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be chalant

>be me >discover effective altruism >apparently normal charity is inefficient >why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing >fair enough >buy mosquito nets >save lives >numbers look good >feel powerful >couple years later >someone asks an innocent question >why only count people alive today >huh >future people matter too >obviously >my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet >reasonable.jpg >keep following logic >what about their grandchildren >also yes >what about people in 500 years >sure >5000 years >why not >500 million years >starting to get weird but morality is morality >open calculator >humanity could survive for an astronomically long time >could colonize galaxy >could have trillions upon trillions of descendants >maybe digital people too >maybe simulated civilizations >maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds >calculator starts smoking >realize currently living humans are rounding error >8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta >future contains potentially 10^something people >can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets >new moral priority unlocked >protect the long-term future >stop thinking in units of "people helped" >start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved" >malaria? >terrible >but only kills existing humans >AI extinction could delete the entire light cone >nuclear war could permanently derail civilization >bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years >someone invents wrong constitution in 2140 >quadrillions suffer >better fund governance workshop now >friend says maybe we should improve hospitals >explain opportunity cost >friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people >explain scope sensitivity >friend stops inviting me to dinner >need to decide what to fund >easy >expected value >suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction >sounds tiny >but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives >multiply >mother of god >$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies >charity evaluation complete >someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from >expert judgement >which expert >us >how calibrated >extremely thoughtfully >reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative >still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude >epistemic robustness achieved >someone says maybe project doesn't work >assign 20% chance >still astronomical >maybe project makes problem worse >assign 5% chance >still astronomical >why 5 >because 30 felt pessimistic >publish 46-page report >contains seventeen sensitivity analyses >every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign >critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities >yes >that's literally why it's important >critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical >make probability smaller >critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong >make probability smaller again >critic begins rubbing temples >discover AI safety >perfect longtermist cause >AI might kill everyone >or create utopia >or seize galaxy >or tile universe with paperclips >or create billions of conscious software minds >finally a problem with numbers big enough for me >start AI safety nonprofit >mission: prevent dangerous AI >hire smartest people available >smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI >interesting >we must understand capabilities to understand safety >we must scale models to study alignment >we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first >we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong >we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous >outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies >complicated field >company releases stronger model >very concerned >company begins training even stronger model >extremely concerned >company raises $14 billion >concern reaches unprecedented levels >need to influence government >future is at stake >normal democratic process too slow >politicians don't understand exponential curves >public doesn't understand x-risk >experts must guide them >who counts as expert >people who understand x-risk >who understands x-risk >our friends >someone objects that this seems politically convenient >explain we're representing future generations >future generations unavailable for comment >develop concept of value lock-in >terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever >therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in >whose values >let's circle back >begin with impartial morality >end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want >beautiful arc >meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things >voting wrong >having parochial attachments >loving family more than strangers >caring about local community >getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible >evolutionary biases everywhere >explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted >except intuition that future digital people count >and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad >and intuition that our probability estimates are sane >and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future >those intuitions survived peer review >someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter >inefficient >could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher >think of all the simulated people you just killed >okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly >PR team says "future generations deserve a voice" >much better >journalist asks what longtermism means >say "future people matter" >everyone agrees >great >journalist asks what follows from that >well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures >journalist raises eyebrow >return to "future people matter" >motte has entered the chat >critic: of course future people matter >me: glad we agree >critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them >me: why do you hate our grandchildren >eventually notice uncomfortable implication >if future value dominates everything >then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future >education matters because future institutions >health matters because future productivity >democracy matters because future trajectory >human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy >see starving child >feel compassion >check spreadsheet >child's direct welfare contribution negligible >but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality >compassion restored >tell myself this is impartial altruism >one day assistant asks obvious question >"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?" >silence >open spreadsheet >increase column width >add confidence interval >assistant asks again >"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?" >stare into cosmic light cone >10^50 people staring back >none of them exist >none of them can tell me >none of them can falsify my assumptions >realize I have invented the perfect constituency >infinitely important >completely silent >and always represented by me

This is phenomenal. It’s on par with what you’d see on Netflix today — not because it’s AI, but because the writing and creative execution are excellent. We’re truly only months away from individuals competing directly with Hollywood. Their monopoly on distribution is still a real challenge for indie creators though.

