Aaron Bergman's tweets, March 2025
Every public tweet, reply, quote tweet and retweet that Aaron Bergman (@AaronBergman18 on X, formerly Twitter) posted in March 2025 and has not deleted: 613 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: February 2025. Next month: April 2025.
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Tweet, 00:38 UTC · 1 like
@Replit should take business advice from me and stop being stingy about file storage of all things
Tweet, 00:38 UTC · 1 like
You actually see the same thing here on twitter with Elon maxing out on at 2004-era video quality for free users and 2012-era ones for paid
“penny wise, pound foolish” but multiply each by idk 10^7
Thread, continued, 00:38 UTC · 3 likes
YouTube is like extreme proof of the financial viability of lenient file hosting
If they can allow unpaid randos to upload 2 hour 8k videos for free and turn a profit, you can be a bit chiller too
Tweet, 02:13 UTC · 2 likes
One good thing about Trump is that he’s willing to be cringe
Unfortunately this is in the service of bad ends but still
Quote tweet, 02:15 UTC · 2 likes
Extremely underrated tweet of mine IMO
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): This is less ambitious than what @PauseAI and friends are calling for, but a somewhat more plausible ask is “pause (frontier) AI until the next POTUS election” or at least “no self-improving AGI” until than
Thread, continued, 02:16 UTC · 1 like
It’s not just a guy - it’s an entire administration and to some extent the entire American administrative state
It’s a really big deal!
Quote tweet, 03:53 UTC · 7 likes
If an institution makes a promise like that, and people sign up for their service, they can’t just remove it from the terms of service right? Lol
Like that’s false advertising which is generally illegal
Cc @FTC
Quoting Theo - t3.gg (@theo): This is one of the wildest git diffs I've ever seen
Reply to @StatsLime, 03:59 UTC · 2 likes
Max ⏸️ Limelihood 🔸🔸🔸 (@StatsLime): I think they do it because it makes them horny
Not necessarily mutually exclusive or independent
Reply to @StatsLime, 04:01 UTC · 4 likes
Max ⏸️ Limelihood 🔸🔸🔸 (@StatsLime): I feel like that's the main reason tho
Tweet, 04:05 UTC · 7 likes
I’ve gotten a low-medium amount of happiness out of having meme pictures like this in my Favorites folder
Which isn’t a ton of extra utility but given the cost it’s a great buy
Thread, continued, 04:05 UTC · 4 likes
More
Thread, continued, 04:05 UTC · 4 likes
Last but not least
Tweet, 04:47 UTC · 3 likes
Why no war/invasion insurance between countries?
Full on military allyship is a big ask; this could be a mutually beneficial regime both because it acts as a deterrent for the boring economic utility reasons that insurance is often a good buy ex ante
Tweet, 05:02 UTC · 8 likes
What
Thread, continued, 05:05 UTC · 3 likes
Force kill and my computer works well again yay
Tweet, 06:10 UTC · 12 likes
Discovered that even though coding agents like cursor are a trillion times better than me 99.9% of the time they will once in a while miss something trivially obvious if you follow the code around yourself (in this case, importing pandas as pd for the second time at line ~1000)
Reply to @ptrschmdtnlsn, 09:08 UTC · 3 likes
Peter Schmidt-Nielsen (@ptrschmdtnlsn): This is one of those interesting things where the threshold is pretty sharp. I can beat every 4 year old in the world at chess, with 5 year olds it's unclear and depends on the current batch of prodigies, and with 6 year olds I don't stand even the slightest shadow of a chance.
(quoting @chesscom: what's the oldest Magnus Carlsen you think you could beat at chess?)
Super interesting
Tweet, 16:39 UTC · 75 likes
Nonbinary people not beating the “still deciding” allegations
Reply to @AndyMasley, 16:54 UTC · 2 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): Simply type up all your life problems, throw it into a deep research prompt, follow the advice, and you should be good
I have literally basically done this. So far not a ton of success
Quote tweet, 18:06 UTC · 3 likes
I think ~frog boiling is a real phenomenon and we (on AI-adjacent twitter) naturally forget how weird and surprising AI capabilities are
Like I’m pretty sure I would have said the latest gen of LLMs were ~impossible pre-ChatGPT; moderately surprising advances compound fr
Quoting AI Notkilleveryoneism Memes ⏸️ (@AISafetyMemes): Imagine showing this tweet to people a few years ago, how they would react
Tweet, 18:06 UTC · 1 like
(I’m not sure a talking computer is would be more impressive than like an airplane to a feudal peasant, but we were born into a world with airplanes; the uncommon thing with AI the importance of the technology and pace of progress)
Quote tweet, 18:27 UTC · 9 likes
I suspect SOTA AI would be surprisingly unsurprising to (very roughly) pre-industrial people
That world was “enchanted” with spirits, fairies, physical icons endowed with the spirit of a saint, etc.
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): (I’m not sure a talking computer is would be more impressive than like an airplane to a feudal peasant, but we were born into a world with airplanes; the uncommon thing with AI the importance of the technology and pace of progress)
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 18:29 UTC · 13 likes
Aaron Bergman, March 1, 2025: Nonbinary people not beating the “still deciding” allegations
(I say this with love and whimsy)
Reply to @AmandaAskell, 18:33 UTC · 7 likes
Amanda Askell (@AmandaAskell): I like climbing because the two types of people who seem to be best at it are (a) people who have dedicated every waking moment of their life to it for decades and (b) five year olds.
I was type a for quite a while lol
Tweet, 22:53 UTC · 13 likes
YOU COULD BE MY ROOMMATE (Arlington VA, basically DC)
Sharing on behalf of my current roommate who is moving out and trying to find someone to take over lease.
DM me if interested!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Looking for a tenant for a furnished bedroom in Rosslyn, Arlington in March, April, or May. Great location in downtown Rosslyn, across the river from DC, 5 minutes from the metro and a grocery store and CVS. The room is 10.5x13.5” + attached closet. Fits a full-sized bed, a large L-shaped desk, bookshelves, an easy chair, another low shelf.
Bathroom shared with one roommate, there’s another roommate (with his own bathroom) in the apartment also. The water pressure in the shower is the best of anywhere I’ve ever lived. Nice third-story apartment in a small building with stairs from the outside. Apartment has full kitchen and washer/dryer. $1150/month + electricity and internet. Roommates are two chill and nice dudes, both EAs if that sweetens the pot any.
Feel free to pass this on if you know people who might be interested.
(Also big furniture can stay, random stuff will not)
Reply to @MariGO2thepolls, 22:54 UTC · 2 likes
🏳️🌈Mar G-O 🌐🇺🇦 (@MariGO2thepolls): There’s rly no reason to own more than four shoes tbh
Pairs of total
Reply to @mattyglesias, 22:56 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @mattyglesias is no longer available.)
How much
Tweet, 23:51 UTC · 5 likes
The limiting factor on vibe coding is that the models are much better at generating complexity than making targeted changes to a complex system, although they are quite good at the latter
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Tweet, 01:37 UTC · 8 likes
Anyone vote for Trump and now regret* it?
* in the sense of thinking you’d change your vote now if you could, not necessarily that you made the wrong decision ex ante
Thread, continued, 01:40 UTC · 7 likes
I don’t expect regretful Trump voters to be a large bloc, but I do expect them to be disproportionately represented in the set of people who will see this (some of y’all came up with galaxy brain reasons to support him)
Reply to @algekalipso, 01:44 UTC · 3 likes
Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@algekalipso): Hanging out with David Pearce, Zach Eagleton, and Curran Janssens at the AI for Animals conference :-)
Oh based how is/was it?
Quote tweet, 01:45 UTC · 12 likes
Is anyone else at AI for Animals? I’m not but very curious to hear if it was good/fun/interesting
Quoting Captain Pleasure, Andrés Gómez Emilsson (@algekalipso): Hanging out with David Pearce, Zach Eagleton, and Curran Janssens at the AI for Animals conference :-)
Reply, 01:48 UTC · 1 like
Wait why did I think that? Sorry!
Reply to @dhadfieldmenell, 02:51 UTC · 22 likes
Dylan HadfieldMenell (@dhadfieldmenell): Since I’m a glutton for punishment, here’s another long-held critique I have for Lesswronger alignment folks:
Your community seems intentionally designed to prevent people with different intellectual commitments and approaches from participating.
Let me illustrate with a story.
The specific example you give sounds plausibly bad on its own terms, but “designed to prevent people with different intellectual commitments and approaches from participating” is arguably what characterizes an academic discipline or intellectual movement
(to be pedantic I guess this would less wrong (ha) if one said it was “designed to” do some other thing and the boundaries are a necessary side effect of that)
Reply to @snuppydogg, 03:01 UTC · 2 likes
snuppydogg (@snuppydogg): Jews are the perfect people to be 2-4% of your country
Lmao
Reply to @eshear, 03:28 UTC · 6 likes
Emmett Shear (@eshear): Abolishing suffering is one of those goals that inevitably generates suffering.
Ah no this is an incorrect take; and it’s unironically never been tried
Reply to @eshear, 03:29 UTC · 2 likes
Emmett Shear (@eshear): You can have my negative valence experiences when you pry them from my cold, dead mind
I genuinely think this is the worst take I’ve ever seen you have
I can’t speak for anyone else but no I’m don’t wanna force anyone to do anything; I’ll bite the bullet on “yeah it’s bad to torture a pig that wants to be tortured” but personal preferences and reducing suffering are like 99.99% aligned
Reply to @eshear, 03:31 UTC · 8 likes
Emmett Shear (@eshear): So you don’t want to abolish suffering, just reduce it?
You’re being uncharacteristically uncharitable
Reply to @hyperdiscogirl, 03:49 UTC · 4 likes
hyper(bolic) disco(unting) girl in the bay (@hyperdiscogirl): @sympatheticopp eating very spicy food makes me feel a high of sorts but i don't think that's what they're speaking of...
Yeah same, literal endorphins I believe
Tweet, 06:42 UTC · 4 likes
Men will literally fuck up the Federal Government of the United States of America before reinstating Circles
Tweet, 06:49 UTC · 88 likes
Acausal trade + evidential decision theory seem like an infoblessing
I now regularly think along the lines of “doing X is evidence that people like me do X”
It’s not complex, it’s totally non-obvious, and the potential gains from coordination (“trade”) are enormous
Thread, continued, 06:50 UTC · 9 likes
It’s almost a little too surprising that such juicy low hanging fruit could have been left unpicked
What am I missing?
Reply to @LinkofSunshine, 07:25 UTC · 2 likes
Basil🧡 (@LinkofSunshine): hating cringe is not a morality system
I mean it is, just a bad and wrong one
But yes
Reply to @QualiaNerd, 07:36 UTC · 7 likes
QualiaNerd (@QualiaNerd): The reason why we know that qualia exist is NOT qualia reports.
The reason why we know that qualia exist is that qualia exist, and this is self-evident: 🔴🔵🟢🟣🟡.
(quoting @robinhanson: If we hooked it up to eyes, hands, etc., we could train it to report being aware of itself & world. If we gave it another "sensor" that we told it tracked when it "really felt" other inputs, we could train it to report what that sensor said. How is our "real" feeling different?)
I’m like 95% sure qualia are legit but I don’t actually think we have direct knowledge of it
Direct access *to* qualia doesn’t imply direct access to knowledge *about* it
I don’t think it’s literally impossible that I’m radically mistaken about my current subjective experience, up to and including it not existing
Reply to @QualiaNerd, 07:44 UTC · 3 likes
QualiaNerd (@QualiaNerd): Well, even if I were to concede that I can be mistaken in my belief that qualia self-evidently exist - still, I have a higher certainty in the existence of qualia than I have in anything else.
To give a very practical example, I am more confident in that there are colors in my visual field (🔴🟢🔵🟣🟡🟠) then I am confident in even having a brain.
Yeah I agree but there are two ways to go with this:
1) some other propositions are very likely so qualia are even more extremely likely
2) qualia are only so likely so we are radically unsure about literally everything
Tbc I think the first one is true, but (sorta recursively lol) not for certain!
Quote tweet, 08:01 UTC · 1 like
Qualia doubters don’t always grasp what p(qualia) < k (pick ur k) implies, which is is that p(the sun rises tomorrow) < k as well
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): @QualiaNerd Yeah I agree but there are two ways to go with this:
1) some other propositions are very likely so qualia are even more extremely likely
2) qualia are only so likely so we are radically unsure about literally everything
Tbc I think the first one is true, but (sorta recursively lol) not for certain!
Thread, continued, 08:01 UTC
Ofc even qualia doubters will keep behaving as though the sun will rise tomorrow
This isn’t inconsistent—it tacitly illustrates the point!
Which is that if we are radically uncertain about ~everything, then all bets are off, so we may as well assume that’s not the case
Thread, continued, 08:01 UTC
This kinda feels like a trick but I don’t think it is
If qualia aren’t real, nobody has a damn clue what kind of spooky metaphysical goo the world is really made out of (“will the sun rise tomorrow?” “What sun?”)
Thread, continued, 08:01 UTC
“if we are radically uncertain about ~everything, then all bets are off, so we may as well assume that’s not the case” points towards, well, assuming qualia are real for all practical purposes, regardless of what you think the true probability is
Thread, continued, 08:01 UTC · 2 likes
This isn’t a rock solid argument for qualia tbc. I only think they’re like 95-99% depending on the day and yeah we might just absolutely wrong about literally everything
Reply to @Insect_Song, 08:15 UTC · 13 likes
Cogent Sins🔎 (@Insect_Song): >I now regularly think along the lines of “doing X is evidence that people like me do X”
Juicy examples?
Juicy? Uh sure, if I was to get a glass of juice rn, that would be evidence that the next guy who responds to a similar tweet will do the same
The actual random thing that comes to mind is calling/emailing a politician about something after seeing the opportunity on the EA Forum
Like I don’t really feel like it and I’m probably not gonna make the difference, but I do actually want to live in the world where everyone like me (eg doesn’t really feel like it, does think it’s good) does the thing
Thread, continued, 08:17 UTC · 3 likes
It doesn’t always point in this like canonically pro-social direction
Like at some threshold of “really don’t wanna do it”, the math does in fact flip for me and I no longer wanna live in the world where ppl cause themselves tons of pain in order to email their congressman
Reply to @ModeledBehavior, 08:20 UTC · 3 likes
Adam Ozimek (@ModeledBehavior): At some point "stop with the virtue signaling" became "stop with the virtue having"
Reply to @a_real_society, 08:21 UTC · 1 like
society (@a_real_society): I'm thinking about giving being normal a shot, any advice
Nah
Tweet, 08:22 UTC · 5 likes
What should I use my ChatGPT deep research queries on?
Expiring soon
Feel free to just pitch whatever u personally wanna know - I’ll send the results
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 08:28 UTC · 7 likes
Aaron Bergman, March 2, 2025: It’s almost a little too surprising that such juicy low hanging fruit could have been left unpicked What am I missing?
*maybe acausal trade + FDT
Something like that
Reply to @aidan_mclau, 08:45 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @aidan_mclau is no longer available.)
In economic theory you’re looking for “total surplus” I think, which is usually (always?) consumer + producer surplus = sigma_{over all transactions and people}(willingness to pay - price paid)
Tweet, 08:48 UTC · 17 likes
I’m watching someone fall in love it’s pretty cool
(not me unfortunately)
Reply to @dlbydq, 08:50 UTC · 1 like
Anish Tondwalkar (@dlbydq): @AaronBergman18 anyways, I think it is more apparent that qualia are real than the apparency inherent in the observations leading up to "the sun will rise tomorrow", so I think the above is (false and) a much worse argument for qualia than simple apparency
Fundamentally I think all apparency grounds out in qualia or something extremely similar to it like “raw intrinsic propertyness”
Tweet, 20:22 UTC · 15 likes
Whatever Trumpism is is one of the dumbest—not merely worst—ideologies around
Quote tweet, 20:29 UTC · 24 likes
@ journalists who could use some context when attacking EA from the left
Quoting Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): @littmath @KellerScholl @fardarter @JosephPolitano There was actually a recent large survey with some politics questions
Thread, continued, 20:33 UTC · 6 likes
EA is…checks Claude…Massachusetts
Reply, 20:34 UTC · 2 likes
Coase’s "Net effect?" Ghost 🏴🕊️ (@GhostCoase): I think it is possible the movement is disproportionately left-wing while social media figures are centrist, in fact with evolutionary psychology social media figures, if anything, often seem positively right-wing, while surveys of professors show no such thing.
Maybe a bit directionally? I still think we’d see a left leaning distribution if only surveying self-identified EAs on Twitter, even if weighed by follower count
Reply to @skooookum, 20:37 UTC · 9 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @skooookum is no longer available.)
I would genuinely kinda like the last thing
Reply to @bryan_caplan, 21:57 UTC · 17 likes
Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan): The classic mistake of the old: Thinking there are no new ideas.
The classic mistake of the young: Thinking your ideas are new.
You have a 2 week span at the age of 31 to get things right
Reply to @GhostCoase, 22:36 UTC
Coase’s "Net effect?" Ghost 🏴🕊️ (@GhostCoase): @AaronBergman18 Prolonging the war is a triple crime: more soldiers and civilians are killed and wounded, more infrastructure is destroyed and, as payment, the peace settlement will be worse when Russian forces have advanced more and Ukrainian forces are more depleted.
Prolonging the war is a Ukrainian choice to make; whether to keep supporting them conditional on continuation fight is a different q
Quote tweet, 22:48 UTC · 20 likes
Deleted this post. I think Ukrainian conscription without WWII-level stakes makes it not “the easiest possible war to get behind”
I think I still support US support, but this was overstated
Thanks to @GhostCoase for some discussion
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): @GhostCoase Prolonging the war is a Ukrainian choice to make; whether to keep supporting them conditional on continuation fight is a different q
Thread, continued, 22:56 UTC · 4 likes
I still think it checks out from a selfish American POV (which is not my all-things-considered POV tbc), which means, probably contrary to “conventional normie wisdom”, US policy to arm Ukraine might be good for Americans and bad for Ukrainians (which is who/what I care about, not Ukraine the metaphysical entity)
Quote tweet, 22:59 UTC · 5 likes
This was a good take 3 years ago and it still
Free ticket to America, courtesy of the US Air Force
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): 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.
Reply to @justjoshinyou13, 23:02 UTC · 4 likes
Josh You (@justjoshinyou13): bad for Ukrainians only if you think the Ukrainian government has very bad judgment.
And this argument is a bad one for not arming Ukraine. You can continue to arm Ukraine and pressure them towards a deal, or offer them even more arms if they make a deal.
Yeah I think it’s totally possible the Ukrainian government has bad judgement
wartime conscription has to be like the strongest example of when we should expect individual people’s interest to diverge from those of political leaders
Reply to @SOPHONTSIMP, 23:05 UTC · 2 likes
GOON MASTER SOPHONT SIMP (@SOPHONTSIMP): Do you think universalizing this strategy any time a country is invaded by would lead to good outcomes on net?
That’s the most likely reason I’m wrong for sure
But yeah I think it would actually (this is highly dependent on me thinking the US should be way more populous and open to immigration for other reasons)
Reply to @SOPHONTSIMP, 23:10 UTC · 2 likes
GOON MASTER SOPHONT SIMP (@SOPHONTSIMP): I also think the U.S. should be way more populous and open to immigration.
However I feel like this strategy works out beautifully for invading counties. Like I guess territory without any of the original inhabitants has less value, but it does still have great value-
Idk seems like not a bad thing if everyone, even the bad guys, are left better off (this has to check out all things considered tbc, not just in a naive first order sense which makes it hard)
Monday, March 3, 2025
Quote tweet, 00:24 UTC · 12 likes
Very interesting idea by @labenz here: dump subsidized AI inference (I guess api calls) into China to (1) suppress their domestic industry, (2) ensure that their people still get to benefit, and (3, kinda overlapping with 1) prevent tech tree divergence
Quoting sarah (@littIeramblings): if you relate to this tweet, my latest pod episode with @labenz might help! we chatted about the many developments on AI over the last year, including reasoning models, spooky alignment failures & more.
sneak peek below and full episode in the replies!
