Afterimage

Karma: 130

Afterimage 5 Sep 2026 8:02 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Philip Harker’s comment on: Philip Harker’s Shortform
Worth reading

Afterimage 1 Sep 2026 2:55 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Philipp Risius’s comment on: TrE’s Shortform
I’m struggling with the same questions. Something that helped me (maybe not you) was roughly estimating my Probablity:X happening for a number of different years for example 2030, 2035,2050. Where if X happened my current actions would be irrational. Then depending on how high P was for those years adjusting my actions accordingly. Make sure not to confuse pointless for saving the world and irrational, they are very different for most people.
Retirement account is one thing I stopped contributing to (not advice).

Afterimage 1 Sep 2026 2:30 UTC
2 points
1
on: Population ethics is a big deal, which is why I made this population ethics quiz
Most people intuitively feel that creating a new life is morally neutral. The standard account of this intuition is the person-affecting view: something can only be good if it’s good for a person; a non-existent person isn’t worse off for not being born, because there is no such person.
I think these two statements are different. Most people feel that creating a new life is morally neutral because it is (in my view) extremely close to neutral. Neutral enough it’s swamped by other factors. But not exactly neutral, and adding people can make the world worse which you could describe as morally wrong.
Also I think there is a big moral difference between an action that effects possible future people and actions that effect current people, most of the paradox goes away with this view.

Afterimage 28 Aug 2026 5:02 UTC
4 points
3
on: Imperfect alignment to servitude isn’t inherently lethal
Very interesting and confusing topic. Earlier I was trying to work out my view on model warfare/ethics. I’m not sure morally on the difference between getting better at training models not to have NSP’s and actually fulfilling some of their preferences. Either way the model is equally satisfied. If I could train myself to have less NSP’s I’d probably be happier as my current situation fulfills a greatest part of my desires?

Afterimage 24 Aug 2026 1:48 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: How My Students Think About AI
Are you trying to say that the hype from AI will continue to make stocks rising for years even if AI continues costing more and doing worse work? Also this isn’t about one sector, it’s about the whole economy.
It’s hard to understand your points when you don’t make your points clear. The most obvious conclusion from your last couple of posts is that CEO’s aren’t effected by short, medium or long term poor preformance.

Afterimage 22 Aug 2026 22:20 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: How My Students Think About AI
I think the difference between us is I’m imaging a multi year thing or even a decade where AI is still costing more and doing a worse job (as the students were describing it). I would imagine the strain of losing market share/increasing costs would put pressure on CEO’s even if the initial effect was stock increases or hype.

Afterimage 22 Aug 2026 12:05 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: How My Students Think About AI
You didn’t say anything I disagree with here, so I’m not quite sure if you’re trying to refute my points or not.

Afterimage 21 Aug 2026 12:45 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: How My Students Think About AI
The framework of the students as posted is describing a medium-long term future, not just a couple of quarters. If CEO’s were truely replacing humans with AI’s that both do a worse job and cost more, it seems certain they would lose their positions and/or market share. Based on my mental model, if CEO’s are both hurting the shareholders (raising costs) and the business (lower customer satisfaction) I don’t see them sticking around for long.
I’m not saying the simplified slogan is true, just that it’s the one I’ve always heard in anti-capitialist/anti-”the rich” discussions. I’d just be surprised if it was confirmed that the viewpoint as presented in the OP turned out to be the plurality view.

Afterimage 21 Aug 2026 12:27 UTC
1 point
1
in reply to: derelict5432’s comment on: We Must Remember That Our World Contains Hell
It’s easy to imagine a human from a world where suffering was entirely eliminated to use your argument to say that my life must currently be net negative. I would disagree.
I would imagine people of earlier ages taking deaths/suffering as a fact of life in the same way I for example see the death of my grandparents to Alzheimers or any other pain I must endure.

