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It's a rationalist community, IMHO their methodology of thought leads to much more well-reasoned takes on AI than on HN, where the discussion here is often very
by solenoid0937 3mo ago
It's a rationalist community, IMHO their methodology of thought leads to much more well-reasoned takes on AI than on HN, where the discussion here is often very emotionally charged or led by wishful thinking.
When it comes to AI, LessWrong has been discussing topics for years, that HN has just started to consider, so they are much further along in the philosophical "chain of thought" so to say. LW fully understood and gamed out the risks of LLMs back when most of HN was calling them "stochastic parrots." https://ai-2027.com/ https://ai-2027.com/
- senderista 3mo agoWell at least HN hasn't (yet?) spawned a murderous death cult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians
- gizajob 3mo ago“Reason is the slave of the passions” - Hume
- ahartmetz 3mo agoOne could also say that a logical agent needs ultimate goals to do anything and it cannot choose them by logical means. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEUO6pjwFOo
- frollogaston 3mo agoAnarchism, eh? If anything, HN cult would be pro-Arch.
- overfeed 3mo agoTBQH, probably fashy.
- jodrellblank 3mo agohttps://aiascendant.com/p/extropias-children https://aiascendant.com/p/extropias-children
- frollogaston 3mo ago"Rationalist" just sounds like people calling themselves smart. There's a little AI skepticism on HN, but not a ton. When ChatGPT 3 and 3.5 came out, most of the comments were remarking how well it can write code.
- solenoid0937 3mo agoNo, it's not just people calling themselves smart, it is a specific philosophy of how to think. Whether you think that philosophy works or not is another matter. IMO it has its flaws but is far superior to vibes-based hot takes you see on HN.
- magimas 3mo agooh please... lesswrong was full of idiots already in 2010 when people outside of that community were laughing about "self-taught expert" Yudkowsky's bullshit physics takes. They are not "further along" the AI discussion, they are a bunch of wackos LARPing as scientists living out their personal sci-fi scenarios.
- jdub 3mo agoSounds like you've interpreted the "stochastic parrot" metaphor dismissively, and/or that it somehow precludes potential LLM risks.
- solenoid0937 3mo agoHN was definitely using "stochastic parrot" throughout most of 2024 and a good half of 2025 to dismiss AI capabilities.
- tpm 3mo agoLessWrong has been obsessed with AI. They certainly are much further along, but along a road which has diverged with reality long time ago and they relatively overweight AI risks so much it's not even funny anymore.