Aaron Bergman's tweets, April 2022
Every public tweet, reply, quote tweet and retweet that Aaron Bergman (@AaronBergman18 on X, formerly Twitter) posted in April 2022 and has not deleted: 56 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: March 2022. Next month: May 2022.
Friday, April 1, 2022
Quote tweet, 00:43 UTC · 2 likes
The saga continues https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/JfaF3DgwNN6itcmtm/announcing-what-we-owe-the-future?fbclid=IwAR37mUQfHl5eGnxFZ3BXgVBXg0leTHBboM0zczZwrov2AEzGe3iwOGvXDr4
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Cool book but I mostly just want to know whether capitalizing the T was an intentional or strategic decision @willmacaskill https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541618629/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_2YM76XF6E492FNQ9B6D3
Reply to @KaylaAncrum, 12:48 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @KaylaAncrum is no longer available.)
Well there are *different* edible salts. Sodium chloride, potassium chloride, potassium citrate, potassium iodide (for nuclear fallout lol), magnesium citrate, probably a hundred more
Monday, April 4, 2022
Reply to @tszzl, 18:09 UTC · 3 likes
roon (@tszzl): .@elonmusk please give me a seat on the twitter board ill do your bidding
I think there’s like a 1% chance this actually works
Tuesday, April 5, 2022
Reply to @lukeprog, 10:29 UTC · 4 likes
Luke Muehlhauser (@lukeprog): Google's new 540B language model:
We’re screwed lol
Reply to @AbieRohrig, 10:51 UTC · 7 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @AbieRohrig is no longer available.)
Not this particular example, just the general trend of increasing model size leading to more impressive results with no signs of asymptotic or even diminishing returns
Reply, 11:06 UTC · 2 likes
Ok if you’re serious - my $10 to your $1000, evaluated in 6 months?
Reply to @NathanpmYoung, 12:31 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @NathanpmYoung is no longer available.)
~12 y/o me to my first cousin: “c’mon man you can’t be ‘half Jewish, half Christian.’ Do you think he’s the son of God or not?!”
Quote tweet, 15:52 UTC · 3 likes
I feel like right now is analogous to late March, 2020, when predicting COVID’s importance was trivially easy for anyone paying attention but still still kinda contrarian and rare. AI is gonna be a bfd!
Quoting Dave White (@Dave__White): google's new language model is capable of doing word problems and explaining jokes
hard to overstate how shocking this is
i'm bumping my estimate of AI achieving superintelligence within my lifetime to 33%
Reply, 17:16 UTC · 3 likes
@SBF_FTX new arbitrage opportunity for ya
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Reply to @pickover, 03:09 UTC · 9 likes
Cliff Pickover (@pickover): Scream in ecstasy at the mysterious realm of mathematics.
Thursday, April 7, 2022
Reply, 15:45 UTC · 10 likes
A serious chad move would be to go to a less prestigious but still good school without a thriving EA scene and make it happen there. Could be state school honors college
Reply to @juan_cambeiro, 19:10 UTC · 4 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @juan_cambeiro is no longer available.)
Super general but I’m sympathetic to the category of “no you should actually act as though EA ideas are true” critiques. Most obvious example I can think of is that a bunch of 4-6 figure donors donate to charities they don’t think would actually make best use of their money
Reply, 21:55 UTC · 3 likes
If you don’t think animals are sentient, why do you care about their experiencing cruelty?
Friday, April 8, 2022
Reply to @DisplayNom, 16:24 UTC · 2 likes
display nom de plume (@DisplayNom): People in EA way overestimate near term X-risk probability. Some of the numbers in The Precipice are ludicrously fanciful.
I hope you’re right
Saturday, April 9, 2022
Reply to @ArmandDoma, 02:25 UTC · 5 likes
Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma): We're cancelling each other over data takes today. Post your cancellable data takes.
The singular should be “dat” not “datum”
Sunday, April 10, 2022
Reply to @groundedsage, 00:08 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @groundedsage is no longer available.)
Statistics, people! Probably the smallest town in which one such person lives! One postrat in a town of 10k=~8500 in NYC
Reply to @peterwildeford, 00:14 UTC · 2 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): i^i is a real number (not imaginary)... cool proof
http://mathcentral.uregina.ca/QQ/database/QQ.09.08/h/randomness1.html
Disagree.
Reply to @ilex_ulmus, 15:12 UTC · 6 likes
Holly ⏸️ Elmore (@ilex_ulmus): @JulianHazell Girl at the bar: I actually think animal lives are more mixed-to-happy than you’re allowing. Assuming that pain and pleasure have some evolutionary purpose it seems unlikely that pain would be maxed out in the wild and humans would be the only species whose lives are barely okay.
