Rationalist check-list:
- Incorrect use of analogy? Check.
- Pseudoscientific nonsense used to make your point seem more profound? Check.
- Tortured use of probability estimates? Check.
- Over-long description of a point that could just have easily been made in 1 sentence? Check.
This email by SBF is basically one big malapropism.
This reads very, uh, addled. I guess collapsing the wavefunction means agreeing on stuff? And the uncanny valley is when the vibes are off because people are at each others throats? Is ‘being aligned’ like having attained spiritual enlightenment by way of Adderall?
Apparently the context is that he wanted the investment firms under ftx (Alameda and Modulo) to completely coordinate, despite being run by different ex girlfriends at the time (most normal EA workplace), which I guess paints Elis’ comment about Chinese harem rules of dating in a new light.
edit: i think the ‘being aligned’ thing is them invoking the ‘great minds think alike’ adage as absolute truth, i.e. since we both have the High IQ feat you should be agreeing with me, after all we share the same privileged access to absolute truth. That we aren’t must mean you are unaligned/need to be further cleansed of thetans.
since we both have the High IQ feat you should be agreeing with me, after all we share the same privileged access to absolute truth. That we aren’t must mean you are unaligned/need to be further cleansed of thetans.
They have to agree, it’s mathematically proven by Aumann’s Agreement Theorem!
the amazing bit here is that SBF’s degree is in physics, he knows the real meanings of the terms he’s using for bad LW analogies
Unhinged is another suitable adjective.
It’s noteworthy that how the operations plan seems to boil down to “follow you guts” and “trust the vibes”, above “Communicating Well” or even “fact-based” and “discussion-based problem solving”. It’s all very don’t think about it, let’s all be friends and serve the company like obedient drones.
This reliance on instincts, or the esthetics of relying on instincts, is a disturbing aspect of Rats in general.
Well they are the most rational people on the planet. Bayesian thinking suggests that their own gut feelings are more likely to be correct than not, obviously.
I have nothing to add. Here’s my up arrow.
SBF: What if we kissed in the uncanny valley 😳😳😳
- These docs in a nutshell
A reminder that Rationalists have absolutely No Fucking Clue what they’re talking about when it comes to quantum mechanics, and this is evident from the very top.
Here is their prophet’s, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s, brilliant writings on QM: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5vZD32EynD9n94dhr/configurations-and-amplitude
In this stunning vindication of Dunning-Kruger, EY sets up a thought experiment of a photon being ejected at a half-silvered mirror. Then, he realizes that QM is formulated with complex numbers, so he decides to shoehorn them by imagining a “computer program” that computes the result of the experiment and using the complex numbers as the internal state (because he read somewhere that a wave function is a complex-valued function). From there, he goes on to realize that he needs to actually justify the use of complex numbers, so he drops the fact that multiplying the “internal state” by i represents the photon turning 90 degrees (what?! yes, multiplying by i rotates complex numbers by 90 degrees but this has literally nothing to do with the direction the photon travels, what the ACTUAL fuck am I reading?)
I seriously want to pull my hair out after reading this asinine nonsense. MIT OCW’s QM course is extremely accessible to anyone with a decent high-school math education but these chucklefucks’ need to prove to themselves that they’re smart supercedes any process of actual learning.
edit because I can’t stop sneering: “wave function collapse” is purely born of the Copenhagen interpretation which EY rails against as ridiculous (which, admittedly, isn’t a totally unpopular opinion for real physicists to have). This is, of course, 100% lost on SBF.
If you spend as many words as Yud does, you could actually teach quantum mechanics. But his goal isn’t to teach physics; it’s to convince the reader that physicists are all wrong about physics. It’s cult shit disguised as a science lesson.
How can anyone take a fanfic writer seriously.
I used to read fanfiction, and by the standards of Harry Potter fanfiction, it’s not even good fanfiction.
(insert “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” joke here)Maybe it’s just a matter of taste, but I couldn’t get through more than a chapter. I wonder if most of the audience for it were people who didn’t normally read fanfiction. Actually, I just looked it up on fanlore to see what fandom people have said about it, and the reviews are mixed…
Lots of gold in there. Apparently Eliezer was bullied by a Harry Potter fan forum, to the point that some of the users set up a blog called “Methods of Rationality sucks”.
Apparently Eliezer was bullied by a Harry Potter fan forum, to the point that some of the users set up a blog called “Methods of Rationality sucks”.
His reaction was where Sneerclub got its name
I’d like to see this text superimposed into a Google calendar meeting request
all alignment and no play makes jack a dull boy
it’s like the negative thoughts I have whenever I convince myself I’m not cutout to create my own business. I’m sure I’d be a self-indulgent weirdo like that.
I’m sure I’d be a self-indulgent weirdo like that.
Hey, don’t talk about my acquaintance from the niche internet forum that criticises other niche internet forums that way.
More seriously, I hope those thoughts aren’t holding you back. I’d like to think that by being in sneerclub you are inoculated from transforming into the specific kind of self-indulgent weirdo on display here.