In response to the clip going around with the African lady saying 'WHAT WHITE CULTURE!?!' Because I can explain it in more detail than anyone else... here are the main things that create western civilisation. The principle, the law of nature that is an adaptation to and what operation it creates in our civilisation. THE WESTERN CIVILISATION STACK Western civilisation can be understood as a set of adaptations to the laws of nature that allow millions of people to cooperate, solve problems and innovate together. 1. SOVEREIGNTY — Let people act. Law of nature: Knowledge and ability are distributed among individuals. No ruler or institution can know everything everyone knows. Sovereignty gives people freedom to choose, experiment and solve problems for themselves. That creates millions of independent problem-solvers instead of waiting for one authority to find the answer. 2. RECIPROCITY — Don’t impose your costs on others. Law of nature: Cooperation survives when it benefits both sides. Freedom cannot mean freedom to steal, defraud, injure or force others to carry your costs. Reciprocity means pursuing your interests while respecting the same right in others. It turns conflict into cooperation and makes peaceful life among strangers possible. 3. RESPONSIBILITY — Make people accountable for consequences. Law of nature: Every action produces consequences. Freedom works when the person making a decision also bears responsibility for its results. When people can keep the benefits of their choices while forcing the costs onto others, cooperation breaks down. Responsibility reconnects choice with consequence. 4. PROPERTY — Make control and consequences clear. Law of nature: Resources are scarce and cannot satisfy every competing use at once. Property establishes who controls something, who may use or exchange it, and who bears the consequences of those decisions. That reduces conflict, encourages people to improve what they possess, and makes investment and long-term planning possible. 5. TRUTH — Correct error faster than reality punishes you for it. Law of nature: Reality does not change because we believe something false. Truthful testimony, open criticism and evidence allow people to discover mistakes before those mistakes become catastrophes. A civilisation that can criticize and correct itself can learn faster than one that protects comforting falsehoods. 6. CONTRACT — Make cooperation possible across time. Law of nature: Cooperation requires predictable future behaviour. Promises backed by reputation and law allow strangers to trust one another enough to cooperate. Contract lets one person invest today because another can credibly promise performance tomorrow. That makes enormous networks of specialization, trade and investment possible. 7. RULE OF LAW — Replace arbitrary power with predictable rules. Law of nature: People have conflicting interests, and power creates opportunities for predation. Law provides a common procedure for resolving disputes without violence or personal rule. When rulers and citizens are both constrained by known rules, people can cooperate, invest and experiment without constantly fearing arbitrary interference. 8. DUE PROCESS — Test accusations instead of trusting authority. Law of nature: Human beings are biased, mistaken and sometimes dishonest. An accusation is not proof. Evidence, defense, confrontation, impartial judgment and appeal create an adversarial process for discovering error. Due process protects both society from wrongdoing and individuals from arbitrary punishment. 9. DECENTRALISATION — Let many solutions compete. Law of nature: No one knows in advance which adaptation will work best. Families, firms, towns, institutions and governments can try different solutions to different problems. Failures can remain local while successful solutions spread. Decentralisation therefore turns society itself into a continuous experiment. 10. MARKETS — Let reality select among competing solutions. Law of nature: Evolution advances through variation, selection and retention. Markets allow people to try different products, services and ways of organising resources. People select among them through voluntary choice. Successful solutions attract resources; unsuccessful ones disappear or improve. Markets turn millions of choices into continuous social learning. 11. SPECIALISATION — Let differences become advantages. Law of nature: People differ in knowledge, ability, resources and circumstances. Instead of everyone doing everything badly, specialization lets people become exceptionally good at different things and exchange the results. Cooperation converts human differences from a source of conflict into a source of increasing productivity. 12. SCIENCE — Institutionalise error correction. Law of nature: A false model eventually fails when tested against reality. Science turns doubt into a productive institution: observe, propose, test, criticize, replicate and correct. Knowledge therefore does not have to depend upon authority or tradition. Every generation can discover where the previous generation was wrong and build upon what it got right. 13. CAPITAL — Preserve successful adaptations. Law of nature: Progress compounds only when successful adaptations survive. Tools, businesses, infrastructure, institutions and knowledge allow yesterday’s successful experiments to become tomorrow’s starting point. Each generation does not begin again from zero. It inherits accumulated solutions and adds another layer. 14. EDUCATION — Transfer accumulated knowledge between generations. Law of nature: Individuals die; knowledge does not have to. Writing, schools, apprenticeships and universities allow discoveries to survive their discoverers. Instead of every generation rediscovering mathematics, engineering, medicine and law, it begins with thousands of years of accumulated learning. 15. COMMONS — Build things that make everyone more capable. Law of nature: Cooperation can produce benefits no individual could produce alone. Courts, roads, standards, security, scientific knowledge, infrastructure and trustworthy institutions multiply everyone's ability to act. A successful civilisation does more than protect private interests: it continually creates shared capital that makes future cooperation cheaper and more productive. THE RESULT These principles form a system: Sovereignty creates experimentation. Reciprocity makes it peaceful. Responsibility makes it sustainable. Property makes interests clear. Truth corrects error. Contract creates trust across time. Law suppresses predation. Decentralisation preserves alternatives. Markets select successful solutions. Specialisation multiplies productivity. Science accelerates discovery. Capital preserves what works. Education transmits it. Commons multiply everyone's capabilities. That is the deeper logic of the Western stack: Stable rules + distributed freedom + relentless error correction = cooperation at scale and accelerating innovation.

Every job I had the manager would come over and nervously tell the group of employees some task that sucked like cleaning the bathroom. The other people would play that “not it touch your nose game” I would watch them all do their lame little nose game then I would jump up and do the job enthusiastically 11/10. An ernest “you got it sir anything else?”.Soon enough the manager would come over and say ok anyone but Keivan go clean bathrooms. I’d still pop up until he had to hold me back from doing it. It gave me pride in myself. And I could see it gave the managers strength and they would be more authoritative with the rest of the group as I became the standard. Proud of that kid.

Gets me every time. Rick Rescorla was, and will always will be, a Man amongst men.

Never forget. This one was very personal to me. Warning: Sensitive imagery.