agi is impossible because the universe can't generate the amount of smugness needed if the rationalists were right

the more I think about it, the more I believe people aren't convinced by arguments directly people are convinced when they like an idea or want to be seen as the type of person who believes an idea this also applies somewhat to people who do try to use reason and evidence correctly, they also want to be seen as "that type of person" I don't know how useful this is in practice, but it might be helpful to understand that your goal in convincing isn't to argue someone into submission with your logic to truly win someone over, you must convince them there is desirable status and/or intrinsic benefit in switching hirearchies this can't be done directly, and I think this explains at least some of why there is a lot of intense arguing with very little convincing people are working within the hierarchies they want to be in and rarely have a desire to switch so people make arguments that are iron clad using the assumptions of their chosen hierarchy, but they do nothing to persuade others because they aren't interested in being a part of your hierarchy you have to switch their desire to be in your ingroup before any of your arguments become convincing

does anyone else have a povertyslop dish that your grandparents invented, was your favorite meal as a kid, and you still make on occasion?

it was a good day

brains are insane, I saw this equation and then starting thinking about sonic the hedgehog 2? like wtf is going on?

ratioed the "former White House economic advisor"

sigh... i'm sure we couldn't find anything else that changed appreciably in utah since 2014 that might explain a drop in math scores... it must be the tech making students dumber fortune.com/2026/03/01/ameri…

just asked the iranian guy i work with and he seems really excited and hopeful seems to feel civilians are very safe

sometimes i wonder if in every instance of the universe/world/human-level intelligence eventually leads to a sink like america for literally all the best and brightest who ends up mogging everyone else

imagine how much @kitten_beloved is hating he's on his lent break right now

i don't have good luck i have plot armor

there has now been 1% real deflation over the last 40 days not 1% annualized aggregate prices are down an entire percent over that time period this could be the start of a great deflationary spiral i've been anticipating i'm rotating from stock to long treasuries

stacking dollars like megalixirs in chrono trigger

me driving to my cushy public university job: lord, give me a laissez faire market economy, but not yet

there's so much alpha in being philosemitic and it's only going to get better

EAs be like finally! we've discovered the most voracious utility monster from the famous philosophical paper, "don't feed the utility monster" you're evil if you don't feed it

does anyone else feel like we continually live in a world where things cost either zero of infinity dollars?

I miss caring about videogames and anticipating them... 😢

me: expresses core intuition independent of external data the internet: how can you feel that way when *external data* I feel like this is an instance of the pancakes/waffles diconomy sometimes I just feel like saying my first instinct without trying to make a truth claim

library sent out a solicitation for donations first line was of the form "reading isn't this, it's this" and contained an em-dash 💀