheezewheel 3y ago
  Yud on one hand believes that AI is an actual *VERY LITERAL* existential humanity of which it is completely 100% paramount to get the rest of humanity on board with preventing our own destruction. And yet he doesn't think it is worth the effort to take off his trilby hat in order to come across as marginally more respectable to the average person? When the way he is choosing to present himself is undermining his own message then yes, it is worth bringing up.
  - yreg 3y ago
    OP implied that Eliezer and Noam are one of the ugliest people alive. I'm very surprised so many people defend that comment and pretend it is relevant and discussion worthy.
benatkin 3y ago
Using the word "cringey" is a trope in itself. So what if he likes wearing a hat?
nullc 3y ago
Yud is a doomsday cult leader (https://archive.is/YTqlI https://archive.is/YTqlI) who has publicly advocated using mass murder in the form of nuclear weapons to forestall his predicted apocalypse. Although they call themselves "rationalists", I prefer to refer to these extremists as ℚ-anon. Their otherwise dismissible ravings are being converted to whitewashed publication friendly versions and fanned by commercial actors in an apparent effort to secure a state backed monopoly on technology that is otherwise relatively moatless, potentially to the peril of AI researchers (including ones that work for them) to the extent that anyone takes them seriously rather than using them as a plausible excuse to hand out windfalls. We don't have an AI safety problem, we have an human safety problem. Violent extremists are unsafe, greedy corporations seeking to suppress the free exploration and exercise of mathematics are unsafe. Existent language model chatbots are primarily just a public relations risk, at least so long as the government doesn't step in and create a monopoly that gives the market leaders choice of training biases the force of law.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  This whole subthread is both silly and sad. So suddenly Yudkowsky is the Thought Leader and a punching bag when people need to dismiss the entire AI risk perspective. A week or two ago, during previous round of statement letters and signatures, Yudkowsky was apparently a Complete Nobody. Anyway. > Yud is a doomsday cult leader (https://archive.is/YTqlI https://archive.is/YTqlI) Are you really using that link to support your argument in the earnest? You know this was posted on April Fool's day? The text itself mentions it near the end, and it's also explicitly tagged as such directly below the headline/byline. At least warn people who're going to skim this. > who has publicly advocated using mass murder in the form of nuclear weapons to forestall his predicted apocalypse. You mean that bit from his article in Time Magazine? Where he talked about airstrikes against GPU farms might be necessary in case some country/group is violating the international moratorium he's proposing? I don't recall him advocating mass murder there, or ever. Of course, since he is insisting on a strong international agreement, military intervention - yes, including nuclear weapons - is part of the picture, because that's literally how international agreements are ultimately enforced. As for the rest - the guy has been saying the same thing for way over a decade now. The mainstream interest only really picked up in the last half a year. But somehow he's in on it.

yreg 3y ago

Let's not attack people through their looks.

