FFRefresh

He already owns xAI, valued at $45B+.

4 things (for other people's benefit):

1. This person didn't claim THEY were harassed. They claimed others were harassed. This was not THEIR lived experience. They were talking about harassment secondhand.

2. The secondhand claims of inappropriate language were made on the internet. The internet is different than the physical world. Much text typed on the internet is/can be recorded. It is a very common practice for someone who is being harassed on the internet to share with others the record of their harassment. The internet is perfect for this. It's certainly much messier out in the physical world to prove which is the analogy you seem to be trying to apply to internet communication.

3. I just asked WHERE it happened, not to provide a precise record of the claims. It wasn't a tall ask to respond with an internet location (i.e. channel).

4. Questioning claims is NOT harassment, especially when the cost to produce evidence supporting the claim approaches zero (as on the internet). This is a toxic mentality to employ, though I'm sure you think you are being noble with your #believeallclaims approach. If anything, people who employ a "DON'T QUESTION IT!" approach do themselves a huge disservice, as that is probably the least persuasive tactic to do and immediately signals a huge red flag to any neutral onlookers.

The topic here is asking for where secondhand claims of harassment on a part of the internet happened, with the context of it being contrary to MY lived experience in similar parts of the internet. I'm trying to square how this secondhand claim could be contradictory to MY lived experience, and to update my understanding if given new information.

As a last rhetorical example/hypothetical: Let's say I made a claim that someone replied to a tweet of mine this week calling me the n-word. Do you automatically believe me? If you sought to prove my claim by looking at my tweets, are you a racist that is harassing me? What if there is absolutely no record of the alleged tweet reply happening/existing (even accounting for a potential delete)? Would you ever waver in your belief of my claim?

If one wanted to substantiate some of your claims here to be convinced of the problem you suggest, what's the best way to do that?

What are the names of the IRC channels you were part of that said they weren't bigoted but used homophobic slurs every day?

As an anecdote, I was very active in those communities/networks back in the day, and I don't remember the rampant racism/sexism you suggest.

The main vector that people demeaned others on was based on technical skills.

That's great! For the sake of humanity, can you please start documenting your realizations/interpretations in some sort of readable/understandable format, with your reasoning? Especially those realizations/interpretations which are not super widely held, as it'll help move the ball forward with humanity understanding how things have evolved.

If you did this, then perhaps you'd be a bit less frustrated when others come to your interpretation years later. And if you are looking to status seek, you can gain some status points in the process!

On examining the negative thought patterns, I think there's at least a couple parts to it:

1. If you very much believe no amount of physical health interventions will have any cognitive effects, then it seems like the probability of you sticking with any sort of health/fitness routine is very low. If in fact, health/diet/fitness DOES have positive cognitive effects (it's been proven scientifically and there are tons of anecdotes), you may end up depriving yourself of a really great thing for improving quality of life and cognition. So examining the possibility that your cognition is not doomed and immune to physical health interventions could greatly increase the odds of improvement.

2. In 2 of your examples, they were social situations. In my experience, negative thought patterns can definitely impact that. I'm saying this somewhat loosely, as I'm not an expert, but have done research in the past on this: Thoughts can trigger bio/physiological responses in the body/brain that can definitely impact cognition.

This is not meant as a criticism, hopefully more of an inquiry if you so choose. Is it possible that your 'feeling' of your brain being irreparably damaged is actually factually incorrect? And that your assumptions/model of the plasticity of the brain may be wrong and skew a bit negative?

Is it possible that these negative thought patterns are holding you back? Awhile back, I became aware of some irrational negative thought patterns I had myself, and worked on reframing them, and it helped immensely w/ confidence.

Here's a random link on the general idea (can't vouch for all the content, but it captures the idea of this pattern): https://positivepsychology.com/cbt-cognitive-restructuring-c...

You dismissed the article and author by labeling it a 'hit piece' by 'someone who hates wikipedia'. When other users asked if you had any substantive critiques of the claims in the article, you responded by saying you don't need to read or respond to the article's claims because of the 'bullshit asymmetry principle' that you adhere to.

The next natural question that I asked is how you arrived at the conclusion that the article/author is heavily biased (or filled with 'bullshit' as you have stated)? You respond by implying what I was asking is 'bullshit', and you don't need to answer any questions about it.

