Aaron Bergman's tweets, February 2022
Every public tweet, reply, quote tweet and retweet that Aaron Bergman (@AaronBergman18 on X, formerly Twitter) posted in February 2022 and has not deleted: 31 posts, oldest first, times in UTC. Each heading links to the original post on X. When Aaron replies to or quotes someone, their tweet appears as a blockquote with their name; those words are theirs, and everything outside the blockquotes is Aaron's.
This page is one month of the complete archive of Aaron Bergman's tweets, which updates automatically every few hours. Previous month: January 2022. Next month: March 2022.
Thursday, February 3, 2022
Reply to @KatjaGrace, 05:28 UTC
Katja Grace 🔍 (@KatjaGrace): Is there a place you know of that does much better on this? (Could still be worth avoiding if nowhere does, but other places spend their time on entirely different valuable things)
Came here to ask this too. I’d guess Oxford, are any other cities dominated by a single elite university?
Tweet, 18:57 UTC · 10 likes
The type of serious grappling with longtermism and suffering that longtermist EAs should do more of https://qualiacomputing.com/2021/11/13/david-pearce-on-longtermism/
Thread, continued, 18:58 UTC · 1 like
By @webmasterdave
Reply, 22:10 UTC · 1 like
Basically, yes. He begins the first quote with “in my view,” which takes most of the mystical/spooky edge off the term evil. And lots of the other claims are shockingly normal:
Reply, 22:10 UTC · 1 like
For example, “Well, on an (very) optimistic note, I wonder if both longtermist and near-termist effective altruists who are NUs and CUs could unite on a “traditional” EA agenda of effectively tackling existing sources of suffering.”
Thread, continued, 22:12 UTC · 1 like
On the other hand, it’s hard to tell if I’d have the same interpretation if his views weren’t quite similar to mine
Reply to @mattparlmer, 23:54 UTC · 1 like
mattparlmer 🪐 🌷 (@mattparlmer): Really obnoxious to see people taking Ezra Klein et al seriously
Pretty sure this is wrong. You can’t peg every bad Vox take on Ezra. Is there an example of something he has *actually said or written* that you think is cynical/bad faith? FWIW, I take his coverage of animal welfare as evidence is his favor
Friday, February 4, 2022
Reply to @myhandle, 07:43 UTC · 2 likes
Jakeup (@myhandle): the "money printer go brrr" jokes hit different when even the local barbershop starts posting inflation explainers
No they don’t, preventing high unemployment is worth this level of inflation. I don’t think monetary policy doves generally think printing more money comes with literally no downside
Tweet, 22:20 UTC · 2 likes
Being taken by the Twitter zeitgeist, I wonder if this has implications for the capability limits of large language models like GPT. If you add enough parameters, will GPT-n be able to rotate shapes? I don’t have a strong intuition either way
Thread, continued, 22:20 UTC · 2 likes
From, of course @tszzl’s https://roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words
Monday, February 7, 2022
Reply to @robertwiblin, 23:27 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @robertwiblin is no longer available.)
Should he double down and try to become 2+ times wealthier? Why or why not?
Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Reply to @trevposts, 04:17 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @trevposts is no longer available.)
Do it
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Reply to @lymanstoneky, 17:52 UTC · 2 likes
Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 (@lymanstoneky): it's actually crazy to me that many schools do *not* have riflery classes!
Nah this is a bad idea. Strong correlation between firearm availability and gun deaths, and I don’t think most students would endorse the trade off upon reflection
Thursday, February 10, 2022
Reply to @DisneyDragon, 20:31 UTC · 5 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @DisneyDragon is no longer available.)
Somewhere a 22 year old consultant really said to himself “I know how to make Venn diagrams🤔”
Reply to @thisburneracct, 22:22 UTC · 6 likes
This Burner Account (@thisburneracct): @mattyglesias @alexeyguzey Another one that can be debunked with less than 5 secs of Googling
Yeah but the whole point is that the top search results might be *wrong*
Saturday, February 12, 2022
Tweet, 17:28 UTC · 3 likes
Idea: the “natural rate of homelessness” as a concept, analogous to the natural rate of unemployment. It’s what the homelessness rate would be if there were no land use restrictions or other related market failures.
