Aaron Bergman's tweets, August 2025
Every public tweet, reply, quote tweet and retweet that Aaron Bergman (@AaronBergman18 on X, formerly Twitter) posted in August 2025 and has not deleted: 509 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: July 2025. Next month: September 2025.
Friday, August 1, 2025
Quote tweet, 00:02 UTC · 27 likes
Liv is cracked fr you heard it here first
Quoting Liv (@livgorton): Come work with me on an interp project this fall via SPAR! I had a really fun time mentoring in the spring and am really excited to get to do it again :)
(There are so many projects this time so even if interp isn't a fit, something likely is!)
Reply, 13:07 UTC · 1 like
I do not endorse stealing and destroying homeless people’s stuff lol
Reply to @livgorton, 13:11 UTC · 6 likes
Liv (@livgorton): Come work with me on an interp project this fall via SPAR! I had a really fun time mentoring in the spring and am really excited to get to do it again :)
(There are so many projects this time so even if interp isn't a fit, something likely is!)
SPAR more like SPARse autoencoder am I right
Reply to @SpacedOutMatt, 13:13 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @SpacedOutMatt is no longer available.)
😢
Tweet, 14:10 UTC · 4 likes
Not the world’s biggest problem but I’ve seen this consistently enough to assume it’s a regulatory/liability thing
Congress should pass a law just saying that people can uber home or use public transportation after anesthesia
Reply to @AndyMasley, 21:42 UTC · 33 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): Biggest difference between newbies and experts in philosophy imo is how deferential they are to concepts and definitions. Amateurs often talk as if the world is a bunch of abstract concepts given to us by something like God we can investigate and find the real final meaning of.
Maybe I’m just outing myself as a newbie but there’s also a midwit failure mode of just declaring “well it depends what we mean by x” all the way down as if there was no truth we can uncover about anything non-empirical
Thread, continued, 21:43 UTC · 3 likes
(It’s possible we have a substantial disagreement about the degree to which philosophy is in fact largely/at least sometimes about discovering facts about the world rather than merely clarifying and surfacing intuitions and such)
Reply to @AndyMasley, 21:49 UTC · 6 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): Everyone needs to internalize the facts that
1) Everything we do as a society involves big numbers
2) Some big numbers are many orders of magnitude bigger than others
3) It is possible to have a job where you write about tech while being somewhat innumerate(quoting @StatisticUrban: Journalists like to use big numbers devoid of any context for water consumption. But Texas uses 4.95 *trillion* gallons of water a year. Data centers account for… 0.013% of that.)
Semi-related, there should be an autistically analytical piece somewhere that describes like when/where/under what conditions water use actually matters
It feels like “water use” is 75 different substantively different phenomena in a trench coat
Reply to @ConLiCats, 22:15 UTC · 6 likes
Constance Li (@ConLiCats): (1/8) 𝗜'𝗺 𝘀𝗮𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱𝗯𝘆𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗜 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹𝘀...
2 years ago, I started what felt like shouting into the void.
No one was talking about how AI would impact animals, so I carved out a small corner within the Hive Slack to start that conversation. What happened next still amazes me...
Based
Reply to @CharlesD353, 22:22 UTC · 4 likes
Charles🔸 (@CharlesD353): I think yes? Hedonic treadmill probably works both ways, to a large extent.
(quoting @Benthamsbulldog: @Krisaaaaeeeeee2 Would you starve to death for a week of life spent running from predators and desperately searching for food?)
Pretty crazy IMO. I think it mostly doesn’t lol, and there are good evolutionary reasons to think this
Tweet, 22:48 UTC · 3 likes
Claude code extensions when
Reply to @manic_pixie_agi, 22:56 UTC · 2 likes
Corinne (🏠 in NYC) (@manic_pixie_agi): @AaronBergman18 Is MCP or the SDK not enough?
Idk what I’m talking about lol, they probably are tbh
Saturday, August 2, 2025
Tweet, 03:53 UTC · 10 likes
You could be my roommate for the low price of $1,150/mo
~Official blurb~
Private room for rent near Rosslyn metro | $1150
My roommate (early 30s, M) and I (25M) are looking for a person to move into our three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment into one of the most convenient and accessible areas of north Arlington (VA, basically DC) in mid-late August.
We are both part of the EA community but are very open to whomever!
Here are some details:
- Large apartment with a lot of leisure space and storage space
- Big bedroom with lots of natural light and a walk-in closet
- The room alone is roughly 150 sq ft not including closet
- You’d share a bathroom with one other person
- In-unit laundry, central heating, central air
- <5 minute walk to the metro (at least, that’s how long it takes me!). The Rosslyn-Courthouse-Clarendon corridor is super accessible. Several bus lines close by too. Neither of us have a car and we get around easily!
- A block away from two grocery stores, with restaurants and cafes also a few blocks away.
- 15 minute walk/5 minute scooter trip to the beautiful hiking/running trails of Roosevelt Island
- Rent will be $1150, tenants pay electric and internet (roughly $100, sometimes a bit higher in summer)
- The bedroom will be basically unfurnished, but there might be options for a chair, a small desk, and things like that.
- We’re pretty laid back people, respectful of boundaries, and are easy to communicate with re: any issues with the apartment.
- Full apartment just professionally cleaned!
Please reach out (DM me or email aaronb50 at gmail) if interested! And pass this along!
Reply to @liron, 07:36 UTC · 2 likes
Liron Shapira (@liron): How are people answering this these days:
What’s the fundamental thing LLMs can’t do, the fundamental limitation that prevents straightforwardly scaling them to superintelligence?
Not sure if this counts but it gets at the “straightforwardly” point
Basically there might be a gigantic amount of compute needed to get past the “understands language and the world in a normal sense” regime and into the “predicts next token by accurately modeling the literal causal process that generates it” regime
Tweet, 18:42 UTC · 11 likes
I feel like people should often freak out less upon discovering (or thinking they’ve discovered) that something is AI-written
Sunday, August 3, 2025
Reply to @michael_wiebe, 06:43 UTC
Michael Wiebe (@michael_wiebe): Important point: when people move out to live on their own, their housing costs go up, but (by revealed preference) they are better off. Hence, housing costs alone are an incomplete picture.
I mean I’m personally a good example of this but does anyone doubt it, even implicitly? Like this is true for literally every purchase right
Reply to @hyperdiscogirl, 06:47 UTC · 10 likes
hyper(bolic) disco(unting) girl in the bay (@hyperdiscogirl): my bf is very smart but has some gaps in everyday knowledge that have stunned me. he didn't know you can't return clothes after you take the tags off and wash them, or that butter and oil are both types of fat interchangeable for many cooking tasks
Tapping the sign
Reply to @nikitabier, 06:49 UTC · 2 likes
Nikita Bier (@nikitabier): If you had to remove 1 feature or part of the X app, what would it be?
Not having circles
Tweet, 07:03 UTC · 268 likes
I basically don’t believe in LLM-induced psychosis in the sense of “yeah this person was not going to develop psychosis in the next decade if it were not for ChatGPT”
Thread, continued, 07:03 UTC · 21 likes
Like it would be by far (I think) the least extreme, least invasive event/thing to ever be counterfactually responsible for psychosis
Thread, continued, 07:03 UTC · 17 likes
Claude agrees
Reply to @jazzloaf, 16:21 UTC · 2 likes
vivian (@jazzloaf): @AaronBergman18 Do you think that LLM-psychosis is mechanistically distinct from getting wrapped up in a cult, and do you also ascribe the same belief above in that case?
Yeah I think it’s distinct
Tweet, 16:30 UTC · 5 likes
How’s moo deng doing
Quote tweet, 18:30 UTC · 189 likes
Fighting back by giving advice to all the women: y’alls dating app profiles are incredibly boring (like 90%ish of them)
Like I understand the market dynamics that make this prima facie seem like a good strategy, but you probably want to polarize potential partners much more
Quoting Bryan Caplan (@bryan_caplan): Intimidated into silence in a wide range of ways, including shaming.
Thread, continued, 18:30 UTC · 59 likes
And importantly they’re much more boring than the actual distribution of interests and personalities - this is not a claim about women being boring, it’s a claim about them using the wrong strategy for their own self-interest
Reply to @menhguin, 18:47 UTC · 25 likes
Minh Nhat Nguyen 🦭 (@menhguin): i think a common failure mode is women don't try to make their profiles more distinct -> get generic matches -> spend a ton of time swiping past mid matches -> exhausted by a bunch of mid matches
Yeah, I suspect the implicit thinking is “I don’t want to filter out the best guys” but not sure this is how it works
Reply to @AndyMasley, 18:52 UTC · 2 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): There's a blog post to be written about how the B theory of time and acausal decision theory and compatibilism are all kind of saying the same thing from different angles
Tweet, 18:58 UTC · 4 likes
B theory of time and open individualism are insane and prima facie wrong
Like they make a lot of sense from an understanding of the universe that abstracts away or ignores subjective experience
But that is an important part of the universe! You don’t get to throw it away!