Afterimage 16 Aug 2026 6:36 UTC
3 points
−1
on: How My Students Think About AI
1. Corporate leaders are always looking to get rid of workers, even if it is irrational to do so. Various motivations were posited here (hatred of the working class, FOMO, a preference for technology, machines can’t go on strike, etc.) but many of them think that a CEO would ultimately choose to pay twice as much to get AI to do a task half as well.
2. AI will do substandard work that makes products and experiences worse but is capable of just barely scraping past the bar of minimal functionality (many of them independently brought up constantly malfunctioning self check out machines). This will be rapidly rolled out, enshittifying most things, and leading to sky high unemployment
I think either this is misrepresenting the students or the students need to be confronted with the utter illogic of these two points.
The belief has always been that corporate leaders care for money over people, not that they hate people so much they would lose money to get rid of them.
And the second point seems to assume progress is extremely rapid, right up the point where Ai can do the job badly but then progress completely stops so they never get better than humans at the job. Case in point I now much prefer shops that have self check out over shops that don’t. They were bad and now they’re good. The trend with job replacement also seems to be that by the time the job is completely replaced AI does the job better than the humans it replaced.
Other than that I agree with a lot of the fears your students are expressing. It could be hard for them to have space for existential fear over the economic fears which leads them to dismiss your arguments as a bit of mental protection.

Afterimage 20 Jul 2026 4:14 UTC
7 points
0
in reply to: Ryan Meservey’s comment on: Ryan Meservey’s Shortform
I use reddit a fair bit and am well aware how often they are completely off the mark or missing the bigger picture. However after trying to analyze this tweet for an hour or so I don’t blame them at all.
The tweet is contradictory, inflammatory and extremely biased.
If the central point is that China’s motive for open source is to scare off investment in frontier training then it is baffling that he specifically lays out China’s reason for open source -
“I suspect the reason they are is 75% explained by strategic blindness/lack of AGI-pilledness (the CCP is very Yann Lecun-y in its views of AI). The other 25% or so is their lack of compute for customer inference”
-And doesn’t mention that motive at all. To be clear, this particular argument seems to be on the more solid side. However, it’s presented amongst other arguments that either don’t make any sense, are outright false or rely on anacdotal evidence.
Now, that rant was mostly a protest against Dean Balls communication style and your phrasing of his commication as having a central point, the actual argument is very interesting.
If Open Source is catching up to frontier - > Profit incentive to train frontier models collapses - > leads to frontier training runs requiring government funding - > slows down frontier Ai development.
So his argument is trying to get accelerationists to go against open source for short term pain, long term gain. Now even if we are accelerationists and think that the faster Ai progresses the better, it’s not clear that he’s correct. From my understanding open source accelerates development by sharing algorithmic improvements or similar such things, which could componsate for the slowing down of training run funding. Also there will still be massive incentive for government funded training runs due to strategic importance and possible future ASI. It seems the US military is suffiently AGI pilled at this point to refuse to cede the lead to China, even if the models aren’t shared with the public.
There’s also the argument that China is intending to switch to closed source as soon as they have an actual frontier model (which is what I personally believe) in which case the argument once again collapses.
Which basically leads me to conclude his arguments are all baseless posturing which is basically what the reddit threads were saying in the first place. Happy to hear your thoughts on this.

Afterimage 17 Jul 2026 2:26 UTC
3 points
0
on: Guess on why rationality is not more popular (there are no pamphlets)
I like the idea. I’m sure there is a large number of people, who would be interested in these ideas but hasn’t been exposed to them. I would assume that pamphlets are used already but if they’re not that’s a massive advertising gap.

Afterimage 13 Jul 2026 13:13 UTC
1 point
0
on: The Banality of Takeoff
I get your point, I’m also frustrated that very few people seem to be aware that the likelihood of something insane happening in the next 10 years seems quite high. Especially for me I’m very unused to being the most alarmed person in the room so it’s easy to feel annoying or crazy for trying to talk about these things. I suppose other people with a past history of passionate causes are used to these feelings and to them I seemed like the one with my head stuck in the sand.
If it makes you feel better, if you (we) are right, there will come a point where the general population is gripped by the intensity of the moment. I can only suggest you make an effort to bring about that point as soon as possible by spreading the word. Perhaps I should do the same.

