these kinds of questions are about the potential benefits to some hypothetical version of humanity (from slavery) vs. the real, documented harms to a real group of real people (caused by slavery). Of course we already know that rationalists are bad at accounting for the later while distracted by the bright and shiny allure of the former. And it just so happens that the people they imagine benefiting from slavery are people very much like themselves.

There was that woman whose tiktok algorithm figured out she was bisexual before she was

I curse the day I found out what remilia was.

I have discovered from an unrelated Google search that there is a subreddit called r/TherapyGPT. We’re in hell

It seems possible, but they don’t actually explain…

AI shite creeping into everyday life, example #1928748392:

I was out mattress shopping today. It was enjoyably ridiculous - the sales assistant measured my “pillow size” using a big contraption (apparently I’m a 2). However while testing a mattress I saw a video display advertising an “AI” widget to go with a specific “motion” mattress.

Baffled, I searched this up later.

AI voice control & Anti-snore box

Create your own spa-like oasis from the comfort of your own home by combining this Anti-snore Voice Control Box with our U210 and N700 motion bases. This range combines the very best and innovative technology with unbeatable comfort to give you the ultimate relaxation experience. Whether you want the optimal sleeping position or to spend your evenings unwinding with a good book, set offers luxurious comfort at the tip of your fingers.

I think this is un-enjoyably ridiculous. It’s not really clear what’s “AI” about it.

You see this particular kind of bigotry quite a bit in relation to neurodivervence and disability. It’s an attempt to beat people advocating for equality and justice by claiming a moral high ground. Oh, you think disabled people can have meaningful and worthwhile lives and that differences should be celebrated?? You must be too ignorant to know just how awful life is for people who really have that disability!

A close friend of Epstein told me he was an integral part of a group called Edge, a strange organization involved in what my source called “the TED Talk community” that would serve as his primary gateway to the scientific world.

Edge, which has called itself “the world’s smartest website” and claims to “redefine who we what and are,” would hold TED Talk afterparties in Monterey Bay called “The Billionaire’s Dinner,” where people like Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt of Google, Rupert Murdoch, Steve Pinker, Richard Thaler, Joichi Ito, Margaret Levi, Frank Wilczek, Richard Dawkins, and many of the world’s high-profile scientists (including Nobel prize winners), business executives, and intellectuals would show up. Edge’s website calls itself the online version of “The Reality Club” which, the site claims, was an “informal gathering of intellectuals who met from 1981 to 1996 in Chinese restaurants, artist lofts, investment banking firms, ballrooms, museums, living rooms and elsewhere,” the hallmark of which was a “rigorous and sometimes impolite (but not ad hominem) discourse.”

Epstein had close ties with Edge’s founder, John Brockman, a self-described cultural impresario who on his bio page introduces himself with an uncredited quote that reads, “If the creation of contemporary culture had a global hero, his name would coincide with that of John Brockman.” He claims to have invented the term “intermedia” as well as “intermedia kinetic environments.” Epstein bankrolled Edge’s events and financed the majority of the organization—from 2001 to 2017 Epstein provided $638,000 out of a total $857,000 received by Edge. He was photographed at Edge’s premiere annual event, The Billionaire’s Dinner, several times between 1999 and 2011. Multiple photos of him have been scrubbed from the website, such as one with Brockman’s son in 2003.

Media coverage of the Epstein case has given considerable attention to his absurd scientific pursuits, like the New York Times story about how he wanted to seed the human race with his DNA, or how he wanted to have his penis frozen and resuscitated in the future, and I myself heard from people in the black book that Epstein had told them he had a cloning lab down in Mexico and that he was very into “transhumanism.” Followers of the Epstein story have debated whether these were signs of a true mad-genius supervillain or whether they were elitist hot air. I’m here to tell you that all of this bullshit, every bit of it, came from Edge and its assemblage of chinstrokers. The transhumanism, the cloning, the “What is up? What is down?”—all of it is perfectly at home on the deranged pages of Edge.org.

From “I Called Everyone In Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book” by Leland Nally, Mother Jones, October 2020

Some good news for once: Dublin punk bar the Thomas House have had enough of AI slop.

this is just PUA bullshit right? Oh akshually women are ATTRACTED to “dominant” men, dangerous men, bad boyz, anyone who challenges this is just too woke to admit the truth

A man who wants to knock up as many women as possible is definitely trustworthy ladies and you should definitely make him the father of your kids 👍

Love how one of the top qualities for women is “feminine”. I can’t imagine one of my friends being asked about me and just saying uh she’s a woman I guess. A real womanly woman. She-woman. Girl

Basically,

I guess the idea is that the tech economy moves fast and if we don’t get to grips with AI we’ll be left in the dust, broke and unemployed. Somehow this is proof that AI is good instead of proof the economy is bad (if people are impoverished in a whim). It’s just the same self-satisfied fantasy as always.

D: Not only does this community have a missing stair, but they’re all explaining to each other how to avoid the missing stair, and the missing stair is in the chat replying to comments?!

why is there a vacuum in the jar? To preserve the jam? Isn’t jam a preserve? Like, I thought the whole raison d’etre of jam was as a way to make fruit keep, unrefrigerated, through the winter? Why must we preserve the preserve? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

I…basic common sense alone would tell you that something with a lot of fruit and a lot of sugar in it might spoil if left open outside of a fridge. Why do these people act like they’ve never seen a banana before

What these people do is they take something that’s vaguely true or at least has a kernel of truth in it and they give it the most sensationalistic and negative spin possible. So it can’t be “there were upsides and downsides to the switchover from incandescent bulbs”, it has to be “the greatest uglification in history”, and anyone who points out the energy saving advantages of LEDs and fluorescent lightbulbs is just trying to Silence You and smear you. It’s so wretched.

I knew some people who lived in Switzerland for a bit and they joked that it was a libertarian paradise because you can drink and smoke when you’re a teenager, the age of consent is 16 and everyone is issued a gun as part of their military service. I didn’t expect anyone to take it seriously…

Afaik Switzerland does have a unique system of federated democratic governance, one of the oldest democratic systems in Europe. The downside is that women weren’t able to vote in some Swiss cantons until the 90s.

Fire accidents seem to have the unique combination of producing extremely strong emotional responses by people in a local community, while also often being traceable to an o-ring like failure that you can over-index on.

Gee, why would people get emotional about friends and family being burnt alive. How bizarre.

Also I am not a fire expert by any means whatsoever and maybe I’m missing this guy’s point. But pretty much every account I have ever read of a fire that killed a lot of people is like “the building did not meet fire safety standards and the management had been dodging calls from the fire safety inspectors. Multiple people said the building was unsafe. On the night the fire happened the fire exits were chained shut.” Like, read about this horrendous fire that happened near where I live. There is no need to bring up o-rings. Fires in residential buildings and entertainment venues are not the same as fires on NASA spaceships.

Also fire codes do not control the size of fire engines. That’s a bad decision made by firefighters.