heavyset_go 3y ago
Agreed.
zoogeny 3y ago
We play with tropes based on appearances within our culture. Consider Shrek. The story is made to subvert the trope that the ugly person is the villain, as it was in Disney movies. But the real point isn’t some Platonic view of Beauty. It is about expectations. Like how advertisers use people wearing lab coats to subliminally feed credibility into the words of actors. You may wish to be free of such bias, and you may even work to raise your own awareness and strive to critically examine the message of people. And let us all work towards such a world. But we should not pretend such a world exists today, despite our desires. It is a world that may exist in the future once we mature as a species. Until that day arrives, advertisers and political movements will use our biases against us. My claim isn’t that yudkowski is ugly, it is that he represents a trope that is being used to bias his message.
- benatkin 3y ago
  He didn't decide a whole lot about how he looks, except he wears a hat. His hair color is just how he was made, same with how his face looks. He appears to make an effort to look good just like most everyone else. If he was trying to look a certain way he might have tattoos or have died his hair. He doesn't, that I know of. You seem to be policing a small recent decision he made to wear a hat.
  - zoogeny 3y ago
    I didn’t create the meme of a neckbeard wearing a fedora. Know you meme entry [1] is 9 years old at this point. Just like I didn’t create the trope of a scientist wearing a white lab coat. But if someone is doing a 2 min video sketch of a scientist, it is a good visual aid to include a white lab coat to communicate to an audience the role of a character. And in the same way, a top hat would communicate a certain kind of character in a movie. In the same way, there is a communication of a particular kind of character with other hat choices. 1. https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/tips-fedora https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/tips-fedora
    - benatkin 3y ago
      > I didn’t create the meme of a neckbeard wearing a fedora. But why should he not be allowed to wear one? Again, you're policing. It's a discriminatory dick move.
      - zoogeny 3y ago
        Allowed? Where do I say he is or isn’t allowed? You must be trolling to so poorly represent what I’m saying. He can wear anything he wants. So can you. So can anyone. If he wants to, and for all I care, he can dress up like a clown. Or dress up like a jester. Or he could wear Gucci or Prada. Or wear steampunk leather outfits like he is in the world of mad max. Or he could go clean cut preppy. He can wear a fedora and a trilby on top of one another. But, by personal choice and temperament, he wants to dress as he dresses. It just so happens that his personal preference aligns with a particular trope. A particularly uncool trope in popular culture. I’m pointing out that alignment. I am not making him dress that way and I am not forcing culture to judge him.
woooooo 3y ago
It's reality, and as much about mannerism as looks. OP wasn't attacking chomsky on a personal level, just pointing out how he's often perceived. It's sort of unfixable because the taste-makers at NYT and WaPo sorted themselves into the conformist camp so early in their lives that anyone outside that camp is trivially portrayable as "weird" to them.
lmm 3y ago
It's interesting how the people who pride themselves on how they're speaking up for the weak are the first and most vicious in bullying acceptable targets.
Cheezewheel 3y ago
Yud on one hand believes that AI is an actual *VERY LITERAL* existential humanity of which it is completely 100% paramount to get the rest of humanity on board with preventing our own destruction. And yet he doesn't think it is worth the effort to take off his trilby hat in order to come across as marginally more respectable to the average person? When the way he is choosing to present himself is undermining his own message then yes, it is worth bringing up.
- yreg 3y ago
  OP implied that Eliezer and Noam are one of the ugliest people alive. I'm very surprised so many people defend that comment and pretend it is relevant and discussion worthy.

benatkin 3y ago

Using the word "cringey" is a trope in itself. So what if he likes wearing a hat?

nullc 3y ago

Yud is a doomsday cult leader (https://archive.is/YTqlI https://archive.is/YTqlI) who has publicly advocated using mass murder in the form of nuclear weapons to forestall his predicted apocalypse. Although they call themselves "rationalists", I prefer to refer to these extremists as ℚ-anon. Their otherwise dismissible ravings are being converted to whitewashed publication friendly versions and fanned by commercial actors in an apparent effort to secure a state backed monopoly on technology that is otherwise relatively moatless, potentially to the peril of AI researchers (including ones that work for them) to the extent that anyone takes them seriously rather than using them as a plausible excuse to hand out windfalls. We don't have an AI safety problem, we have an human safety problem. Violent extremists are unsafe, greedy corporations seeking to suppress the free exploration and exercise of mathematics are unsafe. Existent language model chatbots are primarily just a public relations risk, at least so long as the government doesn't step in and create a monopoly that gives the market leaders choice of training biases the force of law.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
This whole subthread is both silly and sad. So suddenly Yudkowsky is the Thought Leader and a punching bag when people need to dismiss the entire AI risk perspective. A week or two ago, during previous round of statement letters and signatures, Yudkowsky was apparently a Complete Nobody. Anyway. > Yud is a doomsday cult leader (https://archive.is/YTqlI https://archive.is/YTqlI) Are you really using that link to support your argument in the earnest? You know this was posted on April Fool's day? The text itself mentions it near the end, and it's also explicitly tagged as such directly below the headline/byline. At least warn people who're going to skim this. > who has publicly advocated using mass murder in the form of nuclear weapons to forestall his predicted apocalypse. You mean that bit from his article in Time Magazine? Where he talked about airstrikes against GPU farms might be necessary in case some country/group is violating the international moratorium he's proposing? I don't recall him advocating mass murder there, or ever. Of course, since he is insisting on a strong international agreement, military intervention - yes, including nuclear weapons - is part of the picture, because that's literally how international agreements are ultimately enforced. As for the rest - the guy has been saying the same thing for way over a decade now. The mainstream interest only really picked up in the last half a year. But somehow he's in on it.