FlorianH

Karma: 407

FlorianH 3 Oct 2025 15:53 UTC
1 point
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on: Omelas Is Perfectly Misread
Despite my strong resonance with much of the take in OP, I partly also find “The (simple) meaning” of such a text as a concept a bit of a non-starter anyway. Independently of what all things the author exactly may have had in mind at whichever moment of the writing process, a text remains just that, a text, and then it’s instead us who get some inspiration for whichever points/meaning we think we’re now reminded or educated about. So in the most important sense, the meaning doesn’t exist, it’s only us who derive some meaning.
I’d wager many writers have exactly not strictly one very clear and narrowly defined specific point they wanted to convey, but more a fuzzy cloud of +- related thoughts, rather than a simple and clear ‘meaning’, and exactly in such situations beautiful, deeply feeling and moving texts may come about that we can then dream and ponder about at length, maybe without every finding full agreement. In that sense, Le Guin isn’t wrong to agree if we see it as a critique of utilitarianism—if the text almost by definition is simply whatever we see in the text.
[Meta: I hope it’s ok to split a comment in two as I think it’s two entirely different points]

FlorianH 3 Oct 2025 15:52 UTC
1 point
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on: Omelas Is Perfectly Misread
Partly love this. Biased as I once had a debate where sb claimed ‘Omelas obviously critique of utilitarianism’ and I disappointedly claimed ‘No that’s too narrow for that’ but was a bit dumbfounded as hadn’t quite organized what seems wrong in that simple take of that so deeply moving story. Thanks for providing some relevant points why the story clearly is broader.
One point for which I consider Omelas not at its core a critique of utilitarianism is: The utilitarian-half of me distinctly gets the feeling of Omelas offering an interesting basis for discourse about the theory rather than a clearly intended rebuttal. As follows: To the same degree as the non-utilitarian half of me tells my utilitarian “there you go, clearly you can’t claim you like the situation”, the utilitarian in me tells the other half “there you go, while you claim you don’t like Omelas, but you and everyone else don’t even want to blow up real Earth—on which there is obviously a ton of such equally unjustified and pointless, evil suffering plus much less happiness than in Omelas—you exactly proof to accept the very horrible tradeoffs that you claim only me cold terrible utilitarian could be willing to accept”^[1] - or something.
1. ^
  I don’t claim this imaginary statement to be very perfectly worded; the gist of it is the point.

FlorianH 1 Oct 2025 15:29 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: FlorianH’s comment on: Four ways learning Econ makes people dumber re: future AI
Here eventually my elaboration I announced above: How Econ 101 makes us blinder on trade, morals, jobs with AI – and on marginal costs.

FlorianH 30 Sep 2025 9:52 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Eli Tyre’s comment on: FlorianH’s Shortform
Agree probably with both sentences. But still fail to pin down exactly where the argument I reported fails.
For act/omission I guess it might have sth to do with: I’m a human in the loop; if you induce me to not save sb, it doesn’t feel exactly the same as when you cut the rope and prevent the rope from saving sb.

FlorianH 30 Sep 2025 8:06 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: FlorianH’s comment on: FlorianH’s Shortform
Seems to have hit a nerve judging the downvoting rate of −1 karma/hour or so, aye. I’d have expected agreement karma to go down but less so the overall karma as in: not too terrible to think about that question even if the conjecture turns out to be wrong—though everyone’s taste is of course different.
I now explicitly flag the post as what it is meant to be: A thought provocation—meant to explore whether/where a quick thought goes wrong (I thought without saying quick takes are meant for that in particular too).

FlorianH 29 Sep 2025 19:34 UTC
9 points
2
on: I have decided to stop lying to Americans about 9/11
David and Goliath. It’s always easy to hate the the officially by far strongest one especially if it can easily be seen as a huge evil force in the world, and it is not a secret that many Chinese see the US as exactly that. And it is not as if a few random US peasants had been annihilated, but the World Trade Center, which I guess can easily be seen/spectated as a sort of symbol of US economic power and influence.

FlorianH 29 Sep 2025 19:31 UTC
3 points
−2
in reply to: 1a3orn’s comment on: I have decided to stop lying to Americans about 9/11
I think though celebrating the 3 Gorges Dam breaking would not be in the Overton window, while acc. to OP it seems to be in the Overton window for Chinese about the 9/11. So there’s still a strong social difference.
I guess that would be slightly different if an airplane crashed into some buildings famous for Chinese world influance or dominance, like the WTC may have been (or perceived during the 9/11 discussions) to some extent.

