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Aarostotle commented on Claude 4.5 Opus’ Soul Document   lesswrong.com/posts/vpNG9... · Posted by u/the-needful
ceejayoz · 15 days ago
> Long-term safety for free people entails military use of new technologies.

Long-term safety also entails restraining the military-industrial complex from the excesses it's always prone to.

Remember, Teller wanted to make a 10 gigaton nuke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial_(weapon)

Aarostotle · 15 days ago
I agree, your point is compatible with my view. My sense is that this essentially an optimization question within how a government ought to structures its contracts with builders of weapons. The current system is definitely suboptimal (put mildly) and corrupt.

The integrity of a free society's government is the central issue here, not the creation of tools which could be militarily useful to a free society.

Aarostotle commented on Claude 4.5 Opus’ Soul Document   lesswrong.com/posts/vpNG9... · Posted by u/the-needful
kouteiheika · 15 days ago
> Anthropic occupies a peculiar position in the AI landscape: a company that genuinely believes it might be building one of the most transformative and potentially dangerous technologies in human history, yet presses forward anyway. This isn't cognitive dissonance but rather a calculated bet—if powerful AI is coming regardless, Anthropic believes it's better to have safety-focused labs at the frontier than to cede that ground to developers less focused on safety (see our core views).

Ah, yes, safety, because what is more safe than to help DoD/Palantir kill people[1]?

No, the real risk here is that this technology is going to be kept behind closed doors, and monopolized by the rich and powerful, while us scrubs will only get limited access to a lobotomized and heavily censored version of it, if at all.

[1] - https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-and-the-department-...

Aarostotle · 15 days ago
A narrow and cynical take, my friend. With all technologies, "safety" doesn't equate to plushie harmlessness. There is, for example, a valid notion of "gun safety."

Long-term safety for free people entails military use of new technologies. Imagine if people advocating airplane safety groused about the use of bomber and fighter planes being built and mobilized in the Second World War.

Now, I share your concern about governments who unjustly wield force (either in war or covert operations). That is an issue to be solved by articulating a good political philosophy and implementing it via policy, though. Sadly, too many of the people who oppose the American government's use of such technology have deeply authoritarian views themselves — they would just prefer to see a different set of values forced upon people.

Last: Is there any evidence that we're getting some crappy lobotomized models while the companies keep the best for themselves? It seems fairly obvious that they're tripping over each other in a race to give the market the highest intelligence at the lowest price. To anyone reading this who's involved in that, thank you!

Aarostotle commented on X Just Accidentally Exposed a Covert Influence Network Targeting Americans   weaponizedspaces.substack... · Posted by u/adriand
Aarostotle · 23 days ago
Given the sibling comment here, I am wondering if you’ve fallen for a fake screenshot. I hope you did not make this up.
Aarostotle commented on In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All   wsj.com/us-news/in-a-u-s-... · Posted by u/nairteashop
Avicebron · 25 days ago
I'm not sure why people don't immediately get serfdom vibes whenever they mention a land tax.
Aarostotle · 25 days ago
It’s the same reason people don’t get serfdom vibes when a government proposes to take over childcare.

Governments buying goods for people with tax money turns them into dependents, sometimes permanently. It’s easy to overlook that.

Aarostotle commented on Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its tech in mass surveillance of Palestinians   theguardian.com/world/202... · Posted by u/helsinkiandrew
meowface · 3 months ago
The difference is that pre-2023 it could at least have some plausible excuse of trying to detect terrorist activity. With Israel's current actions in Gaza, there is no longer any plausible excuse or defense for any security action Israel is conducting towards Palestinians.
Aarostotle · 3 months ago
Did something happen in 2023 that makes it _less_ relevant for Israel to try to prevent terrorist activity?
Aarostotle commented on Show HN: Omnara – Run Claude Code from anywhere   github.com/omnara-ai/omna... · Posted by u/kmansm27
Aarostotle · 4 months ago
This is lovely, I was literally wishing for this two nights ago. I'll give it a try. Good luck!
Aarostotle commented on Scientists generate XX and XY cells from a person with Klinefelter syndrome   scientificamerican.com/ar... · Posted by u/Amorymeltzer
cjtrowbridge · 3 years ago
The article title is a factually incorrect representation of the study being discussed. If you read the article and the study, you'll see the study was about changing chromosomes in a cell line, not about changing the sex of a person.