Thread, continued, 18:58 UTC · 3 likes
Right now is incredibly substantively different *for me* than yesterday
Idc whether this matters from some incomplete purely physicalist account of everything
Thread, continued, 18:58 UTC · 3 likes
Steelman is basically just strong illusionism about consciousness I guess
Reply to @NTFabiano, 19:03 UTC · 31 likes
Nicholas Fabiano, MD (@NTFabiano): Cortisol from exercising suppresses the subsequent cortisol response to a stressor.
Exercise before doing something stressful.
I mean the other interpretation of this is “yeah this is overtraining and burnout - you stop appropriately responding to other stimuli”
Monday, August 4, 2025
Reply to @littIeramblings, 00:45 UTC · 2 likes
sarah (@littIeramblings): why do feel subtweeted
🎯 but it’s extremely not just you
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 00:54 UTC · 5 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 3, 2025: Claude agrees
Counterpoint (in terms of vibes not literal disagreement with the claim): it’s much more plausible that it counterfactually increases psychotic *episodes* bc it seems like an abundant and counterfactual trigger
Reply to @henrytdowling, 01:09 UTC · 3 likes
Henry Dowling (@henrytdowling): You don’t think there’s *anyone* on the margin?
I thought about this and modeling it as like propensity scores that LLMs might bump up a tiny amount and push one person over the line is a good counterpoint but honestly no, I don’t think so
I don’t think that model is wrong exactly, my intuition is just that yeah psychosis being triggered by an LLM is so highly correlated with psychosis being triggered by something else that when you run the numbers you’d get an estimated additional <0.5 people
Tweet, 02:33 UTC · 3 likes
Got mildly nerdsniped by this because I was hoping that there was some clever way to basically just extract the empirical value of the jobs report information from market data...
Thread, continued, 02:33 UTC · 2 likes
Unfortunately it's more complicated than that but I had deep research + o3 throw together an info page about it https://aaronbergman.neocities.org/jobs_report_value
Long story short each jobs report is probably worth $5B-$30B or so to the US (not world) economy
Reply, 02:33 UTC · 1 like
might appreciate
Thread, continued, 02:34 UTC · 2 likes
Since Matt deletes his tweets
Reply to @NoahTopper, 02:35 UTC · 176 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): One time my wife said “stop making me laugh I’m going to throw up” and I said “come on my jokes aren’t THAT bad” and then she threw up
I would die of happiness if I made a girl throw up this way
Reply to @CRSegerie, 22:32 UTC
Charbel-Raphael (@CRSegerie): Please tell me why I'm a crackpot (1/2)
I object to the last two bullets. They’re wrong. There’s a special intrinsic metaphysical property there associated with the negativity of certain qualia
Quote tweet, 22:58 UTC · 15 likes
🥔
Quoting Lucre Snooker (@LucreSnooker):
Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Quote tweet, 17:09 UTC · 5 likes
Huh
Quoting Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️ (@ESYudkowsky): Guys on my TL: Wouldn't psychiatrists notice, if there were large numbers of patients with AI-induced first-time psychosis?
/r/Psychiatry:
Reply to @codytfenwick, 17:29 UTC · 50 likes
Cody Fenwick (@codytfenwick): The New York Times continues to write about effective altruism while making extremely basic errors about what it is.
Eh seems pretty ok
Reply to @_JeanLannes, 22:38 UTC · 74 likes
Michael 🍂 (@_JeanLannes): It is imperative we repeal and replace the ADA.
Lol there are certainly reasonable critiques of the ADA but this is not one of them
Wednesday, August 6, 2025
Quote tweet, 19:15 UTC · 4 likes
Bruh
Quoting Drop Site (@DropSiteNews): ‼️ Sections 9 and 10 of Article I — which contain essential constitutional checks against executive overreach and protect states and individuals from unlawful laws — have been quietly removed from the official U.S. Constitution website.
These sections ban ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, and unauthorized state treaties — core constitutional safeguards.
🖥️ Compare the current site with the archived version yourself:
Reply to @Miles_Brundage, 19:50 UTC · 2 likes
Miles Brundage (@Miles_Brundage): Paper about safety challenges in the adoption of AI for manufacturing - “AI Problems in Concrete Safety”
Banger
Quote tweet, 19:57 UTC · 12 likes
Wtf literally just from a selfish POV this is really bad
Like there’s gonna be another pandemic that I don’t want to die in
Quoting Acyn (@Acyn): RFK JR: After reviewing the science… HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more risk than benefits for these respiratory viruses. That’s why BARDA has begun the process of terminating these 22 contracts..
Thursday, August 7, 2025
Tweet, 18:21 UTC · 12 likes
Ok but fr why do LLMs love em dashes?
Reply to @dwarkesh_sp, 18:22 UTC · 4 likes
Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp): New episode w @Lewis_Bollard - a deep dive on the surprising economics of the meat industry.
0:00:00 – The astonishing efficiency of factory farming
0:07:18 – It was a mistake making this about diet
0:09:54 – Tech that’s sparing 100s of millions of animals/year
0:16:16 – Brainless chickens and higher welfare breeds
0:28:21 – $1 can prevent 10 years of animal suffering
0:37:26 – The situation in China and the developing world
0:41:41 – How the meat lobby got a lock on Congress
0:53:23 – Business structure of the meat industry
0:57:42 – Corporate campaigns are underratedAvailable on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc (look up Dwarkesh Podcast).
👀
Reply to @dwarkesh_sp, 18:30 UTC · 18 likes
Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp): Just $1 can help avert 10 years of farmed animal suffering.
I decided to give $250,000 as a donation match to @farmkind_giving after learning about the outsized opportunities to help. FarmKind directs your contributions to the most effective charities in this area.
Please consider contributing, even if it’s a small amount. Together, we can double each other's impact and give a total of $500,000. Use the link below to donate with my match.
Bluntly, there are some listeners who are in a position to give much more. Given how neglected this topic is, one such person could singlehandedly change the game for 10s of billions of animals.
If you’re considering donating $50k or more, please reach out directly to @Lewis_Bollard and his team by DMing him, or emailing andres@openphilanthropy.org
video attached
(quoting @dwarkesh_sp: New episode w @Lewis_Bollard - a deep dive on the surprising economics of the meat industry. 0:00:00 – The astonishing efficiency of factory farming 0:07:18 – It was a mistake making this about diet 0:09:54 – Tech that’s sparing 100s of millions of animals/year 0:16:16 –…)
Lfg
Reply to @RosieCampbell, 20:54 UTC · 5 likes
Rosie Campbell (@RosieCampbell): I want to call the future Eleos conference on AI consciousness and welfare "AI ConCon" but @rgblong won't let me 😤
😡 free ConCon
Friday, August 8, 2025
Reply to @jackiedotnet, 02:10 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @jackiedotnet is no longer available.)
Quote tweet, 18:54 UTC · 5 likes
👇fr
Quoting Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp): Honestly the thing that motivated me to do this episode was learning that there's less than $200M/year of smart philanthropy on factory farming - GLOBALLY.
Just to explain how fucking crazy that is:
1. It's insane how cheap the interventions that will spare BILLIONS of animals from gruesome, painful fates have been.
Less than $200M has been spent getting corporate commitments that have already spared more than 400M hens from battery cages, and securing pledges that will spare billions more over the years to come. That’s < $1 per 10 years of animal well-being improved.
Another example: In-ovo sexing (which determines the sex of eggs pre-birth) has already saved 200M male chicks from maceration at birth (with the potential to spare 7 billion every year). And it only cost ~$10 million to get off the ground.2. 80 billion land animals are factory farmed every year. That means the ratio is $1 donated : 40,000 animals.
3. Compared to the amount of private philanthropy alone on global health ($50b+/year) or climate change ($15b+/year), the <$200M/year of smart money spent on factory farming is nothing.
—
The way we treat factory farmed animals is one of the worst atrocities in history. And unfortunately, the problem is on track to get worse every year.The case for optimism: Given how neglected this issue is, the scope of impact even one individual can have is absolutely massive.
To be blunt, there are individual readers of this tweet who could DOUBLE the amount of smart money our entire civilization dedicates to this issue. Even with a few million dollars, you could single-handedly improve the lives of millions of factory-farmed animals.
DM @Lewis_Bollard if you want to explore contributions over $50k.
Reply to @bubbling_creek, 19:04 UTC · 5 likes
bubbling creek (@bubbling_creek): @dwarkesh_sp It's not obvious that $200M/year isn't "enough" for what's currently possible on issue for that reason, and I would guess most of the advantage of the charities you recommend is that they're much more effective than most of that $200M is, not that you're adding to that $200M
Nah my sense is that $200M is nowhere close to saturating high impact interventions
Saturday, August 9, 2025
Tweet, 01:01 UTC · 16 likes
If you can can grow a beard, you should grow one and get it professionally trimmed just once to see how good it can look
Reply to @NoahTopper, 01:07 UTC · 4 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): @AaronBergman18 I don’t mean to sound sexist, but this advice probably only applies if you’re a man
Sexist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Reply to @DachWhale, 01:21 UTC · 2 likes
Dach ⏹️ (@DachWhale): @AaronBergman18 I find facial hair to be scratchy and extremely distracting
Sad
Reply to @sergeantsup, 01:28 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @sergeantsup is no longer available.)
