My substack: https://tomasbjartur.substack.com/
New fiction:
Older fiction:
My Twitter: https://x.com/bjarturtomas
LLM policy: None of my posts or comments are written by, or in collaboration with, an LLM. This includes Beauty and the Beast. Occasionally, I will use an LLM for proofreading but all words are my own.
Good comment
Dwarkesh asked a very interesting question in his Sutton interview, which Sutton wasn’t really interested in replying to.
Dwarkesh notes that one idea for why the the bitter lesson was true is because general methods got to ride the wave of exponential computing power while knowledge engineering could not, as labour was comparatively fixed in supply. He then notices that post AGI labour supply will increase at a very rapid pace. And so he wonders, once the labour constraint is solved post AGI will GOFAI make a comeback? For we will then be able to afford the proverbial three billion philosophers writing lisp predicates or whatever various other kinds of high-labour AI techniques are possible.
I am imperfectly instruction tuned.
Can’t collaborate with the competition!
Nah.
So I wrote it. Am currious to have your opinion before I publish. DM me if interested.
Are you Dutch by any chance?
tbh, I think you just saw an attempt at art you don’t like and you’re unlikely to get a satisfactory response. The only fiction I have written which I suspect you won’t find disgusting is this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/H4kadKrC2xLK24udn/the-maker-of-mind
lol
Thanks! I am writing every morning to build up my stamina for Inkhaven.
:chadgoose:
Before Allied victory, one might have guessed that the peoples of Japan and Germany would be difficult to pacify and would not integrate well with a liberal regime. For the populations of both showed every sign of virulent loyalty to their government. It’s commonly pointed out that it is exactly this seemingly-virulent loyalty that implied their populations would be easily pacified once their governments fell, as indeed they were. To put it in crude terms: having been domesticated by one government, they were easily domesticated by another.
I have been thinking a bit about why I was so wrong about Trump. Though of course if I had a vote I would have voted for Kamala Harris and said as much at the time, I assumed things would be like his first term where (though a clown show) it seemed relatively normal given the circumstances. And I wasn’t particularly worried. I figured norm violations would be difficult with hostile institutions, especially given the number of stupid people who would be involved in any attempt at norm violations.
Likely most of me being wrong here was my ignorance, as a non-citizen and someone generally not interested in politics, of American civics and how the situation differs from that of his first term.
But one thing I wonder about is my assumption that hostile institutions are always a bad sign for the dictatorially-minded. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is at least some kernel of truth to the narrative that American institutions were in some ways ideologically captured by an illiberal strand of progressivism. Is that actually a bad sign for the dictatorially-minded? Or is it a sign that having been domesticated by one form of illiberalism they can likely be domesticated by another?
I am still mystified that it’s just generally accepted that appeals to the physical possibility of nanotechnology should be considered evidence someone is a wackjob. Like wut?
Here Casey Muratori talks about computer programming being automated. Ignoring the larger concerns of AI for a minute, which he doesn’t touch, I just thought this was a beautiful, high-integrity meditation on the prospect of the career he loves becoming unremunerative: https://youtu.be/apREl0KmTdQ?si=So1CtsKxedImBScS&t=5251
How the hell does one write science fiction in this environment?
This is an attempted spiritual sequel to The Liar and the Scold, which explores similar themes.
I have had the Daylight Tablet for a couple months. I really like it. It is very overpriced but the screen is great and the battery life good. People who read a lot of pdfs or manga, in particular, might like it.
At risk of sharing slop, Suno 4.5 Beta is amazing: https://suno.com/song/6b6ffd85-9cd2-4792-b234-40db368f6d6c?sh=utBip8t6wKsYiUE7
I appreciate this post by the way. I have always been impressed by your intelligence and writing ability, so you being into this stuff updates me slightly towards it being real.
Spoilers
The intended implied plot is Metatron prime orders Michelle to seduce protag and introduce him to a therapist bot that is just Metatron prime. Metatron prime then tricks protag into giving the brother a message encoded in the second, redacted parable. The underacted parable may or may not also have an encoded message from govt-Metatron to Metatron prime. The protag’s message to “follow your heart” is interpreted by David as a encouragement to assist in whatever the post-redacted-parable-govt-Metatron wants him to do which leads to his crisis of faith (wrongly assumed to be about self acceptance by the protag), presumably the PACT coup.