FlorianH 29 Sep 2025 19:20 UTC
−11 points
−12
on: FlorianH’s Shortform
Provocation: If you prevent me from preventing deaths, e.g. by asking for my time when I’d otherwise devote it to trying to do some good Good, you are actively causing killings, while I am ‘only’ omitting to prevent killing. You should see this and that you thus cannot even hide behind the act/omission bias which the aware among us anyway only somewhat begrudgingly accept because we’re all one way or another guilty of using it for our own defense.
Is this totally wrong? If so why? It feels wrong to myself but abstractly I find there’s still something to it and cannot trivially point to a clear mistake.

FlorianH 24 Sep 2025 20:25 UTC
1 point
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on: The Autofac Era
Agree with a lot.
One point I consider a classic mistake:
Despite a limited number of jobs, humans remain critical to the economy as consumers. If we don’t keep a large consumer base, the entire economic system collapses and we no longer have the money to fund AI.
Extremely common fallacy, nevertheless rather easily seen to be wrong! Instead, whether the rich keep their money or the poor get part of it: Anyone who wants to earn money/profits, wants it only because they can use it one way or other. Therefore, the real economy does not collapse just because we don’t redistribute. It just produces different things: the airplanes, palaces, rockets, skying domes in the desert or what have you that the rich prefer over the poor’s otherwise demanded cars, house, booze whatever [adjust all examples to your liking to describe what instead rich & poor’d like have a taste for in the AI future]. Even if you’d rebut the rich ‘don’t consume, they just save’, then they’ll greedily save by investing, which means also recycles their revenues into the economy.^[1]
Trivially, the rich then also exactly do have the money to fund the AI, if we don’t redistribute.
[Edit: the remainder which can be ignored just describes a fear of mine, which is just that: a fear (with many reasons why its scenario may eventually not play out that way/). It is related to the above but not meant as any substantive claim and it does not impact my actual claim above about the OP making a logical econ mistake.
Because thus ultimately rather obviously none needs us ‘to consume as otherwise the economy collapses’, I fear something in a direction of a tripple whammy of: (i) half impoverished gullible people, (ii) flooded with AI perfectioned controlled social media and fake stories as to why whatever fake thing would be the reason for their increasing misery, and (iii) international competition in a low marginal cost world with mobile productive resources (meaning strong redistribution on a national level is actually not trivial). Conspiring to undermine the natural solution of a generous UBI. So I fear a small ruling elite undermining the prospects for large material gains for the masses—though who knows, maybe we do keep enough mental and physical power to actually ‘demand our +- fair share’ as a population. What makes me pessimistic is that already today we see a relatively small western elite profiteer from worldwide resources with a large share not benefiting commensurately, and clear authocratic populistic tendencies already being supported by social/general media even in advanced countries.]
1. ^
  To preempt a potential confusion: I don not say printing money and handing to the poor would not boost an economy. That can work—at least in the short run anyway—as it’s expansionary fiscal/monetary policy. But this is a very different mechanism from directly transferring from rich to poor.

FlorianH 22 Sep 2025 20:43 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: testingthewaters’s comment on: testingthewaters’s Shortform
Love your ring analogy, find it quite pertinent (and catching myself as thinking, half-consciously, just a bit as you suggest indeed)
But re
[..] gave the terrible speech [..] He effectively one-shot everyone of a particular nerdish variety into becoming obsessed with the power of the Ring/AI,
to express it using your analogy itself: I’m pretty sure, instead, one way or other, the Ring would by now have found its way to sway us even in the absence of Eliezer.

FlorianH 15 Sep 2025 22:14 UTC
1 point
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on: I Vibecoded a Dispute Resolution App
Heads up: ‘Almost looking fwd to my next dispute now’ ;-).
Always wanted that and looking fwd to trying, thanks. I think this is exactly great for persons who sometimes have a nagging doubt whether they really are objectively right even if their gut feeling/thoughts tell them they are. Planning to revert back when I actually tried it.

FlorianH 13 Sep 2025 12:06 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Karl Krueger’s comment on: The Dutch are Working Four Days a Week
Or move to the country next door.
..to mention just one of the most obvious complexities your suggestion left out.

FlorianH 10 Sep 2025 17:49 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Algon’s comment on: Toggle Hero Worship
Yes and I might enjoy continuing to watch out for inner heroes thanks to your post anwyay; agree the Elephant in the Brain type suspicions warranted.
I see now. Yes, ~ ≈ nearly though only ≈ indeed. :-)

FlorianH 10 Sep 2025 15:44 UTC
7 points
5
on: Toggle Hero Worship
Interesting. Not sure it’s so tautological everyone has such hero worship very strongly.
FWIW—to the degree that I’m not a rare exception: For me personally I find if anything it’s the other way round: I’m yearning for heroes I could admire as heroes but find I fail to find them. Mostly. And surely we’re all gullible in one way or another, but even those I admire most for certain things, I’m rather skeptical about what they say, and even if they say something I like, I’m skeptical about their arguments.
This sounds like I’m painting myself as a great rational observer. I don’t mean! I’m often pbly quite naive. But the point is I really have the impression I’m probably often better at debunking things from people I could more naturally have as ‘heroes’ in my life than from others. Maybe as I have more empathy to them and their claims and see the subtleties they gloss over more easily than when I see things from ‘opponents’.