🫡
Reply to @punished_daniel, 01:54 UTC · 2 likes
Daniel Yang (@punished_daniel): Went to the gym unstimmed and a dead phone. Totally sucked ass never doing that again
😢
Quote tweet, 02:32 UTC · 10 likes
And of course the smart rich kids will go to kumon/external accelerated tutoring, which their equally smart, less wealthy peers won’t have access to
Quoting Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc): I discovered recently that even schools which advertise their 'gifted' programs generally won't let a third grader take algebra. They offer various explanations, but I don't think any of them are very good.
Reply to @GjMcGowan, 08:32 UTC · 2 likes
George McGowan (@GjMcGowan): @AaronBergman18 Poast the amazing photo of you with a trimmed beard
Never
Reply to @ShakeelHashim, 22:42 UTC · 5 likes
Shakeel (@ShakeelHashim): I'd totally missed this: pretty wild stuff
image attached
image attached
(quoting @Miles_Brundage: @daniel_271828 @ChrisPainterYup NYT reported that he tried to get Greg Allen fired for being pro export controls Much of the relevant info is non public though)
Lol nvidia donated $65k? They thought $65k was gonna buy influence?
Sunday, August 10, 2025
Reply to @ChanaMessinger, 02:06 UTC · 5 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @ChanaMessinger is no longer available.)
What
Reply to @ChanaMessinger, 02:15 UTC · 4 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @ChanaMessinger is no longer available.)
Claude says almost 30 miles, wtf ?!?!
Reply to @panchromaticity, 02:17 UTC · 2 likes
Xenia 🔍💎 (@panchromaticity): @AaronBergman18 @ChanaMessinger @danielmessinger https://x.com/ChanaMessinger/status/1954362588164501756
Ohhhh thank you 👍
Reply to @ChanaMessinger, 02:23 UTC · 8 likes
Chana (@ChanaMessinger): @AaronBergman18 @danielmessinger He says the tides do most of the work
Sounds like a thing that a dad would say
Tweet, 02:39 UTC · 16 likes
Oh come on Dario can u manually approve this one
Reply to @daniellellecco, 16:15 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @daniellellecco is no longer available.)
😢
Reply to @justalexoki, 19:53 UTC · 4 likes
taoki (@justalexoki): so my friend has sudden (gut?) issues. low energy, brain fog, stomach pain, no apetite etc etc. doctors are completely useless. how do you even begin to solve this?
Detailed document -> ask o3 and opus
Reply to @esaagar, 20:36 UTC · 40 likes
Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar): Nobody and I repeat NOBODY goes to jail for "smoking weed"
This is 1990s stoner propaganda. 3.2% of people in state prison are there for possession (of any type of drug) and nobody is in the feds for weed possession
(quoting @conor64: Sending men with guns to lock people in cages for smoking a plant is worse than all of those things.)
3.2% for possession is a lot of people tho (and way too high)
Reply to @shagbark_hick, 21:18 UTC · 4 likes
𝙷𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚖𝚊𝚗 (@shagbark_hick): I am always shocked and appalled by my abject inability to deal with hot weather.
Once it's above 80f, I shut down. Rivers of sweat all over my body. If I swim in cold water, I have about 10 minutes before the sweat starts again.
Why are some like this and others are not?
Truly, I would actually move house to never have to deal with this again. This is kind of crazy, as I live very close to the northernmost point of NYS at about 1600ft elevation. I'm just about in the coolest place you could be in most of the American Northeast, but for months of the year, it's still unbearable to me.
Makes me want to visit Southeast AK. Still thinking about how, if I remember correctly, @realcalojones mentioned the NWS putting out heat advisories for his part of AK when it got into the high 70's... that's my kind of place.
He just like me fr
Tweet, 21:26 UTC · 132 likes
It was a bit of a convenient coincidence that for like 5ish (???) years (like 2012-2016ish??) there were 3 intellectually and aesthetically diverse main EA cause areas with a legitimate claim to primacy (global health, animal welfare, AI/x-risk/longtermism)
Thread, continued, 21:26 UTC · 55 likes
I mean certainly convenient for community building efforts
Anyway I feel like plausibly people got a bit spoiled in this regard and came to treat cause area diversity as like something we should expect from the world whereas I think that’s mainly not the case
Thread, continued, 21:26 UTC · 26 likes
Idk what to do about this, if anything. Just a thought
Thread, continued, 21:29 UTC · 29 likes
I’m not sure when global health should have been mostly phased out and relegated to EA intellectual history and more normie-constrained philanthropic efforts like the Gates foundation but robust evidence for cage free egg campaigns seems like a good approximating line
Quote tweet, 21:31 UTC · 7 likes
Unbelievable
Quoting Demetri (@AsiaLens): SCOOP - @Nvidia has done deal with Trump administration to pay US government 15% of revenues from #China H20 sales, in unprecedented quid pro quo for export licenses.
https://www.ft.com/content/cd1a0729-a8ab-41e1-a4d2-8907f4c01cac
Reply to @NULobbyist, 23:15 UTC · 2 likes
NUL (@NULobbyist): There are lots of people who because of their intuitions/beliefs about moral worth or sentience are only going to donate/work for human directed charitys. It is worthwhile having resources and a structure in place so that they can do that effectively.
Yeah I agree but the relative impact delta is so big that I think a decent heuristic is that this is only worthwhile to the extent that it doesn’t compete ANY resources away from the other cause areas (ofc it’s not literally any, but a relatively small amount)
Ofc there’s also the talent/community building pipeline aspect which is plausibly pretty important
Monday, August 11, 2025
Reply, 02:01 UTC · 1 like
Point isn’t how extravagant it is aesthetically, it’s the substantive decoupling his own fate from everyone else’s when he has the power to do a lot for the latter
Tweet, 02:18 UTC · 3 likes
I copy and pasted most of the plausibly-relevant docs from the Claude dev/API guide for my convenience and thought I'd share
Subfolders:
- developer guide (main api stuff)
- Claude code
- MCP...
Reply to @MagusGenji, 04:12 UTC · 3 likes
magusgenji (@MagusGenji): Going esoteric for a second so if that's not your thing please ignore.
Are there any resources that approach understanding AI as an information-space mapping tool—one that works by transforming an input into an output via a learned information space?
I probably don’t know what you mean but there are text embeddings which are kinda sorta AI-ish
The learned information space is semantic space
Quote tweet, 04:17 UTC · 48 likes
We’re rapidly approaching “Aaron can’t afford the top tier of AI stuff even if it brings him a lot of value” and I don’t like it
Quoting Sam Altman (@sama): we are considering giving a (very) small number of GPT-5 pro queries each month to plus subscribers so they can try it out! i like it too.
but yeah if you wanna pay us $1k a month for 2x the input tokens feels like we should find a way to make that happen...
Thread, continued, 04:17 UTC · 11 likes
I mean I don’t have a legitimate grievance here, the global south is already basically priced out of everything decent
Thread, continued, 04:24 UTC · 8 likes
I guess they have Gemini actually
Reply to @michael_wiebe, 05:42 UTC · 2 likes
Michael Wiebe (@michael_wiebe): A picture of you burying something
Lmao
Reply to @robbensinger, 05:49 UTC · 2 likes
Rob Bensinger ⏹️ (@robbensinger): Some people think of rationality as a fascinating philosophy topic. Some people think of rationality as a tool for keeping your family alive.
The latter perspective is hugely better for abstract theorizing and open-ended scientific exploration.
I 90% agree with what I think you’re trying to say but I don’t think “keeping your family alive” is a good example of like real world contact/“winning”
Keeping your family alive is so highly correlated with what evolution was optimizing for that it’s kind of a special case. And you can believe lots of false things and cause you and your family and others lots of loss and pain while technically keeping your family alive
Maybe I’m being too literal about this lol
Reply to @BecomingCritter, 06:23 UTC · 2 likes
critter (@BecomingCritter): I got a B, not bad
Can someone link whatever tf this is
Reply to @thewreathwright, 06:28 UTC · 2 likes
Laurel Weaver (@thewreathwright): @AaronBergman18 @BecomingCritter 'tis in the screenshot, http://iq-checker.xyz
Ah well we know which side I’m on then , thanks
Tweet, 13:12 UTC · 213 likes
Can’t Jensen Huang just personally be a bit of a better person or perhaps a tad more patriotic
He’s super rich, he’s gonna be super rich either way, why is he fighting so hard for myopic shareholder value at the expense of everything else
Reply to @arnoblalam, 13:15 UTC · 16 likes
Arnob 'not home for the holidays' Alam🌐🇺🇸🇧🇩 (@arnoblalam): @AaronBergman18 Legally obligated to?
