Bee Jackson

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on the atlas — 9

highlights — 16

Finally, Kadmi-nomai asked the High Priest of Joy in Til Iosophrang for the earring, which he was given. After cutting a hole in his own earlobe with the tip of the Piercing Star, he donned the earring and conversed with it for two hours, asking various questions in Kalas, in Kadhamic, and in its own language. Finally he removed the artifact and recommended that the it be locked in the deepest and most inaccessible parts of the treasure vaults, a suggestion with which the Iosophrelin decided to comply. Niderion-nomai’s commentary: It is well that we are so foolish, or what little freedom we ha…
The Whispering Earring (Scott Alexander) - Croissanthology
His best-case scenario for AI is essentially the antithesis of Roy’s: superintelligence that will actively refuse to give us everything we want, for the sake of preserving our humanity.
Child’s Play - Harper’s Magazine
“It’s terrifying to ask someone out,” he said. “What you want is to have the dating site that tells you that algorithmically you’ve been matched with this person, and then magically you have permission to talk to them. I think there’s something similar going on here with AI. Many of these people are smart enough that they could answer their own questions, but they want someone else to do it, because then they don’t have to have this terrifying encounter with their own humanity.”
Child’s Play - Harper’s Magazine
There’s a short story by Scott Alexander called “The Whispering Earring,” in which he describes a mystical piece of jewelry buried deep in “the treasure-vaults of Til Iosophrang.” The whispering earring is a little topaz gem that speaks to you. Its advice always begins with the words “Better for you if you . . . ,” and its advice is never wrong. The earring starts out by advising you on major life decisions, but before long it’s telling you exactly what to have for breakfast, exactly when to go to bed, and eventually, how to move each individual muscle in your body. “The wearer lives an abnorm…
Child’s Play - Harper’s Magazine
Throughout the story, whenever Harry encounters something that offends him, Yudkowsky describes him being overcome by a sudden cold fury, colder than Antarctica, colder than the depths of space, in which everything is seen with perfect icy clarity and every fibre in his body is primed to exercise his will. Every single time, he then proceeds to have what can only be described as a spluttering, spastic tantrum. In his first Potions lesson with Professor Snape (and I am not happy to be typing these words), Snape makes a few sarky comments, which prompts Harry to accuse him of being abusive, thre…
Against truth - by Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge
He also, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, immediately starts using his knowledge of social psychology to blackmail and manipulate everyone he encounters, and belittles everyone he considers stupider than he is. I guess that’s just what incredibly smart people do.
Against truth - by Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge
Reading HPMOR gave me a sense of crushing second-hand despair that I’ve only previously experienced when finding out things about Chris-Chan. It really is that bad.
Against truth - by Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge
The AI-driven economic boom we’re occasionally promised never seems to materialise; everyone around you just steadily gets more and more stupid and insane.
Against truth - by Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge
Rationalism is the notion that the universe is a collection of true facts, but since the human brain is an instrument for detecting lions in the undergrowth, almost everyone is helplessly confused about the world, and if you want to believe as many true things and disbelieve as many false things as possible—and of course you do—you must use various special techniques to discipline your brain into functioning more like a computer.
Against truth - by Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge
The name is because these people think the history of philosophy is just a series of wrong ideas that have since been replaced by better ones, and instead of reading any of it you should just skip ahead to simulation theory, in the same way that physics students skip past phlogiston.
Against truth - by Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge
If you’re not aware of rationalism, in this context it has absolutely nothing to do with the rationalist philosophy of Descartes and Spinoza, in which all knowledge is deduced from eternal a priori truths; instead it’s actually a kind of empiricism, and it’s mostly about living in the Bay Area, writing things like ‘fark’ or ‘f@#k’ instead of ‘fuck,’ and having unappealing sex with your entire friend group.
Against truth - by Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge
For it is a place of graven images, and the people go mad over idols. So the desert creatures and hyenas will live there and ostriches will dwell there. The bots will chatter at its threshold, and dead links will litter the river bed. It will never again be inhabited or lived in from generation to generation.
The internet is already over - by Sam Kriss
Things will survive in proportion to how well they’ve managed to insulate themselves from the internet and its demands. The Financial Times will outlive the Guardian. Paintings will outlive NFTs. Print magazines will outlive Substack. You will, if you play your cards right, outlive me. If anything interesting ever happens again, it will not be online. You will not get it delivered to your inbox. It will not have a podcast. This machine has never produced anything of note, and it never will.
The internet is already over - by Sam Kriss
it’s helped break apart the cohesive working-class communities that produce a strong left, and turned them into vague swarms of monads
The internet is already over - by Sam Kriss
Everything that depends on the internet for its propagation will die. What survives will survive in conditions of low transparency, in the sensuous murk proper to human life.
The internet is already over - by Sam Kriss
Much of the media is currently going down the same path, refining itself out of existence
The internet is already over - by Sam Kriss