Monday, February 14, 2022
Reply to @algekalipso, 15:40 UTC · 1 like
Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@algekalipso): It's psychedelic if it messes with the energy parameter in a broad spectrum way to the point non-linearities emerge, increases the dimensionality of experience, enhances association bandwidth, changes control dynamics (causing tracers), and has clear neural annealing effects.
It’s psychedelic if it activates 5HT2A receptors
Reply to @nic_carter, 15:43 UTC · 1 like
nic carter (@nic_carter): me, seeing an ad for charles schwab on tv. wow. must be a bubble. these "stocks" are a risky business. if they were worth buying they wouldn't have to sell them to us with ads. reminds me of the south sea affair.
This is not analogous lol. Advertising a company’s product is not the same as advertising it’s own equity
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
Reply to @bayeslord, 05:50 UTC · 4 likes
bayes (@bayeslord): I feel like the burst of openai ppl talking about alignment and conscious language models is a hint that they’ve cooked up something freaky as fuck
Oh fuck
Saturday, February 19, 2022
Reply to @metakuna, 15:49 UTC · 2 likes
metakuna (14/100 blog posts) (@metakuna): new EA cause area: make vitalik ripped
Get that man some soylent
Reply to @metakuna, 15:55 UTC · 2 likes
metakuna (14/100 blog posts) (@metakuna): @PradyuPrasad skeptical about the whole thing but keep about 5% of my money in it just in case
Same, almost exactly
Tweet, 22:10 UTC · 4 likes
Is there any reason why we *shouldn’t* issue a Green Card to every Ukrainian citizen? Seems like that would eliminate most of the harm of a Russian invasion.
Thread, continued, 22:10 UTC · 2 likes
I mean I know it’s not going to happen, but it seems like the whole idea of decoupling a nation state as a geopolitical entity from the actual people who live there is unfairly neglected
Thread, continued, 22:10 UTC · 2 likes
Looks would take roughly 90,000 747 flights to evacuate the whole country so that would probably take a minute. At 12 hours/flight and $25k per flight-hour, we’re looking at $27 billion, which is a lot but only about 3% of our annual military budget…
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Reply to @RatOrthodox, 05:28 UTC · 1 like
Brangus🔍⏹️ (@RatOrthodox): Why aren’t there opposite investors? People who bet you money that you will fail, and you are legally obligated to pay them back only if you do fail. This might be a good way to fund experiments and other research projects.
It’s the opposite of insurance. People generally don’t like increasing risk/variance while keeping expected value the same
Monday, February 21, 2022
Reply to @nickcammarata, 19:09 UTC · 4 likes
Nick (@nickcammarata): gf: periods should be a cause area
has anyone made an EA-like proposal for this? It seems credible to me
The immediate question in my mind is why the market wouldn’t/hasn’t solve this problem in rich countries. Maybe because healthcare in general is a clusterfuck of market failures?
Reply to @Techgnostik, 19:10 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @Techgnostik is no longer available.)
“Rationally” is doing a lot of work here. Meth and heroin are already legal as prescription drugs.
Wednesday, February 23, 2022
Reply to @the_aiju, 22:57 UTC · 3 likes
Emily - 🚂 Bristol Oct 6-9 (@the_aiju): is it worth making a linkedin account for job hunting
Yes. The best justification I’ve heard is that publicly outing your career history there serves as a check on lying on your resume, which is why employers value it
Thursday, February 24, 2022
Reply to @AlecStapp, 01:28 UTC · 1 like
Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp): Vision Zero to eliminate traffic deaths in DC… not going great
Yes but maybe the counterfactual is that there would have been millions of traffic deaths these last six years. Causal inference is hard.
Friday, February 25, 2022
Reply to @tszzl, 00:18 UTC · 2 likes
roon (@tszzl): meeting some top tier AI/ML people tonight, what should I ask them?
How much would someone have to pay you to switch into AI safety?
Monday, February 28, 2022
Reply to @micha_frazer, 19:00 UTC · 7 likes
micha (@micha_frazer): do you remember how hyped the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" was when we were kids. it was all the rage. no one talks about antidisestablishmentarianism anymore
I thought I was the only one. What emoji should we use for antidisestablishmentarianism Twitter?
End of February 2022. Previous month: January 2022. Next month: March 2022. Back to the archive index.