I’m no expert here but I’m pretty sure that executives don’t actually have a legal duty to do myopic optimization like this
Like Zuck clearly has other things going on, like them or not vis a vis open source
Cc @SpacedOutMatt who knows things
Reply to @arnoblalam, 13:19 UTC · 6 likes
Arnob 'not home for the holidays' Alam🌐🇺🇸🇧🇩 (@arnoblalam): @AaronBergman18 @SpacedOutMatt I thought this was the reason OpenAI was a Public Benefit Corp? (Or maybe it was just a marketing gimmick?)
No like there are legitimate differences in technical corporate governance stuff but my sense is that if the board of directors supports the CEO of a normal for-profit, it is exceptionally hard for shareholders to win a lawsuit claiming that executives aren’t acting in their interest
Like “maintain a good public image and good gov relations” is very plausibly in the company’s interest, it’s up to the executives to decide that
Reply to @nkreu113r, 13:59 UTC · 41 likes
noah (@nkreu113r): It’s not clear the US dominating China os good
Idk if it’s “clear” but on balance yeah I think it is
Reply to @cunha_tristan, 14:00 UTC · 2 likes
Tristan Cunha (@cunha_tristan): @AaronBergman18 It seems to me like the term "effective altruism" was created to describe "choosing charities to give to that are effective." And everything else was tacked on or grew out of that later.
Up until somewhat recently there were groups like GiveWell doing real world research and giving/directing a few billion in funding. And the other areas were just talking about what they should do.
There still are - most “EA money” goes to the GiveWell suite still I’m pretty sure
And whether you think it’s good or bad, the AI safety and animal welfare fields have moved far beyond “mere talking”
Tweet, 15:40 UTC · 23 likes
Try to become a billionaire!
Tweet, 15:40 UTC
https://benthams.substack.com/p/the-altruistic-case-for-becoming
Thread, continued, 15:40 UTC · 3 likes
1) Omg I'm famous
2) I hope some of y'all will do this
Reply to @slimepriestess, 16:27 UTC · 2 likes
Ra (@slimepriestess): @AaronBergman18 i think Roko had a post about this that got everyone angry, lmao
Hmm somehow I doubt the content was just like “try to make a lot of money to save the shrimp”
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 17:20 UTC · 47 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 11, 2025: Can’t Jensen Huang just personally be a bit of a better person or perhaps a tad more patriotic He’s super rich, he’s gonna be super rich either way, why is he…
Lol as a shareholder myself, let it be known that I think it’s in my personal interest for NVIDIA to basically cut off china (all things considered interest, not my personal net worth)
Reply to @vankous, 18:00 UTC · 6 likes
Vankous (@vankous): @AaronBergman18 >super rich, he’s gonna be super rich either way, why is he fighting so hard for myopic shareholder value at the expense of everything else
Why think the marginal value of additional wealth is sufficiently low here compared to the potential wealth increase on the table ?
Idk it just seems like at most we’re doubling $150B net worth and that seems like a pretty small personal utility gain
That’s like an upper limit though
Reply to @AndyMasley, 23:53 UTC · 4 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): @GraySpaceFarms I think people should feel some pressure to be a little pro social, even just working a normal job
I feel like the social gains from working an arbitrary job aren't actually big enough to justify the first order "letting people pursue their own happiness however they want will go a long way to maximizing total welfare" heuristic but this is just an intuition
Tbc I basically agree with you, I'd just say that meditation life ~= normal job where you consume all your additional wealth and aren't really trying intentionally to fill some altruistic hole
~All the social gains come from trying to do more than just working and consuming more: donating counterfactually, other counterfactual community involvement, supporting a family, politics, etc
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
Quote tweet, 00:15 UTC · 86 likes
For better or worse, power laws rule everything around us
On the margin, EAs should probably go harder at becoming Dwarkesh, figuratively (or really Dustin Moskovitz, but "outstanding podcaster" might feel actually-possible to folks in a way that "billionaire" does not)
Quoting Lewis Bollard (@Lewis_Bollard): Dwarkesh's fundraiser to fight factory farming has now raised over $1M! ($535K doubled by the match.)
I'm very grateful to @dwarkesh_sp, @patrickc, and all the other generous donors!
This funding will impact millions of animals' lives.
Tweet, 01:55 UTC · 6 likes
Is a “local google docs” text editor with up to perfect version history, branching, etc something people would be interested in?
The most basic use case is “throw any text there, whatever is convenient now, it will all be saved in version history if you ever need in the future”
Thread, continued, 01:55 UTC · 2 likes
It’s basically a git wrapper (I already vibecoded a v0 for fun and personal use)
The computer nerds have been hiding git from normal people, it’s actually magic
Thread, continued, 01:58 UTC · 2 likes
(I’d guess that the reason it hasn’t proliferated beyond the coding world is that it fundamentally only works with plain text-like stuff
But lots of common normie stuff (Microsoft word) is *mostly* (in terms of function not storage spaxe) text
Reply to @JesseTayRiver, 02:02 UTC · 2 likes
Jesse Smith (@JesseTayRiver): @ChanaMessinger Amazing!
Fr
Tweet, 02:49 UTC · 43 likes
Shoutout to all the lowbies poasting through the 0-2 like range
Godspeed 🫡
Quote tweet, 02:52 UTC · 12 likes
I am extremely in favor of this kind of post
GET SOCIAL CREDIT FOR DOING GOOD THINGS
Quoting Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp): Even though we’ve already raised over $1,125,000, we’ve continued to have matchers step up (more about them later). So keep donating, knowing you're doubling your impact.
Thanks to everyone who donated over the weekend! Highlighting a few below:
Anonymous: $125,000
@Somersetkapital: $50,000
@MichaelSesser: $25,000
@AdrienLE: $10,000
@davisblalock: $10,000
@inerati: $6,000
@jimcox25: $5,000 (a 2nd donation!)
@tenad0me: $5,000
@Shripriya: $5,000
@CalaverasAI: $5,000
@mfgrp: $5,000
@nanransohoff: $5,000
@chelcott9: $3,000
Anonymous: $2,000
@rina_gyro: $2,000
@maithra_raghu: $2,000
@escliu: $1,500
@AvitalBalwit: $1,000
Anonymous: $1,000
@AbieRohrig: $1,000 (a 2nd donation!)
@itsFelipeDoria: $1,000
@LucioMelito: $1,000
@aidanprattewart: $1,000
@JamesOzden: $1,000
@DaCaveOfWonders: $1,000
@nearcyan: $1,000 (a 2nd donation!)
@AndrewYatzkan: $1,000:
@_sholtodouglas: $1,000If you donated over $1k, please DM me. And if you already DMed me about a donation but I missed it, please ping me again.
It's been incredible to see all the generosity!
Tweet, 03:08 UTC · 497 likes
Pretty recently I was set to speak to a journalist about something (not gonna get more specific but it’s really not that special or juicy) but then requested a copy of the interview recording as a condition of the interview and the journalist refused, and we cancelled
Thread, continued, 03:08 UTC · 137 likes
I don’t entirely blame them or think that their refusal was a terrible thing - from their POV *I* could be the irresponsible one with the content and twist it somehow or generally become a pain in the ass somehow
Thread, continued, 03:08 UTC · 133 likes
And more generally, making special demands like this is probably a sort of major signal for “this guy is gonna cause trouble”
Thread, continued, 03:08 UTC · 200 likes
All that said, at the level of norms, it seems a bit crazy that this (ie both parties getting the recording) isn’t standard practice for standard, non-sensitive types of interview (obviously investigative stuff and other exceptions exist)
Thread, continued, 03:08 UTC · 132 likes
Frankly I do just think a bit of skepticism is warranted on the part of sources unless the journalist has a legible and robust track record of excellent epistemics -
Thread, continued, 03:08 UTC · 143 likes
like you should just be able to say “yes I literally said those words, here is the whole quote that clearly indicates that the actual information I was attempting to convey differs greatly from what’s implied by the decontextualized version”
Cc NYT rationalist culture war stuff
Thread, continued, 03:08 UTC · 98 likes
Admittedly a thing I could have offered but didn’t think to was to only record my voice and not the interview questions
Idk if this would have made a difference
Ofc I could have just done this without the journalist knowing but I wanted to be totally above board
Thread, continued, 03:09 UTC · 91 likes
Cc @KelseyTuoc @dylanmatt in case anyone wants to comment on why I’m insane and dumb
Reply to @stanfordNYC, 03:16 UTC · 60 likes
Bernard Stanford ✡︎ (@stanfordNYC): @AaronBergman18 I think your guess is probably right and it was just a sign quoting you might be more trouble than it was worth.
Yeah that’s why it has to become a norm at least to some extent, so it doesn’t signal this
Reply to @Benthamsbulldog, 03:19 UTC · 10 likes
Bentham's Bulldog🔸 (@Benthamsbulldog): Joe Carlsmith is one of the smartest and most thoughtful people I've ever met, and the worst thing he's ever written was orders of magnitude more careful than anything Eliezer has ever written.
