sudo-nym

Karma: 19

sudo-nym 2 May 2026 19:55 UTC
3 points
2
on: Consider chilling out in 2028
I know a person (who is not me) who was going to college to eventually work on AI alignment, wholeheartedly absorbed this community’s “we need to work at full speed at all times or we’re all gonna die” attitude and took on far too much work, had a complete mental breakdown, and is now a depressed nihilist hedonist.
The problem you speak of is not hypothetical. This community’s doomerism and chronic stress has already incurred real costs in brain drain.

sudo-nym 21 Dec 2023 18:33 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: jacob_cannell’s comment on: Multinational corporations as optimizers: a case for reaching across the aisle
Skepticism about the alignment of government and the incentives thereof has existed for almost as long as governments have. Elections, for example, are a crude but better-than-nothing attempt to align political interests with public interests, and much ink has been spilled on the subject of improving this alignment and even whether alignment to the general public opinion is a good idea.

Far less such discussion has occurred in the case of extremely large companies, as they are a relatively newer concept.

sudo-nym 21 Dec 2023 18:24 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Bezzi’s comment on: Multinational corporations as optimizers: a case for reaching across the aisle
The fact that there is not really an equivalent for AGI is admittedly a place where this analogy breaks down.

sudo-nym 21 Dec 2023 18:21 UTC
1 point
0
on: Multinational corporations as optimizers: a case for reaching across the aisle
A pithier version of this has been suggested to me as “[Corporations are] like paperclippers except for money”.

sudo-nym 21 Dec 2023 18:11 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Walker Vargas’s comment on: Multinational corporations as optimizers: a case for reaching across the aisle
It may also be worth noting how a sufficiently advanced “algorithm” could start making its own “decisions”; for example, a search/display algorithm that has been built to maximize advertisement revenue, if given enough resources and no moral boundaries, may suppress search results that contain negative opinions on itself, promote taking down competitors, and/or preferentially display news and arguments that are in favor of allowing Algorithms more power. Skepticism about The Algorithm is a cause many political parties are already able to agree on; the possibility of The Algorithm going FOOM might accelerate public discussions about the development of AI in general.

sudo-nym 24 Jul 2013 18:55 UTC
8 points
0
on: low stress employment/ munchkin income thread
If you are in the United States, you may want to consider applying for disability. This is ethically questionable if you can support yourself working. It may or may not be a rational economic decision: see below.

Pros:
- Many part-time jobs are not designed for people with significantly and arbitrarily fluctuating energy levels/availabilities.
- Almost no part-time job available to someone without social influence or significant skills will let you earn a comfortable living with a guaranteed income level. Some part-time jobs available to people with skills but not social influence will let you earn a living (ie. freelancing), but the income level is not as secure as a disability check would be. Income security is extremely valuable to people with (for example) some types of anxiety disorders.
- You can get a lawyer to help you appeal disability rulings, if you are denied the first time you apply, without any out-of-pocket cost.
- Free health insurance (admittedly it’s not great health insurance, but it will probably prevent you from going bankrupt).
- You qualify for other government programs such as food stamps and subsidized housing, which stretch your money further than the dollar amount you receive would indicate for your standard of living.
- Disability can be collected indefinitely.
- Because you do not have to work, you will have a lot of free time.
Cons:
- Being on “disability” is low-status like “welfare”. Your reference class will be used to play political football. Specifically, most disability/entitlement programs are currently perceived as unsustainable spending by the Republican/Tea Party ideological cluster.
- Your disability check is highly dependent upon the health of the US government’s finances.
- You need to have a valid disability diagnosis (and a cooperative doctor/psychiatrist; note that you can be prosecuted for fraud if another doctor/psychiatrist examining you could reasonably argue that you aren’t disabled).
- You will be living at the poverty level. You will never get a raise beyond standard-of-living unless Congress passes one.
- Any money that you earn from jobs, tutoring, etc. results in a proportional deduction to your disability check, usually large enough to make it uneconomical to get a part-time job. (Given that the IRS is monitoring Paypal and all “normal” jobs, this pretty much means that the only way to supplement your disability checks is with under-the-table cash work.)
- Student loans count as income against disability, which will significantly decrease or eliminate your checks.
- Unpaid student loan debt can be withheld/deducted from disability.
- You are not allowed to accumulate assets that the US government can see (past $2,000, if I recall correctly), rendering it extremely difficult to plan for the future. (The shoebox under the bed is a plausible strategy for saving, but if it is discovered, you may get accused of drug dealing and/or tax evasion.)
- There exist large-scale “welfare-to-work” programs, but any corresponding “disability-to-work” programs are small-scale and/or run by non-governmental entities.
I suspect that disability is set up, without anyone being at fault, such that the vast majority of the economic incentives prevent you from improving yourself further. A more sustainable program to replace disability on the national scale, one that would not actively discourage going to work or training, would resemble a basic income-type system. Unfortunately, such a program does not currently exist in the United States. (More realistically given the general political climate here, percentage disability ratings like the VA uses would be a sustainability improvement, if they could be implemented fairly.)

I believe that it is at least somewhat ethically justifiable to take advantage of disability if you qualify for it and your disability is significantly impacting your ability to work (even if it does not prevent you from working entirely), because there is no better system in place. However, just because I may be able to justify it to myself (I do not currently collect disability, and am currently agonizing about whether I should) does not mean that you will be able to. Please make your own decisions.