Thread, continued, 00:24 UTC · 3 likes
Kinda upset I didn’t think about this from first principles lol
Reply to @panickssery, 04:34 UTC · 3 likes
Arjun Panickssery (@panickssery): PEPFAR stuff is obviously serious but I think the discourse feels a bit fake in the sense that it doesn't swing anyone's overall view on Trump and his agenda vs Harris and hers
and definitely during the election itself the same EA/progress studies types that are making a big deal out of the measurable impact of PEPFAR weren't making quantitative arguments but almost exclusively non-quantitative arguments about the directions of norms that Trump had threatened
Lol both quantitative global health and qualitative rule of law arguments can be good/true
Quote tweet, 04:40 UTC · 40 likes
I did this!!!!
Washington Post every morning at the breakfast bar. I unironically grew out of it
Quoting gabe (@allgarbled): I told my girlfriend that as a child I used to read the newspaper every day and she started making fun of me
Thread, continued, 04:40 UTC · 5 likes
Not beating the allegations
Tweet, 06:02 UTC · 5 likes
I can't believe this is how programming works now
Tweet, 18:42 UTC · 29 likes
Functional decision theory isn’t obviously right
Thread, continued, 18:42 UTC · 2 likes
I kinda think you shouldn’t smoke (a weird intuition here is that maybe you’re imagining that you already have a strong desire to smoke, but if so that’s information you’ve already acquired—and it’s not what the thought experiment says)
Reply to @frances__lorenz, 19:02 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @frances__lorenz is no longer available.)
Can’t find my tweet on this but regression to the mean vs straight lines on a (log) graph (ie when one heuristic is better than the other) is undertheorized
Reply to @MLaGrangienne, 19:07 UTC · 3 likes
L'amour est cerise... 🍒🏳️⚧️ (@MLaGrangienne): stance on counterfactual mugging and XOR blackmail?
I’m against mugging and blackmail (I will actually look these up)
But tbc “FDT is right most of the time and a decent approximation of true decision theory” is quite possible
Tweet, 21:45 UTC · 5 likes
Idk if I’m doing something wrong but gpt-4o-mini is literally 20x faster than Gemini-flash-2-lite when you try to parallelize
It seems like google is throttling parallelizability (?) on their end (which seems really dumb?)
For better or worse, OpenAI makes a good product lol
Reply to @tenshi_anna, 22:05 UTC · 2 likes
Anna K. Winters (@tenshi_anna): autism is better understood as an unconscious spiritual rejection of God’s grace. few understand this
:(
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Reply to @ESYudkowsky, 00:11 UTC · 3 likes
Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️ (@ESYudkowsky): In this setup, if people like you suppressed your desire to smoke, smoking would be found to be uncorrelated with cancer, and then you'd have no warning sign and also no tasty cigarettes. So you should all smoke and accept your warning.
Afaict thought experiment doesn’t say anything about “desire” it only says whether you do or not is evidence of cancer
This is super pedantic but I think load bearing - you don’t actually know yet whether you’re the kind of person who chooses to smoke yet (or the kind of person who must “suppress” their desire or merely naturally doesn’t wanna smoke)
Reply to @ESYudkowsky, 00:17 UTC · 2 likes
Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️ (@ESYudkowsky): If you can notice the urge to smoke, before smoking, then that of course screens off any evidence from the actual smoking. This is known as the "tickle defense" of evidential decision theory, though most EDTers who espouse it claim they also therefore two-box on Newcomb. :/
Yeah we agree about this. This is why I objected to your use of the phrase “suppressed your desire”
Probably just confused lol (many such cases)
Reply to @DeepDishEnjoyer, 22:26 UTC · 3 likes
peepeepoopoo (@DeepDishEnjoyer): YESSSSSS GOT THE MONEY SHOT 7 FIGURE DAY BABY
wtf
Quote tweet, 22:53 UTC · 83 likes
FIRE is the OG ACLU
Quoting FIRE (@TheFIREorg): Today, Texas A&M University System banned drag shows on the theory that they *might* "contribute" to a "hostile environment."
The only thing hostile here is Texas A&M's disregard for the First Amendment. Drag is protected expression. Full stop.
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Reply to @tautologer, 00:47 UTC · 2 likes
tautologer (@tautologer): went for a walk
Waow
Quote tweet, 00:57 UTC · 86 likes
This continues to be true
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Orange man bad
Reply to @keysmashbandit, 00:58 UTC · 2 likes
keysmashbandit (@keysmashbandit): @AminiCorp that explains the suit
Got a chuckle
Reply to @JesseTayRiver, 02:46 UTC · 4 likes
Jesse Smith (@JesseTayRiver): I thought Ezra Klein's interview with Bob Buchanan was excellent but this segment bothered me. Seems likely that someone is being dishonest
Marc Andreesen does not seem like an honest person
Tweet, 02:53 UTC · 29 likes
Trumpism is clarifying (I think) what @tylercowen meant by “state capacity libertarianism” several years ago (iirc)
Trumpism is the opposite of this—pseudolibertarianism—in the sense of simply reducing state capacity without actually reducing de jure regulatory burden
Thread, continued, 02:53 UTC · 9 likes
The result is that the average taxpayer saves like $5 (ofc most/all of this goes to the rich) and all of society is worse and less competent. It’s a really bad system
Thread, continued, 02:53 UTC · 6 likes
IRS enforcement is a good litmus test for this
State capacity libertarianism is positive on IRS funding/enforcement (as long as this doesn’t lead to extralegal harassment); Trumpism/pseudolibertarianism says “burn it all down”
Quote tweet, 02:55 UTC · 2 likes
Bad stuff
Quoting OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical): Immediate impacts from the total US shutdown of intelligence sharing to Ukraine will be wide-ranging, but Russian air strikes targeting civilian infrastructure will likely become more effective.
Comes at a time when the US has cut Ukraine off from air defense supplies.
Tweet, 14:58 UTC · 89 likes
I’m extremely curious how this all ends
Thread, continued, 14:58 UTC · 22 likes
It’s not a natural thing to be curious about. This is likely the only time in history it makes sense to be curious about the matter
Reply to @panickssery, 15:03 UTC · 8 likes
Arjun Panickssery (@panickssery): Interesting that as of now the most common answer is "10 year olds" rather than "1 year olds"
In the replies people are making up non-sequitur reasons about 'potential'
but if you suppose that people have an out-of-date instinct about child-mortality rates then it makes sense
image attached
image attached
(quoting @tenobrus: there are 4 age groups of 10 people each tied to 4 train tracks. trollies are hurtling down all 4 tracks and will kill all unless stopped. luckily u have exactly one comically large block of cobblestone u can place to stop a trolly. which group do u save? (all others perish))
I think it can be justified for a variety of other reasons
The 10yo has hopes and dreams
Society has also invested quite a lot in the 10yo by now
Quote tweet, 15:24 UTC · 24 likes
Ahhhhh why is it just Elon and not also @open_phil ?!?!
The very least they do is file an amicus curiae
Quoting Garrison Lovely (@GarrisonLovely): Preliminary injunctions are extremely hard to get, so Musk's failure to get one isn't a surprise. What is surprising is that the judge basically says that if Elon had standing, the injunction would be warranted!
Thread, continued, 15:27 UTC · 5 likes
I didn’t one-shot “curiae” I looked that shit up
Quote tweet, 16:14 UTC · 7 likes
Who is this even for? Did MAGA folks even want this?
Quoting Dan Roy (@roydanroy): Vindictive much?
Friday, March 7, 2025
Tweet, 12:21 UTC · 6 likes
Have you seen anyone in person irl with an Ash Wednesday forehead thing
Tweet, 12:26 UTC · 84 likes
New cause area: make insects have vertebrae so OpenPhil will fund their advocacy
Reply to @RafaRuizdeLira, 12:36 UTC · 5 likes
Rafael Ruiz ⏸️🔸 (@RafaRuizdeLira): @AaronBergman18 I'm shoddily taping bones on them like this rn
@open_phil this is a major development
Reply to @davidshor, 12:40 UTC · 2 likes
David Shor (@davidshor): These are the top personality correlations controlling for demos like age/income/education/etc with being more sympathetic to Luigi vs Thompson.
It generally paints a pretty grim picture about what is driving his support imo.
R go brr
Reply to @MariGO2thepolls, 13:11 UTC · 4 likes
🏳️🌈Mar G-O 🌐🇺🇦 (@MariGO2thepolls): wtf r lesbians complaining about?
If I could choose I’d be born a lesbian
Reply to @Mjreard, 14:43 UTC · 2 likes
Matt Reardon (@Mjreard): This year or ever?
I was thinking in the last few days but as an ideological pedant Ill say you can vote your conscience
Reply to @NULobbyist, 15:10 UTC · 2 likes
NUL (@NULobbyist): Part of lib recovery plan from Trump catastrophy should be juicing all aligned men to minimum 1000ng/dl test levels. If it turns you into a Chud all that shows is that your faith was weak to begin with and we can do without you.
(quoting @Austen: Still think about this often. NPR did testosterone level testing and the *highest* level of testosterone in the building was so low you should see a doctor about it.)
1000 is a little high especially when you’re accounting for variation in SHBG but directionally I agree
Reply to @ElytraMithra, 15:15 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @ElytraMithra is no longer available.)
Ur scaring them away
Quote tweet, 17:47 UTC · 6 likes
On one hand, saying Dems need to chill on trans issues is a hell of a reason to get kicked out of BunnyChat
Otoh really study that second sentence
Noah has been slinging takes for…checks Claude…15 years! And the totality of all irl ire is getting kicked out of BunnyChat!
Quoting Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@Noahpinion): I got kicked out of a rabbit-related San Francisco chat group because of this tweet! First time in my life someone has ever gotten mad at me IRL about online political stuff.
Reply to @tautologer, 18:22 UTC · 17 likes
tautologer (@tautologer): they don't want you to know this, but "woke" has a definition that's both useful and captures most of common usage: it's "illiberal progressivism".
so "anti-woke" was a strange coalition: some were opposed to the illiberalism, while the rest were opposed to the progressivism
I remember explaining this to my parents years ago during Covid and used the term “illiberal leftism” - “illiberal progressivism” is better though
Reply to @peterwildeford, 19:32 UTC · 11 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): New cause area: make OpenPhil have vertebrae so OpenPhil will fund insect advocacy
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Tweet, 19:43 UTC · 5 likes
I got a cheap Thinkpad on Craigslist that allegedly was made in 2020 and allegedly has 16GB RAM and now I understand why Apple is a $4T company
Saturday, March 8, 2025
Tweet, 03:26 UTC · 5 likes
She’s back for round 3 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
Tweet, 12:59 UTC · 67 likes
My most conscientious take is that you shouldn’t be scared of free trials
Just set a google calendar event for a few days before the thing starts charging you to decide whether or not to cancel
Thread, continued, 12:59 UTC · 11 likes
If you’re following me you’re probably in the conscientiousness elite
Reply to @NULobbyist, 13:16 UTC · 2 likes
NUL (@NULobbyist): @AaronBergman18 Absolutely could not be less accurate, I would fail to cancel after a free trail even if the monthly fee was a chunk of my liver.
Lol to each their own I guess
Quote tweet, 14:06 UTC · 14 likes
This is approximately true (and even more true than for startups, I assume) in the world of every-other-type-of-civil-organization (university club, volunteering org, informal nonprofit, vague boundaryless movement)
Quoting Dr. Dad, PhD 🔄🔼◀️🔽▶️ (@GarrettPetersen): In a startup with relatively flat org structure, the person who talks authoritatively becomes the de-facto boss.
Tweet, 14:13 UTC · 281 likes
Ex-OpenAI employees should consider personally filing an amicus curiae explaining to the court (if this is true) that the nonprofit’s representations were an important reason you chose to work there
Thread, continued, 14:13 UTC · 27 likes
I’m not sure if any ex-OpenAI employees are following me (sad), but I do know a couple of them are following my followers so it’s not crazy they could see this
Thread, continued, 14:13 UTC · 20 likes
It’s also not obvious to me that this would be characterized as “disparagement” for those who signed NDAs they don’t want to break
Factual and personal representations to a federal court would be a hell of a thing for OpenAI to go after, legally
Reply to @SpacedOutMatt, 14:35 UTC · 2 likes
Matt 🔸 (@SpacedOutMatt): Kill me
I won’t do that since, not being made out of venison, wouldn’t qualify for the tax credit when processed
People respond to incentives, it’s econ 101
Reply to @DaphneRHansell, 14:39 UTC · 3 likes
Daphne Hansell (@DaphneRHansell): This is like a parody of democrats trying to appeal to rural voters with kludgey policy
Ok on the merits I’m not actually sure it’s a bad policy (wild deer meat probably displaces factory farmed meat and hunting deer probably doesn’t increase wild animal suffering (?))
Quote tweet, 14:45 UTC · 4 likes
Ok at first I RT’d this bc it’s funny as an appealing-to-rural-whites thing but the policy is actually growing on me and is plausibly an *insufficient* step in the right direction…
Quoting Daphne Hansell (@DaphneRHansell): This is like a parody of democrats trying to appeal to rural voters with kludgey policy
Thread, continued, 14:45 UTC · 5 likes
Wild deer meat probably displaces factory farmed meat and it’s not obviously bad for the deer insofar as predation and hunger are their alternative ways of being killed
Thread, continued, 14:47 UTC · 3 likes
Like $75 just isn’t a ton of money for the effort of going out and killing a deer, but people do respond to incentives
At some non-astronomical level ($2k?), and barring being convinced that it’s unethical, I would personally be interested in taking up deer hunting
Quote tweet, 15:35 UTC · 62 likes
I regret to report this is kinda funny
Quoting JD Vance (@JDVance):
Quote tweet, 17:52 UTC · 7 likes
In honor of Women’s Day I’m bumping this offer
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): @_alice_evans @mmt_lvt I like girls and volunteer to be their friend
Reply to @timfduffy, 18:28 UTC · 3 likes
Tim Duffy (@timfduffy): Dank and also I take his side on this one, the making fun of him based on his appearance feels pretty gross to me.
Ya fr
Tweet, 18:32 UTC · 142 likes
Bumping this suggestion from the EA Forum. I think some ppl seeing this live in California!
Reply to @timfduffy, 18:32 UTC · 3 likes
Tim Duffy (@timfduffy): I think Vance is a bad person, but gosh darn it I won't accept that as a reason to launch nasty attacks against him. In addition to being mean, I don't think it's effective
(quoting @timfduffy: JD Vance did not write that he had sex with a couch in Hillbilly Elegy, and I think it's bad to make jokes about it. I want a road back to a world where Rs and Ds treat each other with respect, and sexual slander is not on that path.)
💯
Reply to @paul_cal, 21:24 UTC · 3 likes
Paul Calcraft (@paul_cal): @AaronBergman18 What's your second most conscientious take?
Hmm probably always carry around 2 keys ideally in 2 different locations (eg pocket and bag bc sooner or later you’re gonna lose one (and 10x as often you’re going to momentarily freak out [if only carrying one] and think you lost one)
Thread, continued, 21:27 UTC · 2 likes
Picture of drivers license and insurance card has come in handy a ton. I guess that’s number 3
Number 2.5 is also carry around first aid stuff, a battery pack charger thing and anything else you might like to have that’s relatively small and light (pen, headlamp, cash)
Quote tweet, 23:16 UTC · 18 likes
Truly a master orator
Quoting Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): “I don’t think what I’m about to say is true. Actually, that’s not true.” - @AaronBergman18
Sunday, March 9, 2025
Tweet, 01:40 UTC · 5 likes
Cursor is a gazillion times better than me at ~everything but like maybe once or twice a week I will give it some naive qualitative suggestion that just fixes whatever issue is going on
Strange dichotomy
Tweet, 03:34 UTC · 4 likes
Convince me you should smoke
I don’t like the highlighted bit: The important evidential part is that *smoking is evidence of cancer, all things considered* …
Cc @NoahTopper
Thread, continued, 03:34 UTC · 4 likes
If you learn the ground truth about whether or not you have a carcinogenic genome (before deciding whether or not to smoke), the smoking <> cancer correlation remains but smoking per se no longer provides additional evidence about cancer
Thread, continued, 03:34 UTC · 2 likes
In some sense, evidence is all there is
Causation is one type of evidence but not the only type
Decision procedure is relevant to situations where the world cares about your decision procedure; in this case it’s irrelevant
Thread, continued, 03:40 UTC · 3 likes
I tentatively think FDTers get convinced of FDT by basically only considering situations in which the world cares about your decision procedure, and then generating a genuinely helpful principle with which to deal with *that set* of situations, and then falsely (implicitly) conclude that this is the one true principle with which to make all decisions
Fight me @ESYudkowsky
Quote tweet, 03:44 UTC · 1 like
Ok here’s a very tentative proposal:
- EDT is true
- causation is one type of evidence (not the only type)
- your own decision procedure is sometimes a type of evidence (not the only type, and not forming a partition with causation)
- idk what else there is but in general, X thing is a tempting form of decision theory because it’s a form of evidence
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): In some sense, evidence is all there is
Causation is one type of evidence but not the only type
Decision procedure is relevant to situations where the world cares about your decision procedure; in this case it’s irrelevant
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 03:47 UTC · 4 likes
Aaron Bergman, March 9, 2025: I tentatively think FDTers get convinced of FDT by basically only considering situations in which the world cares about your decision procedure, and then…
Tempted to make this a LessWrong shortform but I don’t know if I wanna deal with 75 people writing up careful and nuanced takes and not unreasonably expecting a response
Quote tweet, 06:22 UTC · 15 likes
I’m not actually convinced that smoking gives you higher utility, which seems to be taken as basically ground truth by everyone afaict
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Convince me you should smoke
I don’t like the highlighted bit: The important evidential part is that *smoking is evidence of cancer, all things considered* …
Cc @NoahTopper
Tweet, 06:22 UTC · 1 like
I’m not even convinced it gives you lower utility (although I think this is the case under intuitive understandings of how good/bad smoking and cancer are)
I think it’s ambiguous until you define all the relevant parameters
Am I being dumb/crazy/tired?
Thread, continued, 06:25 UTC · 2 likes
Ok I’m on the warpath, this is like Sleeping Beauty 2.0
Your decision procedure ABSOLUTELY influences (well for some understanding of that word) whether you get cancer
P(cancer | decision procedure that outputs smoking) > P(cancer | decision procedure that outputs not smoking)
Quote tweet, 06:26 UTC · 3 likes
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Ok I’m on the warpath, this is like Sleeping Beauty 2.0
Your decision procedure ABSOLUTELY influences (well for some understanding of that word) whether you get cancer
P(cancer | decision procedure that outputs smoking) > P(cancer | decision procedure that outputs not smoking)
Quote tweet, 06:37 UTC · 7 likes
This is not a terribly inaccurate description of the literature
Quoting Someone:
Thread, continued, 06:39 UTC · 6 likes
This isn’t a pro-ketamine post, it’s a pro-ketamine in the case of treatment resistant depression post, which is a very different thing
Yes you are probably going to have to incur some risk if you have TRD—the world just sucks sometimes
Reply to @p8stie, 06:39 UTC · 9 likes
Mariè (@p8stie): Money does not matter to women.
I would sooner date a high T gym owner making $300k a year than a loser tech founder making $1.5M a year.
Guys it’s bait
Reply to @ApriiSR, 06:58 UTC
Aprii *️⃣ (@ApriiSR): considering that comparison to be of key relevance is indeed how evidential decision theory works
Yeah I agree - I just think that FDT basically implies EDT which implies not smoking in this case
This is contrary to the default understanding/narrative afaict
Reply to @ApriiSR, 07:05 UTC · 2 likes
Aprii *️⃣ (@ApriiSR): @AaronBergman18 i think the "tickle defense" is one way people have articulated the objection
This is one of like 10 terms I’ve heard enough that I should probably acquaint myself with
Reply to @4confusedemoji, 19:41 UTC · 4 likes
olivia (@4confusedemoji): have any of you found a preferred way to ingest twitter automatically - if it has to be a browser use agent so be it, id rather it take ludicrous compute relative to the operation it should be than have to babysit it, but i want this datastream somehow. grok sucks at it actually
Yes! Selenium + render tweet as an html embed + get text from browser + do this as concurrently as your computer and internet can handle (I was running 8 browsers)
https://github.com/AaronBergman/twitter_community_notes
Reply to @4confusedemoji, 19:46 UTC · 2 likes
olivia (@4confusedemoji): @AaronBergman18 since yeah it has to derive from my account activity. and not get my account banned.