Julian, meet Holly👩❤️👨
Reply to @mickeyxfriedman, 15:30 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @mickeyxfriedman is no longer available.)
I want some serious altruism points if this actually works
Reply to @conor64, 20:09 UTC · 7 likes
Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64): What are the most harmful beliefs that are more widely held than they would otherwise be because of disinformation?
Most meat comes from animals that were not abused (though only if ag gag laws+advertising count as disinformation)
Monday, April 11, 2022
Reply, 14:44 UTC · 12 likes
1) certain nutrients do cross the blood-brain barrier (e.g., tyrosine->L-dopa->dopamine)
2) more importantly, there are a huge number of ways that diet can *indirectly* but importantly affect the brain, like inflammation
Tweet, 18:54 UTC · 6 likes
🧵0 books to read in your 0s:
Reply to @QiaochuYuan, 18:58 UTC · 20 likes
QC (@QiaochuYuan): when jorge luis borges was 19 his father arranged for him to lose his virginity to a prostitute. he apparently found the experience so scarring that he was unable to have sex for the rest of his life
We did not learn about this in AP Spanish Lit
Quote tweet, 22:09 UTC · 18 likes
Hypothesis: Swapcard’s shitty quality is an intentional plot to unite EAG attendees in opposition to a common enemy and offer us plausible deniability and a scapegoat to blame when we miss a meeting or something goes wrong
Quoting alex lawsen (@lxrjl): Broke: suggesting how to fix swapcard
Woke: complaining about swapcard
Bespoke: referring to swapcard as rationalist tinder
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Reply to @trevposts, 17:39 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @trevposts is no longer available.)
👀
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Reply to @nosilverv, 15:20 UTC · 4 likes
Guy (@nosilverv): EA spending tons of money and man-hours to discover one of the most effective interventions is direct cash donations (giving money directly to the poor) is strong Mexican fisherman parable vibes
It’s on the efficient frontier of a few relevant variables like certainty, quality of evidence, and theory of impact, but afaik no one thinks it’s one of the best or most effective interventions
Reply to @mattyglesias, 20:29 UTC · 10 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @mattyglesias is no longer available.)
Ya but like half of Americans believe in literal ghosts so let’s moderate our expectations
Friday, April 15, 2022
Reply to @AndyMasley, 03:25 UTC · 1 like
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): Hit 1 million YouTube views today
👑
Reply to @calebwatney, 03:27 UTC · 13 likes
Caleb Watney (@calebwatney): Normalize using reverse alphabetical order roughly half the time 😤
I attribute any success I may have in life to alphabetical privilege
Saturday, April 16, 2022
Reply to @nsztl, 10:30 UTC · 3 likes
Noah (@nsztl): Is there enough text to make this worthwhile?
Ooh this is a good question. Are there estimates of the total number of digitized words/characters? Could that meaningfully limit LLMs in the future?
Reply, 10:49 UTC · 13 likes
The fact that Google searches are free and easy suggests the marginal cost of their computation is ~0. If that’s true, what is stopping a service like Google from performing the same level of search quality on one’s own computer’s files?
Reply to @mattyglesias, 10:55 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @mattyglesias is no longer available.)
I wonder whether some of this is indeed caused by less use of recreational drugs that seem to legitimately work against depression, like ketamine, mdma, and lsd
Reply to @a_brisbanite, 11:53 UTC
🌆 (@a_brisbanite): It’s free because you’re not the customer, you’re the product.
Sure, but the marginal ad revenue Google gets by inducing a single extra search is also basically zero
Reply to @depthsofwiki, 20:23 UTC · 1,753 likes
depths of wikipedia! (@depthsofwiki):
I will never stop tweeting this
Reply, 23:23 UTC · 7 likes
Common misconception. You just need tinkering and memetic/cultural evolution
Monday, April 18, 2022
Reply to @daniel_271828, 16:22 UTC · 3 likes
zzDANIEL_ETH (@daniel_271828): If every EAG you go to is clearly worth it, then you’re not going to enough EAGs. At optimum, the marginal EAG you go to should be ex ante neutral, and ex post the least worthwhile EAG you go to should be negative.
I think you’d have to subtract out the marginal labor+money cost if your having attended for this to work
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Reply to @NathanpmYoung, 11:32 UTC · 6 likes
Nathan 🔎 (@NathanpmYoung): Top tier utilitarianism:
At my party, a guy lost a shoe. He was gonna leave in a sock. I offered him my sandal. He refused vehemently. I said they were very cheap. He took the sandal. Then:
"You might as well give me the other one as well"
He's not wrong!
