I think they’re saying that stopping a datacenter won’t do squat to stop AGI takeoff

at least this a reading of

Efficiency gains from AI are absolutely massive, and while they don’t apply to training, they do apply to inference, and even accounting for endogenity, state bans only slow AI progress by 9 days at the absolute most pessimistic.

so we can re-state this as a form of Pascal’s wager:

1. if I stop a datacenter near me, the world will still be taken over by a superhuman intelligence, albeit 9 days later, and my local environment will be moot
2. if I stop a datacenter, and no superhuman intelligence appears, I won’t have a datacenter near me

I’m not Blaise but I feel that stopping a datacenter is a win, all in all.

just bribe 'em, bro!

“How to be Rational: Use Drugs”: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8qYuy9Cr6BNpgjJjT/help-your-friends-get-adhd-and-depression-meds

you unfortunately have to dig quite deep for sneers in this weird post about datacenter votes in the recent US elections, but they’re there

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8vakRzGKXLknQNJ9M/stephen-martin-s-shortform?commentId=ec8LnnTjBMcow3C82

especially “Noosphere89” smugly stating that datacenters will just move somewhere else, like Iceland (retracted after someone points out that Iceland is probably even more woke than, say, Vermont) and Paraguay (which recently had a digibank seized and closed, leading to the president stepping down).

Then there’s this gem

Data center inputs, unlike almost anything else are much more subsitutable than any other input, and can be built in places where humans don’t care to raise NIMBY concerns.

So cutting through the jargon, “inputs” in this case means

• power
• cooling
• construction / planning
• the actual fucking contents in the racks
• data

All of these are constrained in various ways. The places with abundant accessible power tend to be relatively developed parts of the world. Same with water which is the most efficient mode of cooling.

Building your datacenter in Texas means you’re on familiar ground with local laws and regulations, and can draw on skilled manpower to actually construct the thing and keep it running. I’d wager that the actual hardware is cheaper than almost anywhere else. Once it’s built it’s in the security zone of the USA, which means property is efficiently defended by LEO and emergency services.

Paraguay? You need to find a skilled workforce there, or import it. Same for all the bits and bobs needed. Then you probably have to pay more for the same, as well as having to deal with an unfamiliar planning process. Not to mention political instability. And you might have to build a shit-ton of supporting stuff yourself, like power generation and fiber comms.

These people are delusional.

They banked on Trump & co being reasonable competent at fascism and getting rid of meaningful democratic participation in the 2 years before the midterms. And if he’d had a bit more of a plan apart from building marble and gold monstrosities, he’d have gotten away with it, too!

Its conservative essence is to enshrine and protect a certain, mainly pop-cultural, framework about what the future should look like

This is such a great way of looking at it, thanks.

Of course, a lot of the creators of that future were themselves politically right-wing or libertarian. Think Heinlein.

I remember seeing Star Wars for the first time in '78 or something (we lived in Malaysia at the time and I believe it took some time to get there). I was dead center in the marketing targetting. And for a while I was dying to know about the Clone Wars and what Luke’s father was doing there.

God, Ep 1 was such a let-down.

I believe there are 2 kinds of nerds - those that accept that there will just be mentions of the lore and it’s basically flavor, and those that just need to know and explore the lore down to the last minutae. Let me tell you, the image I had of the Clone Wars as an 8 year old was way fucking cooler than what appeared in Ep 2. And Vader?? Please let me keep my personal backstory.

XSLT is basically used for one thing - styline RSS feeds so they look like HTML

(yes I know the XSLT lovers point to data sources that went all in on XML in the early 2000s then never got the budget to update, but in the first approximation that’s the use case)

Seeing as RSS is basically as popular/well known as XML, I doubt this tantrum will move the needle in any way.

Mostly people are mad at Google, which is fine by me

wait oh god there’s more than just Lunduke???

If Bane is anything he’s Robespierre.

LW and the more credulous parts of the general techsphere are going gaga over this

https://rikiyat.github.io/blog/weight-space-programming/

Is this the long foretold, mythical RSI???

RSI = recursive self-improvement, not repetitive strain injury

This is the dumbest right-wing thing since the last dumb right-wing thing.

I am not a Proton customer. My impression is that they offer semi-secure/private email and VPN access.

What the fuck do they need GenAI for??

LW adds Grok(!!!) support (as in “@Grok, destroy this loser with facts and logic”) and for some reason the denizens are Not Happy

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fSaxGFMysTTeKxoMF/you-can-now-grok-on-lesswrong#comments

That’s the link I was thinking of , thanks for digging that up.

I think it’s more that someone made a Bayesian analysis and concluded with 60% certainty or something that it was a lab leak. Can’t remember the link now but I believe it was widely discussed at the time.

So Dario and co. are literally Sauron. That tracks.

You haven’t read Neuromancer??? God, I envy you, to have that in front of you.

Article next to it is an anonymous review of Jünger’s In Stahlgewitter, which is certainly A Choice.

(Jünger wasn’t a card carrying Nazi, but served in the Wehrmacht in WW2 and is kind of a right-wing ideal of an aesthete)

On second thought I won’t post it myself, it’s a bit too mean-spirited and facile. I haven’t been party to the discussions on IRC so I am probably missing a bunch of nuance.

I do compare the mods to Robespierre and co which might be seen as less of a compliement. I do believe they’re working under a lot of pressure and it’s hard to make decisions that please everyone.

I am mostly not unhappy that it’s not been a complete victory for the sloppers