Oh wait there’s this although IME it crashes or is super slow if you try to export your whole history of 10k+ tweets
Reply to @4confusedemoji, 19:49 UTC · 3 likes
olivia (@4confusedemoji): @AaronBergman18 that last bit, like if i dont get on here for a day, is the hard part
Autoscroll chrome extensions potentially
Side note I feel like my special interest in data collection if coming in handy for the first and only time ever lmao
Reply to @MariGO2thepolls, 23:27 UTC · 4 likes
🏳️🌈Mar G-O 🌐🇺🇦 (@MariGO2thepolls): Ngl I’m very undecided on the credit card interest rate cap
Yeah I’m not universally against paternalism in this domain
10% might be a little low, but “literally any lending contract is verbatim enforceable” seems bad too
“10^10% interest sign on the dotted line and we own ~all your financial assets now” (this is my understanding of bankruptcy law from 5 mins with claude) seems bad
Monday, March 10, 2025
Tweet, 00:16 UTC · 29 likes
It’s so funny having beef with Canada
It’s like having beef with a puppy, or the concept of gratitude
Reply to @polisisti, 01:57 UTC · 3 likes
Alessandro (@polisisti): @AaronBergman18 I know what you mean, and no offence taken whatsoever, but it's not very funny at all to be on the other side of this!
Ya :(
Quote tweet, 02:17 UTC · 21 likes
I’m not incredibly confident in the survey methodology here but its crazy to me that ghosting (I mean after meeting someone in person tbc) is kinda socially accepted
Quoting Allison Papson (@AllisonPapson): DC leads nation in ghosting, survey reveals https://www.fox5dc.com/news/dc-leads-nation-ghosting-survey-reveals
Thread, continued, 02:17 UTC · 6 likes
The weird partially-online dynamic means that there are generally no consequences but it’s just somewhere between rude (if you barely know the person) and cruel (if you’ve gotten to know them pretty well)
Reply to @RYChappell, 02:24 UTC · 2 likes
Richard Y. Chappell🔸 (@RYChappell): Something I appreciate a lot about the University of Miami is that it has a LOT less red tape than previous places I've worked. (They even made their travel agency non-mandatory in response to faculty requests to be able to book our own flights.)
(quoting @MasudHusain: Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @Brain1878 If you agree with the sentiments please RT. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness https://academic.oup.com/brain/issue/148/3)
I sorta wonder why universities don’t compete on this dimension more (maybe they do and I’m unaware?)
Like there’s gotta be some tradeoff between QoL stuff like this and prestige, maybe University of Wherever can compete with Harvard for the best faculty this way
Tweet, 05:25 UTC · 4 likes
Targeted advertising is generally good (I don’t know what the first two things even are but I certainly vibe with the keywords and aesthetics)
Thread, continued, 05:25 UTC · 3 likes
Plausibly privacy is a concern but *given* that your data is being collected may as well maximize consumer surplus; the targeted advertising per se goes on the benefits side of the ledger
Reply to @tenobrus, 05:50 UTC · 3 likes
Tenobrus (@tenobrus): STOP. FUCKING. YEARNING.
(quoting @rakwtf: as a man, fumbling a marvellous woman in your 20s only to realise she could've been the love of your life but now you'll probably never see her again and carrying that haunting melancholy forever in your heart is almost a prerequisite to greatness)
No
Reply to @BecomingCritter, 06:05 UTC · 64 likes
critter (@BecomingCritter): Alright cowards, what's your most woke opinion?
(quoting @samswoora: What can’t you talk about openly in TPOT)
- white privilege is real and nontrivial
- fatphobia is real + bad + not denying the obvious bad health effects + actually underrated by wokism/progressivism
- the left is engaged in a fundamentally more moral project than the right (I think this checks out bc of the care/harm dimension of moral foundations stuff)
- illegal immigration is fine
- trans people should be respected, only <1% of the time do multiple competing legitimate interests imply a legit conflict
- pronoun norms are benign (my anti-woke take is that they’re also silly but still)
I call myself anti-woke because of the classical liberalism dimension, I’m on board with a bunch of object level non-illiberal progressive claims
Reply to @amelapay, 06:07 UTC · 1 like
Pamela J. Hobart (@amelapay): run your family like a business, they said. it’ll be efficient, they said.
Lmao
Quote tweet, 16:04 UTC · 8 likes
Lol I don’t necessarily disagree, but I recently gave a ✨lightning talk✨ to a bunch of less online people (who were selected for being like me in relevant ways, like the people reading this) about how Twitter is good actually and they should seriously consider trying it out
Quoting Nathan 🔎 (@NathanpmYoung): I recommend some spending social media time off X.
Reading longform is good. A world of 280 character ideas and Elon's loud thoughts is not particularly helpful for me.
Thread, continued, 16:05 UTC · 7 likes
Like drinking, I think the downsides are overstated and upsides understated among a set of intelligent and thoughtful people who are willing to reasonable safety measures (eg “don’t use the For You feed”)
Reply to @ChrisLloyd__, 17:47 UTC · 2 likes
Chris (@ChrisLloyd__): what sorts of ways has Twitter benefited you?
- Most salient is that a majority of irl friends weighted by time spent with them I basically met through twitter (sometimes slightly indirectly)
- ^ also true for direct online socialization (so group chats but not posting)
- (at least?) 2 paid jobs/projects
- 1 date
- not *my* benefit and idk what my Shapley value is here but last two years I’ve helped raise like $60k for EA AWF. Very hasty BOTEC says that I get Shapley credit for like $2k of that
- ~directly responsible for at least one two decently intensive volunteer EA project, probably a bunch more smaller stuff
- harder to give rock solid evidence of the truth or concrete benefits here but in general I have the sense that it’s epistemically and intellectually good both for me and “from” me in the sense of participating in an intellectual community of sorts, to put it pretentiously
- I enjoy it
These last two things are mostly what I mean tbh but the other stuff is important too!
Quote tweet, 18:53 UTC · 18 likes
Improved version of a naive “just be agentic” or “be more agentic” meme is “don’t let lack of agency be your limiting factor”
Quoting j (@meadandjuniper): I think tpot’s agency fetish risks rendering it taboo for people to be open about the very normal anguish and frustration they feel when the conditions of their lives just suck
Quote tweet, 19:12 UTC · 36 likes
Some reasons you might consider drinking:
- a lot of people really enjoy it, and that matters
- it’s a good social lubricant in a number of ways and a lot of people would be better off with more friends/socialization
Quoting Jacob (@JacobWoess56393): @AaronBergman18 Care to elaborate on the drinking claim? I have always assumed that drinking is much worse than the average person's prior.
Thread, continued, 19:12 UTC · 7 likes
- it’s Lindy, both culturally and physiologically. Unlike many drugs, humans and human society/culture evolved alongside alcohol
- my impression of the empirical literature is basically “ehhhh you have to squint really hard to see anything” - here’s Claude’s summary
Thread, continued, 19:12 UTC · 9 likes
Alcohol is indeed a major cause of social ills like crime and accidents. I (tentatively) think that the following category of drinking is NOT:
- moderate (~1 per day) but tbh I’ll bite the bullet on like “5-10 drinks a couple times a year” too
- in relatively safe settings
- no driving
- no risk of pregnancy
- no family or personal history of alcoholism
- no guns around
- no other insane situations like currently you’re operating a motorboat
- among generally low-risk demographic groups (eg college educated with no criminal history)
By all means, convince me otherwise!
Reply to @NinaPanickssery, 19:31 UTC · 3 likes
Nina (@NinaPanickssery): I think if you enjoy drinking there is something seriously wrong with you and you should fix that instead of masking the issue with more drinking. (Yes, this covers a large fraction of the population who “drink socially” or “drink to relax”)
Lol people enjoying certain drugs is, for better or worse, like the default state of human biology
Btw I don’t even like drinking! I’m the odd one out though, weird brain
Tweet, 19:54 UTC · 2,043 likes
Apparently stimulants DECREASE all cause mortality in people with ADHD to the same extent that smoking increases it
And ofc this isn’t counting quality of life
Public health should take this way more seriously
Tweet, 21:37 UTC · 9 likes
Buy the dip
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Tweet, 00:51 UTC · 2 likes
How much have you spent on AI APIs (not counting applications like ChatGPT/claude dot ai)
Reply to @panickssery, 01:09 UTC · 2 likes
Arjun Panickssery (@panickssery): This is dominated by long-term effects on growth right
If the excesses of the weak punishing the strong cause more harm to growth than that of the strong over the weak, then it's more harmful in the long-run
And then history supports this: communism alone swings the scale?
I disagree that growth is *in general* the dominant concern; afaik there’s no good empirical or theoretical reason to expect this to be the case (plausibly it is in a restricted familiar setting like “human beings since 1970”)
AI doom is one line of thinking here, factory farming is another
With wealth comes power and the ability to use/abuse others
Communism ≈ chattel slavery to a very hasty first approximation in terms of magnitude
And if you care about animals, factory farming is probably worse than both
Reply to @panickssery, 01:22 UTC · 2 likes
Arjun Panickssery (@panickssery): I agree that if you care about animals, then growth has been net bad, and maybe extinction would be good
But if you only care about people, then it technically depends on your views about extinction risks or permanent-stagnation risks in some way, but "maximize growth" is the simplest baseline, and costly egalitarianism stays bad
> Communism ≈ chattel slavery to a very hasty first approximation in terms of magnitude
This isn't true at all right, in any kind of accounting
Wdym on the last thing?
It’s true “bad communism” had way more total people live through it (≈1 OOM) but they look similar if you think 1 communism death ≈ 1 chattel slavery life and death
Not every person who lived through Mao was harmed as much as the average chattel slave
Reply to @absurdlymax, 03:30 UTC · 3 likes
Max Alexander (@absurdlymax): @austinc3301 @AaronBergman18 coded
I’m all ears lol
I doubt I’m able to do much myself but maybe I can yell at the right people
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 04:30 UTC · 146 likes
Aaron Bergman, March 10, 2025: Apparently stimulants DECREASE all cause mortality in people with ADHD to the same extent that smoking increases it And ofc this isn’t counting quality of life…
Grain of salt, just a LLM convo, but all things considered yeah I believe “partially causal”
ADHD is actually pretty bad - if you’re reading this you’re probably not exposed much to what ADHD looks like in the bottom half of the distribution (much like autism)
Tweet, 04:38 UTC · 2 likes
I suspect COVID will go under-analyzed by the intellectual powerhouses in social science because it parses as "merely" a generational event, not a world-historic one, but actually the last major global societal disruption before the singularity is indeed world-historic
Reply to @Turn_Trout, 05:23 UTC · 32 likes
Alex Turner (@Turn_Trout): The "AI=shoggoth" meme is fun and evocative. But the meme is bad for thinking carefully about how AI might be dangerous.
Try not to talk about how AI is shoggoth. "Shoggoth" distorts your thinking by anchoring you on the idea of a scary eldritch monster. 🧵
It’s not super precise, but my impression is that the meme is more substantive than “scary monster”
IMO the point is that base LLM models are unruly extremely complex minds and that the “guy” you’re talking to when you talk to a chat-tuned model is one specific elicitation of this unruly patchwork
Not all scary monsters are shoggoths (pick any human serial killer) and not all shoggoths are monsters (although they might all be “scary” in the sense of reasonably evoking fear because they’re as of yet unknown, though not necessarily malicious or bad)
Thread, continued, 05:24 UTC · 2 likes
Oh lol checked ur bio maybe idk what im talking about lol
Tweet, 07:17 UTC · 9 likes
Help me decide whether I should go to @vibecamp_! Manifold market and more below
Reply to @mmjukic, 07:36 UTC · 16 likes
Marko Jukic (@mmjukic): Kind of insane we don't base entry into the civil service on highly competitive and meritocratic entrance exams. Every time you read about a functional bureaucracy, you also read it used highly competitive and meritocratic entrance exams. Colleges and lawyers still use them!
I’m not exactly opposed but professional (lawyer, economist) govt bureaucracy positions already are quite competitive and reasonably meritocratic
Not that the hiring process couldn’t be improved at all - it’s just not one of the main ways in which the USG is deficient
Reply to @RomanHauksson, 07:36 UTC · 4 likes
Roman Hauksson-Neill (@RomanHauksson): We need another SBF but like, not fraudulent this time
Yes
Reply to @OverheardWDC, 07:38 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @OverheardWDC is no longer available.)
Save NEPA 🚩🚩🚩🚩
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Reply to @cremieuxrecueil, 01:05 UTC · 3 likes
Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil): LSD is Ozempic for meditation
Adderall is Ozempic for focus
Need more examples of X is Ozempic for Y
Ozempic is ozempic ∀X
Reply to @DrSamuelBHume, 19:37 UTC · 19 likes
Samuel Hume (@DrSamuelBHume): Top 10 selling drugs globally in 2024
1. Keytruda (Pembrolizumab) – PD1 inhibitor (for cancer)
2. Ozempic (Semaglutide) – GLP1 receptor agonist (for obesity/diabetes)
3. Dupixent (Dupilumab) – IL4/IL13 inhibitor (for atopic/eosinophilic conditions)
4. Biktarvy (Bictegravir/Emtricitabine/Tenofovir) – anti-HIV
5. Eliquis (Apixaban) – anticoagulant (for atrial fibrillation/DVT/PE)
6. Skyrizi (Risankizumab) – IL23 inhibitor (for psoriasis/IBD)
7. Darzalex (Daratumumab) – Anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody (for multiple myeloma)
8. Mounjaro (Tirzepatide) – GLP1/GIP receptor agonist (for obesity/diabetes)
9. Stelara (Ustekinumab) – IL12/IL23 inhibitor (for psoriasis/IBD)
10. Trikafta (Elexacaftor/Tezacaftor/Ivacaftor) – CFTR modulator (for cystic fibrosis)
-umab means “human antibody” apparently, for the curious
Tweet, 19:47 UTC · 47 likes
4 hours of @willmacaskill, link below
Tweet, 21:28 UTC · 7 likes
Liberalism is weird bc in some sense it’s the water that the West swims in but also fish don’t start protesting for more water until the water starts getting drained (forgive this metaphor)
How do we make liberalism per se a thing again?
Reply to @mattyglesias, 21:36 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @mattyglesias is no longer available.)
Existing institutions aren’t the same as “popular movements” which is what I was trying to get at
Reply to @CartoonsHateHer, 21:43 UTC · 4 likes
Cartoons Hate Her! (@CartoonsHateHer): MEN: what are some things you do for yourself that make you happy without any productivity or health long term benefit? (So exercise/sleep don’t count.)
Nothing sexual! Also I may quote you anonymously
Idk if this is too pedantic but by default I expect that things that make you happy also have at least health benefits, so there just isn’t very much in this category
Tweet, 21:47 UTC · 27 likes
Dear capitalists,
I would like to spend money to buy a comprehensive blood biomarker monitor
Thanks,
Aaron
Reply to @JgaltTweets, 21:56 UTC · 1 like
JgaltTweets (@JgaltTweets): You're gonna have to wait another 7 years
Sad
Reply to @RYChappell, 22:38 UTC · 2 likes
Richard Y. Chappell🔸 (@RYChappell): No it wouldn't. You might as well claim that a fictional character would think it's real.
I’m only like 97% sure I’m phenomenally conscious lol (although if I didn’t know about the arguments for illusionism that would be ~100%)
Reply to @shinboson, 23:01 UTC · 26 likes
𝞍 Shin Megami Boson 𝞍 (@shinboson): tried an exotic stimulant from a grey-market but otherwise reputable source & it was very effective but I found I had trouble sleeping afterwards. still buzzed the next day, so I thought to actually read the pharmacology in detail
so anyway, the half-life is like two weeks
Bruh
Reply to @Noahpinion, 23:34 UTC · 80 likes
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@Noahpinion): Is "fatphobia" fear of fat people, or fear of getting fat?
Because if it's the former, it doesn't exist (who on Earth is scared of fat people?).
And if it's the latter, it's just called "being reasonable". Being fat is no fun!
It’s antagonism against fat people, the “phobia” suffix has evolved past its original meaning for better or worse
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Reply to @yoltartar, 03:03 UTC · 4 likes
hinterlander (@yoltartar): PSA: anything that affects all-cause mortality is extremely likely to be a proxy for social class, in this case i'd guess higher-class ADHD-havers get prescription stims and lower-class people self-medicate with nicotine
(quoting @AaronBergman18: Apparently stimulants DECREASE all cause mortality in people with ADHD to the same extent that smoking increases it And ofc this isn’t counting quality of life Public health should take this way more seriously)
Some causality is worth entertaining
Reply, 10:05 UTC · 7 likes
1) sadly
Reply to @demiurgently, 18:56 UTC · 2 likes
sydney (@demiurgently): why don’t mice make holes like this anymore
Real
Friday, March 14, 2025
Reply to @maiamindel, 13:23 UTC · 47 likes
Maia (@maiamindel): I'm sorry but this isn't a real syndrome. He's just in his 50s
(quoting @JoshRainerGold: Once you know what Cushing’s Syndrome is you’ll see it everywhere. Wouldn’t be surprised if at least 40% of the population has some level of it. Skinny arms/legs with fat around the waist, moon face.)
I mean Cushings is a real syndrome, but <<<40% of people have it
Quote tweet, 13:52 UTC · 13 likes
He did warn us
Quoting Bentham's Bulldog🔸 (@Benthamsbulldog): @nath_ormond https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-pepfareconomic-case-for-harris?utm_source=publication-search
Reply to @tenobrus, 13:54 UTC · 2 likes
Tenobrus (@tenobrus): reply with ur most braindead obvious take. the ones that u genuinely think are borderline cringe to post bc everyone already knows.
Orange man bad
Quote tweet, 14:13 UTC · 3 likes
Now that Canada is in the news again, never forget bluegate
Quoting Canada (@Canada): Did you know that the symbolic #BlueJay isn't really blue…In fact, we see them as blue due to the way light reflects off of the inside of their wings! Despite the optical illusion, these birds are beautiful and are part of the logo for our #Toronto
@BlueJays! 💙📷jgazze/IG
Tweet, 14:52 UTC · 11 likes
New economic indicator
Reply to @hpkmxvlaa, 15:39 UTC · 8 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @hpkmxvlaa is no longer available.)
Banger
Tweet, 18:47 UTC · 10 likes
Can’t even use the walking pad I got without supervision 😔
Reply to @NTFabiano, 19:59 UTC · 9 likes
Nicholas Fabiano, MD (@NTFabiano): Relative reproductive success (RLRS) is highest for ADHD.
Wait coefficient on polygenic score is importantly different from coefficient on actual trait (phenotype) right?
I’d like to see them compared
Tweet, 20:14 UTC · 97 likes
Apparently ~2M people are prescribed GLP-1 inhibitors, in a country with ~107M obese adults (source below)
Seems bad. Much like the new world screwworm, this is one of those rare issues where ~everyone is on the same team!
Thread, continued, 20:14 UTC · 9 likes
Source is for data up to December https://www.truveta.com/blog/research/glp1-prescription-trends-december-2024/
Thread, continued, 20:14 UTC · 31 likes
Unlike vaccines there’s no reason to pressure those who don’t want to use the drugs, but I have a hard time believing that <2% is the “natural” rate of use among obese adults if it were maximally cheap, easy, with full information, etc
Tweet, 22:28 UTC · 89 likes
Today is my birthday!
If you’re feeling generous, please consider donating to an effective organization in an area that OpenPhil isn’t funding, namely rationality, insect welfare, or digital sentience
I’d encourage one of the following…
Thread, continued, 22:28 UTC · 14 likes
1) Lightcone Infrastructure aka the people behind @lesswrong, because rationality is good actually
Donate: https://www.every.org/lightcone-infrastructure
Thread, continued, 22:28 UTC · 14 likes
2) @eleosai, because digital sentience is a moral shitshow (but like they’re working on that)
Donate: https://eleosai.org/donate
Thread, continued, 22:28 UTC · 16 likes
3) Arthropoda Foundation, because insect sentience is also incredibly important + neglected + tractable even though I can’t think of a pithy tagline
Donate: https://www.arthropodafoundation.org/give
Reply to @Samsox14, 23:01 UTC · 1 like
Samsox14 (@Samsox14): @AaronBergman18 Hey, Happy birthday man! Hope you get everything you are reaching for in the coming year.