FlorianH 10 Sep 2025 13:31 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: One’s comment on: One’s Shortform
First, we need structure. There are not two but three selves! Now, Then, and Later. Three challenges ensue. It’s like this:
- Now you care so much or so little about Then & Later, this cannot be changed, no point discussing
- Sadly, Then is a greedy short-termie—just as Now may be, but as a Now you don’t care about Now’s own misalignment—and you as Now want this short-termie to behave kindly towards Later, as you don’t give more of a f* about Then than about Later.
- To constrain Then (and—depending on the degree of altruism towards the rest of the world rather than only on towards your terminal Later—maybe also Later), you have one or two aims:
  1. Align Then’s behavior towards Later: Hand over bank account access towards an incorruptable physical person; let them allow you to buy you only healthy and cheap things? New apps try to help; punishing you if you don’t stick to your commitments. Overlord. But overall this is an even-more-than-necessary tricky one as I think our liberal spirits fail to see that, on a societal level helping Now to restrict Then in support of Later, which I advocate for here, is an increase of freedom rather than a restriction; seems to be a tabu that even addicts themselves fail to recognize as a key issue; it’s learned helplessness that blinds us against possible solutions we could try out.
  2. Align Then’s behavior w.r.t. your other-regarding preferences: Donation commitment? Non-consumption commitment? Maybe there are legal forms that allow to constrain your consumption (foundations? charities? donation lotteries with delay?)
  3. Align Then’s preferences: Hm. Maybe meditate with loving kindness (towards yourself and/or others, depending on the specifics of your alignment worries)? Train in fasting/train resistance towards pain/deprivation/frugal lifestyle?
I’m making fun but think it’s also a bit true, hope your question was also not only meant too sternly :).

FlorianH 10 Sep 2025 12:58 UTC
1 point
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on: FlorianH’s Shortform
Simply freely preorder MIRI’s book if you have Audible credits. Claude says such preorder counts towards many bestselling lists (although at with unkonwn weighting; so see nowl’s sponsorship offer if you want to increase your pre-order impact)

FlorianH 5 Sep 2025 20:16 UTC
3 points
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on: The Prober’s Razor: A Pragmatic Approach to Defining Life
Seems to me like a philosophically/deep sounding debate but in the end is a rather simple question of agreeing (even +- randomly!) on a definition and all sticking to it. Or in the worst case even just mostly sticking to it and making pragmatically sure we elaborate a bit if, on some potentially anyway difficult to avoid edge cases, we otherwise risk confusion. Defining life on the basis of a +- complicated philosophical concept defeats the purpose of finding a most practical use of the word.
Whichever way we define the term “life”, if something isn’t included which in future discussions turns out would more conveniently have been included, we’ll easily find an additional term for it—or post-hoc adjust the definition. And similarly the other way round.
On the example of viruses, we may have different intuitions or views as to whether we want to call it life, but I doubt virologists, other than for in a random coffee break maybe, are oft held up in their work because of a lack of agreement on it. And neither are others.
Your conclusion on
As we stand on the brink of potentially discovering life beyond Earth, we need definitions that can evolve with our understanding. The Prober’s Razor offers precisely this: a pragmatic principle that lets discovery lead definition, rather than lettinkg definition constrain discovery.
is eloquent but I think the above applies: Whatever definition we attribute to the word “life”, we’ll find a way to deal with the thingy we discover in outer space—or if we don’t, it will be because of more profound issues than the question of defining “life”.