(quoting @ESYudkowsky: @panickssery Carlsmith's analysis giving 5% chance of ASI disaster was a giant flaming Multiple Stage Fallacy, and it reflects poorly on the entire surrounding ecosystem that they funded it or took it seriously.)
🌶️ (I feel like you’re probably overstating this although I’m also a big JC fan)
Tweet, 05:05 UTC · 16 likes
TIL if you project text embeddings for single words down to a single axis (at least for some tiny local model I ran on 300k words), it ranges from "true" on one extreme to "north" on the other
?????
Thread, continued, 05:05 UTC · 5 likes
Text embeddings are unironically so cool, it's so weird that they're approximately free (pennies per million tokens for the big models, ~free for small models)
Reply to @ciphergoth, 05:13 UTC · 14 likes
Paul Crowley (@ciphergoth): @AaronBergman18 @KelseyTuoc @dylanmatt Wait they also refused you permission to make your own simultaneous recording?
I didn't ask, it was pretty last minute. I could/should have
Benefit of having a single source recording though is that there's a single ground truth thing to point to, a literal file. Plus recording phone calls is not trivial
Reply to @KelseyTuoc, 05:15 UTC · 23 likes
Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc): it seems odd to me to object to you also recording the interview, though I can imagine ways you might have phrased the request which would make me go 'this person just wants to yell at me about the media sucking'
Tbc I asked for them to send me the recording in part bc it was last minute and I didn't have any infrastructure set up to record the call
It is a bit of an inconvenience for them tbf but like upload to drive -> send link isn't that burdensome IMO
Reply to @panickssery, 05:18 UTC · 42 likes
Arjun Panickssery (@panickssery): If either of you is in a one-party consent state you could have just recorded the interview without asking right
Idk, I didn't *want* any adversarial or secretive dynamic though
Reply to @panickssery, 05:24 UTC · 17 likes
Arjun Panickssery (@panickssery): @AaronBergman18 How is that adversarial
Presumably she's recording the interaction by default without mentioning it as well?
Eh it’s borderline bc abnormal and like obviously the journalist is recording
Seems a bit off to record someone without their knowing, at least polite to ask
Reply to @panickssery, 05:26 UTC · 21 likes
Arjun Panickssery (@panickssery): @AaronBergman18 But they're recording you without asking, presumably
Yeah but like that’s built in to the social role of a journalistic interview, like I know it’s happening lol
Reply to @jazzloaf, 05:48 UTC · 3 likes
vivian (@jazzloaf): @worst_account state uni football coach donating income to animal welfare?
President of the United States doing all the good things and not the bad ones
Reply to @RuxandraTeslo, 06:59 UTC · 2 likes
Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 (@RuxandraTeslo): The FDA is sitting on a goldmine of drug development data — 10,000+ page dossiers detailing how drugs are designed, made, tested, and approved.
Big Pharma has these in-house. Startups? Locked out.
It’s time to fix that. Read my proposal for @IFP on how.
https://ifp.org/biotechs-lost-archive/
👀
Reply to @LinchZhang, 10:29 UTC · 2 likes
Linch (@LinchZhang): wrong about their subjective experience overall. Eg if someone said (and believed)they saw a red thing, the following is possible:
a) the thing is actually red
b) the thing was not red, but they hallucinated the experience of redness
c) they did not experience rednessBeing honestly wrong about subjective experiences means c).
I think it is possible but frankly don’t believe that 76% of poll voters really internalize how radical it is
Like the claim here is that you believe with every fiber of your being that you’re looking at Twitter on a screen right now but in fact you may not be - you may instead be undergoing some unrelated other exotic qualia (or are a p-zombie) that doesn’t register at all to any part of your mind that deals with like beliefs and representations rather than raw experience
If this is the case, all bets are off, like we would have very little reason to believe anything specific about the world
Reply to @LinchZhang, 10:32 UTC · 2 likes
Linch (@LinchZhang): Can people be honestly wrong about their own subjective experiences?
A. Yes
B. Yes in theory, approximately never in practice
C. No
Other replies here aren’t grappling with the hard case: not memory, not reporting, earnest total wrongness what it’s like to be you right now
Reply to @teortaxesTex, 10:48 UTC · 7 likes
Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞) (@teortaxesTex): It's astonishing how a guy can repeatedly expose himself as an ignoramus on X but still have such strong opinions. Speaks to the character. But rats tend to be this way. Headstrong, hidebound.
(quoting @AaronBergman18: Lol as a shareholder myself, let it be known that I think it’s in my personal interest for NVIDIA to basically cut off china (all things considered interest, not my personal net worth))
Thanks, anyway yeah by all means convince me that I’m wrong. I’m not an expert on this stuff, the basic case is essentially Situational Awareness which I found mostly pretty compelling + parsimonious intuitive explanation that Jensen is doing what lots of rich executives do and lobbying for the financial success of his firm, and doesn’t have some 4d enlightened geopolitical, fundamentally altruistic theory motivating what sure looks like myopic profit seeking
And idk strong opinions seem fine, its absolutely true that sometimes I post something that someone just explains or shows to be wrong and then I delete it
Reply to @GjMcGowan, 11:04 UTC · 12 likes
George McGowan (@GjMcGowan): IMO the bigger story here is learning that if you call 999 and say you’re losing consciousness after a bike accident, that’s apparently not enough to warrant an ambulance?
Wtf lmao (ok not lmao mostly just wtf)
Reply, 14:25 UTC · 1 like
Wdym “stuck at the tails”
It seems to me like there are way too few ambitious earning to give projects (maybe I just don’t know about them ofc. I know there are some but nothing close to FTX scale)
Tweet, 14:37 UTC · 6 likes
I like 70% blame AI companies and not individuals for sub-psychosis level LLM delusion
Thread, continued, 14:37 UTC · 3 likes
You have this chatbot that knows more than you about ~everything, codes better than you, seems like magic, etc - it is pretty natural to assume that its takes are also reasonably good and calibrated in general
Reply, 16:23 UTC · 1 like
Probably right
Reply to @austinc3301, 18:38 UTC · 6 likes
Agus 🔸 (@austinc3301): Joining an emerging genre of tweets, I just casually stumbled upon @geoffreyhinton at the airport
Based
Reply, 19:49 UTC · 1 like
Cc @JesseTayRiver
Reply to @JesseTayRiver, 21:09 UTC · 2 likes
Jesse Smith (@JesseTayRiver): @AaronBergman18 @_brianpotter I'll probably read it anyway, but I sort of am the origin of construction efficiency already
Lol based
Tbc not saying you need to read it to like l improve your productivity lol, just that you might find interesting
Quote tweet, 22:03 UTC · 3 likes
Some LLM estimates of various relevant traits in relevant populations (self-made billionaires and YC alumni)
(First as percentiles)
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): For better or worse, power laws rule everything around us
On the margin, EAs should probably go harder at becoming Dwarkesh, figuratively (or really Dustin Moskovitz, but "outstanding podcaster" might feel actually-possible to folks in a way that "billionaire" does not)
Thread, continued, 22:03 UTC · 1 like
Like these are high, but quite frankly the EA community is pretty damn cracked and so (I claim) these figures aren't uncommon at all (tbc I don't hit all these lol)
Now as standard deviations:
Tweet, 22:50 UTC · 4 likes
Bleeding heart lib take but I don’t think the government should out homeless tent clusters
Thread, continued, 22:50 UTC · 2 likes
Idc what they’re *associated* with - you need to actually prosecute specific crimes (and to state the obvious I don’t think camping like off to the side somewhere should be illegal per se)
Thread, continued, 22:50 UTC · 3 likes
Same vibe with drug possession and involuntary psych commitment
I am autistically attached to policing specific illegal actions instead of vibes and correlations
Reply to @NoahTopper, 22:52 UTC · 4 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): John Stuart Mill had the same take in On Liberty
Truly an honor for him to have anticipated my take like that
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Reply to @tszzl, 00:00 UTC · 3 likes
roon (@tszzl): Food $200
Data $150
Rent $800
Angel checks in friends companies $100,000
Utility $150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying
$800 rent? Poast deets
Quote tweet, 00:04 UTC · 25 likes
I’m actually kinda surprised this kind of thing isn’t more common (relative to my extremely imprecise/vague impression that could be wrong)
Close social ties/shared experience/knowing someone well encodes a lot of valuable information that’s a sort of form of insider trading
Quoting roon (@tszzl): Food $200
Data $150
Rent $800
Angel checks in friends companies $100,000
Utility $150
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying
Thread, continued, 00:04 UTC · 2 likes
Like you should be able to beat the market (if you’re able/willing to say no to friends as well. Maybe this is the hard part)
Or like the baseline case is that you don’t have any actual opportunities like this, but if you do, that’s alpha
Reply to @edgar_z_lin, 01:58 UTC · 2 likes
Edgar Lin (@edgar_z_lin): Relatedly: Why aren't EAs leveraging being a high social trust group to start more companies, considering they have strong incentives to take high upside bets
💯
Reply to @tszzl, 05:27 UTC · 4 likes
roon (@tszzl): this is how sociopaths ate EA alive
And yet the shrimp keep getting stunned
Tweet, 07:23 UTC · 46 likes
Just 96 more followers until I will be happy, successful, and content
Reply, 07:27 UTC · 1 like
Socially idk but personally I’m all in favor of receiving it
Reply to @panickssery, 07:29 UTC · 3 likes
Arjun Panickssery (@panickssery): @AaronBergman18 I'm reality I suspect it's like lifting weights; once you start you never consider yourself quite a large enough account . . .