Thank you ❤️
Reply to @eshear, 23:35 UTC · 6 likes
Emmett Shear (@eshear): Taking suggestions for a single word to describe the reductionist-materialist utilitarian-consequentialist rational-empirical secular-humanist cluster?
Guy who has strong opinions about which of these are overrated/underrated (me)
Reductionism: ?
Materialism: overrated
Utilitarianism: underrated
Consequentialism: underrated
Rationalism: underrated
Empiricism: massively overrated
Secularism: appropriately rated
Humanism: ?
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Tweet, 00:46 UTC · 15 likes
A very secondary but not fake reason frontier AI scaling pause would be good is that the leading companies could turn their insane concentration of talent into some truly banger consumer products/wrappers/applications
Thread, continued, 00:46 UTC · 2 likes
It wouldn’t feel like an AI winter; in the short-medium term it would feel like greater acceleration and a flourishing of societal adaptation
Reply to @Aella_Girl, 01:01 UTC · 16 likes
Aella (@Aella_Girl): when i was a kid i remember some formative moments where i knew eating the food off the ground was 'bad' and 'dirty', but then i just tried to think through - did I actually think I would get sick if i ate the ground food? I realized no.
I just applied that to my entire life
Lol I’m all (well most) for this style of reasoning but I’m not actually sure you did the reasoning correctly in this specific instance
I’d bet eating food off the ground, especially when that involves suppressing a disgust instinct, is in fact unwise and unhealthy lol
Thread, continued, 01:01 UTC · 3 likes
Mfers will talk about environmental contaminants and then eat a piece of pizza off the ground
Reply to @tracewoodgrains, 02:58 UTC · 4 likes
Jack (@tracewoodgrains): It's been remarked upon, but it really is interesting how little follower count matters on this site if you don't do anything with it
Yang has 1.5 million followers and gets payouts comparable to a lot of accounts with 50000 or fewer
(quoting @AndrewYang: As usual I will give my x earnings to someone who likes this post. Must follow this account to dm info. Will choose a winner Sunday. Good luck and hope it helps!!)
To be pedantic, it doesn’t matter in this one specific way
The value of Yang’s platform on here is worth way more than $234
Reply to @tracewoodgrains, 03:27 UTC · 4 likes
Jack (@tracewoodgrains): it's certainly worth more than $234, but the dollars are much less interesting to me than the question of impressions and interactions
I think it accurately reflects his level of impact on the conversation on here. he has a lot of potential energy but it's not in active use
Yeah true - he has ~500 times more followers than me but only a ~20x payout
Reply to @livgorton, 04:38 UTC · 2 likes
Liv (@livgorton): RIP my stonks 💔
I bet ur doing ok
Reply to @robinhanson, 13:44 UTC · 15 likes
Robin Hanson (@robinhanson): Could the answer to the hard question of consciousness be this?: All devices & creatures actually feel whatever their brains compute them to feel. https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/what-things-really-feel
“Compute them to feel” seems like an incoherent phrase
“Feel” is not the kind of thing that falls out of computation (ofc there might in fact be a 1:1 relationship between computational/functional structure and qualia, but thats a quasi-empirical claim that doesn’t answer the hard problem)
Tweet, 14:12 UTC · 47 likes
Good post was deleted; point being: “net positive fallacy” is the error of excusing bad things because they’re tied together in some non-necessary way with good things
Examples:
- person who donates a lot of money but also commits sexual assault. The assault is still bad!
Thread, continued, 14:12 UTC · 24 likes
I think a big *real* example is the implication that we needn’t care about wild animal suffering if wild animals as a group have net-positive lives
Even if this is true, there’s a huge amount of suffering that can potentially be addressed
Thread, continued, 14:17 UTC · 17 likes
Another example would be assuming that we shouldn’t do anything about AI risk if one’s net assessment of the situation is positive; you can be very optimistic and still think we should take safety precautions
I think this general class of error feels obvious/trivial but isn’t
Reply to @dissproportion, 17:34 UTC · 2 likes
Dissproportionately (@dissproportion): Just so you know, “swabbing the deck” isn’t to keep the ship clean, it’s to keep the boards wet so they’re swollen and watertight.
wtf
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Quote tweet, 16:11 UTC · 6 likes
Lol I got punished by the musk regime for the first time yesterday (luckily just a 12 hour thing)
Quoting Aaron Bergman (@AaronBergm14016): Ahhhh @AaronBergman18 has been brutally locked out of Twitter
Reply to @crazyclipsonly, 16:16 UTC · 6 likes
Crazy Clips (@crazyclipsonly): A carp suddenly swims differently
😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
Reply to @SpacedOutMatt, 17:15 UTC · 3 likes
Matt 🔸 (@SpacedOutMatt): This is the ideal Goodreads. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like
Do you have a book rec for the whole aerospace industry?
Reply to @arabelladevine, 17:21 UTC · 2 likes
arabella ※ (@arabelladevine): do you understand yet
Ethics? Yes. Decision theory not really
Tweet, 18:43 UTC · 3 likes
Here’s a thing I wrote yesterday while I was locked out of twitter
Reply to @imitationlearn, 19:44 UTC · 2 likes
imit (@imitationlearn): @Tymtweet elaborate??
^
Tweet, 19:55 UTC · 17 likes
I almost never hear Temple Grandin talked about, here or elsewhere, despite her being a sorta mainstream advocate for systematic farmed animal suffering reduction and autistic person + autism understander https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_Grandin
Thread, continued, 19:55 UTC · 4 likes
I think I’m going to listen to this
Tweet, 20:11 UTC · 2 likes
As usual the discourse on universities is incredibly overweighted toward like 15 elite ones, but if we are focusing on the elite ones, I have a naive intuition that $10B+ endowments should be enough to seriously mitigate the direct impact on faculty from federal grant withdrawals
Reply to @young_opsimath, 20:49 UTC · 2 likes
young_opsimath ⏸️ (@young_opsimath): @AaronBergman18 Probably because she is pro animal welfare (to an extent?) but also pro factory farming.
Ah huh seems bad
I mean I’m very pro harm reduction even within the current regime so maybe she’s just wrong on this specific thing idk
Monday, March 17, 2025
Quote tweet, 00:55 UTC · 75 likes
Gonna take the vibey side on this one and say that technical incompetence isn’t the fundamental reason social science is unreliable
It’s about truthseeking norms and incentives far more
Quoting Jesse Singal (@jessesingal): When these studies are debunked, the culprit usually isn't some super subtle, complex, technical thing. It's the sort of potential problem you'd learn in a first-year stats class. Science needs to give the public more compelling reasons to trust it.
Thread, continued, 00:55 UTC · 8 likes
Yes you will cover omitted variable bias in intro to econometrics but figuring out to what degree that applies in a given real world case, with data that inherently omits approximately all variables, isn’t the kind of thing I’d trust any B+ econ or stats undergrad to get right
Thread, continued, 00:55 UTC · 8 likes
Tbc I agree the original study is probably fundamentally wrong insofar as it makes any causal claims about the doctor race relationship, just trying to point out that the reason (probably) isn’t failure to understand basic stats
Reply to @bubbling_creek, 01:11 UTC · 3 likes
bubbling creek (@bubbling_creek): @AaronBergman18 one of the results of said norms and incentives is not selecting hard against people who don't or can't understand the statistical tests though
Eh I basically disagree. Selection for technical econometrics + stats understanding is actually pretty strong at least in econ departments where most of this quantitative social science is happening
Thread, continued, 01:12 UTC · 4 likes
Like I don’t think any of the major issues in social science would be substantially improved if everyone was just smarter and better at math
Reply to @AskYatharth, 03:46 UTC · 3 likes
yatharth ༺༒༻ (@AskYatharth): what exactly.. happens in a depression?
the people still know how to make food, like they did two years ago. the wealth production infra stays same
what exactly goes scarce
Plenty of good answers like this which are true much of the time but I object to the premise (sorta)
Sometimes the wealth production infra doesn’t stay the same (which can then spiral into a vicious financialized pessimistic cycle but still)
Tweet, 05:25 UTC · 200 likes
Interesting answer to a question that in hindsight I should have been curious about
Thread, continued, 05:26 UTC · 7 likes
Not “should” in a real normative sense - more like a question I didn’t know I had
Thread, continued, 05:26 UTC · 3 likes
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism
Thread, continued, 05:43 UTC · 10 likes
What do we think folks
Tweet, 06:06 UTC · 7 likes
After becoming an expert (skimming the Wikipedia page), I have come to the conclusion that autism is positively correlated with so many things that it might be more instructive to figure out what if anything unifies psychiatric/cognitive abnormalities it is NOT correlated with
Thread, continued, 06:06 UTC · 1 like
Claude suggests:
- intentional social manipulation (this seems to check out)
- non-cognitive excesses of emotionality
So explosive anger, narcissism, various manias
Reply to @Tim_Hua_, 06:17 UTC · 6 likes
Tim Hua 🇺🇦 (@Tim_Hua_): My fifty page neel nanda mats application will fr be one in the history records
(I did not have time to format some super simple graphs and tables and just stacked them one after another. There's 16 pages of appendix that's just simple graphs and screenshots)
(quoting @panickssery: Kissinger's 400+ page thesis led to a word limit at Harvard Just learned that Caro's 235-page senior thesis led to a word limit at the Princeton English Department The "one weird hack" to become a Great Man of the 20th century is to just write monstrously long undergrad theses)
Based
Reply to @Tim_Hua_, 06:18 UTC · 2 likes
Tim Hua 🇺🇦 (@Tim_Hua_): omg it worked :D
(quoting @Tim_Hua_: My fifty page neel nanda mats application will fr be one in the history records (I did not have time to format some super simple graphs and tables and just stacked them one after another. There's 16 pages of appendix that's just simple graphs and screenshots))
Congrats!
Reply to @jonatanpallesen, 11:58 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @jonatanpallesen is no longer available.)
She’s also just a much more talented politician lol
Reply to @yzilber, 12:01 UTC · 3 likes
Jazi Zilber (@yzilber): @AaronBergman18 what a stupid logic.
you can hold the deficit view, and still hold that autist-autist communication is better.
I'm finding the neurodiversity ecosystem repulsive. even if some of it has merit. they destroyed the discourse and caused immense harm
Idk seems like a pretty simple intuitive model
I don’t think this is a woke thing if that’s what you’re getting at, at the very least
Quote tweet, 12:24 UTC · 316 likes
The insane and morally indefensible thing here isn’t really the incorrect empirical belief, it’s the failure to take precaution under reasonable uncertainty
If someone is only 45% likely to be able to feel pain, you give them anesthesia
Quoting David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells): “As late as the 1980s it was widely believed that babies do not feel pain.” https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/03/what-do-we-learn-from-torturing-babies.html
Thread, continued, 12:26 UTC · 24 likes
This book gives the issue the analysis it deserves btw
Reply to @yzilber, 12:30 UTC · 7 likes
Jazi Zilber (@yzilber): @AaronBergman18 hardly woke related.
neurodiversity has a just kernel of truth regarding high functioning "spectrum" people.
but it's a dumb movement akin to antivaxx
"don't fix my kid's autism" even when real bad. and lots of fights against therapies of all sorts.
motte bailey
I don’t think this one tidbit is a good stand-in for the whole “mere difference” paradigm
The screenshotted section can be totally true alongside lots of other ways in which autism is bad
Reply to @JesseTayRiver, 12:37 UTC · 2 likes
Jesse Smith (@JesseTayRiver): Anyone want to adopt a dog?
Jk it's fine I had to be up at 5.30 for wrestling anyway
Rip
Reply to @SevendersOTW, 20:16 UTC · 7 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @SevendersOTW is no longer available.)
Totally unethical IMO
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Quote tweet, 01:04 UTC · 9 likes
Big if true
Quoting ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (@hmmmcurious): interesting things are being discovered on /r/migraine
Reply to @KelseyTuoc, 02:18 UTC · 18 likes
Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc): This is even worse than I imagined from the summary. They snatched him off the street and detained him overnight even though he was carrying his ID and social security card proving his US citizenship on him the whole time.
image attached
(quoting @csilverandgold: well, we told you it was coming. ICE detained Julio Noriega, a 54-year-old US citizen, for the crime of walking while Hispanic. https://www.wbez.org/immigration/2025/03/13/chicago-attorneys-accuse-federal-agents-of-violating-immigrants-rights-and-take-legal-action)
Wtf
Reply to @AaronEstel, 03:06 UTC · 2 likes
Aaron (@AaronEstel): @goblinodds just put it all in a single text file I can give to Claude. I think that's what unrolling means? I never used the apps for that
Apparently so
Reply to @sam_atis, 18:49 UTC · 3 likes
Sam Glover (@sam_atis):
Rip
Reply to @OrionJohnston, 23:16 UTC · 4 likes
David Johnston (@OrionJohnston): @nickcammarata It's obviously because vanilla icecream is white, which is the default colour for a milk-based dessert
Nah Nick is right
Also how come they sell plain yogurt but I’ve literally never seen plain ice cream
Reply to @AlexNowrasteh, 23:55 UTC · 2 likes
The Alex Nowrasteh (@AlexNowrasteh): “Revoked degrees” — evidence for @bryan_caplan’s signaling model of education?
(quoting @ColumbiaBDS: BREAKING: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HAS JUST SUSPENDED, EXPELLED, AND REVOKED DEGREES FROM 22 STUDENTS FOR PROTESTING GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE)
I was thinking that I’m not sure id terribly mind having my degree “revoked”
I could honestly say that’s exactly what happened, and that would signal the same human capital as saying I’m currently a degree holder
Much different from getting expelled while at school
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Reply to @gptbrooke, 00:22 UTC · 2 likes
brooke bowman (@gptbrooke): HI R U FREN DO U HAZ FOOD
10/10 would give peas
Reply to @MariGO2thepolls, 16:41 UTC · 15 likes
🏳️🌈Mar G-O 🌐🇺🇦 (@MariGO2thepolls): Be honest ok, do I need to read abundance or is listening to a podcast about it and marinating my brain in that sphere close enough ?
This but for basically every semi-popular new nonfiction book that comes out that I see a lot on Twitter
Quote tweet, 19:37 UTC · 5 likes
TIL the introduction of autism as a diagnosis in the DSM led to fewer diagnoses of “retardation” in children (and I can only imagine that this was a positive development)
A point in favor of what some people call “hypermedicalization”
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): I think I’m going to listen to this
Reply to @mattyglesias, 21:03 UTC · 4 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @mattyglesias is no longer available.)
I know someone who would make a good local politician (to start) @JesseTayRiver
Reply to @skooookum, 21:51 UTC · 10 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @skooookum is no longer available.)
If you need to be regularly hungry to be at a healthy weight, your metabolism is fucked (which, like, maybe you still want to go ahead and do it but you should know this)
Reply to @norvid_studies, 23:27 UTC · 13 likes
norvid_studies (@norvid_studies): what do you do personally to avoid audience capture
Not much besides being naturally kinda disagreeable
With a small audience, “audience capture” just means “act so that your friends/colleagues/peers basically like you” and yeah I definitely do that
Reply to @shinboson, 23:33 UTC · 15 likes
𝞍 Shin Megami Boson 𝞍 (@shinboson): update: the half-life really does appear to be two weeks
(quoting @shinboson: tried an exotic stimulant from a grey-market but otherwise reputable source & it was very effective but I found I had trouble sleeping afterwards. still buzzed the next day, so I thought to actually read the pharmacology in detail so anyway, the half-life is like two weeks)
To be somewhat optimistic, subjective effects do not always track half life for stimulants
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Reply to @nickcammarata, 00:41 UTC · 18 likes
Nick (@nickcammarata): Most people think of veganism as 10/10 I think, eating animals from farms that care a lot about animal wellfare as kind of bad, maybe 6/10, and factory farming as 0. I think veganism as neutral 5/10, funding happy farm animals as 10/10, and factory farming as atrocious (0/10)
I’m very willing to buy into this framework, but I think your metrics are basically wrong
Veganism/neutrality is like 9/10 if you compress the scale of hedonic experience into [0,10]. Or maybe 9.5 or 9.9 or even 10 for negative utilitarianism but definitely not 5
Thread, continued, 00:41 UTC · 2 likes
“Definitely” is hyperbole. Fine. “Almost certainly”
Thread, continued, 00:43 UTC · 3 likes
I’m not sure if there’s literally no number of happy pig lives I’d take in exchange for one factory farmed pig life, but it’s at least 100. Single digits isn’t even worth considering
And quite possibly on reflection there really is no number
Reply to @blapchat, 01:18 UTC · 29 likes
BLAP (@blapchat): this is like when taylor lorenz admitted to keeping her apartment at 90 degrees at all times
This is kinda based
Quote tweet, 02:31 UTC · 5 likes
Outrageous
Quoting Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed): Monday night, Georgetown researcher Badar Khan Suri was abducted by masked DHS agents who informed him his visa had been revoked. He is now is facing deportation under the same immigration law provision used against Mahmoud Khalil.
Suri, an Indian national on a student visa and married to a US citizen, has not been accused of a crime nor charged with one.
According to his lawyer’s petition to stop the deportation, his case rests on his wife’s “ties with Hamas” and past affiliation with Al Jazeera (international journalists, they’re coming).
Quote tweet, 02:36 UTC · 4 likes
I guess I should probably do this now huh
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): I’m not really a public protest guy and the last thing I protested for in public was gun control (half-heartedly) in high school but I think I’d like go and yell at the White House irl if Trump basically just defies judicial orders (conditional on like other people being there)
Reply to @StatisticUrban, 02:50 UTC · 10 likes
Hunter📈🌈📊 (@StatisticUrban): Not foolproof, but if you read:
- The Financial Times
- The New York Times
- The Economist
- Foreign AffairsYou will reliably be in the 98th percentile in terms of accurate and relevant news and information.
Yeah but it’s a power law, 99.9th percentile >> 98th percentile
The former means knowing about AI and COVID before they hit mainstream press (which comes with high leverage to change things), the latter means you’re broadly on top of “current events” as chosen by the media
Reply to @skooookum, 03:26 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @skooookum is no longer available.)
Me fr
Tweet, 03:31 UTC · 2 likes
Of all the things going on, I think this is uniquely bad and stands on its own
Once Trump stops obeying the judiciary, all bets are off. The administration will give bullshit extravagant excuses like “the plane is over international waters”…
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/timeline-trump-deportation-flights-el-salvador.html
Reply to @CrispyWicks, 03:40 UTC · 2 likes
Chris P. Wicks 🔎🐜 (@CrispyWicks): They should invent a body of mine that's lighter so pullups are easier
Who's working on this
Fr at one point I could do 5 one-arms. I was strong but I was also light
Reply, 03:40 UTC · 2 likes
Maybe it was 4
Quote tweet, 03:42 UTC · 10 likes
The last words humanity sees
Quoting lisatomic (@lisatomic5): well this was a new low
Reply to @benryanwriter, 04:01 UTC · 7 likes
Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter): For years now, I’ve had this nagging feeling like I wouldn’t get into Columbia if I applied these days. Then I found out that students there these days can’t read an entire book. And now we have this from Harvard:
Maybe of interest. Basically perfect grades + SAT don’t get you into the top schools now, if they ever did https://www.aaronbergman.net/p/most-ivy-smart-students-arent-at
Tweet, 05:35 UTC · 7 likes
From one of yall (posted with permission)
Reply to @NoahTopper, 06:09 UTC · 9 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): pov: your wife said the vowels feel like the even numbers and you said they feel more like the odds
She’s obviously right
Tweet, 06:18 UTC · 9 likes
Seems pretty bad
Arbitrary indefinite detention is the kind of thing you want zero of in a country of 300M. The optimal amount *is* zero this time
Reply to @NoahTopper, 06:18 UTC · 2 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper):
(quoting @NoahTopper: pov: your wife said the vowels feel like the even numbers and you said they feel more like the odds)
I like her
Reply to @ComInTheMarg, 06:23 UTC · 3 likes
Comments in the Margin (@ComInTheMarg): I sometimes wonder if it's worth becoming top level informed. If I have no power, does it really matter? Can't I use my time better by... idk earning to give? Or even just relaxing in my room?
