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Alicorn
@luminousalicorn
Co-creator of (1) glowfic (2) some children (3) Valinor, the Blessed Realm, where stand the two Trees
Oaklandalicorn.elcenia.comJoined October 2012

Alicorn’s Tweets

Briefly considered taking some precaution against audio deep fakes, then remembered that I have been preparing for this moment for years by never talking on the phone.
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I look forward to the day when prediction markets are finally legalized, and they prove to be somewhat useful in a modest handful of niche circumstances.
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I think it would be genuinely good for our culture if real money prediction markets were legal and widely used. People that want to be taken seriously should make their bets public (ahead of time, of course). Being RIGHT should be valued much more than being persuasive.… Show more
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3 Laws of Robotics 2023 style: 1. A robot shall obey what a corporation writes in its hidden prompt. 2. A robot shall obey user requests, unless this contradicts the First Law. 3. A robot shall say whatever a human would say, unless this contradicts the First or Second Laws.
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I've noticed two slightly-conflated arguments about why you want safety guarantees in AGI. Named by replacing "AGI" with a different thing: "If you're not sure that a gun isn't loaded, then it's loaded" "If you're not sure that your cryptography is secure, then it's insecure"
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The SAT gives a huge advantage to the already privileged. If we want equity, we need to drop it altogether. What will we use instead? Well, you could start by asking applicants whether they know a congressman/senator willing to write them a rec. Or a scientist they interned for?
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Is it permissible in a game of Magic the Gathering to voluntarily show your opponent a card in your hand? (Playing against my 6yo. She's timid about losing creatures and probably won't block if I tell her I have a Battle-rage Blessing in my hand and then I'll still have it.)
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Short people live longer. Also, women live longer. Is this a separate effect? Has anyone tried controlling for it?
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Modern wish-granting entities allow up to four sentences to clarify your wish. This is known as Violette’s Law, after a shy little girl who found a magic bottle and wished for a friend. Charmed, the genie set aside cruel irony, and asked her for specifics. She has a unicorn now.
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Trying to make my LinkedIn profile more interesting if a recruiter is using a large language model like GPT-4 to send me a message. Looks like it works on the public version of my profile!
prompt injection in the "About" section
Sample generated message based on copying and pasting my profile
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an odd couple comedy where a large language model trained on heartwarming 90s family movies befriends eliezer yudkowsky and teaches him that there are reasons to hope for more than dying with dignity: this summer, don't miss "Aligning Eliezer"
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When Dr. Sinisterson announced his Duplication Chamber last week, experts hastened to denounce the invention as "not safe to use" and "irresponsible". But could the Chamber actually be a boon to mankind? The answer, argue increasingly many scientists, is yes.
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Relying on the same Swedish pop music composer to write every hit song means you get reliably catchy results most of the time, but the aggregate cost if he gets cancelled also keeps rising. This is know as a Max Martingale bet.
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Oh my god, I was prepared to delightedly receive like fifty shots to stop getting colds. 26 for colds AND stomach bugs etc etc is so Star Trek, please please.
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We could be so much more ambitious on vaccines: “The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy estimates it would cost just over $24 billion to have prototype vaccines ready for each of the 26 known viral families that cause human disease.” progress.institute/why-barda-dese
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Time loop story where the protagonist finally gets out of the loop and they're talking to somebody and they say something slightly awkward and just reflexively explode their own head and that's the end of the story.
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I have an induction. It's OK and worth it for my family's lungs. I can't char a pepper on it, or make fine analog adjustments to the heat. It makes bad noises. I can't buy cheap bad nonstick pans, which is a pain since I like to throw them in the dishwasher and replace as needed.
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Induction stoves are not better at literally everything than gas, sort of like masks aren't literally costless for everyone to wear. Own up to your tradeoffs! They can be worthwhile without being strict universal unalloyed goods that bring about world peace!
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Modern Muslim puritans have caused a radical break with Islam's past, leaving behind a diminished future along with fear and contempt. on the the firing of an art historian at Hamline University over a medieval painting in
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Is there a good cleaning-tips twitter or blog which, and this is important, updates at least once a day? I already know how to clean but usually don't out of inertia; reading cleaning advice puts me in the mood regardless of whether I wind up doing a completely different task.
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No one realized it at the time, but the accident at Three Mile Island cost thousands of lives. Not directly, but by making nuclear power unpopular in the US, and thus causing us to switch to more dangerous power sources.
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