5 ms·

We know how this story will end for Dario. See Oppenheimer, Turing, Lavoisier, Galileo, Socretes etc. Power does not reside in the hands of people with knowledg

by oxdgd38 7mo ago

We know how this story will end for Dario. See Oppenheimer, Turing, Lavoisier, Galileo, Socretes etc. Power does not reside in the hands of people with knowledge or even wealth. And most technical people have not taken a political philosophy course or even a philosphy course. The Ring of Gyges story is 4000 years old.

beepbooptheory 7mo ago
I do not believe the Ring of Gyges preceded Plato making it up for The Republic... Where are you getting 4000 years? Also maybe not seeing the message or connection here... That myth isn't really about who has power or not, right? It's kind of just a trite little "why you should do good even when no one is watching" thing. It just serves Socrates for his argument with Thrasymachus, and leads us into book 2 where it really gets going with Glaucon and all that. This is from memory so I might be a little off.
- oxdgd38 7mo ago
  I got it from Tamar Gendlers philosophy and human nature course on open yale courses. She says it was a popular folk story passed down orally much before it was written in a book. Plato used it because people grew up hearing the story. The story is asking whats the source of morality? Who decides where the lines are? And its not scientists. Science produces the Ring.
  - beepbooptheory 7mo ago
    I was wrong, it's in Book II. This is "Socratic irony", its Glaucon speaking, assuming the position of an argument from earlier. Socrates himself of course doesn't believe in this conclusion... we are going to learn later that justice is a form, based on the Good! This is all the doxa of one still in the cave. > According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result—when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1497/pg1497.txt https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1497/pg1497.txt
adriand 7mo ago
I think Amodei is widely underestimated. The consensus viewpoint on the deal that OpenAI struck with the Pentagon is that Anthropic got played. I disagree. I'm certain that Amodei and his team gamed this out. In doing so, I think there's at least two conclusions they would have drawn: 1. Some other AI company would cut a deal with the Pentagon. There's no world in which all the labs boycott the Pentagon. So who? Choosing Grok would be bad for the US, which is a bad outcome, but Amodei would have discounted that option, because he knows that despite their moral failures, the Pentagon is not stupid and Grok sucks. That leaves Gemini or OpenAI, and I bet they predicted it would be OpenAI. Choosing OpenAI does not harm the republic - say what you will about Altman, ChatGPT is not toxic and it is capable - but it does have the potential to harm OpenAI, which is my second point: 2. OpenAI may benefit from this in the short term, and Anthropic may likewise be harmed in the short term, but what about the long game? Here, the strategic benefits to Anthropic in both distancing themselves from the Trump administration and letting OpenAI sully themselves with this association are readily apparent. This is true from a talent retention and attraction standpoint and especially true from a marketing standpoint. Claude has long had much less market share than ChatGPT. In that position, there are plenty of strategic reasons to take a moral/ethical stand like this. What I did not expect, and I would guess Amodei did not either, is that Claude would now be #1 in the app store. The benefits from this stance look to be materializing much more quickly than anyone in favour of his courage might have hoped.
- derwiki 7mo ago
  Lyft was briefly number one ahead of Uber, too
- oxdgd38 7mo ago
  The mistake here is thinking they can take on Power without really sitting in any officual position of Power. Wikileaks and Assange got popular too. What happened to them? The State Dept and CIA do exactly what Assange did. They pick and choose who to target with leaks. They get away with it (mostly even when exposed) because they officially are in power. Assange was not in power. If you take a moral position do it when you have real power.
  - 7mo ago
tmule 7mo ago
Oppenheimer? Really? Quoting a review of an Oppenheimer biography: “Oppenheimer was clearly an enormously charming man, but also a manipulative man and one who made enemies he need not have made. The really horrible things Oppenheimer did as a young man – placing a poisoned apple on the desk of his advisor at Cambridge, attempting to strangle his best friend – and yes, he really did those things – Monk passes off as the result of temporary insanity, a profound but passing psychological disturbance. (There’s no real attempt by Monk to explain Oppenheimer’s attempt to get Linus Pauling’s wife Ava to run off to Mexico with him, which ended the possibility of collaboration with one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth, or any, century.) Certainly the youthful Oppenheimer did go through a period of serious mental illness; but the desire to get his own way, and feelings of enormous frustration with people who prevented him from getting his own way, seem to have been part of his character throughout his life.” Seems more like Sam Altman, who is known to get his way, than Dario.
- CamperBob2 7mo ago
  The idea isn't that Oppenheimer was a saint, but that the government he served well and faithfully -- at the expense of his soul, some would argue -- turned on him viciously as soon as he dared to question their agenda. As you suggest, it is easy to imagine Altman in the same hot seat. Never mind his sexual orientation, which the Republican theocrats will eventually use against him as surely as the knives came out for Ernst Röhm.
  - msabalau 7mo ago
    It's a bit simplistic to personify complex organizations of millions of people like "The Government" or "The Market" as if they were a living, breathing persons with a single mind. There were people working in government who successfully attacked Oppenheimer for personal and/or policy reasons, people who stood by, and people who unsuccessfully supported him, voted to clear him, or condemned the proceedings. Oppenheimer still paid the price, and arguably, the risks to someone like him today are considerably higher, as the current administration isn't exactly like Eisnehower's. Nevertheless it's reductionist, reifying sentimentality to talk about "the government" turning "viciously" on someone who "served them well" because they are defying its agenda. The government isn't a character in Game of Thrones. The responsibility lies with the specific individuals who attacked him, and those who stood by.