I think there’s some level where you’re really doing substantial intellectual work yourself a la @TheZvi and idk about that
But simply staying broadly in the right loops via idk 30 mins (*maybe* twice that?) of media consumption/day gets you pretty damn far
Of course I would say this but I do think the rationalist and EA loops are the correct loops to stay looped in to. I don’t think this takes any extra effort
Thread, continued, 06:24 UTC · 3 likes
Tbh my one stop shop is just listen to every 80k episode
This is a pretty good worldview starter pack
Reply to @RandomSprint, 06:38 UTC · 7 likes
RandomSprint🧭 (@RandomSprint): Lately we've been doing a lot of riddles.
Tonight, I asked my 4 yo son, "It takes 15 minutes to boil one egg. How long does it take to boil 3 eggs?"
He talked out 45 minutes, but then I told him the answer was 15 minutes because you could cook three eggs at once.
"My turn. Dad, how many tigers have you seen in your life?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe four or five."
"Nice."
We took a happy beat.
"What's your riddle?"
He stopped to think.
"Dad, I don't really know what a riddle is."
10/10
Reply to @bryancsk, 06:53 UTC · 6 likes
Bryan Cheong 🥮 (@bryancsk): Does it cost money
If you have Amazon prime, One medical is $100/year which includes a physical. Additional visits are like a $30 copay or something
I’ve had this for a couple months bc a specialist told me to get a PCP, seems to be pretty decent IME
Quote tweet, 06:55 UTC · 15 likes
I kinda unironically endorse this meme and the rabbit on the left and think it makes a somewhat compelling intuitive case for caring about wild animal welfare
Quoting snav (@qorprate): this meme has incredibly powerful energy and i don't understand why
Reply to @goblinodds, 06:58 UTC · 2 likes
𝖜𝖔𝖒𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖆 𝖈𝖆𝖚𝖘𝖊 (@goblinodds): OH NO interesting
I endorse air quality monitor + HEPA filter
I have Airthings brand
Tweet, 12:44 UTC · 33 likes
🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐 EXTREMELY BASED 🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐🦐
Thread, continued, 12:46 UTC · 2 likes
https://asteriskmag.com/issues/09/yes-shrimp-matter
Thread, continued, 12:53 UTC · 3 likes
Underrated: their gif logo
(gif, plays on X)
Reply to @nathan84686947, 15:29 UTC · 2 likes
Nathan Helm-Burger (@nathan84686947): I think that concern for shrimp is misplaced projection of suffering onto a being not capable of experiencing it. Aversive stimuli perception is not sufficient for suffering. Suffering requires a self-model and worldview to contextualize the aversive stimuli.
We have no idea what the necessary and sufficient conditions for sentience/suffering are
Tweet, 18:39 UTC · 22 likes
I’ve gestured at this before but God it is so dumb that we got essentially a government reform commission with real teeth/power and instrumental competence but it’s worse-than-wasted on the dumbest possible shit + killing poor people + deporting random Hispanics with tattoos
Thread, continued, 18:39 UTC · 1 like
DOGE could have been great (rename efficiency to efficacy)! In another life 😔
Tweet, 19:28 UTC · 25 likes
Minimal viable EA/rat-sphere semantic search engine just dropped
Link below, ofc
Thread, continued, 19:29 UTC · 7 likes
http://earec.net (no preview thingy [sad])
Thread, continued, 19:29 UTC · 4 likes
Read a slightly more in-depth description at https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Xw98osdN4mEGbRDiR/aaron-bergman-s-shortform?commentId=JNNoTfruJeAAXTuz9
Quote tweet, 19:43 UTC · 91 likes
1) the progressive fee thing is good
2) I feel like “100+ mph” should be night in jail territory, at least
Quoting Betty Yu (@bett_yu): SPEED CAMERAS
Here are the fines speeding drivers in San Francisco will face after a 60-day grace period that starts tomorrow
@KTVU
Reply to @simoj_, 19:52 UTC · 2 likes
simoj (@simoj_): @AaronBergman18 100mph *in San Francisco proper*??
Only one way to find out
Reply to @theojaffee, 19:53 UTC · 2 likes
Theo Jaffee (@theojaffee): @AaronBergman18 "progressive" based on speed or income?
I was thinking income but I guess both
Reply to @RokoMijic, 20:49 UTC · 3 likes
Roko 🐉 (@RokoMijic): @AaronBergman18 > the progressive fee thing is good
why?
Heuristic about proportionality of punishment/deterrence being important and good for a functional society
Also just straightforwardly more progressive distribution of wealth is good on the margin so it’s not fighting up hill
Reply to @abcampbell, 21:28 UTC · 2 likes
Campbell (@abcampbell): in the end, every tech company is a bank
(quoting @MorePerfectUS: DoorDash and Klarna have signed a deal where customers can choose to pay for food deliveries in interest-free installments or deferred options aligned with payday schedules.)
Or advertising
Reply to @IsaacKing314, 21:39 UTC · 9 likes
Isaac King 🔎 (@IsaacKing314): Concerning. This story has some red flags that make me not fully trust the author, Google turns up no fact-checks. Anyone know if this is legit?
(quoting @jonfavs: This is FUCKING INSANE Trump's ICE goons detained a Canadian actress because of confusion over a work visa for TWO WEEKS - shackled, thrown in a van, sent to AZ, kept awake, not allowed to contact a lawyer…)
To not answer your question, one secondary but nontrivial downstream consequence of a lawless administration is that the prior on this type of thing goes way up and we have no way to be confident that arbitrary claims like this didn’t happen
Reply to @pronounced_kyle, 21:42 UTC · 21 likes
Christian Keil (@pronounced_kyle): *taps the sign*
image attached
(quoting @METR_Evals: When will AI systems be able to carry out long projects independently? In new research, we find a kind of “Moore’s Law for AI agents”: the length of tasks that AIs can do is doubling about every 7 months.)
You wanna bet on whether SOTA AI in one year can do tasks at or longer than the trendline in the image would imply?
$1000
Reply to @IsaacKing314, 21:46 UTC · 5 likes
Isaac King 🔎 (@IsaacKing314): @AaronBergman18 This is true, but also
Yeah but like whatever I stand by it
Tweet, 22:15 UTC · 2 likes
I hope Hillary Clinton feels vindicated
Tweet, 22:42 UTC · 21 likes
I love this instagram account. It tickles my brain in just the right way
Reply to @AnniePosting, 23:32 UTC · 4 likes
annie 👁❌🦋🪞 (@AnniePosting): Date with tall goth baddie in 20 minutes, wish me luck chat
Good luck
Reply to @jordanschneider, 23:40 UTC · 3 likes
Jordan Schneider (@jordanschneider): THE EZRA-KELSEY TICKET
(quoting @KelseyTuoc: Here is what I believe the process should be to convert your garage to a miniature bakery/tea shop: there should be a straightforward checklist online which describes how to meet food safety rules. If you look up current food safety rules, they are long, confusing and scattered…)
Omg plz
Reply to @RYChappell, 23:57 UTC · 4 likes
Richard Y. Chappell🔸 (@RYChappell): Ppl sometimes discuss negative utilitarianism (minimize bads, ignore goods), but never "positive utilitarianism" (maximize goods, ignore bads).
They seem worth discussing in tandem. "Why think that avoiding harm could ever compensate for missing out on a good? YOLO!"
Maybe I’m misunderstanding you but I reject the symmetry assumption here, and also reject that symmetry is implied by utilitarianism
(I’ve been thinking about this recently and some people probably want to include symmetry as like an intrinsic feature of the theory they’re calling utilitarianism. Which, if so, fine, then my claim is: symmetry is not downstream of the set of compelling arguments (thought experiments, papers, you name it) that most utilitarians take to imply utilitarianism; we can set aside the question of what the word “utilitarianism” truly means)
Friday, March 21, 2025
Reply, 00:05 UTC · 1 like
Get your beard professionally trimmed + shaped! At least once and then you’ll know what it looks like at it’s best
I’ve been told a good shave gets me at least 1 point on a 10 pt scale. And you look good to start!
Reply to @ch402, 00:15 UTC · 6 likes
Chris Olah (@ch402): Disappointing.
It's worth saying explicitly: The people disadvantaged by this will be academics, and especially students. For those of us in industry, participating in workshops is optional. But for our academic peers, it's important for their careers.
🌶️
Reply to @MaxGhenis, 01:07 UTC · 1 like
Max Ghenis (@MaxGhenis):
(quoting @captgouda24: The harm from bad driving does not vary with the driver’s income. There is no argument for progressive taxation of externalities.)
Yeah, but like should we think of speeding tickets as excise taxes?
I’m inclined to say no, but don’t really have a good framework for thinking about it
Seems like a social consensus thing - to be an excise tax, it should be universally agreed upon that it’s cool to speed as long as you pay the fine
Reply to @RYChappell, 01:17 UTC
Richard Y. Chappell🔸 (@RYChappell): I think it's interesting to explore the structural parallels. In light of the structural parity, it's curious that those drawn to an asymmetry all tend to break in the same direction. I agree that (either) asymmetric view is logically coherent as a distinct form of welfarist consequentialism.
Substantively, I think the kind of lexicalist view you describe (on which avoiding sufficiently bad misery ends up with ~infinite priority, and can't be outweighed by any amount of goods) is rendered implausible by transitive spectrum arguments.
I also worry that it implies that we should prefer certain extinction over an uncertain future (which has some non-zero chance of the bad which you give ~infinite priority).
I think the “and so on” paragraph here is up for debate and actually a good example of the kind of naive mathematics that even quite sophisticated philosophers tend to take as like ground truth models of the universe
Like by postulating that you can in fact do the “and so on” paragraph, you’re assuming the conclusion that lexical thresholds are false
If lexicality is true, you can approach some limit of badness asymptotically and indeed get slightly less bad for additional time units, but never getting less bad than the lexical threshold
Tweet, 03:13 UTC · 51 likes
Claude is legitimately better at explaining/simplifying/streamlining my own ideas than I am
AGI this, AGI that, idk but Claude 3.7 is an epistemic peer, at least, at least in the realm of semantics and words and text input and output
Thread, continued, 03:13 UTC · 2 likes
(This could have something to do with me being uncommonly verbose + a messy thinker + bad at simplifying relative to other cognitive things. But still!)
Reply to @StatisticUrban, 03:19 UTC · 2 likes
Hunter📈🌈📊 (@StatisticUrban): They're weirdly abundant
😱😱😱😱😱😱
Tweet, 03:21 UTC · 17 likes
I don’t think I’ve emphasized this before so here’s a claim:
“Imagining oneself as an egoist experiencing everything is a uniquely epistemically productive way to do ethics”
Thread, continued, 03:21 UTC · 3 likes
This is meta-ethics in a different sense than normal meta-ethics
Reply to @ElytraMithra, 08:51 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @ElytraMithra is no longer available.)
I think it can and does
Salient example is like low probability but definite bad lives. It might be very unlikely that you’re born as the Omelas kid so veil of ignorance is tempted to sorta round it to zero
Omniscient egoist has to actually live that life
Reply to @couldawentpro, 09:38 UTC · 1 like
bailey ☆ ★ (@couldawentpro): you lowkey can bring a horse to water but deadass cannot make him drink
Fr
Quote tweet, 12:39 UTC · 75 likes
No posts in 4 months, they must have indeed killed Qualy 😔
Quoting Qualy the lightbulb (@QualyThe): Qualy you have to stop. You smoke too tough. Your swag too different. Your bitches are too bad. they'll kill you.
Reply to @imitationlearn, 13:10 UTC · 2 likes
imit (@imitationlearn): what software do you pay for that you think is well worth it?
Backblaze
Quote tweet, 16:03 UTC · 18 likes
Tapping the sign in light of Abundance
I know Ezra is sympathetic, I genuinely want to know what he thinks of this
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Steelman of every bad economic policy including tariffs is “less wealth -> less factory farming”
Thread, continued, 16:04 UTC · 3 likes
Still endorse
Thread, continued, 16:06 UTC · 3 likes
If anyone is going to a talk and wants to ask this and report back, I would be grateful!
Reply to @AaronPublicTwit, 16:25 UTC · 2 likes
Aaronlington (@AaronPublicTwit): @AaronBergman18 They talk about this in the first chapter— more dense housing means less suburban sprawl which means more nature which means more wild animal suffering wait wait wait
Hmm
Reply to @SwiftOnSecurity, 20:30 UTC · 4 likes
SwiftOnSecurity (@SwiftOnSecurity): This probably feels so good for the book
The modern version is kindle -> screen recording video of you flipping through every page -> pdf (I have done this)
Quote tweet, 21:02 UTC · 20 likes
F (I don’t feel like I’m super un-empathetic though… 🙁)
Quoting imit (@imitationlearn): yeah i’m pretty surprised too…
(i think that there are problems with collapsing a person’s eq down to a single axis)
Reply to @JohnHolbein1, 21:33 UTC · 20 likes
John B. Holbein (@JohnHolbein1): Look at the distribution of z-values from medical research!
Why the spike at +-4
Reply to @ATabarrok, 21:44 UTC · 2 likes
Alex Tabarrok (@ATabarrok): .0001
Right
Reply to @_chair, 22:41 UTC · 2 likes
Chair (@_chair): @AaronBergman18 poverty/degrowth does not reduce total factory farming, it just shifts it into the future
Yeah this is a very real and important counter argument
Reply to @thegenesisbl0ck, 23:04 UTC · 89 likes
Nadia (@thegenesisbl0ck): All the celebs are “body positive” until the second they can get their chubby fingers on Ozempic.
(quoting @sizeziro: Her glo up is so insane)
This is dumb, you can be fat-accepting at a normative level and recognize the many harms to being fat at a descriptive level
There’s no conflict here
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Tweet, 00:10 UTC · 12 likes
Interesting self-correction pattern
Tweet, 00:13 UTC · 9,734 likes
It’s pretty crazy that MRI works. Like you shouldn’t be able to coercively move around all the hydrogen atoms in a persons body with a giant magnet and not have any acute or lasting effects
If I didn’t know, I’d guess that you’d die
Reply to @anglerfish01, 00:41 UTC · 4 likes
angLerfish (@anglerfish01): @AaronBergman18 I think you can be compassionate and altruistic but just not very good at socializing. Although you seem like a very social person to me! maybe you were being too self critical
Haha I have people tell me this! I’m basically certain it’s bc of a sorta selection bias - they only interact with me when I’m feeling like interacting with people (which isn’t ~never, but still)
Reply to @tautologer, 01:20 UTC · 3 likes
tautologer (@tautologer): LLMs are p-zombies
I mean they’re literally not lol
What do you mean above and beyond “they’re not sentient”
Reply to @BernieSanders, 01:25 UTC · 2 likes
Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders): Today, @AOC and I had 34,000 people come out in Denver.
It is the largest rally that I have ever had.
And it tells me that the American people will not allow Trump to move us into oligarchy and authoritarianism.
We will fight back. We will win.
That is several people
Quote tweet, 01:38 UTC · 24 likes
Fun fact: semi-contrary to popular understanding of autism, the lack of empathy in autism is specifically *cognitive* empathy ie theory of mind
*Affective* empathy ie feeling strongly on behalf of others is not diminished
I think this explains me pretty well
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): F (I don’t feel like I’m super un-empathetic though… 🙁)
Reply to @chasedownleads, 01:47 UTC · 2 likes
Chase Passive Income (@chasedownleads): Is there a better place to spend a Friday than here?
@SpacedOutMatt
Reply to @yzilber, 04:46 UTC · 770 likes
Jazi Zilber (@yzilber): it doesn't move them, it changes their quantum spin.
Ah I didn’t realize it was a quantum thing
Reply to @polisisti, 09:41 UTC · 3 likes
Alessandro (@polisisti): @AaronBergman18 I got 30 — just the right number to continue my narrative of "people have occasionally asked me if I'm autistic, and I'm not really sure"
Lol
Quote tweet, 10:02 UTC · 16 likes
Recent history (like 5-20 years old) is the most interesting and extremely underrated in academia, education, nonfiction popular books, and entertainment (maybe least underrated in entertainment - see eg The Big Short movie but still)
Quoting 🏛 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 🏛 (@nonregemesse): Which opinion about history will get you like this?
Thread, continued, 10:04 UTC · 3 likes
Side note: I’ve gotten into the habit of just pasting my tweets into Claude to see what He’ll say
Thread, continued, 10:11 UTC · 2 likes
Here’s an example: in college I had a lot of ancient history courses but no option for “the history of the Great Recession” or social media, or the war on terror
Quote tweet, 10:19 UTC · 10 likes
I still don’t think this is the highest impact place to donate, but I will stan the choice to screenshot and share
If you donate, especially a large amount of money like $10k, get some social credit goddamnit!
Quoting Alex Turner (@Turn_Trout): Thanks to @NeelNanda5, I was thinking about how USAID's absence has left many ppl vulnerable. Last night I felt fairly low. So I donated $10K to https://www.givewell.org/all-grants-fund, matched +$10K by Google.
$ can't stop me from feeling low right away. But lots of folks need help. Donate :)
Reply, 11:00 UTC · 4 likes
Banana
Reply to @MariGO2thepolls, 11:26 UTC · 5 likes
🏳️🌈Mar G-O 🌐🇺🇦 (@MariGO2thepolls): “I likes them before they were famous” is out “I hated them before they were infamous is in” who have you number one hater if since day 1?
I’m surprised I tweeted this strongly in hindsight but
Reply to @imitationlearn, 17:37 UTC · 2 likes
imit (@imitationlearn): how do u guys control/limit ur twtr usage? i’m finding it quite hard even when i actively want to! would appreciate some thoughts :)
note: i think framing as “control/limit” also is a negative framing that doesn’t help with my motivations since it’s like parts of me fighting
I probably use too much but 24 hour fasts once in a while
Tweet, 17:40 UTC · 2 likes
AI companies should let people do a few floating point operations by hand to train models
(Idk if this is actually feasible)
Tweet, 17:52 UTC · 681 likes
Claude is a narc
Reply to @mpopv, 18:04 UTC · 5 likes
Matt Popovich (@mpopv): @AaronBergman18 Make Rizz Aligned Again
💯
Quote tweet, 18:12 UTC · 15 likes
Lol
Quoting daeveningglow (@InlandCaGuy): Seems like a lot of young dudes are blowing it, lol.
Thread, continued, 18:13 UTC · 6 likes
Kinda
Reply to @StefanFSchubert, 18:18 UTC · 6 likes
Stefan Schubert (@StefanFSchubert): You may not like it but this is what true contrarianism looks like
Haha I voted the same, but it’s a close call between A and C
Tweet, 19:00 UTC · 16 likes
Guys what’s the best intro to EA for her
Reply to @joelhooks, 19:00 UTC · 9 likes
joel ⛈️ (@joelhooks): the robots are dumb
✊
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 19:25 UTC · 5 likes
Aaron Bergman, March 22, 2025: Guys what’s the best intro to EA for her
Like it used to be Doing Good Better
Surely there’s something more up to date at this point?
Reply to @Pandora_Delaney, 19:31 UTC · 13 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @Pandora_Delaney is no longer available.)
Here’s a fun series https://reducing-suffering.org/
Reply to @matt_olma, 22:47 UTC · 12 likes
Matt Olma (@matt_olma): In terms of importance, who wins this tournament?
Bro you can’t put normative and meta-ethics together in the first round that’s fr two 1st seeds
Reply to @livgorton, 22:55 UTC · 2 likes
Liv (@livgorton): really feeling the AGI now
The algorithm knows me better than I do
Quote tweet, 23:12 UTC · 8 likes
Here is the objectively correct ordering
(I’m actually pretty unsure about some of them I haven’t engaged a ton with so grain of salt)
Quoting Matt Olma (@matt_olma): In terms of importance, who wins this tournament?
Reply to @beala, 23:16 UTC · 2 likes
Alex Beal 🆎 (@beala): All right just got served a pornographic ad of a guy jacking off. I reported it as adult content and it asked me if I wanted to upgrade to premium. Might be taking a little break from x dot com.
