chaseadam17

we're at the stage of the cycle where we know things are wrong but we don't care enough to do anything about them. unfortunately, it might not be until we live through the consequences that we can muster the energy to care enough again.

No one could ever predict anything and we're all going to die.

This article would be more convincing if it focused on debunking the conspiracy instead of spending all but one hand wavy paragraph presenting a new conspiracy.

The single debunking claim says there are 700k "US top secret-cleared aerospace and nuclear workforce" so normal mortality rates should be higher.

Were these people all part of the normal workforce or a smaller category? Are those death rates total deaths or deaths under suspicious circumstances?

Anecdotally, Amy Eskridge went on a podcast and texted friends saying she was at risk and had no intention of killing herself before supposedly killing herself. Will McCasland and others disappeared under strange circumstances and Will was clearly not just part of a 700k person workforce, he was a general who directed a largely classified $4B annual research budget.

I'm not saying there is a broad conspiracy here but it's worth exploring. I miss real journalism. What a waste of an opportunity to write a good story.

Surprised how negative most of the comments are.

A lot of nonprofits could benefit from someone helping them implement AI and most are 1) competent enough to ensure the fellow hands off their projects before they leave, and 2) to decide if it’s worth continuing to pay for Claude or not.

It’s great the fellows are paid so they are at least somewhat accountable vs volunteers who are often unreliable.

All that said, I bet 80% of what these fellows end up doing is automating fundraising emails…

Haha yeah, we're in "who knows" territory. It could just be a foundational truth that all life has an innate unconscious will to survive.

However, it makes more sense to me that consciousness precedes the will to survive. And that doesn't mean the way a microbe experiences life is the same as us. E.g. the fact that we have so much control over our environment might mean we have a much more sensitive and reactive way of engaging with consciousness, whereas maybe a microbe is like an enlightened monk, just chillin because it can't do much about what it experiences anyways.

How would you determine “an optimal course of action” without consciousness?

Eg we optimize for survival but without the ability to experience things, why survive?

Why would that instinct or any other preference for a course of action emerge?

I'd argue we don't even know what "intelligence" or "self-awareness" mean.

Humans are conscious which means we experience things, then we develop preferences for certain experiences, then we develop skills for achieving those preferences.

Without consciousness, what is there to be aware of? And why would intelligence emerge and/or what end would it serve?

My guess is that you need consciousness in order to develop preferences for certain experiences, then that pushes us to develop skills to achieve those preferences. AI has something that looks like intelligence but not consciousness or agency.

Which they are unlikely to do because the California AG signed off on the original IP transfer agreement…

Best strategy is to subscribe to one streaming service, watch everything good over a few months, then cancel and switch to another.

Great point. I was originally in favor of the fax barrage because I've also been frustrated navigating bureaucracy but you made me reconsider.

These types of problems usually persist because it's hard to know who is responsible. It's not just the customer support person or the president/governor - I assume the invisible senior leaders in-between hold a lot of power.

I'd happily support an investigative journalist who exposed exactly why these problems exist and which individual humans are responsible.

For larger operations wouldn’t it be most effective to mix laundered money with legitimate earnings? If so that would make OF the top choice.

Somewhat unrelated but I won’t be surprised if we eventually find out a lot of OnlyFans revenue is money laundering.

It sucks to feel lonely. You could try a meditation retreat. I found it helpful to sit with loneliness before trying to solve it.

Someone once told me that boredom is often repressed anger. Got me thinking.

Thanks, Greg! We really appreciated all your help. Been too long.

I’m a fan of DAFs and agree they are underutilized. Getting ppl to donate stock might be hard but I’ll chat with Mackinnon, Watsi’s ED, about it and let you know if we have any questions. Appreciate the offer to help share research!

That’s a very long time - thank you both!

The old Teespring office, those were the days!

Love the idea and have long wanted something like this to exist. One other twist is you could let ppl vote on where to donate the profits.

Thank you so much!

That's incredible. Monthly donors are Watsi's lifeblood - it is so impactful to be able to bet on receiving a certain amount each month - thank you!

Thank you :) Watsi is lucky to have an incredible team and medical partners, who work in some of the most challenging environments to provide care to patients.

If you assume this is true, what are the new high-status career paths out of college?

Personal site and blog: https://www.chaseadam.com/

Agree it shouldn't be so binary. Only thing I'd add is that I believe it makes sense for schools to err towards restricting books until the upper age limit of "appropriate" because parents who choose to expose their kids to those topics earlier can still do so (e.g. by borrowing the book from the public library or giving their kid more permissive internet access) without having tax dollars used to undermine the values of those who don't. It's not an easy issue but for better or worse, I'd bet what books schools "ban" actually has fairly little impact on what kids are exposed to, so this might all be increasingly a mute point.

Seems like most of the books deal with complex real-world issues like sexual identity, racism, school shootings, etc. and are banned due to "sexual" or "violent" content. My guess is these criteria can be selectively interpreted to target books that go against political or cultural beliefs but there is obviously some merit to wanting to protect young kids from certain topics. I wish the article mentioned what ages the books are banned for because that seems like an important piece of data. I'm assuming it includes all K-12 public schools?

How does structural change happen in a democracy?

We are the levees in your metaphor and we have agency. The problem is not that one founder does something before another and gains an advantage. The problem is the millions of people who buy or use the harmful thing they create - and that we all have control over. If we continue down this path we'll end up at free will vs determinism and I choose to believe the future is not inevitable.

Agree with OP. This reminds me of fast food in the 90s. Executives rationalized selling poison as "if I don't, someone else will" and they were right until they weren't.

Society develops antibodies to harmful technology but it happens generationally. We're already starting to view TikTok the way we view McDonalds.

But don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Most food innovation is net positive but fast food took it too far. Similarly, most software is net positive, but some apps take it too far.

Perhaps a good indicator of which companies history will view negatively are the ones where there's a high concentration of executives rationalizing their behavior as "it's inevitable."