by oxdgd38 7mo ago

beepbooptheory 7mo ago

I do not believe the Ring of Gyges preceded Plato making it up for The Republic... Where are you getting 4000 years? Also maybe not seeing the message or connection here... That myth isn't really about who has power or not, right? It's kind of just a trite little "why you should do good even when no one is watching" thing. It just serves Socrates for his argument with Thrasymachus, and leads us into book 2 where it really gets going with Glaucon and all that. This is from memory so I might be a little off.

oxdgd38 7mo ago
I got it from Tamar Gendlers philosophy and human nature course on open yale courses. She says it was a popular folk story passed down orally much before it was written in a book. Plato used it because people grew up hearing the story. The story is asking whats the source of morality? Who decides where the lines are? And its not scientists. Science produces the Ring.
- beepbooptheory 7mo ago
  I was wrong, it's in Book II. This is "Socratic irony", its Glaucon speaking, assuming the position of an argument from earlier. Socrates himself of course doesn't believe in this conclusion... we are going to learn later that justice is a form, based on the Good! This is all the doxa of one still in the cave. > According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result—when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1497/pg1497.txt https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1497/pg1497.txt

adriand 7mo ago

I think Amodei is widely underestimated. The consensus viewpoint on the deal that OpenAI struck with the Pentagon is that Anthropic got played. I disagree. I'm certain that Amodei and his team gamed this out. In doing so, I think there's at least two conclusions they would have drawn: 1. Some other AI company would cut a deal with the Pentagon. There's no world in which all the labs boycott the Pentagon. So who? Choosing Grok would be bad for the US, which is a bad outcome, but Amodei would have discounted that option, because he knows that despite their moral failures, the Pentagon is not stupid and Grok sucks. That leaves Gemini or OpenAI, and I bet they predicted it would be OpenAI. Choosing OpenAI does not harm the republic - say what you will about Altman, ChatGPT is not toxic and it is capable - but it does have the potential to harm OpenAI, which is my second point: 2. OpenAI may benefit from this in the short term, and Anthropic may likewise be harmed in the short term, but what about the long game? Here, the strategic benefits to Anthropic in both distancing themselves from the Trump administration and letting OpenAI sully themselves with this association are readily apparent. This is true from a talent retention and attraction standpoint and especially true from a marketing standpoint. Claude has long had much less market share than ChatGPT. In that position, there are plenty of strategic reasons to take a moral/ethical stand like this. What I did not expect, and I would guess Amodei did not either, is that Claude would now be #1 in the app store. The benefits from this stance look to be materializing much more quickly than anyone in favour of his courage might have hoped.

derwiki 7mo ago
Lyft was briefly number one ahead of Uber, too
oxdgd38 7mo ago
The mistake here is thinking they can take on Power without really sitting in any officual position of Power. Wikileaks and Assange got popular too. What happened to them? The State Dept and CIA do exactly what Assange did. They pick and choose who to target with leaks. They get away with it (mostly even when exposed) because they officially are in power. Assange was not in power. If you take a moral position do it when you have real power.
- 7mo ago

tmule 7mo ago

Oppenheimer? Really? Quoting a review of an Oppenheimer biography: “Oppenheimer was clearly an enormously charming man, but also a manipulative man and one who made enemies he need not have made. The really horrible things Oppenheimer did as a young man – placing a poisoned apple on the desk of his advisor at Cambridge, attempting to strangle his best friend – and yes, he really did those things – Monk passes off as the result of temporary insanity, a profound but passing psychological disturbance. (There’s no real attempt by Monk to explain Oppenheimer’s attempt to get Linus Pauling’s wife Ava to run off to Mexico with him, which ended the possibility of collaboration with one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth, or any, century.) Certainly the youthful Oppenheimer did go through a period of serious mental illness; but the desire to get his own way, and feelings of enormous frustration with people who prevented him from getting his own way, seem to have been part of his character throughout his life.” Seems more like Sam Altman, who is known to get his way, than Dario.

CamperBob2 7mo ago
The idea isn't that Oppenheimer was a saint, but that the government he served well and faithfully -- at the expense of his soul, some would argue -- turned on him viciously as soon as he dared to question their agenda. As you suggest, it is easy to imagine Altman in the same hot seat. Never mind his sexual orientation, which the Republican theocrats will eventually use against him as surely as the knives came out for Ernst Röhm.
- msabalau 7mo ago
  It's a bit simplistic to personify complex organizations of millions of people like "The Government" or "The Market" as if they were a living, breathing persons with a single mind. There were people working in government who successfully attacked Oppenheimer for personal and/or policy reasons, people who stood by, and people who unsuccessfully supported him, voted to clear him, or condemned the proceedings. Oppenheimer still paid the price, and arguably, the risks to someone like him today are considerably higher, as the current administration isn't exactly like Eisnehower's. Nevertheless it's reductionist, reifying sentimentality to talk about "the government" turning "viciously" on someone who "served them well" because they are defying its agenda. The government isn't a character in Game of Thrones. The responsibility lies with the specific individuals who attacked him, and those who stood by.