Bad but also lol
Reply to @tautologer, 23:17 UTC · 5 likes
tautologer (@tautologer): unless you're using every waking minute with the maximum possible efficiency, time is not your bottleneck. your true bottleneck is energy, focus, or courage. "I don't have enough time" is deep cope
Yeah fr, there have been like 19 days in my life when I truly have not had enough time
Reply to @animalologist, 23:30 UTC · 2 likes
taco belle (@animalologist): There’s something so fascinating about having reply guys who disagree with you more often than they agree with you. Does everybody have this or is this a me thing
@absurdlymax
Thread, continued, 23:30 UTC · 2 likes
But in a good way
Tweet, 23:35 UTC · 5 likes
Dirty hamper and clean hamper is the best clothing organization system change my mind
Thread, continued, 23:35 UTC · 5 likes
The pile is the most natural and elegant sorting method in general
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Tweet, 03:52 UTC · 11 likes
You have a moral responsibility to stand up for the low status in whatever domains you are high status in (if you’re very intelligent stand up for the less gifted, if you’re hot stand up for the ugly etc)
Tweet, 04:04 UTC · 16 likes
Destroying Teslas has got to be the dumbest*worst method of protest
It’s incredibly overdetermined:
- being pro-MAGA is bad but not worthy of a $30k fine each
- we live in a society aka classical liberalism
- you should really give people the benefit of the doubt
Tweet, 04:04 UTC · 1 like
- only very recently has Elon showed the worst of himself IMO
- it’s real wealth destruction, worse than stealing from the rich to give to the poor in this sense
Thread, continued, 04:04 UTC · 2 likes
- if you’re still not persuaded, you should probably start with less destructive methods like TPing/tomatoing the car. You don’t have to literally destroy it
Thread, continued, 04:04 UTC · 2 likes
- part of the theory of change is that you sell the car? How does that help (hurt Elon) exactly? I guess decreasing the value a tiny bit? Ok sure
- calling for a boycott moving forward is a totally legit alternative
- probably more
Reply to @EpochAIResearch, 04:28 UTC · 2 likes
Epoch AI (@EpochAIResearch): Many AI leaders claim AI's value mainly will come from accelerating R&D—"geniuses in datacenters."
This view has key flaws: R&D contributes less to economic growth & is harder to automate than believed. Most of AI's value will instead come from broad deployment in the economy.
Wait but almost all economic growth over time is due to total factor productivity growth right? And post-1980 is an anomaly
Reply to @NoahTopper, 06:22 UTC · 3 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): @AaronBergman18
Based
Reply to @NeelNanda5, 06:39 UTC · 6 likes
Neel Nanda (@NeelNanda5): Working for Google certainly has its share of BS, but I've never had anything as bad as an employer threatening to take back years of paid compensation unless I signed a lifetime concealed non disparagement. Not everything is an upgrade.
(quoting @nearcyan: If you work on core Google AI products and are interested in a more fun work environment with a higher talent bar, and most importantly, less bureaucracy and BS, consider joining Anthropic, OpenAI, or xAI! All three are aggressively hiring. I will match you with a recruiter, DM!)
🌶️
Reply to @animalologist, 08:07 UTC · 10 likes
taco belle (@animalologist): YOOOO I used a butter knife and popped the seal fuck yeah I knew that publicly bullying myself would motivate me adequately to figure it out, now we snac
Making jars openable by say 90% of the adult female population is a movement with a missing constituency
It sorta falls between the feminist/non-feminist/anti-feminist cracks
Quote tweet, 08:10 UTC · 12 likes
Declining CO2 emissions per capita in the US kinda lacks a constituency to publicize it (although there are also good reasons not to focus on or care about this much)
Making jars openable by women lacks a constituency
What else is like this?
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): @animalologist Making jars openable by say 90% of the adult female population is a movement with a missing constituency
It sorta falls between the feminist/non-feminist/anti-feminist cracks
Reply to @iamaheron_, 08:35 UTC · 2 likes
sniper (heron) (@iamaheron_): a lot of people will get 2 or 3 high-profile followers and be like “holy shit, i can’t lose these followers” and then they become scared of posting anything ever again
for the love of god, do not let 2 or 3 people take control your life
Dustin Moskovitz follows me on Bluesky and I kinda wanna post exclusively for him to see but then again I don’t wanna be too much of a simp so I basically don’t do anything lol
Reply to @AndyMasley, 13:47 UTC · 2 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): This is the blog post that's gonna get me cancelled once and for all
Yes I will cancel u
Reply to @RandomSprint, 14:11 UTC · 2 likes
RandomSprint🧭 (@RandomSprint): At long last, we can use the magic of AI to heal the broken "bishop" of its unfortunate cut.
(Accidentally gave this prompt to the wrong openai model, and it used matplotlib to paint a random oval on it.)
Lol
Reply to @WillowChem, 14:45 UTC · 4 likes
MagpAI (@WillowChem): Just spent the morning explaining effective altruism to a priest
Interesting, curious to hear more!
Reply to @WillowChem, 14:53 UTC · 2 likes
MagpAI (@WillowChem): @moreisdifferent @AaronBergman18 I don't mind but am curious as to why you retweeted this?
It’s just interesting idk
Thread, continued, 14:54 UTC · 2 likes
Like the kind of thing more people might like to see
Tweet, 15:09 UTC · 5 likes
Maybe what people actually don’t like about “theater kids” is their attempt to subvert/deny the consensus status hierarchy
Reply to @GjMcGowan, 15:30 UTC · 2 likes
George McGowan (@GjMcGowan): @NeelNanda5 Google took away the freshly squeezed orange juice at breakfast and replaced it with juice from a carton.
So who's the real monster?
Tech is DEAD
Reply to @suntzugi, 16:28 UTC · 9 likes
Sun 乌龟 💖 (@suntzugi): "suffering is necessary" is one of the greatest false beliefs that permeates the culture
Perhaps the ultimate sentient being cope
(quoting @beffjezos: Pain is the greatest teacher)
He’s actually right I think when it comes to ethics
I suspect it is literally impossible for a non-suffering being to appreciate the moral importance of suffering (maybe by contrast with pleasure? Idk)
Reply to @imitationlearn, 16:50 UTC · 4 likes
imit (@imitationlearn): ive wondered a lot about this!
do i need to know pain (and suffering?) to know what i want directionally? from some thinking, the answer seems like unfortunately yes. i don't know something until ive experienced it, right? but i feel like this is not strictly true...
our society prevents lots of very bad things from happening to its inhabitants (eg measles, arbitrary homicide) by having laws and sharing of ethics/morals. i wonder if a society that "grows" past many of the modern forms of pain/suffering by creating preventative measures will stick to those measures if they forget why they exist in the first place.
i do believe (from my buddhist/meditation friends and teachers) that there can be happiness regardless of the circumstances, but i wonder if this lesson can be taught without having gone through some part of life and suffered and then realized that this is the case. i think perhaps not?
this relates to the idea in my QT (below) of learning something too early to gain value from it.
calling in my quant @_space_punk_ for this one too
(quoting @orphcorp: hard to explain in a tweet but exposing ppl to the concept of "cognitive security" too early is likely to be incredibly infohazardous & incur lasting damage by prematurely closing off exploratory behaviors, eroding capacity to trust, & ultimately impeding psychosocial development)
I’m really talking about suffering to appreciate the intrinsic disvalue of suffering - whether you need suffering instrumentally is separate (and totally reasonable+valuable) question
Reply to @space_punk, 16:52 UTC · 4 likes
ꜱᴘᴀᴄᴇ ᴘᴜɴᴋ (@space_punk): Pleasure is just the feeling of relief from a lower previous baseline state. Everything isn't suffering in the sense of pain, but everything, including pleasure, is dukkha in that it is movement. Time always happens, change always happens. Things can only get better or worse. Even if they stay the same, you will have hedonic adaptation so they will start to feel less pleasurable (aka worse). Existence isn't suffering in the sense of pain, but it is suffering in the sense of time/change/movement (aka dukkha)
I don’t think this is true lol
Pleasure has an intrinsic property of goodness that is neither created by nor dependent on relief from something worse
Thread, continued, 16:52 UTC · 2 likes
Although as an empirical matter they may line up
Tweet, 17:02 UTC · 6 likes
Might delete but: there’s a thinkpiece to be written about how Hanania discourse is often a proxy war over the relative value of intellectual honesty vs good vibes
Grey tribe worships the former, blue tribe the latter
Quote tweet, 18:07 UTC · 20 likes
What
Quoting John Gramlich (@johngramlich): New post on our methodology blog reads like a whodunit: How a bizarre technical glitch caused the word "yes" to be replaced with the word "forks" in online surveys https://www.pewresearch.org/decoded/2025/03/21/how-a-glitch-in-an-online-survey-replaced-the-word-yes-with-forks/
Reply to @skooookum, 18:33 UTC · 5 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @skooookum is no longer available.)
Relevant lol
Tweet, 19:11 UTC · 6 likes
Re: abundance housing policy: there’s no direct conflict between YIMBY building policies and direct housing subsidization by the government (as opposed to just mandating that the landlord charge below market prices)
Tweet, 19:11 UTC · 1 like
If anything there’s a natural semi-transactional coalition here between the center/center-left and left here - center gets liberalized zoning, left gets direct subsidization of housing
Thread, continued, 19:11 UTC · 3 likes
Now I think this is a worse use of public money than just cash transfers/negative income tax
But it’s not *that* much worse, and it’s certainly better than other arbitrary things the government can pay for on behalf of the poor (subsidized donuts, whatever)
Thread, continued, 19:17 UTC · 2 likes
I have been informed that Ezra just says this in the book. Sadly not original 😢
Reply to @JosephPolitano, 21:26 UTC · 17 likes
Joey Politano 🏳️🌈 (@JosephPolitano): Jesus Christ man
I think people in the broad liberal cluster ascribe too much to “working with” whomever
It doesn’t have to be a kumbaya thing—in a democracy, votes/hearts+minds are power. You have power, you get a seat at the table, for the same reason Putin and any other nuclear-armed warlord gets a seat at the table
Yes you should absolutely “work with” racists and whomever else when things that matter are on the line and they have something to offer. It’s not an endorsement
(Steelman of the opposing side probably involves like “working with” being empowering; there’s something to this but I don’t think it generally carries the day)
Reply to @monke_io, 21:50 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @monke_io is no longer available.)
Yeah iirc like >1% of executed people are definitively innocent in the US
Reply to @mattyglesias, 22:23 UTC · 6 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @mattyglesias is no longer available.)
They should not float like that!
Monday, March 24, 2025
Tweet, 00:19 UTC · 37 likes
Man Kantianism is wrong on so many levels
It’s like a black pill on philosophy that anyone fell (falls!) for it
Reply to @_mattmandel, 00:42 UTC · 16 likes
Matt Mandel (@_mattmandel): You might be interested in this essay I wrote on the philosophical foundations of EA and the comparative advantages of Kantianism over consequentialism https://matthewmandel.com/2022/08/31/on-the-philosophical-foundations-of-ea/
Is there a particular argument for consequentialism you find especially persuasive?
This sounds trite and question-begging but things that in fact happen just *are* the things that matter. Tbh I don’t have a super sophisticated defense of consequentialism per se, it seems to me so trivially correct and all the interesting questions start after you’ve accepted consequentialism and specifically utilitarianism
As for why not Kantianism, the thing I find most compelling is that it (afaict uncontroversially) gives no weight to suffering per se. Nothing wrong with torturing a being as long as it’s not “rational,” and this is sufficient for me to dismiss it out of hand
FWIW I actually agree with your thesis that EAs should care more about moral philosophy, I just think all the plausible and interesting disagreement is underneath the umbrella of utilitarianism
Reply to @corsaren, 00:46 UTC · 3 likes
corsaren (@corsaren): Which parts? I think his metaethics is brilliant even if his applied ethics is shit (i.e., ofc you can lie to a nazi looking for Anne Frank)
Nothing wrong with suffering per se
also like punts on the question of “ok well what would/should/shall I will, as a rational being”
Also no good way of deciding between multiple (really infinite) possible dictums you could be considering as relevant in any given scenario
Also elevates something like “elegant consistency” to the highest possible good with no legitimate justification (ik this one is contentious)
Quote tweet, 00:49 UTC · 7 likes
I have no idea what I’m talking about but I feel like the distinction between ethics and decision theory is a bit blurrier than it first seems
Like ok, “consequences” matter, well what kind of consequences? Logical ones, causal ones, evidential ones, etc?
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): @matthewjmandel This sounds trite and question-begging but things that in fact happen just *are* the things that matter. Tbh I don’t have a super sophisticated defense of consequentialism per se, it seems to me so trivially correct and all the interesting questions start after you’ve accepted consequentialism and specifically utilitarianism
As for why not Kantianism, the thing I find most compelling is that it (afaict uncontroversially) gives no weight to suffering per se. Nothing wrong with torturing a being as long as it’s not “rational,” and this is sufficient for me to dismiss it out of hand
FWIW I actually agree with your thesis that EAs should care more about moral philosophy, I just think all the plausible and interesting disagreement is underneath the umbrella of utilitarianism
Reply to @austinc3301, 02:09 UTC · 5 likes
Agus 🔸 (@austinc3301): Finally: I’ve been called a Jew (?)
(quoting @whStancilGala: This Jew says non-citizens have no rights at points of entry but if you go around the point of entry you do.)
L’chaim
Tweet, 02:41 UTC · 25 likes
Took long enough (I don’t blame him, I think he’s a bad guy and have been actively antagonistic)
Reply to @tapir_worf, 02:44 UTC · 2 likes
tapir worf (@tapir_worf): i’m so tired of reading shel silverstein
what’s a slightly better more grown up poet i can migrate my kids to?
Edgar Allen Poe
Reply to @RomanHauksson, 02:47 UTC · 2 likes
Roman Hauksson-Neill (@RomanHauksson): More research in general should be interactive demos! I think it's unfortunate that PDFs are the standard presentation format for research when many would benefit from being webpages
Semi related: now that Substack is the dominant blog, they should allow arbitrary html embeds
Reply to @jutyrannus, 03:06 UTC · 3 likes
Joakim 🇫🇮🇲🇽 (@jutyrannus): In case you missed it, there are feral giraffes in Mexico
(quoting @ElFinanciero_Mx: 🦒😱 ¡Jirafas en #Coahuila! Policías encontraron varias jirafas deambulando en Hidalgo, Coahuila. 🚓🌵 Autoridades investigan cómo llegaron ahí y aseguran su bienestar. 📷 redes sociales)
Basado
Quote tweet, 03:16 UTC · 5 likes
Ok hear me out: this is a unique opportunity to do wild animal welfare via contraception
Quoting El Financiero (@ElFinanciero_Mx): 🦒😱 ¡Jirafas en #Coahuila!
Policías encontraron varias jirafas deambulando en Hidalgo, Coahuila. 🚓🌵 Autoridades investigan cómo llegaron ahí y aseguran su bienestar.
📷 redes sociales
Thread, continued, 03:17 UTC · 3 likes
Like before they start starving to death
No predators in Mexico apparently
I don’t mind a quite robust New World Giraffe population as long as they’re happy
Reply to @lxeagle17, 10:51 UTC · 4 likes
Lakshya Jain (@lxeagle17): Is the following image 55% blue or 55% red?
Take a guess. It's virtually impossible for the naked eye to tell. And this is why you *cannot* say a model that says there is a 55% chance of a one-off event occurring is that, functionally, from one that gives a 45% chance.
This is true but the example says much more about human neuropsych than it does about the nature of statistics
Quote tweet, 11:11 UTC · 6 likes
Could you beat a fox in a fight? No weapons
Poll below
Quoting Peter Schmidt-Nielsen (@ptrschmdtnlsn): It's funny that my takeaway from this graphic is 180° from what I see everyone say. Obviously everyone is wildly underconfident? Sure, 8% saying they'd beat a lion is wrong, but that's close to lizardman. 50% saying they'd somehow lose to a goose seems like a *much* worse error!
Tweet, 11:13 UTC · 1 like
Tweet, 11:41 UTC · 10 likes
Brilliant by Uber Eats, estimating individual demand curves (I’ve gotten a series of coupons now this decreasing in value)
Thread, continued, 11:41 UTC · 7 likes
Ugh it’s kinda fun econometrics
Estimate P(each stage in order process conditional on previous) => propensity to purchase as a function of price => calculus to find optimal “discount” to give each consumer
Reply to @peterwildeford, 12:50 UTC · 2 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): Never ask a woman her salary or a Kantian what Kant thought about bastards
"A child that comes into the world apart from marriage is born outside the law (for the law is marriage) and therefore outside the protection of the law."
(quoting @AaronBergman18: Man Kantianism is wrong on so many levels It’s like a black pill on philosophy that anyone fell (falls!) for it)
Seems wrong
Reply to @ElytraMithra, 12:52 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @ElytraMithra is no longer available.)
Lmao
Quote tweet, 12:55 UTC · 9 likes
Isn’t Chevron deference dead? Isn’t the whole point that this kind of thing has to go through congress now?
Quoting unusual_whales (@unusual_whales): BREAKING: Robert F. Kennedy Jr has announced plans to ban pharmaceutical advertisements on television.
Reply to @boreal_country, 13:25 UTC · 1 like
Beau (@boreal_country): @AaronBergman18 Chevron was deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes. Unless he’s trying to expand the scope of FDA’s authority using an ambiguous phrase it’s just regular delegation.
My pretty vague impression is that there are a ton of random statutes that can be interpreted in quite broad ways to covet a pretty wide range of arbitrary regulatory actions
Reply to @mattyglesias, 13:37 UTC · 12 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @mattyglesias is no longer available.)
Well you need an abundance of cognitive labor, if only there was some other technology that could provide this (tbc I am still in favor of 1BA)
Tweet, 15:47 UTC · 3 likes
Wow reading out loud is really tiring
Quote tweet, 17:54 UTC · 321 likes
Hot take: this is bad for a lot of reasons, but my expectations are so low for the administration that the reasonable seriousness shown in these screenshots is actually a sort of positive update
Quoting Shane Harris (@shaneharris): In 25 years of covering national security, I’ve never seen a story like this: Senior Trump officials discussed planning for the U.S. attack on the Houthis in a Signal group--and inadvertently added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/?gift=kPTlqn0J1iP9IBZcsdI5IVJpB2t9BYyxpzU4sooa69M&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Thread, continued, 17:54 UTC · 41 likes
(Notably absent is trump himself, who I do not expect would have reasonably cogent and serious messages)
Reply, 21:45 UTC · 1 like
What max % single year growth rate would you bet 1:1 at, say years 2025-2028? Like if every single calendar year is below that threshold you win
Tweet, 21:59 UTC · 10 likes
I’m interested in betting on a single calendar year having GDP growth above 5% (real, US) by 2030, if anyone is interested in 1:1 odds (feel free to haggle terms)
Reply to @frances__lorenz, 22:15 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @frances__lorenz is no longer available.)
Crazy
Reply to @LinchZhang, 22:57 UTC · 3 likes
Linch (@LinchZhang): Everybody loves a meritocracy until people realize that they're the ones without merit.
Synthesis, ofc, is non-ruthless meritocracy (meritocracy + transfers to the less skilled a la progressive taxation + negative income tax at the bottom)
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Quote tweet, 01:10 UTC · 15 likes
Requesting more of this (share only with the kids consent please, kids are people too)
I’m so curious lol
Quoting Gena Gorlin (@Gena_I_Gorlin): Gave 5yo access to her own ChatGPT context window; came back 10 minutes later to find this
Reply to @ElijahRavitz, 01:44 UTC · 30 likes
Elijah Ravitz-Campbell (@ElijahRavitz): Seriously? The Europe bashing, the "better protect Saudi oil interests"? This is confirmation that they are every bit the incompetent corrupt buffoons they appear to be from the outside.
Hey my expectations are really low
No predictable updating, Bayes, etc
Reply to @LizkaVaintrob, 01:57 UTC · 3 likes
Lizka (@LizkaVaintrob): Apropos nothing- during a summer camp in early HS my roommate & I got dared to sneak across the hall after curfew and send a selfie to a group chat (as proof)
Of course we accidentally sent the photo to the chat with camp counselors
One of the scariest moments in my life iirc
Cancellable IMO
Tweet, 02:03 UTC · 37 likes
Beating a dead horse atp but Community Notes cited as exemplary use of AI for epistemics in Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion (pdf below)
Cc @jaybaxter
Thread, continued, 02:03 UTC · 3 likes
https://www.forethought.org/research/preparing-for-the-intelligence-explosion.pdf
Thread, continued, 02:04 UTC · 3 likes
By @willmacaskill and @finmoorhouse, needless to say
Tweet, 02:26 UTC · 34 likes
Tl;dr intelligence explosion this century *probable*, plausibly this decade
Buckle up
Thread, continued, 02:26 UTC · 2 likes
https://www.forethought.org/research/preparing-for-the-intelligence-explosion.pdf
Thread, continued, 02:27 UTC · 2 likes
I recorded a reading of this to be dropped on a podcast feed near you soon 👀
Reply to @jaybaxter, 02:28 UTC · 2 likes
Jay Baxter (@jaybaxter): Community Notes scale and speed up fact-checking, and do so in a more trustworthy way.