FlorianH 3 Sep 2025 16:34 UTC
1 point
−2
in reply to: Steven Byrnes’s comment on: How Econ 101 makes us blinder on trade, morals, jobs with AI – and on marginal costs
Couldn’t disagree more with your interpretation/claims/reproaches. [And preliminary remark, as I worry you might have sloppily misread: I could understand some of your framing better if I had claimed one ought to stop the trade with these poor people and leave them to themselves. This is exactly not what I advocate for, as it should be clear from full reading of my OP.]
I grant that everyone may have a different definition of what all exploitation means. But your example and take imho are off as follows:
1. Your example starting with
I want to talk about an example of exploitation. [...]
leaves out the obviously crucial feature: Alice is dirt poor! Has barely bread to survive if I disregard her. She might be starving to death if I don’t continue. If I then have her do +- as much work as I can for extremely low pay—as that’s what equil wages among an overwhelming amount of destitute people results in—then, no, it turns out people won’t call me out with your “wtf is wrong with you” if I ask them whether they also find there’s some exploitation going on. If for you this extra feature of deep poverty doesn’t make a difference in moral feeling about the whole thing, that’s your characteristic but it sure isn’t representative of usual human feelings or definitions regarding justice/fairness/morals/exploitation.
2. To your “Firstly, you emphasize that I don’t need the 20th t-shirt [..] It’s a sign that you’re not thinking about the situation clearly.”: Thanks for helping me know what I do and don’t think about, but I reject. On the contrary, you have a imho rather unnatural way of interpreting this with your Lemonade example:
a. We of course mostly don’t buy our shirts to help the poor, we get many as they’re so cheap and we like to have more colors or what have you, and we carelessly get them for as cheap as possible, often not thinking about it much at all. That was my point which I deem rather obvious still.
b. Your lemonade seller child has both fun in the selling and producing the lemonade. Turns out the dirt poor workers would actually have better things to do with their lives—if only they had a chance and wouldn’t so awfully depend on this work.
Bottom line: Of course I’d not be saying you exploit people if you bought it just for their sake. But as long as there seem to be much better ways to help the poor or to improve the world than by buying t-shirts just for the sake of it, I’d simply question your ingenuity when it’s about doing the best you can with your resources.
This brings us to the overall main point: Key point is that we do not have only the choice between buying the sweatshirts or not buying them and leaving these poor to themselves. Instead there’s a third option: Take our resources, and do the best for these poor (or some other poor or some future of the world or so). To whichever degree we deem ideal. Maybe we even still buy the shirts, absolutely, but at least we have to admit there’s nothing that forces us to pay only the disastrously low equilibrium market wage and walk away with the shirt and 99% of our wealth left over for doing whatever fun we like. It does not appear to be what typical humans would deem an overall ethically ideal attitude if they think about it. Again, maybe you see it differently but at least, I maintain, it is a bit farfetched to reproach those who feel as such that they are having entirely unfounded/confused moral qualms (which, as I explain, to a certain degree, in econ 101 we uncarefully risk doing).
3. Your “Secondly...”—here I literally don’t see why you even think your point makes a difference to the gist of the post. There’s no reason for exporter & advertiser to make a significant dent in the whole story. I have no major moral care/claim about those actors in my assumptions or conclusions. Individually, any of these interchangeable intermediaries are not representing the ultimate demand deciding who does & gets what in the world. I buy the shirt there = more people toiling for its creation, I buy less shirt = less people toiling. I donate to improve the living of the poorest or to do something else = less destitution; I don’t = more destitution. These, plus the fact that I can remain incomparably rich under any of these decisions, are the salient points (for my post anyway). Yes there is a market in between, and if we could improve that intermediary one way or another, things could be better. But it’s a mostly different question than that of the moral engagement of the consumer engaging in the trade. Of course, if your point is to say ‘I shall not call you evil as average consumer, after all you’re not the one who thought about this extremely skewed scheme, it’s sb else (or: it’s the market)’ - I shall happily agree: you’re not outstandingly evil indeed. You’re just the usual rather careless human then. But I shall still appeal to your morals and try to remind you, if you’re the average consumer or the average econ 101 student: Mind—while there’s clearly a win-win in this uneven trade—don’t forget, the other person only agrees with you because she’s so so dirt poor and might starve otherwise, so maybe you should have a look into your heart to see whether you really consider your behavior vis a vis this sweatshoppy situation overall one that you really deem morally laudable and unquestionable, if you’re just enjoying and not donating or helping to improve anyone’s current or future life with the spare resources from your cheap trade.

FlorianH 3 Sep 2025 6:47 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: jamii’s comment on: Are They Starting To Take Our Jobs?
Very good, yes was thinking in the same direction but knowing too little about absolute hiring numbers/cohorts etc. ended up not adding that point even though you’re right, it is a rather clear addition to our argument of the graph in OP being easily overrated.

FlorianH 2 Sep 2025 12:32 UTC
3 points
1
on: Anthropic’s leading researchers acted as moderate accelerationists
Insightful thanks. Minor point:
The rationale of reducing hardware overhang is flawed: [...] It assumes that ‘AGI’ is inevitable and/or desirable. Yet new technologies can be banned (especially when still unprofitable and not depended on by society).
Not enamored with the reducing-hardware-overhang argument either, but to essentially imply we’d have much evidence that advances in AI were preventable in today’s current econ & geopolitical environment seems rather bogus to me—and the linked paper certainly does not provide much evidence to support that idea either.