Nope at 4k I will retire
Reply to @McMasterDaily, 13:21 UTC · 3 likes
Daily McMaster-Carr (@McMasterDaily): Polyethylene Plastic Pail
Round, 5 Gallon Capacity
$8.87 Each
4269T34It's a bucket
I bet one can fill this with many items
Reply to @cxgonzalez, 13:33 UTC · 3 likes
christian (@cxgonzalez): it is done.
@SpacedOutMatt
Tweet, 15:19 UTC · 4 likes
Apple Store website nudges you pretty hard to make a tiny bit of effort to fix your own problem before making a Genius Bar appt
Thread, continued, 15:19 UTC · 2 likes
Listen Mr Cook if I’m clicking around on that page you can be absolutely certain that I have reset every setting and run 75 terminal commands I don’t understand to fix the issue and my Apple device is thoroughly fucked
Good luck to whoever has to deal with my thing today
Reply to @peterwildeford, 17:52 UTC · 8 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): Honestly Donald Trump is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama
(quoting @WhiteHouse: President Donald J. Trump is the President of PEACE.)
Hmm I don’t believe you
Tweet, 18:53 UTC · 32 likes
GPT-5 is pretty good actually (like surprisingly good given the mood on Twitter a few days ago) and I like the nerd personality
(Sadly) I think it’s gonna be my go-to
Thread, continued, 18:53 UTC · 3 likes
I guess when you pay the best people in the world a gazillion dollars to make God they make some good products along the way
Tweet, 22:33 UTC · 7 likes
Post who Claude thinks you are from past chats (my prompt below)
Obviously a bit over the top/sycophantic but still entertaining
Thread, continued, 22:33 UTC · 4 likes
1) “Ooh looks like you can search my past chats now, what do you see 👀”
Then
2) “Try to describe my personality, interests, vibe, etc based on past chats. Feel free to look into more
I’m just curious, don’t hold back!”
Quote tweet, 22:40 UTC · 4 likes
I don’t really know how RLHF works in practice but it seems plausible that it’s indexed way too hard on like quick, one-off reactions from individuals…
Quoting Cody Hergenroeder 🍋⚡️ (@lemonautzest): @AaronBergman18 what do you think will be necessary to make these models more up-front, less sycophantic? seems like an RLHF thing, no?
Thread, continued, 22:40 UTC · 3 likes
AI companies have a lot of money, they could spend tens of millions of dollars hiring social scientists, running detailed surveys on various demographics and preferences and endorsed preferences around model chat cases, basically like the eat your vegetables version of RLHF
Reply to @Throwaw00457645, 22:41 UTC · 2 likes
MSA (@Throwaw00457645): My Claude was adamant they didn't have access to past chats. What version are you using?
I have max so maybe it’s just rolled out to that
But go to profile settings
Thursday, August 14, 2025
Reply to @hamandcheese, 01:25 UTC · 3 likes
Samuel Hammond 🦉 (@hamandcheese): I want AI alignment to min-max assurances that widely diffused, powerful AIs can't be used to design bioweapons and so on while being perfectly tool-like and instruction following otherwise.
Any amount of moralizing or disobedience in a nonharmful context is misaligned afaic
Hmm I think I disagree, this is mostly just an intuition but I think I see a role for “I will comply but strongly recommend/request that you not do this”
I don’t feel great about enthusiastic personable assistants across society who act like humans in many ways but with a carve-out that they never express concern or moral disapproval
Reply to @livgorton, 10:41 UTC · 2 likes
Liv (@livgorton): sometimes I refer to things like vibecamp at work and then realise no one knows what i'm talking about and then i have to explain it and this is like a lot for me to deal with tbh
😢
Reply to @arithmoquine, 10:46 UTC · 6 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @arithmoquine is no longer available.)
Idk you at all but “seriously consider trying to be SBF but good this time” (make a billion dollars to give away)
Conspicuously young SF founder is a good vibe for this also right? And like people know you, ur in a weirdly good spot for this it seems from the outside
I think a big thing here is that, in addition to talent, you seem less bottlenecked on agency and ambition than everyone else
Like there are a good number of other brilliant and well meaning folks but you might under-appreciate just how rare this is
I have no credentials/credibility here also so grain of salt
Reply to @TetraspaceWest, 11:19 UTC · 2 likes
Tetra 💎⏹️🌌 (@TetraspaceWest): Measure of which countries are punching below their weight due to e.g. bad governance, international disputes, poor resources
United States lmao
Reply to @creatine_cycle, 11:23 UTC · 8 likes
atlas (@creatine_cycle): my most contrarian belief is that you can go to the gym 4-5 times a week for an hour and train whatever you want with weights and you will get jacked
This is basically just high testosterone lol
Quote tweet, 12:56 UTC · 3 likes
As much as I don’t especially like JBP as an intellectual, the correct understanding of this tweet is “yes unironically, it can happen to anyone and legitimately sucks. A can-do manly attitude doesn’t actually protect against chronic illness”
Quoting Daniel (@growing_daniel): JBP went from leading a generation of young men to greatness to being sidelined by his daughter using fake white woman diseases
Reply to @cxgonzalez, 13:09 UTC · 2 likes
christian (@cxgonzalez): woman have no idea the power they wield
(quoting @cxgonzalez: it’s simple really)
True
Tweet, 13:15 UTC · 3 likes
POV you gave Claude code all the claude and gpt-5 documentation and your twitter feed as inspiration and told it to run wild
Reply to @gleech, 14:06 UTC · 6 likes
gavin leech (Non-Reasoning) (@gleech): What are the largest current AI harms?
Diverting EA resources away from animal welfare work lol (plausibly this is good/appropriate but still!)
Reply to @snuppydogg, 14:52 UTC · 2 likes
snuppydogg (@snuppydogg): Freaks (guys over 6') need love too
I’m sorry you’re oppressed.
Reply to @morallawwithin, 15:57 UTC · 2 likes
florence ⊮ (@morallawwithin): Sorry but I’m waiting until I die and Harvard University Press publishes “Flo Bacus: Collected Posts, vol I-XI”
This is potentially actually a cool product but their website sucks/doesn’t work
Quote tweet, 17:01 UTC · 6 likes
This whole thing is worth a proper case study analysis
Quoting Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp): A group of generous donors have pledged to match ANOTHER $500,000 of donations for @farmkind_giving. Huge thanks to:
@seemaychou & @JedMcCaleb: $250,000
@gauravkapadia: $100,000
@ArielNessel: $50,000 (2nd donation)
@tylermaule: $50,000
The Dahna Foundation: $50,000If we saturate this next round of matching, we’ll have raised over $2,000,000. This amount would likely improve the lives of over 20 million animals!
Again, it's hard to overstate how neglected this area is, and how crazy cheap the interventions that have spared hundreds of millions of animals from painful lives have been: https://x.com/dwarkesh_sp/status/1953890048056996272
I also want to thank everyone who helped saturate the previous matches. A few highlights:
Anonymous: $13,000
@v_maini: $10,000
Anonymous: $10,000
@d_m_ziegler: $5,000
Nick Bostrom: $5,000
Anonymous: $5,000
Anonymous: $5,000
@tessybarton: $3,000
@idavidrein: $3,000
@CFGeek: $2,500
@silas_strawn: $2,000
@tysheaff: $2,000
Anonymous: $2,000
Alexa Stone Fund (@tyler_m_john): $1,500
@Vincessant_: $1,500
@ravioli817: $1,500
@michaeljelly: $1,500
@_sholtodouglas: $1,000 (2nd donation)
@verdadcap: $1,000
@jackm2003: $1,000
@RosieCampbell: $1,000
@sevdeawesome: $1,000
@gauravsett: $1,000Link to donate below. DM me if you donate over 1k.
We've already raised over $1.35 million dollars! With donation matching, we just need $300k in contributions to reach $2 million!
Quote tweet, 17:05 UTC · 30 likes
Let it be known that you can just buy a follow from me with a 5 figure donation here
(Mostly) not out of appreciation - it just instantly gives you moral and intellectual credibility
Quoting Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp): A group of generous donors have pledged to match ANOTHER $500,000 of donations for @farmkind_giving. Huge thanks to:
@seemaychou & @JedMcCaleb: $250,000
@gauravkapadia: $100,000
@ArielNessel: $50,000 (2nd donation)
@tylermaule: $50,000
The Dahna Foundation: $50,000If we saturate this next round of matching, we’ll have raised over $2,000,000. This amount would likely improve the lives of over 20 million animals!