Hmm but giving the second shoe might create a moral hazard around being careless with shoes
Reply to @elidourado, 23:22 UTC · 3 likes
Eli Dourado (@elidourado): It is baffling to me that very few if any of you are freaked out by the likelihood of a global supply-side recession.
/ht @mattparlmer
(quoting @EricMertz_KC: Holy shit, China is even more fucked than I thought...)
What’s the move if we think you’re right, and know better than the markets? Not being sardonic - I’ve become skeptical of efficient markets these last few years!
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Reply to @MichaelTrazzi, 20:18 UTC · 25 likes
Michaël Trazzi (@MichaelTrazzi): who made this?
Mega chad: sets out to make $1 trillion because we’re funding constrained at the ~$50B margin
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Reply to @pli_cachete, 03:19 UTC · 7 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @pli_cachete is no longer available.)
Google how to solve your problem (it’s free)
Thread, continued, 03:21 UTC · 4 likes
https://aaronbergman.substack.com/p/for-gods-sake-google-it?s=w
Reply to @chrislakin, 23:51 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @chrislakin is no longer available.)
Make👏it👏public 👏 (if u want to)
Friday, April 22, 2022
Reply to @MariGO2thepolls, 18:55 UTC · 3 likes
🏳️🌈Mar G-O 🌐🇺🇦 (@MariGO2thepolls):
Lol I don’t think the guy on the left exists
Saturday, April 23, 2022
Reply to @embryosophy, 07:56 UTC · 7 likes
+ big buddhi + (@embryosophy): @strangestloop
Yea if this is the least interesting, can you just link ur whole camera roll?
Reply to @PradyuPrasad, 08:11 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @PradyuPrasad is no longer available.)
Lfg - can you tell who’s the account right next to me?
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Reply to @RyanRadia, 17:29 UTC · 3 likes
Ryan Radia (@RyanRadia): @JosephPolitano Could be worse! ;)
@JosephPolitano DESTROYED with FACTS and DATA
Monday, April 25, 2022
Reply to @tszzl, 02:15 UTC · 4 likes
roon (@tszzl): what i'm learning is that the proceeds from crypto fund an endless global party like something out of a science fiction novel. amsterdam one week, miami the next, and on, with the same recurring cast of characters
Yeah but then there’s @SBF_FTX making up for all this bullshit with earnest philanthropy lol. A few other smaller crypto donors too
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Reply to @rmcwhorter99, 03:23 UTC · 1 like
Ryan McWhorter (@rmcwhorter99): @Tjdriii That’s really a 17-22 struggle
Damn I got like 10 months to figure out my life
Reply, 13:40 UTC · 1 like
Yea that one should be easy
Reply to @PradyuPrasad, 15:44 UTC · 4 likes
Pradyumna 🇸🇬 (@PradyuPrasad): weird question
what are the places outside economics where economists have and can do the best work?- nuclear strategy
You should 100% apply for @80000Hours coaching. Basically guaranteed to be accepted
Reply to @rohn_jawls, 15:54 UTC · 8 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @rohn_jawls is no longer available.)
Hate to be earnest here but most strength gains come from improved neuromuscular activation, not bigger muscles
Friday, April 29, 2022
Reply to @AlecStapp, 00:18 UTC · 4 likes
Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp): Tyler Cowen’s talent spotting skill is off the charts 🤯
Reply to @benjamin_hilton, 18:42 UTC · 48 likes
Benjamin Hilton (@benjamin_hilton): 2) A sign that says "beware of the dog"
Ngl if I saw one of these signs I would 100% not break in to that house. Especially the second 💀
Reply to @SeanMombo, 23:55 UTC · 3 likes
sunshine ☀️ revival (@SeanMombo): used a glue trap to catch a mouse and then realized i had to kill it myself still.
then i got some mousetraps for the rest of them. two babies triggered one of the mouse traps and neither died and i had to kill them too
Theyre quite literal torture. Seeing a glue trapped mouse slowly dying was probably one of the key events that “radicalized” me on animal welfare
Saturday, April 30, 2022
Tweet, 21:11 UTC · 7 likes
I try not to be reactively cynical, but one true thing few people tell hs/early college students is that at least one of your majors should be chosen purely for signaling value, which generally means the hardest/most rigorous subject you can tolerate and do well in
Thread, continued, 21:11 UTC · 3 likes
I was lucky enough to come across @bryan_caplan’s whole “education as signaling” thing in high school, and I’m glad that I did! I added a math major (alongside econ) ~100% for the signals, and in hindsight that was 100% the right call
End of April 2022. Previous month: March 2022. Next month: May 2022. Back to the archive index.