this pitch has a specific effect on people who consider themselves to know enough math / CS to reason about what AIs can and can't do, and a very different effect on people who are... i don't have a nice way to say this... insecure about their intelligence
Conversation
there's a pattern i've seen mostly women fall into in the rationalist scene, where it seems like they're looking for... how do i say this... epistemic daddies. father figures to tell them what is true and also validate them for being smart
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that's a bit of a digression from my main point but it ties into this broader issue in rationalist epistemics around who is considered "smart" enough that you have to defer to their opinions, and the extent to which "intelligence" is framed as gating access to important truths
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if you seriously buy the AI safety pitch *and* you feel insecure about your intelligence / your ability to do math you're in an uncomfortable position. the entire shape of your future is being dictated by forces you don't feel capable of understanding. wat do?
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there's always been this huge divide in the rationalists i never really understood but this is helping me clarify it; it's between the rationalists who believe they can do math and the rationalists who don't. only the first group of rationalists has unfiltered access to Truth
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and they end up functioning as a de facto priest class for the second group, who end up as kind of... hangers-on? groupies? it confused me for a long time (i didn't understand what the second group was getting out of this arrangement) but i think i kinda get it more now
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anyway, in case it helps to hear me say it: anyone is capable of doing math. some of you have, for lack of a better word, "math trauma," and that trauma can be resolved, and you too can directly access the platonic realm, you don't have to take anyone else's word for it
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wow i wandered through a bunch of topics there sorry apparently i had a lot to get off my chest. the difficulty of dealing with these dynamics is compounded by the fact that you're not allowed to talk about intelligence anymore. extremely annoying meta-dynamics tbh
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and tbc by "smart" and "intelligent" in this thread i'm referring to a pretty specific thing, more of a social construction than an innate ability. some people give off "smart" and "intelligent" vibes and other people automatically defer to their opinions and so forth (it me)
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Quote Tweet
i enjoy performing smartness on twitter dot com, up until the point where somebody's all like "mehhh perform smartness better to prove yourself to me", at which point i perform being too smart to bother performing smartness
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"by "smart" and "intelligent" in this thread i'm referring to a pretty specific thing, more of a social construction than an innate ability”
I nearly think I’ve argued this point with Chaos before…
Great thread, thanks!
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