Overall, this thread/tangent has not been constructive. I was responding to your ad hominem on the author and shallow dismissal (which is against HN guidelines) of the article with no supporting arguments/remarks/evidence. Yes, my tone was more direct, as I'm not a fan of shallow dismissals based on ad hominem attacks. Probably my mistake for even engaging given the content of the comments that were posted to others.

Like you have stated a number of times here, you don't need to read/respond to anything you don't want to and you don't owe anybody anything. For future reference, this is just an implied rule in life, and doesn't need to be explicitly stated. Feel free to ignore this comment as you have stated you will, and I definitely don't expect/want anything else out of this conversation.

Would you actually be interested in reading about Wikimedia finances though? Wikimedia is a non-profit and posts all of their financial data publicly [1], why not go read it there?

What's interesting is that you somehow know that the author is someone who hates wikipedia, yet you refuse to read his article(s). How did you arrive at the conclusion that the author is someone who is heavily biased against Wikimedia and shouldn't be trusted? Are you just memetically repeating something others have said on the internet about the author, or did you read other articles/claims from this author and independently arrive at your conclusion?

If the latter, how could you have not researched Wikimedia finances even a little to validate claims the author makes? In which case, you would have something substantive to communicate to others on the internet to be aware of about the claims of the author, instead of the anti-intellectual ad hominem approach you took here.

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/

How can you be sure any research won't result in violence? How do you establish whether a given piece of research/data will result in violence?

Is your basic operating model for this: "Never show any data that shows there are group differences, because it can be used by violent extremists"?

If that is your operating model, do you support getting rid of ANY data out there that shows differences between groups in ability/behavior, as it could result in violence? For instance, should we ban all public violent crime reporting, if that showed group differences, as it would be something used by those violent extremists you mention?

diu vivere tabula rasa!

But making it known that the line of questioning will bring violence to others is implying that if the person continues the line of questioning, they are then knowingly and intentionally bringing violence to trans people. In a lot of legal systems and with informal norms, if you know your action will cause harm to others, and you do it anyway, you are considered a cause of the harm.

Claims that an action can cause violence are ultimately claims that the action causes violence.

As an extreme example: Times Square in NYC is considered a "Walker's Paradise" with a walkability score of 100 on Walk Score. But it seems like the worst possible place to walk, and most NYC locals I know avoid that area like the plague.

Link: https://www.walkscore.com/score/Times-Square-New-York

I think with the popular conception/definition of walkability and the assigned importance of that conception is a little over-rated.

I personally feel like it overvalues commercial activity (restaurants, retail, grocery, entertainment). Obviously, it depends on how often you want to partake in said commercial activities as far as how you would value it.

I would love if the conception of walkability could also take into account:

'How far can I walk without having to worry about cars/crossing streets/waiting for lights?'

'How safe/comfortable is the walk? Will I be walking by people who will harass me/be high on drugs/try to sell me something?'

'How easy is it to string together a run without having to stop?'

'How busy are the sidewalks? Will I have to be dodging people on their phones all the time?'

'Is it easy to take a dog for a walk? Or are there limited green spaces?'

'Are there social/interest groups nearby that meet up?'

I find some of these types of factors much more important than closeness to X number of commercial venues. So a busy downtown street may get a high walkability score (i.e. Walk Score) because of the restuarants/retail/theaters, but it might be atrocious to my conception of walkability.

There was no accusation of making up anything, as I cannot possibly know your personal experience.

What I was doing was pushing back on using comically outlier events as something representative of rural living, that the GP would have to reckon with if they were to live in a rural setting. Nobody I know who has lived in a rural environment has ever experienced what you highlighted. If you did experience that, it sounds like you just had shitty neighbors or you lived next to a recreational area where that is more likely to happen, and I would caution against extrapolating that experience to being the norm among rural residents.

The irony is I never have been woken up by ATV's and shotguns in decades growing up in a rural environment, but have certainly been woken up by those things a number of times in urban environments.

I grew up in a rural area, and I experienced zero instances of loud ATVs and shotguns where I lived, at any time of day. This view sounds like a TV trope, which one might lean on if they don't have much in-person experience of living in a rural area themselves.