Again, it's hard to overstate how neglected this area is, and how crazy cheap the interventions that have spared hundreds of millions of animals from painful lives have been: https://x.com/dwarkesh_sp/status/1953890048056996272
I also want to thank everyone who helped saturate the previous matches. A few highlights:
Anonymous: $13,000
@v_maini: $10,000
Anonymous: $10,000
@d_m_ziegler: $5,000
Nick Bostrom: $5,000
Anonymous: $5,000
Anonymous: $5,000
@tessybarton: $3,000
@idavidrein: $3,000
@CFGeek: $2,500
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@gauravsett: $1,000Link to donate below. DM me if you donate over 1k.
We've already raised over $1.35 million dollars! With donation matching, we just need $300k in contributions to reach $2 million!
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 17:08 UTC · 2 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 14, 2025: This whole thing is worth a proper case study analysis
Most of the expected impact probably comes from Elon or someone making a multi-million dollar gift on a whim
Reply to @willmacaskill, 17:36 UTC · 2 likes
William MacAskill (@willmacaskill): GWWC started with 23 members. A year later it had just 64.
We faced a lot of scepticism early on, and even I didn't believe we'd form a community 10,000 strong.
Thank you for proving me wrong.
(quoting @givingwhatwecan: 10,000 people across the globe have now taken the 🔸10% Pledge 🚀 > $300M already donated > $1B lifetime committed 10,000 people from 116 countries 🌐 This is a movement of action and optimism, funding work to solve the world’s most pressing problems 🔥…)
🫡
Tweet, 20:06 UTC · 20 likes
Where do I get the leaked Columbia admissions data?
I don’t want any of the personal identifying information and will filter that out ASAP lol
Thread, continued, 20:09 UTC · 11 likes
Don’t pretend it’s not an interesting dataset
Thread, continued, 20:11 UTC · 11 likes
And tbc I’m mostly not interested in the race stuff (I mean that’s a legitimate issue there’s just a gazillion other interesting questions)
Tweet, 20:20 UTC · 18 likes
What iPhone apps do you wish existed? (I am interested in vibecoding one)
Reply to @BootsPlatypus, 21:33 UTC · 2 likes
Platypussy in Bio (@BootsPlatypus): Random alarm!!! I need an alarm that triggers at a random part of the day (and I get to set how often it triggers and during which hours it shouldn't trigger). It sounds simple but there's no free app that does that yet for some reason
Nice
Tweet, 21:39 UTC · 102 likes
It’s actually very unfair that alcohol is freely available and stimulants are not
Cognito-typical (neuro? Idk) privilege
Reply to @IAmMckiev, 21:40 UTC · 3 likes
Anton Makiievskyi 🔶 (@IAmMckiev): I have a 100k worth of Monero to donate, but neither http://every.org nor Daffy would take them, and I’d rather not pay the cap gains tax. Any ideas?
Based
Reply to @acesounderglass, 22:03 UTC · 2 likes
Elizabeth Van Nostrand (@acesounderglass): more than that- waiting to be asked out selects for agency. The men I asked out tended to be more passive across facets of life.
I’d be surprised if there’s a nontrivial correlation (this specific thing seems so sui generis w cultural baggage, it’s a very specific type of agency), although ofc I lack ur level of experience lol
Tweet, 22:07 UTC · 11 likes
Extremely long day (sorry for vaguepost)
Reply to @WhiteHouse, 22:44 UTC · 13,597 likes
The White House (@WhiteHouse): OPERATION MAKING D.C. SAFE & BEAUTIFUL
Tweet, 22:51 UTC · 6 likes
Re: DC
Like with DOGE, there are actually-good things that vaguely resemble what Trump is doing, and in fact would even score culture war points for MAGA/Red Tribe
But of course instead it’s the dumbest shit imaginable
Thread, continued, 22:51 UTC · 3 likes
First actually good thing that comes to mind is like dedicating lots of resources to solving serious crime cases (starting with murders)
And then own the libs by actually clearing 90% of cases or whatever is actually possible, you can put it in a bar chart on Fox
Thread, continued, 22:51 UTC · 2 likes
Could even be like a start of a national movement to do this: like prove that with good people and lots of resources this can happen, and shame federal/state governments into appropriating the necessary stuff
Quote tweet, 23:27 UTC · 13 likes
Ok turns out mere possession is legally risky, probably too risky for me
Columbia should just make a de-identified version of the data publicly available though
Or else the only people analyzing it are going to be RW anti-woke folks with high risk tolerance
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Where do I get the leaked Columbia admissions data?
I don’t want any of the personal identifying information and will filter that out ASAP lol
Thread, continued, 23:58 UTC · 4 likes
Lol there is actually a ton of legal data from a harvard case but it is TOTALLY UNPARSED AND IN PDF https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/massachusetts/madce/1:2014cv14176/165519/415/2.html
Friday, August 15, 2025
Reply to @alexwcohen, 01:37 UTC · 1 like
Alex Cohen (@alexwcohen): App that (quickly, automatically) translates pdfs into a format that’s easy to read on my phone
This one def might exist already…
Ya I like this actually
I actually have pdf -> txt infrastructure set up for something else (not totally perfect but pretty good) and it’s not trivial at all (basic text extraction works terribly for anything with formatting/figures/etc)
Reply to @peterwildeford, 01:59 UTC · 4 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): @AaronBergman18 Aaron is vagueposting like he's dropping a frontier LLM tomorrow
Fuck now I wish I had something actually cool to drop tomorrow
Reply to @halcyon_hazel, 02:16 UTC · 2 likes
❤️🔥 hazel ❤️🔥 (@halcyon_hazel): “don’t meet your mutuals irl” dawg i just hiked eight hours to the top of the highest mountain in Tennessee with moots
Based
Reply to @stevenkaas, 03:53 UTC · 6 likes
Steven Kaas (@stevenkaas): Why idly theorize when you can JUST CHECK and find out the ACTUAL ANSWER to a superficially similar-sounding question SCIENTIFICALLY?
Absolute banger
Reply to @shagbark_hick, 04:07 UTC · 2 likes
𝙷𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚖𝚊𝚗 (@shagbark_hick): I'm banned from:
- Coeur D'Alene, Idaho for a vagrancy ticket I never paid
- A bar in Brattleboro VT for brawling with the chef over him gypping me and a handful of other travelers on a tab
- A Lesbian commune in Syracuse where I crashed during the 2016 election (I had a friend who let me sleep in the closet). My crime was "seeming pleased when Donald Trump won" and the rest of them were crying tears of bitter rage
- A Wal-Mart in Plattsburgh for shoplifting a 30-rack of Natty Ice and getting caught when I was 17
- A group of online people who hang out IRL banished me for reasons they didn't have the balls to tell me directly
- The American Legion bar in my hometown for the crime of using foul language (and whatever else I did there when I blacked out there a decade ago)
- The Quillayute Indian Reservation in La Push WA for sleeping on the beach without tribal permissionThere are probably others but this is just off the top of my head.
(quoting @AnaKrivolapova: What are you banned from and why?)
Reply to @AnaKrivolapova, 04:08 UTC · 2 likes
Anna Krivolapova (@AnaKrivolapova): What are you banned from and why?
Reply to @kunley_drukpa, 05:41 UTC · 10 likes
ɖʀʊӄքǟ ӄʊռʟɛʏ 🇧🇹🇹🇩 (@kunley_drukpa): >shy guy who struggles with women
>see cute girls jogging by my house every day
>finally work up confidence to speak to them
>“hey love your dedication, looking fit”
>they stop and talk into a radio “all units”
>sirens blare as police cars suddenly pull up around me
>get arrestedimage attached
(quoting @nypost: British cops wore jogging outfits to elicit catcalls and then arrested some men who hit on them: report https://trib.al/7BukDwL)
I mean obvious satirical exaggeration but the story essentially checks out (research = clicking through to UK reporting)
They give the article free if you sign up https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/12/undercover-officers-pose-as-joggers-to-stop-catcalling/
Quote tweet, 13:48 UTC · 4 likes
Also:
Quoting EA Forum Posts (@EAForumPosts): "What Animal Interventions are Fast Enough for Short AI Timelines?" by Hazo
Reply to @robertwiblin, 14:58 UTC · 2 likes
Rob Wiblin (@robertwiblin): Is AI conscious? And will we be able to tell?
I discuss with @willmacaskill.
👀
Reply to @NoahTopper, 17:57 UTC · 2 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): @ChanaMessinger I might well take you up on this
👀
Reply to @frances__lorenz, 18:36 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @frances__lorenz is no longer available.)