Everything about primary and secondary sex characteristics would not be affected by changing someone's chromosomes. Homologous sex structures diverge before birth based primarily on dht metabolism. Even then, chromosome expression doesn't always determine how dht will metabolize, meaning whatever chromosomes a person has can still lead to someone having any kind of primary and secondary sex characteristics. The six most common sex chromosome patterns in humans are XX, XY, XXY, XYY, X, and XXXY (in that order).

Sex and gender are both far more complex than merely chromosome expression, and chromosome expression is anything but a binary. This study has nothing to do with being male or female.

Aarostotle · 3 years ago
From the article:

> “This is a very well-designed study that validates the notion that sex differences start early in development—and that they depend on the sex chromosomes because that’s the only thing that can account for those differences,” says Nora Engel, a professor of cancer and cell biology at Temple University, who was not involved in this work.

Is this your area of expertise?

Aarostotle commented on ESG should be boiled down to one simple measure: emissions   economist.com/leaders/202... · Posted by u/vinnyglennon
washbrain · 3 years ago
TSLA also has a lot of labor related discussions open about workplace safety and racism.

(I'm not weighing in on their validity, but it's absolutely truthful the allegations and lawsuits are there.)

Aarostotle · 3 years ago
> it's absolutely truthful the allegations and lawsuits are there.

I want to make sure I understand you. You don't know if people's accusations are true, but you do know that they are making accusations. Is that correct?

Aarostotle commented on Soon, life for 40M people who depend on the Colorado River will change   denverpost.com/2022/07/21... · Posted by u/orionion
kelnos · 3 years ago
So my understanding here is that the largest consumer of water in most (all?) of the places served by the Colorado River is still agriculture. The article hints at fallout from this around 2/3 of the way through, when talking about grocery prices going up due to water scarcity (the hypothetical $14 head of lettuce).

Why do we still do so much farming in regions that have such marginal water supplies? Are there no better-irrigated places in the US to grow all these crops? Obviously all these farms can't move overnight, and presumably the owners of the farms wouldn't be happy with their revenue moving elsewhere, but it seems necessary.

Has farming been slowly (too slowly?) moving out of these water-strapped regions? Or are they just all sitting there, expecting someone else to bear the brunt of the problem? I know there have been shenanigans with farmers deliberately growing water-hungry crops because the water allocations have always been a "use it or lose it" system. That is apparently changing (far too late, IMO); do we expect this to have a meaningful impact?

Either way, I would suggest that it's a lot easier to move farming activities to regions with a more stable water supply (assuming such regions exist) than it is to move hundreds of cities of people.

Aarostotle · 3 years ago
I am not a farmer nor an expert.

My guess: Drier areas have fewer pests, less rain means there is less risk of flooding or crops washing away, and problems like mold or rot are rarer. Also, the sun is always shining. More photosynthesis means happier plants.

I hope someone here can share the details of the economics here. It's probably a very interesting cost-benefit analysis.

Aarostotle commented on Soon, life for 40M people who depend on the Colorado River will change   denverpost.com/2022/07/21... · Posted by u/orionion
voz_ · 3 years ago
> but even so, the status quo is certainly far superior to an un-engineered Colorado River Basin.

Making an uninhabitable area, habitable, at the cost of a total destruction of natural resources does not seem like its "far superior".

Aarostotle · 3 years ago
That depends on your standard of value.

Do you justify things in terms of human life? Conversely, is your standard that nature should be left untouched?

As for me, I would say that flooding the valleys that are now Lake Mead and Lake Powell, enabling tens of millions of people to live, is worth far more than whichever critters and plants were displaced.

Besides, the issue here is not "total destruction" it is over-allocation. We have not destroyed the Colorado River. Rather, it seems like we just have too much demand for its supply. Did I misread that?

u/Aarostotle

KarmaCake day75January 28, 2019View Original