The advice to try it before you buy it is sound though.

...according to your subjective value system.

> You're not exploring anything, you're not celebrating life, not producing any meaning. You just sit there, like a robot, pissing it all away.

I would suggest that meaning can be found, even if you are unable to transcend our human limitations in this insanely large universe. But I can tell that you are on a path of reflection of what a meaningful human life means for you, and that's exciting! I wish you the best!

(Don't read this as if I have it all figured out, because I most certainly do not)

Not to be too much of a cynic, but this article definitely has me losing a bit of respect for this writer.

It reads like the social acceptance of his writing/illustration is of the utmost importance to him, and that social acceptance should trump other considerations. This type of yearning is a trust buster for me. I don't want writers/publications towing whatever the politically correct line is for that given moment, I want them to be intellectually honest and open for whatever topic they are writing about.

Perhaps I would interpret it differently if he was honestly wrestling with the impact and considerations of technology, instead of just reacting to a Twitter rainstorm that came and went like they all do. I don't feel like he's really grappling with it, just giving into the simplistic "AI art can take our jobs away, so therefore it's bad" take, but then ignoring how he uses other technologies that people aren't complaining to him about on Twitter. (this of course is not to say anything about the ethics of said technology, my comment is about intellectual honesty and not groveling)

If this writer was really sincere about not wanting to leverage technology that could have the downstream consequence of job displacement, why on earth is he writing on the internet and interacting with so many people on the internet? There are so many jobs that could be involved in physically distributing the information that he wants to distribute, but he knowingly plays a part in using a distribution system that is essentially zero-cost and doesn't need labor to distribute information. Why is he using Getty instead of working with independent photographers/illustrators and paying them MORE? (I know he said he will pay the complaining illustrator on a future one, but that was done because he was called out)

It's going to be the same story with AI art and AI other things. I would predict that at some point in the next 5 years this writer will be using AI art again, because it'll be more socially acceptable then.

I obviously say this all from the position of not being in the eye of a Twitter outrage cycle, but man, I would love to see more people not kowtow to the mob and just let it pass...

I think there a few aspects to whether something can be 'interesting' to me with regards to creation (i'm probably missing some):

1. Is the broader topic/activity interesting to me? (interesting in of itself, not for the other reasons listed below)

2. The act of doing is interesting to me in of itself (as opposed to consuming)

3. The act of growth/learning/getting better is interesting to me

4. How good the output of my creation can/will be

5. How will the output be socially valued in a way beneficial to me (whether status/wealth/whatever)

I will say as I've gotten older, I've started to really decrease focus on #5, as I've found it to be the most empty for me (not to say I haven't achieved success there, but it's just a never-ending treadmill when you compare with others).

I try to really focus on #'s 1-3, as they give me the most joy.

This view is really interesting to me.

It seems like you are hyper-focused on ends/outcomes. And if an end/outcome of a pursuit isn't completely novel, unpredictable, or result in you being the best at the pursuit, then what's the point? Is that an accurate summary?

I wonder whether there's a higher level view that really prioritizes status seeking, and that a life should be valued based on outcomes/production. And if you can't produce things at the level of the best, what's the point?

If that is the case, I've certainly had those thoughts when I was younger, and I would offer to consider giving yourself a break. Release yourself of expectations of being the best/most novel/etc. Give yourself permission to be a flawed human. Focus on enjoying the little things, focus on the present. Focus on the journey, not the end. We're the self-aware universe, we're so lucky we get to experience things as we do, let's enjoy the ride while we can. And contrary to what you're hinting at, there are an infinite number of possibilities/knowledge to gain. To think us humans have answered all of the questions of conscious experience and the universe (and what may lay beyond) is incredibly naive.

You're focusing on how socially valued your creative work is (and how it ranks relative to others), which is an external factor. I tend to find that if you justify doing creative work on whether it'll be better/more interesting than others or you think it'll increase your status somehow (popularity/wealth), it's not as fulfilling and you'll probably never create anything.

