It’s good to be skeptical of institutions, just don’t go dismissing or accepting science based on ideological/class association, that’s how you get shit like Lysenkoism

I used to write that kind of stuff for a living when I was really poor and scraping by, it paid by the word and so low that you could realistically only crack minimum wage if you kept typing continuously and didn’t stop to think or do any research.

I think framing this as “refusing” to use AI is kind of weird. They believe in doing things the traditional way, great, I think games that use all hand-drawn nondigital art are also cool for going against the grain like that, and making a point of supporting artists is laudable, but it isn’t like anyone is trying to force them not to.

The person who predicted 70% chance of AI doom is Daniel Kokotajlo, who quit OpenAI because of it not taking this seriously enough. The quote you have there is a statement by OpenAI, not by Kokotajlo, this is all explicit in the article. The idea that this guy is motivated by trying to do marketing for OpenAI is just wrong, the article links to some of his extensive commentary where he is advocating for more government oversight specifically of OpenAI and other big companies instead of the favorable regulations that company is pushing for. The idea that his belief in existential risk is disingenuous also doesn’t make sense, it’s clear that he and other people concerned about this take it very seriously.

Yeah I thought about it and I guess I’m wrong. I thought that maybe the ball still wouldn’t be faster if there was a perfectly flat surface for both objects to land on, but I imagined how it would be if the bowling ball and feather were actually very far apart, and of course they wouldn’t be travelling perpendicular to the platform, and the path of the feather would follow more of a curve. So a slight distance would be the same thing just less.

But they are being dropped at the same time for dramatic effect, so the earth will also be accelerating towards the feather at bowling ball speeds because the feather is next to the bowling ball, therefore they still land at the same time.

I remember conservative conspiracy types were all over the idea that covid was going to be uncontainably catastrophic right up until the pandemic really happened and the party line was suddenly that actually the virus isn’t real after all, at which point they did an about face rather than delivering actually well deserved "told you so"s.

Point being, as soon as they see

the petrolium companies don’t want us to see it as a problem

They will suspect this sentiment is disloyal to their political tribe and definitely automatically discard it on that basis.

I feel like reading statutes is unreliable because a lot of how the law works is how courts interpret the law, which can be very different from the commonsense interpretation of the letter of the law. Lacking broader context, I can’t know from just this exactly what the consequences might be. Here’s some parts that are possibly concerning though:

The Commission may, in its discretion, prescribe the forms of any and all accounts, records, and memoranda to be kept by carriers subject to this chapter, including the accounts, records, and memoranda of the movement of traffic

Not sure if this increases the ability of the government to spy on people through their ISPs or if that remains the same.

(a) Requirement to restrict access (1) Prohibited conduct Whoever knowingly and with knowledge of the character of the material, in interstate or foreign commerce by means of the World Wide Web, makes any communication for commercial purposes that is available to any minor and that includes any material that is harmful to minors shall be fined not more than $50,000, imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both.

Some states have been experimenting with broad bans on online porn sites and requiring those sites and also social media sites to demand id from all users, maybe this provision could give a future FCC the power to apply this sort of thing to the internet nationally? Although this section already explicitly mentions the internet which is confusing if this whole thing is only recently being made relevant to the internet.

There are provisions about the FCC being able to come up with rules for the prevention of robocalls, maybe this could be generalized to prohibit some forms of automated network traffic?

It’s worth mentioning that obscenity laws apply whether Net Neutrality is a thing or not

Couldn’t this reclassification affect that sort of thing in a jurisdiction sense though? Again, I like net neutrality, mostly because the idea of something like the standard internet option being Facebook only is terrifying, but it sounds like a big part of this is reclassifying ISPs to be subject to rules made by the FCC. I’d really rather it be a law passed by congress, and I worry about how federal agencies might abuse their powers over the internet when those powers are expanded in general. I’m not really sure how much it generally expands their authority over the internet, but it seems like it might.

I think net neutrality is a good thing, but could this reclassification mean that the FCC will have increased authority to police content online? There has been a lot of worrying activity around that lately in general, and the FCC has a history of imposing censorship on traditional media.

Because the crypto bros see that cryptocurrency discussion is allowed, and they join in, and they invite their friends, and they start shilling their scams. And then you get crypto spammers and scam bots and the personal messages inviting you to elite investment opportunities and all the other scummy garbage that infests cryptocurrency websites

At this point any cryptocurrency discussion space by necessity has strict policies against promotion, people who like to talk about cryptocurrency have realized it’s generally rude and unwelcome to shill their bags outside of designated areas, and crypto scam bots don’t limit themselves to only those spaces. Not every group of people you don’t like is the equivalent of Nazis.

I would play No One Has Heard Of Bombs, sounds like an interesting game

I think something that works pretty well related to this is, find something at the core of how they feel about things that you actually agree with, and compliment them on being right about that. Then talk about what you think the implications of that thing are.

That’s a fair argument, but what I’m saying is more wondering to what extent this is really how things work and how that can be confirmed, than making a statement about how things should be. Every time I see this discussion everything is extrapolated from this single court case about a single police department.

This is widely cited and I agree it happened and it’s messed up, but I think it would be more interesting to see some kind of broader analysis of how common this practice is, which I haven’t been able to find solid information on. I’ve seen this a number of times and there are always comments offering speculation on how the system works, and maybe a few anecdotes, but I’ve talked to people who are skeptical that this is a larger phenomenon and I can’t exactly offer anything to prove it to them.

What would it take to actually get ranked choice voting? That would need a constitutional amendment right?

I guess that’s somewhat true if you are sharing an implementation around, but even avoiding the feature being widely known could make a difference. Even if it was known, I think the scoring could work alright on its own. A malicious removal could be quickly reversed manually and all reporters scores zeroed.

I had an idea for a system sort of like this to reduce moderator burden. The idea would be for each user to have a score based on their volume and ratio of correct reports to incorrect reports (determined by whether it ultimately resulted in a moderator action) of rule breaking comments/posts. Content is automatically removed if the cumulative scores of people who have reported it is high enough. Moderators can manually adjust the scores of users if needed, and undo community mod actions. More complex rules could be applied as needed for how scores are determined.

To address the possibility that such a system would be abused, I think the best solution would be secrecy. Just don’t let anyone know that this is how it works, or that there is a score attached to their account that could be gamed. Pretend it’s a new kind of automod or AI bot or something, and have a short time delay between the report that pushes it over the edge and the actual removal.

Doubt that’s going to be enough, I think if you want to make a sexually objectifying 90s magazine ad that appeals to female nerds you’re going to have to break out the homoerotic innuendos

For the most part yeah, it’s just a novelty. The feeling of presence is pretty cool though, like the sense that someone is standing close to you. I feel like most VR porn is not taking advantage of the medium very well, might be better if it wasn’t trying to be an outright sex simulation.