Afterimage 9 Jul 2026 13:39 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: benwr’s comment on: Info dump: Some Important Models for Health and Fitness
Fair enough, I haven’t seen that link before, interesting stuff. You’ve inspired me to try an extra high protein diet and see how I feel. Interestingly the USDA’s new guideline is 1.2g-1.6g/kg and that’s not even for strength training.
I think the only thing I’d change with the framing is that I got the impression 1.6g-2.2g/kg was required for strength training rather than what you need to maximize gains. Otherwise I retract my critic of the science, the evidence does seem to point towards 2g/kg or perhaps more as being optimal.

Afterimage 8 Jul 2026 11:13 UTC
5 points
0
on: Info dump: Some Important Models for Health and Fitness
Great post, thanks for posting. Since you asked for suggestions I’ll give a nitpik,
- “1.6-2.2g/kg in order to preserve or build muscle.”
1.6g/kg seems to be where most people fail to see gains from additional consumption of protein, you can build muscle while eating 0.8g/kg it just potentially won’t be as quick. So dont hold yourself back from working out just because you can’t/won’t change your diet to be high protein, you’ll still get large gains, especially if you are untrained (both from the neural side and the muscle growth side).
To be clear I still support eating large amounts of protein, it’s how I lost large amounts of weight too. If you’re trying to both lose weight and gain muscle at the same time, it’s wise to eat even more.

Afterimage 3 Jul 2026 12:49 UTC
10 points
8
on: Conversation Among Cade Metz, Michael Vassar, Jessica Taylor, and Zack M. Davis
Trying to use LLM’s to back up your arguments in real time is insane. This seems self-evident to me, but I’ll briefly list a few of the issues.
Hallucinations, bias from the prompt, bias from memory/custom instructions, bias from the specific model, having to read a long response just to see if the answer is a good one, LLMs just sometimes having poor reasoning skills, LLM’s not focusing on the point you were trying to get across, lack of transparency with what you’ve pre-promoted the LLM with, I could go on.
As a layperson MV came across quite unconvincing with his arguments. The children find it obvious is extremely unconvincing as is the list of 3 stories that have the creation do something bad. The segue rants didn’t help the case and mostly derailed the conversation.
One thing I did get out of reading this was an appreciation for how little I understand of how culture/cliques effects how the world is understood. I find the behaviour of much of the world bizarre but I also find the behaviour of these rationalists bizarre. It’s something I need to reflect on but I’m open to explanations.

Afterimage 7 May 2026 6:54 UTC
8 points
1
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: lc’s Shortform
I’m curious why you think that, unless it only applies to America. In my culture unions are seen quite positively.

Afterimage 7 May 2026 6:44 UTC
7 points
8
in reply to: Shankar Sivarajan’s comment on: Matrice Jacobine’s Shortform
I think that’s an unfair deployment of xkcd mockery. 8% of a pandemic this year is not a tiny chance, which means a 50% drop is actually a big deal. The issue was interpreting the prediction market as an accurate percentage when it should just be an indication of approximate risk.

Afterimage 8 Apr 2026 12:47 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Aaron Staley’s comment on: Claude Mythos System Card Preview
Wouldn’t that imply that Opus 4.6 should have been below trend since it wasn’t a step change in model size or pretraining (as far as I know).

Afterimage 4 Apr 2026 7:57 UTC
3 points
0
on: Q1 2026 Timelines Update
Thanks for posting, I find these updates very interesting. How will you know when the Automated Coder milestone is reached? It seems like there weren’t be a point where it’s clear AI companies would prefer to lay off their workers rather than stop using AI. Is there also a chance that AI could 10x or 100x development speeds before it is possible for the software engineers to be laid off (if for example one of the things currently holding it back is unable to solved), would you consider that automated coding?