What I find more fulfilling is creating for its own sake and for myself. Completely abandoning the thought of whether what I'm making will have utility for the whole world and I'll be lauded for it. Creating things that I find interesting, and also abandoning the view whether others will find it as interesting or high quality. For me, I've realized that I feel more fulfilled if I'm doing/creating more and consuming less. The mere act of doing/creating something in of itself is the end I try to seek.

I agree, but I think they are linked.

Culturally, the 'pro gender revolution, LGBTQ' movements and the fat pride movement (amongst other movements) are part of the same underlying thrust of our society. The basis is the idea that the individual should be free to be/do whatever they want (especially wrt themselves/bodies), and it's oppressive to have social norms/laws which restrict or even make the individual feel bad for being as they 'truly' are.

To suggest a way of living is not ideal (even with solid utilitarian arguments) for a set of individuals can be considered oppressive, as you are saying who they are is somehow not good enough. The individuals sense of themself and their feelings are tantamount in a culture so centered on the individual.

On a slightly related note, it does seem like our culture is also moving away from believing humans have free will. A lot of maladaptive states (from a utilitarian perspective) that humans can be in are increasingly described as 'unfortunate'/'unlucky' things that 'happen' to them. This relates to the sense of oppression for social norms that would suggest one way of being/living is not good - "How dare you say my current state is bad, I can't control that!"

I actually don't think invocations of 'natural' are very useful given:

1. There's a degree of ambiguity involved with the term as far as what gets lumped in with natural vs not

2. This ambiguity gets leveraged by those who want to push for whatever their subjective takes on the ideal state of the world/human relations. (i.e. it gets used a lot as a cheap tactic to dismiss human behavioral changes or how we organize ourselves or technological change, etc.)

3. Using 'unnatural' or 'artificial' to describe the modern world on the surface has an air of being descriptive/fact-based, but in reality the speaker tends to be assigning a value judgment (natural = morally good, artificial = morally bad) to a portion of the world they don't like. I don't think I've ever seen someone say "[X] is unnatural, we should have more of it!"

To answer your question on "If the modern human lifestyle isn't 'artificial', what is?' - my answer would be why are we trying to describe the modern human lifestyle as 'unnatural' or 'artificial' in the first place? What are we really trying to convey? I think humans are part of the natural world, and we cannot escape the laws of nature. We live within the bounds of the laws of nature. Calling some of our activities 'artificial' seems to be really about saying we don't like the given activities for whatever reason. And if that is the reason for using the term 'unnatural' or 'artificial', why not just say it and then state why we don't like it?

To bring it all back to the parent I was responding to, is it really that physical labor is some 'natural' thing whereas non-physical labor is 'unnatural' (do any other animals or oganisms do 'labor' as we use the term?)? In general, types of human labor seems like a weird area to assign a natural/unnatural label on. Or is it really about thinking something may be getting lost as we move away from physical labor? And if so, we should just say so instead of leaning on the power of the word 'natural'.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

I think I agree with the thrust of what you are saying, in that we do need to think about the negative externalities of different technologies before scaling them out as a species.

I am getting a little tripped up on your usage of 'the natural world' and 'environmental destruction' though. Aren't humans 'natural'? And if we are natural, shouldn't anything that springs from us also be 'natural'? We are subject to the 'laws of nature'. Is a beaver dam a natural thing? An ant hill? A bee hive? A bird's nest?

It's obviously nitpicking semantics and word usage, but I think people often use 'natural world' to refer to their own human preferences for how the world should look (often just as it looked as they were growing up), and by using the term 'nature', it carries a sense of absolute purity, and anything that goes against it must be wrong.

'Natural' arguments have been used throughout history, and still get frequently used today as a cudgel to dismiss any sort of social/technological change happening.

Now this is not to say that there can't be arguments against certain changes or that all change is the same, but the invocation of what's 'natural' always feels like a cheap rhetorical tactic in place of a stronger argument about why one state of the world is inferior to another state of the world.

Minor quibble with the usage of 'unnatural'. Humans are part of nature and our creations/society we build are a result of nature as well.

In the bigger picture, I don't see why 'physical labor' should be considered some privileged activity of humanity that we must hope to get back to. Movement and physical activity are important for our bodies, but that doesn't mean physical labor is an unalloyed good. If anything, we're seeing evolution at play, we're expending less human energy for our labor over time. That seems good! We just need to figure out how to not let our physical bodies degrade in a way that can worsen our quality of life.