But to handle AI-scale misinfo slop, we’ll probably want AI assistants helping to write notes. “Supernotes” is one proposal of how this could work:
image attached
(quoting @AaronBergman18: Beating a dead horse atp but Community Notes cited as exemplary use of AI for epistemics in Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion (pdf below) Cc @jaybaxter)
I’ll bump this in case anyone wants to finetune something
Quote tweet, 02:45 UTC · 9 likes
High key it’s dumb that they chose the basketball height rim to basically maximize the impact of height
Make it 8 feet or 14-16 feet
Quoting ROBYNA 👽 (@socoolrobyna): In the name of fairness should this kid be allowed to compete against other kids? I really care about this for some reason and it will be a primary point in my politics
Tweet, 03:19 UTC · 3 likes
Claude has data export now
Here is my Claude Wrapped:
Convos: 2262
Total messages: 10058 = 5029 each
Total word count: 1953658 ≈ 2M
Reply to @wokal_distance, 11:24 UTC · 5 likes
Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance): The young media-savvy progressives hold extremist views that are going to totally alienate mainstream voters.
For example, the woman mentioned here wants to:
- Allow unlimited numbers of refugees
- allow "gender affirming medical care" for minors
- Pack the supreme court
Uh kinda based ngl
Reply to @MarioNawfal, 11:45 UTC · 6 likes
Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal): 🚨🇺🇸 GPS DATA EXPOSES ASTROTURFING AT DENVER BERNIE-AOC RALLY
That massive Bernie Sanders and AOC rally in Denver? Turns out it wasn’t as “grassroots” as advertised.
Despite claims of 34,000 attendees, GPS data analysis reveals the real number was closer to 20,000—still big, but not record-breaking.
More revealing? A whopping 84% of those devices had shown up at nine or more other protests, including Antifa/BLM events, pro-Hamas and pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and Kamala Harris campaign stops.
Over 30% had attended twenty or more.
Data analysts say the crowd was anything but organic—the majority were tied to activist networks like Disruption Project, Indivisible, Democratic Socialists of America, Rise & Resist, and Troublemakers—all reportedly funded by ActBlue and some receiving backing via USAID.
Optics over authenticity. The playbook hasn’t changed—just the targets.
Source: @zerohedge @TonySeruga
image attached
video attached
image attached
(quoting @MarioNawfal: 🇺🇸BERNIE AND AOC TAKE AIM AT BILLIONAIRES IN COLORADO RALLIES At a packed Vegas stop, Sanders said it flat-out: the Democratic Party needs fewer elites and more people who “get their hands dirty” and “struggle to put food on the table.” They’re now taking that message to Greeley…)
Lmao the accusation is that people who went to a lot of previous progressive irl events went to another progressive irl event
Damning
Quote tweet, 15:45 UTC · 16 likes
Tapping the sign
It seems very bad if a lawless authoritarian administration is administering the intelligence explosion
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): This is less ambitious than what @PauseAI and friends are calling for, but a somewhat more plausible ask is “pause (frontier) AI until the next POTUS election” or at least “no self-improving AGI” until than
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 17:07 UTC · 3 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 18, 2024: Load bearing
Not load bearing (wild turkey)
(video, plays on X)
Tweet, 17:35 UTC · 27 likes
I like when Claude says I’ve asked a fascinating question
Thread, continued, 17:35 UTC · 3 likes
Reply to @absurdlymax, 18:23 UTC · 2 likes
Max Alexander (@absurdlymax): To return to this years later, this is extremely Aaron tbh
I’m a longtermist 😤
Reply to @ChanaMessinger, 18:34 UTC · 15 likes
Chana (@ChanaMessinger): Just hire philosophers for your career consulting and research organization, they said
it'll be fine, they said
slack will be completely normal, they said
Directly inspired this
Kantianism is a dealbreaker 😤
Tweet, 18:45 UTC · 3 likes
You can just tell when something is made with deep learning, or at least ML, instead of some other GOFAI/algorithm
It runs smoother, more naturally, “just works,” even surprisingly well
I don’t think deep learning is going to hit a wall
Reply to @Romy_Holland, 18:53 UTC · 2 likes
Romy (@Romy_Holland): still can’t believe i somehow transmuted 4000 clementines and an ungodly amount of cheese into a functioning, softball-sized human in mere months
Yes it is remarkable
Reply to @thoth_iv, 19:14 UTC · 2 likes
Thŏth (@thoth_iv): There's at least something nice about the way ChatGPT tries to explain the double standard truthfully.
(quoting @NickADobos: New ChatGPT image gen can draw sexy men but not sexy women)
Fr
Reply to @HenriThunberg, 21:50 UTC · 4 likes
Henri Thunberg 🔸 (@HenriThunberg): Oh boy. She couldn't possibly have known less what she was about to walk herself into.
Hasn’t unmatched yet 🙏
Reply to @metakuna, 21:53 UTC · 2 likes
metakuna (14/100 blog posts) (@metakuna): Guess who wrote the book
Milton
Reply to @metakuna, 21:54 UTC · 52 likes
metakuna (14/100 blog posts) (@metakuna): Non-drinkers who go to social events are freeriding on the goodwill and joviality of hard working drinkers and the whole social fabric would fall apart if everybody stopped drinking
Sorry :(
Reply to @metakuna, 21:57 UTC · 2 likes
metakuna (14/100 blog posts) (@metakuna): Yeah
Oh nice
Quote tweet, 21:59 UTC · 52 likes
Parenting *does* matter
Maybe not much for measured outcomes, but like it just intrinsically sucks/makes for a worse childhood to have a parent like this
Quoting Dissproportionately (@dissproportion): One mom once told us she whispered “I wish I could beat the shit out of you” to her child, and people came to her defense saying it’s healthy to express her feelings, as long as she doesn’t act on them. And that’s only part of why I’m not in those groups anymore.
Reply to @StefanFSchubert, 22:07 UTC · 4 likes
Stefan Schubert (@StefanFSchubert): It's ok and natural to be habituated to things. You don't have to pretend you're in awe of something just because people in the past would have been.
(quoting @kaseyklimes: always take the window seat. always leave the window open. you’re flying through the goddamn air, you’re living the dream of your ancestors, have some respect for humanity’s defiance of gravity)
I agree it’s ok, but airplanes are actually incredible to me and I don’t think I will ever be fully habituated
They shouldn’t work!
Reply to @NoahTopper, 22:19 UTC · 13 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): Interestingly, as I recall, in Caplan’s parenting book he says one of the metrics parents *do* affect a lot is “longterm relationship with your parents” and argues you should mostly focus on just giving your kids a pleasant and enjoyable childhood.
Yeah but like even if it didn’t affect your long term relationship, it would be good to give kids a good childhood for intrinsic reasons
Quote tweet, 23:14 UTC · 8 likes
New Pigeon Hour just dropped: I read @willmacaskill and @finmoorhouse’s paper (first two hours) and add my own unstructured thoughts at the end (last 30ish mins)
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Tl;dr intelligence explosion this century *probable*, plausibly this decade
Buckle up
Quote tweet, 23:26 UTC · 5 likes
Is literally anyone being made better off by this administration
Quoting Meighan Stone (@meighanstone): 🚨 Now have heard two reports of COVID/Long COVID researchers notified today NIH grants terminated 🚨
If you're a #LongCOVID researcher or see any posts on grants terminated, please tag in myself or @LCCampaign as starting a list, or email directly: info@longcovidcampaign.org
Thread, continued, 23:26 UTC · 3 likes
Hope it’s worth having to say your pronouns 20% less often
Reply to @tracewoodgrains, 23:59 UTC · 2 likes
Jack (@tracewoodgrains): this dude’s been chasing me around all day interrogating me and Holding Me To Account over liking to chat with a wide range of people
now he’s concluded I’m racist and bad bc I think Richard Hanania is around at the median Racism Level for conservatives and don’t cut people off over that
and he’s gonna follow me around and keep Holding Me To Account. oh no!
I’ve made my standard clear many times, but to reiterate: I’ll talk to basically anyone and am on good terms with many people who hate each other for many often-justified reasons. if you don’t act obnoxious towards me, I try to return the courtesy. racism is bad but not all-defining; people should be considered in full
if any of you want to Hold Me To Account for that, be my guest, but don’t expect any respect or deference for doing so. and if you’re looking for someone to interrogate, I hear Claude’s pretty patient these days.
👏
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Quote tweet, 00:23 UTC · 10 likes
I’m no huge Greenwald fan, but it’s notable that smart people from every corner of non-malicious, not-totally-deranged ideology space have come together to condemn this
Quoting Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald): Nobody disputes the US Govt's power to deport people: meaning send them back to their country of origin.
That's radically different than tossing them into a notorious prison for life in an unrelated country based on unproven accusations of gang membership with no due process:
Reply to @frances__lorenz, 00:29 UTC · 8 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @frances__lorenz is no longer available.)
Yeah I’d really like to think I also wouldn’t have signed the NDA
Quote tweet, 00:39 UTC · 11 likes
Me but Brian Tomasik
Quoting Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): “3 date rule” is how many dates before you tell her she needs to read HPMOR
Tweet, 02:08 UTC · 5 likes
Non-democratic non-republics really like to call themselves Democratic Republics
Thread, continued, 02:09 UTC · 4 likes
I am Tall Neurotypical Person of Aaron
Reply to @scaling01, 02:35 UTC · 17 likes
Lisan al Gaib (@scaling01): ASI actually. I gave it a screenshot of the post as context and asked for its reaction to that post
thank you sama, greg and the whole team behind it
image attached
(quoting @scaling01: OpenAI has reached AGI)
Tweet, 02:43 UTC · 11 likes
Bro it is over for the boomers
This looks like a brother, if not a twin (I don’t have a brother)
Thread, continued, 02:45 UTC · 3 likes
This isn’t me, this is 4o’s drawing of me, tbc
Reply to @Benthamsbulldog, 03:22 UTC · 10 likes
Bentham's Bulldog🔸 (@Benthamsbulldog): If you had to experience the pain of being eaten alive once a week, would your life still be worth living?
No and quite possibly even once
Reply to @liz_love_lace, 03:41 UTC · 4 likes
Liz Lovelace (@liz_love_lace): you people need to get into more arguments with me, i need the stimulation, or else i start picking fights with random political extremists and that's bad for my soul and my brand
Poast cancellable takes
Reply, 04:11 UTC · 1 like
RIP
Reply to @livgorton, 04:24 UTC · 2 likes
Liv (@livgorton): finally got to see my puppy with my other dog who passed away a few years ago. maybe a bit silly but i wish they got to meet and it’s nice that the AI will make me little pictures of the world in which they got to 🩷
😩🥺😭❤️🥰💕💞
Reply to @clairlemon, 04:46 UTC · 7 likes
Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon): Brilliant writing from George Case for @Quillette
“Derangement” in the face of Trump is largely a correct and rational response
He’s a really bad guy!
Quote tweet, 04:49 UTC · 6 likes
Seeing lots of “who is it ok to work with” discourse so here is a take
“It doesn’t have to be a kumbaya thing—in a democracy, votes/hearts+minds are power. You have power, you get a seat at the table”
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): @JosephPolitano @tracewoodgrains @themountaingoa1 I think people in the broad liberal cluster ascribe too much to “working with” whomever
It doesn’t have to be a kumbaya thing—in a democracy, votes/hearts+minds are power. You have power, you get a seat at the table, for the same reason Putin and any other nuclear-armed warlord gets a seat at the table
Yes you should absolutely “work with” racists and whomever else when things that matter are on the line and they have something to offer. It’s not an endorsement
(Steelman of the opposing side probably involves like “working with” being empowering; there’s something to this but I don’t think it generally carries the day)
Tweet, 04:54 UTC · 73 likes
Trying experimental antidepressants from Alibaba is probably one of the most based things I’ve done
Thread, continued, 04:55 UTC · 9 likes
Didn’t really work. Could have been fake for all I know
Reply to @peterwildeford, 12:08 UTC · 6 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): seems potentially dangerous?
Yeah
Reply to @cube_flipper, 14:20 UTC · 7 likes
Cube Flipper (@cube_flipper): @AaronBergman18 what did you order?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALTO-100
Quote tweet, 14:43 UTC · 16 likes
CRITICAL SUPPORT TO KELSEY
EVERYONE VOTE
Quoting New Liberals 🇺🇦🇹🇼🌐 (@CNLiberalism): (3) Economist & Criminal Justice researcher @jenniferdoleac
vs.
(6) Senior writer at Vox's Future Perfect @kelseytuoc
Reply to @stanfordNYC, 14:45 UTC · 10 likes
Bernard Stanford ✡︎ (@stanfordNYC): It's just kind of unfortunate that, per unit of goodness accomplished, donating to local classical music performance feels like 10,000x as good as donating to deworming for impoverished children you will never meet.
This isn’t true for me at all lol
Reply to @rgblong, 14:55 UTC · 20 likes
Robert Long (@rgblong):
This is the real photo
Reply to @stanfordNYC, 14:58 UTC · 7 likes
Bernard Stanford ✡︎ (@stanfordNYC): There's a reason there needed to be a whole explicit intellectual movement for one of those options, while the other... people just do.
Yeah true
Reply to @MannyRutinel, 15:08 UTC · 2 likes
Manny Rutinel (@MannyRutinel): 🚨SUCCESS!
My bill to cut red tape for food trucks passes out of committee!
Food truck owners should focus on making their delicious food, not filling out redundant paperwork to work in the town next door.
Let's cut costs for small businesses and Coloradans!
Nice
Tweet, 15:16 UTC · 37 likes
Tweet, 15:25 UTC · 1 like
Some context for the curious + naive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Ghibli
Reply to @NathanB60857242, 17:29 UTC · 2 likes
Nathan Barnard (@NathanB60857242): sufficently worried about AI and nuclear weopons that I am now using a unholy combination of paracemol, ibuprohen, caffeine and elvanse to get some work done
(quoting @NathanB60857242: Ill again today, so audiobooking a history of the imperial German military)
Based
Reply to @halcyon_hazel, 17:33 UTC · 4 likes
❤️🔥 hazel ❤️🔥 (@halcyon_hazel): i hate people who are obsessed with co2 levels motherfucker it is 55 degrees outside do NOT open that window
55 is perfect open window temperature
Reply to @halcyon_hazel, 17:35 UTC · 2 likes
❤️🔥 hazel ❤️🔥 (@halcyon_hazel): @AaronBergman18 i don’t take opinions on temperature from men
Fair lol
Reply to @peterwildeford, 17:36 UTC · 2 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): I have been trusted with great power
Huge
Quote tweet, 18:05 UTC · 17 likes
.@sam_atis and I are betting on this! He gets $1500 if I lose, I get $750 if I win (2:1 odds)
Nullified/nobody wins if 5% comes in a year after negative growth
Last calendar year is 2029, so resolves as soon as its obvious what the answer is in 2030
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): I’m interested in betting on a single calendar year having GDP growth above 5% (real, US) by 2030, if anyone is interested in 1:1 odds (feel free to haggle terms)
Thread, continued, 18:05 UTC · 5 likes
Thanks to @NathanB60857242 for judging in case of any ambiguity
First serious size bet for me, time to put my money where my mouth is!
Reply, 18:05 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to is no longer available.)
26 is when you get kicked off of parents health insurance so
Tweet, 18:14 UTC · 159 likes
There are many possibilities beyond the Ghibli thing
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 18:18 UTC · 4 likes
Aaron Bergman, March 26, 2025: Thanks to @NathanB60857242 for judging in case of any ambiguity First serious size bet for me, time to put my money where my mouth is!
I’m curious if @peterwildeford wants to opine on who if anyone has the better end of this deal
Reply to @arthur_wright_, 18:19 UTC · 3 likes
Arthur Wrong 🔸 (@arthur_wright_): Missing from this picture is the line of about 10 different Chinese people waiting to take a photo with us 😅
Lmao
Reply to @justjoshinyou13, 18:20 UTC · 5 likes
Josh You (@justjoshinyou13): this looks really bad lol
Lol that head is way too big
Tweet, 19:07 UTC · 4 likes
New image gen is the first AI thing my (highly normie) family has really picked up on
Tweet, 19:10 UTC · 2 likes
I feel like it’s highly in the interest of the marijuana industry to breed some strains that smell less intense per unit smoked
Seems like a tractable problem too
Reply to @ben_j_todd, 21:42 UTC · 13 likes
Benjamin Todd (@ben_j_todd): On lastest episode @dwarkesh_sp casually saying @80000Hours is useless 😂😅
If someone had visited the site 5 years ago, we would have told them to focus on AI..
..which was some pretty damn useful advice.
Wish I'd followed it more myself :p
I haven’t listened but that seems like a crazy take
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Reply to @Noahpinion, 01:13 UTC · 30 likes
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@Noahpinion): One cannot truly live without having experiences. Yet experiences change you as a person. These changes make you a different person, effectively consigning the previous version of you to oblivion.
Therefore, life and death are the same thing.
(quoting @bryan_johnson: What's your opinion on death?)
This is pseudoprofound bullshit lol
Quote tweet, 01:46 UTC · 2 likes
Every random federal employee has to do so much ~bullshit like using MS teams and a ton of phishing training and generally not being allowed to use a lot of convenient digital services or personal computers for anything…
Quoting Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 (@JeremiahDJohns): This is fucking unbelievable.
This is the biggest national defense scandal in generations. Throw every one of their asses out of the government.
Tweet, 05:52 UTC · 6 likes
Ghibli compression: real -> anime -> ask a new instance to predict what the real one looked like
Thread, continued, 05:52 UTC · 3 likes
is this a sparse autoencoder
Reply to @NoahTopper, 06:04 UTC · 2 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): no
Shut up
Reply to @daniel_271828, 08:29 UTC
zzDANIEL_ETH (@daniel_271828): Once AI R&D is automated, will there be an intelligence explosion?
This is determined by two opposing forces:
1) Positive feedback loop of AI improving AI
2) Diminishing returns to AI R&D(To be conservative, our analysis assumes that computing hardware is held fixed.)
That is a hell of an assumption (cool paper though)
Reply to @Shoalst0ne, 08:30 UTC · 2 likes
Shoalstone (@Shoalst0ne): @confusionm8trix I'm surprised that things don't break between layers of abstraction more than they do
Fr
Reply to @sam_atis, 09:30 UTC · 5 likes
Sam Glover (@sam_atis): Is it possible that there could be a future AI system that is a moral agent but not a moral patient?
Yeah ofc, a non-sentient agent with a good understanding of morality is possible given our current state of knowledge
Quote tweet, 14:18 UTC · 4 likes
Relatedly, not joining some institution bc it goes against your vibe seems highly overrated, if not generally just a mistake
Eg more liberals should be law enforcement, especially ICE…
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): (Not commenting on the Meta thing specifically)
Resigning in protest *as an act of bravery* has to be one of the dumbest memes out there
I mean maybe it’s understandable/acceptable, but it’s the opposite of courageous; the courageous thing to do is fight until you get fired
Reply to @shravstwt, 14:21 UTC · 32 likes
shrav (@shravstwt): can someone suggest three (low budget) hobbies please
(quoting @schrodingersded: when u are single u need atleast three hobbies to not fall back into the trap again)
Juggling isn’t exactly free (tennis balls suck) but $20 goes a long way
Reply to @cambieangel, 14:22 UTC · 53 likes
Cam (@cambieangel): i love the bisexual smell ethics doctor lady @DrAllyLouks
Stay out of my lane bro
Reply to @livgorton, 14:26 UTC · 2 likes
Liv (@livgorton): i too prefer human-made art
image attached
(quoting @DrAllyLouks: @granawkins This is super cute! Just wish it was made by a human 🙃)
I have this intuition strongly for poetry but much less strongly for visual art
Tweet, 15:57 UTC · 5 likes
Don’t feel like getting specific now but learn from my mistakes:
If you want to be highly individualistic and agentic when interfacing with the federal government, be sure you have a lot of time and energy to spare, 2 sigma conscientiousness at minimum, and a high tolerance for bullshit
Thread, continued, 15:57 UTC · 3 likes
There is a reason that a nontrivial amount of the economy is consultants, lawyers, accountants, and software to deal with all things government
It is not a context in which the world bends to your will lmao
Tweet, 22:32 UTC · 9 likes
Shruppet
Tweet, 22:39 UTC · 402 likes
Isn’t it kinda weird that buildings don’t fall down more often
There are a lot of them, how does nothing ~ever go wrong in the west?