My two cents (as someone who definitely does not have all the answers, but is learning as I get older):

1) Know that this is a completely normal feeling, especially in more individualistic/atomized cultures where status competitions are more pronounced.

2) YOU have the answer to your question, it's just a matter of uncovering it. I would recommend writing/journaling. Spend a lot of quiet time exploring your thoughts, and asking probing questions of yourself. "Why do I want to do more? What do I think will happen once I do those projects? How will that feel? etc." If I were to guess, some of the story may be around the drive for increased social status. But I can only speculate.

3) Remember you are a human with a physical body/needs, stay attuned to it. Move your body, exercise, go outside and breathe in fresh air, eat well, play with your kids/family/friends. Working remote and on a computer is incredibly convenient, but sometimes it removes our attention from the physical world.

4) Be BIG in your very SMALL world, forget about trying to be BIG in the BIG world - If there's any part of you that thinks about how what you accomplish looks to others and how it'll reflect on your relative status/legacy, I'd recommend making your world smaller/more local. The internet/media shows us what outliers are doing all around the world at all times, and it can make whatever we're doing feel so miniscule in comparison. You'll never 'Win' the global status games, nobody can really. Focus on your very small part of the world, your family, your friends, your local community. How can you be the best parent/spouse/neighbor to them? Being good here has the highest ROI once you've let go of the global status games (which you'll be forced to let go of at some point). For creative projects - what will bring YOU or those closest to you joy? Forget about thinking about how anything you build will scale broadly/globally.

To explore the idea being brought up here, what type of death causes are considered 'tragic' or 'one-off'? Is it the improbability of the cause which will influence the decision-making? If so, wouldn't how the cause is categorized/labeled directly impact our perception of the improbability of it?

For instance:

- Being run over by a trolley is a highly improbable event

- Being run over by a vehicle (higher category in which trolleys are a part of) is a less improbable event

- Dying of a very specific form of cancer which destroyed an organ is a highly improbable event

- Dying of cancer is less improbable

In the scenario for organ donation, what if the recipient had an improbable reason for needing the organ?

As far as my own views, I don't know if the tragicness/one-offness/improbability of the cause of death factors much in my decision-making. Though, I do think there's probably a good argument for reducing active suffering (that I haven't fully thought out).

Right now, non-hypothetically, would you be willing to donate your internal organs to those who will die without them, even if it meant you will not survive yourself?

Thanks for sharing some personal context. I'll admit, when people use the terms "hard", "extreme", "alt" before a political direction, I don't really know what they're actually signifying in terms of substantive views.

I'm still having trouble squaring what his views are from the description (not a demand for more rigor here, just an honest appraisal) here. Sure, Trump was looney/incompetent/corrupt, and JD Vance/Blake Masters have said a few things that we can criticize, but I don't know if those pieces of evidence shed a light on Thiel's actual views. As an example, I voted for Biden/Democrats, but if you were looking at what they say/do (particularly the most controversial things in the media) as the only evidence for my views, you wouldn't understand my positions very well.

To share my version of a steelman for Thiel (I'll admit a lot of ignorance here, so anybody please correct me), it seems like there is a major throughline in a lot of what he does around Centralization vs Decentralization.

I get the impression he is for Decentralization of governments/power at large. This can show up in national politics as showing support for local nation ideals (as opposed to a more globalist perspective), limiting the scope/size of government, support for federalism, support for cryptocurrencies, support for individual rights/freedoms, support for testing new government models (i.e. Seasteading Institute), pushing back on the entrenched establishment, etc.

Is every politician he supports going to follow that playbook directly? I wouldn't expect them to. But the Centralization vs Decentralization dimension seems like something he may be thinking about if I'm reading the tea leaves. About how the individual relates to powerful entities, and what is the best relationship between the individual and the state/power for the future of humanity.

If that is in fact what his views are, I don't think they are insane myself. Yes, individual politicians can be wacky/insane, but I think there are a lot of reasonable positions/considerations on both sides that come out of thinking about that broader topic, whether any one politician is truly representing it.

What is Thiel's platform? Without just leaning on name-dropping? What are his actual views?