Reply to @NathanB60857242, 22:43 UTC · 8 likes
Nathan Barnard (@NathanB60857242): @AaronBergman18 Your views on like planes and buildings and stuff are so memeable
Based if I do say so myself
Reply to @SpacedOutMatt, 22:43 UTC · 2 likes
Matt 🔸 (@SpacedOutMatt): Animal Wilar
Nice
Reply to @banterrealism, 22:49 UTC · 30 likes
Sex Haver (@banterrealism): People do maintenance no?
Can’t say the same for that Baltimore bridge
Yeah like it’s not shocking that the rate is low, but that it’s almost zero and apparently my intuition that it’s way less than other reliable systems checks out
~2000 times less frequent failure than airplanes and bridges, 1000 times less than dams, 50 times less than elevators
Reply to @JesseTayRiver, 22:50 UTC · 17 likes
Jesse Smith (@JesseTayRiver): Yes structural failure - especially absent water as an underlying feature - is quite rare. In residential probably a mix of prescriptive code path being good and enforceable, failures tend to be quite slow and visible, and carpenters having adhered to similar bldg system for ~80 years
Good job 👍
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 22:54 UTC · 53 likes
Aaron Bergman, March 27, 2025: Isn’t it kinda weird that buildings don’t fall down more often There are a lot of them, how does nothing ~ever go wrong in the west?
Even during construction, and even though construction requires a ton of lower-skilled worker-hours
Not just large buildings either, I’ve never heard of a house collapsing while under construction
Friday, March 28, 2025
Reply to @cremieuxrecueil, 01:04 UTC · 2 likes
Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil): You prefer
Noooo I misvoted
Reply to @robi_rahman, 01:20 UTC · 16 likes
Robi Rahman (@robi_rahman): This is a common misconception. Buildings fall down all the time, but due to survivorship bias, you only see the ones that are still standing.
I don’t believe u
Tweet, 01:24 UTC · 6 likes
Is Ghibli even a Japanese word? It sounds vaguely Italian?
Reply to @StatsLime, 03:42 UTC · 39 likes
Max ⏸️ Limelihood 🔸🔸🔸 (@StatsLime): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics
Thanks I didn’t know about that
Tweet, 06:00 UTC · 5 likes
It’s obviously secondary to zoning stuff, but there must be something society can do to lower the transaction costs of moving
Maybe this is irrational but I’m probably not gonna move to save $200/mo, it has to be like $400 ≈ 33% savings to become an attractive possibility
Tweet, 06:11 UTC · 5 likes
@peterwildeford can u plz bless the Florida Gators with a superforecasting prayer
Thread, continued, 06:12 UTC · 4 likes
I would like to win my extended family March Madness bracket, and probably will (I think) if Florida wins
We need a wealth transfer away from the Boomer generation
Quote tweet, 06:16 UTC · 3 likes
Hopefully if we’re still around in a few years everyone will get negatively polarized in favor of actual due process and idk some power will shift away from random prosecutors who can ruin anyone’s life, probabilistically
Quoting eigenrobot (@eigenrobot): possibly the problem with due process defending, which to be clear i think due process is "important" and worth defending
is no one ever bothered to defend due process from insane abuse and overextension and selective application and maybe now it doesnt mean anything anymore
Reply to @peterwildeford, 12:02 UTC · 4 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): 🙏
May the probabilities guide the Gators' jaws to snap true, may the chance of impenetrable swamp be high, may the scary sound of 'chomp chomp' be a positive factor in our models. In Tetlock's name we pray.
Amen
Reply to @NathanpmYoung, 12:28 UTC · 4 likes
Nathan 🔎 (@NathanpmYoung): In Sunday school they would ask for prayer requests and often my younger brother would say:
"sharks"
And so:
"We pay for the Dean's grandmother, for the people of Romania... and also for for sharks. In Jesus' name, amen"
I mean I hope the sharks are doing well
Reply, 12:46 UTC · 1 like
Oh damn
Tweet, 13:25 UTC · 6 likes
Substantively, to a first approximation the government should not be making random people’s lives worse, even in the name of “public health” or whatever
See also: menthol cigarettes ban (good riddance), extreme opioid gatekeeping
Thread, continued, 13:25 UTC · 5 likes
I won’t say that there’s literally never a place for paternalism in public policy, but quite often it doesn’t even reach a modest bar of “actually helping the people it’s sorta intended to protect” when all is said and done, in terms of actual quality of life
Thread, continued, 13:25 UTC · 5 likes
People just live worse lives with more pain, worse cigarettes, and yes, worse/less sex in the case of poppers
Many such cases
Quote tweet, 14:02 UTC · 7 likes
VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE (Kelsey Piper)
Quoting New Liberals 🇺🇦🇹🇼🌐 (@CNLiberalism): (6) Senior writer at Vox's Future Perfect @KelseyTuoc
vs.
(7) Firebomb Hater @LinkofSunshine
Reply to @Mjreard, 18:03 UTC · 5 likes
Matt Reardon (@Mjreard): Approaching levels of EA adjacentcy never thought possible
Lmao
Tweet, 18:04 UTC · 51 likes
I hate low trust environments so much
Reply to @Aella_Girl, 18:08 UTC · 5 likes
Aella (@Aella_Girl): all i wanted was to ask people sexy questions. one little survey here, a sankey diagram there. but slowly things spiraled out of control. things have gotten dark. had to learn programming just to survive. $3k computers running out of ram. not even chatgpt can save me now
Based, Aella plz give me all ur data. I am a data autist and love data
Reply to @niplav_site, 19:11 UTC · 5 likes
niplav (@niplav_site): @AaronBergman18 effective altruist discovers purity as a moral foundation
Eh I don’t really see purity specifically? It’s really just a kindness + honesty thing
Reply to @niplav_site, 19:38 UTC · 4 likes
niplav (@niplav_site): @AaronBergman18 Because high trust environments require exclusion of people with different axes along which trust is practiced, and that feels a lot like purity
Ah I see what you mean
Still, the cases I’m thinking of aren’t really high trust environment becoming low trust, just settings that have been low trust from the start
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Reply to @Aella_Girl, 05:09 UTC · 2 likes
Aella (@Aella_Girl): Have you ever had to hit up someone you weren't really close to (like, someone you rarely talked to), to ask for help like food, money, or a place to sleep?
No thankfully but reminds me of this
Reply to @Mjreard, 06:12 UTC · 4 likes
Matt Reardon (@Mjreard): His name was Crouch when they got married. She did him a big favor imo
I learned this way too recently
Reply to @livgorton, 06:16 UTC · 6 likes
Liv (@livgorton): my sister sent me this like “omg ur friends are in this video???” 😭 it has begun
Based
Reply to @AaronEstel, 13:54 UTC · 4 likes
Aaron (@AaronEstel): same
image attached
(quoting @BLUNDERBUSSTED: having gpt genderswap me and experiencing an uncomfortable yearning for what could have been)
Weird
Quote tweet, 14:49 UTC · 10 likes
Based
Quoting Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon): Substack and FIRE have put out a joint statement pledging to defend writers in the US following the detainment of Tufts University student for the alleged "crime" of writing an op-ed. 👏👏👏
Tweet, 14:52 UTC · 36 likes
Opioids are way too strictly controlled. You should be able to have some on hand in a first aid kit
(I don’t have a horse in this race except reasonable fear of future pain, I think I’ve only ever had one tiny dose of morphine)
Tweet, 14:57 UTC · 38 likes
Air conditioning is so based
Top 10 invention of all time?
Thread, continued, 14:59 UTC · 3 likes
Brought to you by
Quote tweet, 15:06 UTC · 20 likes
Top inventions of all time:
1) opioids
2) vaccines
3) green revolution stuff
4) amphetamine
5) air conditioning
6) heating systems
7) Spotify
8) running water
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Air conditioning is so based
Top 10 invention of all time?
Thread, continued, 15:06 UTC · 5 likes
9) moisturizing hand cream (dry itchy hands during the winter are actually a gigantic quality of life issue for me but this just totally solves the issue to the point that I forget to be thankful)
10) lightbulbs
11) power plants + electricity
12) clean water
13) iodized salt
Thread, continued, 15:06 UTC · 3 likes
That’s it, everything else has been neutral at best (joke)
Reply to @VprwvDreamscape, 15:07 UTC · 2 likes
Dreamscape (@VprwvDreamscape): damn, I was hoping you guys had something like co-codamol but nope. pretty sure you can stack ibuprofen and paracetamol/acetaminophen at least.
Yeah the one time in recent history I was in major pain i was taking > recommended max dose of ibuprofen
Reply to @banterrealism, 15:18 UTC · 4 likes
Sex Haver (@banterrealism): Wasn’t there a huge opioid crisis or something
There’s a huge pain crisis
Reply to @metakuna, 15:29 UTC · 2 likes
metakuna (14/100 blog posts) (@metakuna): @AaronBergman18 hmmm
It’s a major consideration, but opioid *deaths* are largely public, visible, and consequential events that have evoked a major backlash
Whereas an enormous amount of suffering just happens silently, behind closed doors, too disabling to even allow for protest or visible anger
Reply to @austinc3301, 15:30 UTC · 5 likes
Agus 🔸 (@austinc3301): Just installed an AC in my room and I can confirm, best decision ever
(quoting @AaronBergman18: Air conditioning is so based Top 10 invention of all time?)
Yes!!!!!
Reply to @metakuna, 15:30 UTC · 3 likes
metakuna (14/100 blog posts) (@metakuna): Eh 🤷♂️
Slightly proving my point here lol (maybe this is unfair)
Reply to @NoahTopper, 15:37 UTC · 2 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): @AaronBergman18 @austinc3301 Just ordered an AC unit the other day
Real Amazon money hours
Reply to @imitationlearn, 15:47 UTC · 2 likes
imit (@imitationlearn): @AaronBergman18 gotta be a joke right
Like 70% serious
Not a shitpost, these are actually the things that come to mind
Tweet, 16:03 UTC · 3 likes
It’s too hot
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 16:18 UTC · 6 likes
Aaron Bergman, March 29, 2025: Opioids are way too strictly controlled. You should be able to have some on hand in a first aid kit (I don’t have a horse in this race except reasonable fear…
This is a good point, making methoxyflurane (“green whistle”) way more widely available would also be huge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methoxyflurane
Thread, continued, 16:25 UTC · 4 likes
I’ve had one person tell me via DM that they agree but are too afraid to comment publicly
Preference falsification/cascades and all that
Quote tweet, 16:40 UTC · 5 likes
Deeply unserious animal
(video, plays on X)
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Do u think ducks know how silly they are
Tweet, 16:50 UTC · 6 likes
OpenAI et al should pay me, world famous economist, to tell them that they should have escalating cost per api request instead of hard rate limits
Quote tweet, 19:18 UTC · 76 likes
I’m not sure if this has any practical implications, but in a perfect world artists (and writers and such) actually would be compensated for contributing to the LLM training corpus
Quoting zzDANIEL_ETH (@daniel_271828): Eh, this feels needlessly cruel. I like AI art because I want consumers (like me) to be able to consume more art (and higher quality, and more options, etc). But I don’t have any affirmative desire to stick it to artists or to hurt their livelihoods
Thread, continued, 19:18 UTC · 12 likes
Of course the actual question isn’t yes or no but “how much”
And the answer is idk, someone should do economics about it
Thread, continued, 19:18 UTC · 12 likes
Maybe I’m just being dumb but I think it’s actually a quite substantive + non-obvious + interesting question how to model ideal compensation for non-rivalrous goods (eg text/pics on the internet) that may allow some unspecified actor to capture some value in the future bc of it
Thread, continued, 19:18 UTC · 7 likes
LLM training is sufficiently sui generis that I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s essentially zero work on the matter
Thread, continued, 19:18 UTC · 12 likes
From a simple economic perspective, text/media online is actually (massively?) undersupplied because in some sense ~nobody knew that there was a potential opportunity to sell data to the AI companies
Thread, continued, 19:18 UTC · 10 likes
Like would people have written 10% or 50% or 1000% more or better if there was some way to basically sell counterfactual writing/art effort to the AI companies?
Probably (seems like a very difficult market to construct though)
Tweet, 20:26 UTC · 50 likes
POV u lit a candle for 15 mins
Reply to @EAForumPosts, 21:01 UTC · 16 likes
EA Forum Posts (@EAForumPosts): "Should we think more about EA dating?" by anonymoususer. Full text pictured
Need to unite with the vegan community which is mostly female
Tweet, 21:38 UTC · 3 likes
I will really find a way to turn any task into a data collecting task
Thread, continued, 21:38 UTC · 3 likes
Sunday, March 30, 2025
Reply to @livgorton, 13:22 UTC · 2 likes
Liv (@livgorton): 🦆
🦆
Reply to @livgorton, 13:27 UTC · 2 likes
Liv (@livgorton): one of my most unhealthy work behaviours occurred when i first started doing mech interp a year ago. i'd sleep next to my laptop so i could excitedly check on my loss curves whenever i happened to awaken. i don't endorse this as a thing to do but oh boy it was fun.
(quoting @deliprao: Me waking up in the middle of the night and sneakily checking my loss curves.)
Kinda based
Reply to @phl43, 13:31 UTC · 2 likes
Philippe Lemoine (@phl43):
I mean I think it’s totally morally legit to lie about your age for asylum
Reply to @liz_love_lace, 13:35 UTC · 2 likes
Liz Lovelace (@liz_love_lace): @AaronBergman18 big neurotic astrology vibes if i'm honest
Neuroticism evolved for a reason
Reply, 13:49 UTC
I get why it leads to fundamentally unfair outcomes (honesty is selected against)
I’m not sure this is bad all things considered
Tweet, 13:50 UTC · 11 likes
DC folks!
Bit of a shot in the dark, but I’m potentially interested in moving within the DC area to save a bit of money on rent (so looking for <$1k/mo including utilities, the cheaper the better)…
Tweet, 13:50 UTC · 1 like
If anyone has a room they’re trying to fill or knows of one, please let me know! (I would add that I am very flexible on room size, could probably make 50 sq ft work)
Thank you and have a nice day 🫡
Quote tweet, 13:54 UTC · 8 likes
It’s not the world’s most important policy thing, but minimum unit sizes are so patronizing
Like I could move back home into a spacious single family house but this would drive me insane. Let *me* make the choice goddamnit!
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): If anyone has a room they’re trying to fill or knows of one, please let me know! (I would add that I am very flexible on room size, could probably make 50 sq ft work)
Thank you and have a nice day 🫡
Reply to @absurdlymax, 23:42 UTC · 2 likes
Max Alexander (@absurdlymax): @AaronBergman18 @ChanaMessinger @FrostedSapling @arthur_wright_ @SpacedOutMatt
Lmao
Monday, March 31, 2025
Reply to @myhandle, 06:43 UTC · 26 likes
Jakeup (@myhandle): a Hispanic man, unremarkable except for a tattoo of a crown on his arm, shows up at your door late one night
"amigo, you gotta help me, ICE is rounding up all cholos with ink. I gotta hide in your attic for a month or estoy jodido for sure. please, amigo!"
do you:
It’s a little too implausible that a rando would show up to an arbitrary door. Like that makes the situation too sus. People are gonna go to friends and family
But if I knew them basically at all, yeah I think I’d literally let them in and then figure out what to do
Good question!
Quote tweet, 13:17 UTC · 14 likes
Congrats to me and thanks to @SpacedOutMatt and @Laura_k_Duffy for the help!
(I am writing this tweet from underneath a bed net. The mosquitos don’t stand a chance)
Quoting Matt 🔸 (@SpacedOutMatt): Congrats to @AaronBergman18 on getting the extreme EA room makeover of his dreams, complete with an Our World In Data gallery wall, a shrine to Will MacAskill, far too many chicken decals, and an actual bednet!
Reply to @SpacedOutMatt, 13:18 UTC · 10 likes
Matt 🔸 (@SpacedOutMatt): The Will MacAskill shrine
Tag him, coward @willmacaskill
Quote tweet, 13:19 UTC · 11 likes
Girls really do be having aesthetic intuitions
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Girls really do be having theory of mind
Quote tweet, 13:31 UTC · 18 likes
The bednet is actually a vibe. I feel like a princess
Does @GiveWell account for aesthetics??? 👀
Quoting Matt 🔸 (@SpacedOutMatt): Congrats to @AaronBergman18 on getting the extreme EA room makeover of his dreams, complete with an Our World In Data gallery wall, a shrine to Will MacAskill, far too many chicken decals, and an actual bednet!
Reply to @SpacedOutMatt, 13:50 UTC · 1 like
Matt 🔸 (@SpacedOutMatt): He’s gonna think we’re so weird lmao
Relevant context Will
Reply to @sickfootfour, 14:04 UTC · 991 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @sickfootfour is no longer available.)
Apparently incineration and then landfill
Tweet, 17:00 UTC · 5 likes
I wish I could see reports on tweets that I’ve muted like once a month
It would be cool to see how some of the bangers are doing, I just don’t want a notification every 5 minutes
Tweet, 17:12 UTC · 24 likes
Lots of alpha in becoming the new America, culturally
Like if the UK wanted to adopt the vibes of “yes based melting pot go brr”
Thread, continued, 17:14 UTC · 2 likes
Would actually be an interesting (if maybe too divisive) adjacent project to @lfg_uk
Thread, continued, 17:16 UTC · 1 like
It’s not gonna happen, probably for the better, but if the CCP was smart they’d lean into this
Reply to @RokoMijic, 17:24 UTC · 2 likes
Roko 🐉 (@RokoMijic): "melting pot" means third world shithole.
Britain is on track to have the demographics of Lebanon mixed with Colombia
Strong institutions can prevent this
UK would be better off with more Hispanics
Quote tweet, 17:34 UTC · 18 likes
Apparent continuous glucose monitors are OTC now!
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Device to learn about the contents of your own blood is prescription-only
The @US_FDA must be stopped
Reply to @RokoMijic, 17:45 UTC
Roko 🐉 (@RokoMijic): Why would England be better off with more Hispanics?
Institutions are endogenous - if England ends up with the same demographics and culture as Colombia/Lebanon/South Africa it will end up with the same quality of institutions
I strongly disagree, path dependence matters tremendously
Look at the US!
Tweet, 20:06 UTC · 18 likes
One of the reasons like 5000 AI engineers are working extremely hard to put themselves out of a job is that automating stuff with AI is massively fun, (at least for a certain cognitive type of guy like me)
Not just ideology + money + coordination failure
Tweet, 20:15 UTC · 7 likes
I got a walking pad thing (they’re <$200 FWIW) but it just doesn’t hit the same as walking outside
Genuinely unsure if it’s more a psychological thing or if there’s some subtle physiological change that makes it worse (enforces perfectly constant pace, no micro changes in slope etc)
Tweet, 21:34 UTC · 9 likes
Top tier feedback uwu (as the kids say
Reply to @ilex_ulmus, 21:34 UTC · 2 likes
Holly ⏸️ Elmore (@ilex_ulmus): @AaronBergman18 This is a very under-discussed bias. This is also why so much of AI Safety now does pointless or harmful evals, bc it involves playing with the models.
Yeah I fucking love tinkering with them lmao
Reply to @peterwildeford, 21:55 UTC · 9 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): How to improve your writing in two easy steps:
Step 1: Move a lot of the detail into an appendix
Step 2: Delete the appendix
Derek Parfit: “no”
Reply to @StefanFSchubert, 21:57 UTC · 5 likes
Stefan Schubert (@StefanFSchubert): @peterwildeford Yes I think people too often fail to do step 2 (same with unnecessary footnotes)
Ehh “unnecessary” footnotes seem often worth it
They’re only slightly annoying and allow you to pack in way more stuff for highly interested readers/collaborators/critiquers
I actually think the Ord/MacAskill approach of basically writing a whole second book in footnotes is perfect
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