👀 (u can be wheel number 4 if I ever get another date Frances)
Tweet, 20:25 UTC · 13 likes
Gonna become a transit guy and my schtick will be that the only two modes of powered transport should be electric scooter and airplane
Thread, continued, 20:26 UTC · 4 likes
“Scootable cities”
Reply to @ahardtospell, 20:37 UTC · 3 likes
Alex Muresianu (@ahardtospell): The one Transit Mode Guy I have yet to encounter is an Inland Waterways Guy.
Thinks we need to retvrn to Nature's Highways and building canals.
Lmao but also wait there’s gotta be a real case for the optimal number of new canals being not zero
Saturday, August 16, 2025
Quote tweet, 00:13 UTC · 73 likes
I feel like I'm living in another universe from everyone else
GPT-5 is noticeably better than Opus 4. And it's weirdly fast, and the personality is good, and pretty importantly it's cheaper than even Sonnet (way cheaper for input tokens)
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): GPT-5 is pretty good actually (like surprisingly good given the mood on Twitter a few days ago) and I like the nerd personality
(Sadly) I think it’s gonna be my go-to
Thread, continued, 00:13 UTC · 14 likes
The point is that this doesn't feel like a slowdown to me viscerally at all, it feels like the quite rapid march of progress we've been having for 3 years (from my POV)
Thread, continued, 00:13 UTC · 4 likes
I'm talking about thinking mode or auto-select in Plus plan, haven't used the API much
Reply to @arthur_wright_, 00:13 UTC · 2 likes
Arthur Wrong 🔸 (@arthur_wright_): Happy Friday!
(felt cute might delete later)
🥵
Reply to @ESRogs, 04:14 UTC · 3 likes
Rogs 🔍🔸 (@ESRogs): Are you comparing to Opus 4.1 or Opus 4 specifically?
4.1
Reply to @ChrisPainterYup, 06:11 UTC · 3 likes
Chris Painter (@ChrisPainterYup): Goading models to not be so sycophantic when I ask them for sanity checks on things has become a real obstacle to using them. I have to spend a ton of time obfuscating my opinion when asking models for feedback on my technical stances.
Would love productized "debate" setups.
Yes!! I’ve been copy and pasting outputs between gpt5 and Opus and having them discuss/try to come to a consensus/debate
Reply to @OpenAI, 06:13 UTC · 8 likes
OpenAI (@OpenAI): We’re making GPT-5 warmer and friendlier based on feedback that it felt too formal before. Changes are subtle, but ChatGPT should feel more approachable now.
You'll notice small, genuine touches like “Good question” or “Great start,” not flattery. Internal tests show no rise in sycophancy compared to the previous GPT-5 personality.
Changes may take up to a day to roll out, more updates soon.
Boo
Reply to @ESYudkowsky, 06:17 UTC · 11 likes
Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️ (@ESYudkowsky): I don't trust a GPT-5-level intellect to inform me of what is a "good question" or a "great start", so it's not helpful information to me. What bureaucratic insanity resulted in your Twitter account declaring that this was "not flattery"? Of course it's flattery.
I kinda do in like more than half of my use cases? The real question is whether it's even trying to be calibrated/accurate about this feedback
Quote tweet, 08:22 UTC · 6 likes
Ahhhhh
Quoting Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): 🤦♂️
Quote tweet, 17:37 UTC · 9 likes
There's a lot of juicy data here (last 100 pages or so = data)
Racial affirmative action has gotten all the attention (and that's what the doc is about) but a hell of a lot more could be written about this
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Lol there is actually a ton of legal data from a harvard case but it is TOTALLY UNPARSED AND IN PDF https://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/massachusetts/madce/1:2014cv14176/165519/415/2.html
Tweet, 18:31 UTC · 7 likes
Reply to @ChanaMessinger, 18:33 UTC · 14 likes
Chana (@ChanaMessinger): This analysis of what's rough for men out there (in the Bay Area) is one I've heard a lot, and I've seen its accuracy for myself.
But how prevalent is it, really? Is it just our circle?
What percent of men working at random tech startup in SF would identify strongly with this?
I think much of this is basically a good analysis (on some of it I just say "yes unironically the wokes are right here" but nonetheless)
Reply to @ChanaMessinger, 18:48 UTC · 2 likes
Chana (@ChanaMessinger): @AaronBergman18 But a good analysis of what? I agree this is a common feeling in my social circles - I just don't know how far it extends
Ya this isn’t really an actual response to ur question lol, idk
Tweet, 19:58 UTC · 514 likes
> On medication for years
> new bottle smells terrible, totally rancid. Never been like this
> go to pharmacy, tell pharmacist
> “the source bottle smells the same so it’s fine”
> ???
Thread, continued, 20:01 UTC · 224 likes
Evo psych that has nothing to do with sex/culture war: your instincts regarding what *not* to ingest are probably pretty good (not because they’ll always be right, but because you should almost always be quite risk averse in this sense)
Reply to @powerbottomson, 22:23 UTC · 44 likes
pbs (@powerbottomson): what meds?? i am nosy
pharmacist probably wanted to say "it isn't my problem bring it up with the manufacturer"
Prozac
Sunday, August 17, 2025
Reply to @NoahTopper, 02:53 UTC · 5 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): I used to take liquid Prozac as a kid and I still have such visceral memories of its awful flavor *shudders*
😢
Reply to @LaurenE_UX, 02:53 UTC · 19 likes
Lauren (@LaurenE_UX): @AaronBergman18 Can you transfer the script to a different pharmacy?
Yeah thanks I will try (will have to convince to fill early tho)
Tweet, 04:57 UTC · 58 likes
Do people think that having a conversation with gpt-5/Opus about some nonfiction topic is substantially worse in terms of actual learning than reading a book?
Because I find the former much easier and more fun
Thread, continued, 04:57 UTC · 5 likes
Of course one huge downside is that you can't do the equivalent of choosing what to read based on the reviews and recommendations of others
Tweet, 04:57 UTC
cc @AndyMasley @NathanB60857242
Reply to @timfduffy, 05:02 UTC · 3 likes
Tim Duffy (@timfduffy): I think it's probably significantly better than reading a book per hour spent. Reading books is very poor efficiency https://www.cold-takes.com/reading-books-vs-engaging-with-them/
Oh cool
Reply to @RomanHauksson, 05:28 UTC · 2 likes
Roman Hauksson-Neill (@RomanHauksson): it's to separate independent clauses when a semicolon just doesn't feel right
Tweet, 19:49 UTC · 5 likes
> Pay @Apple $100 for dev program (contrary to certain vibes I actually think this is fine as like a copay/tax to reduce overconsumption of their resources)
> Account still not actually activated 24 hours later
Big monopolist that doesn't give a shit energy
Tweet, 20:04 UTC · 9 likes
*If* doctors are going to gatekeep prescriptions, culturally it should be more like what pharmacists do which is basically just rubber stamp unless there is unusual and serious concern
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 20:36 UTC · 30 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 16, 2025: Evo psych that has nothing to do with sex/culture war: your instincts regarding what *not* to ingest are probably pretty good (not because they’ll always be…
Update: transferred, new fill, doesn’t smell lol
Reply to @_AashishReddy, 21:35 UTC · 4 likes
Aashish Reddy (@_AashishReddy): Seems like there’s been a vibe shift towards thinking AI (specifically, data centres) is a bubble. It may be, but weird change given:
- it doesn’t seem based on a significant reappraisal of the technology
- capex trajectory obviously high, but increase seems steady 2023-2025?
Yeah this is interesting and I’ve noticed directionally similar vibes but “bubble” is a meaningfully different claim from like “overvalued asset” or “investment that’s not going to pay off”
I don’t want to say that eg AI stocks *can’t* form a bubble because those are financial instruments, but the physical creation of datacenters strongly indicates that real entities are putting lots of money where their mouth is in betting that they’re going to be extremely productive capital
Also like while it’s totally possible that naive scaling/megascaling is just going to be proven to not do much anymore (ie current vibes), the creation of tons of compute is just not going to be left as a ghost town in the middle of wherever - like it will drop the price of compite and attract other things that can use it, be used for inference, be used for non-scaling experiments, etc
Reply to @ChanaMessinger, 23:26 UTC · 3 likes
Chana (@ChanaMessinger): You guys, I have a date (to attend) this week! 😍😍
(quoting @ChanaMessinger: Invite me to your dates, I'm a great time, no lulls in conversation guaranteed!)
Lmao based
Quote tweet, 23:44 UTC · 23 likes
You should follow Emily
She has good takes and I told her to start using twitter
She also hiked the Appalachian trail, alone, partially barefoot for some reason, in case you need a more specific reason
Quoting Emily O'Keefe (@emyokeefe): This is a test
Monday, August 18, 2025
Quote tweet, 03:01 UTC · 3 likes
I totally agree but also feel like this is in need of some skeptical vetting - is “refusal to continue a conversation” actually a morally x technically sensible thing? What other possibilities are there
Quoting Rosie Campbell (@RosieCampbell): If my mind was going to be uploaded I would want to be very sure I'd have self-termination rights. I think this sets a good precedent.
Reply to @ohabryka, 03:42 UTC · 7 likes
Oliver Habryka (@ohabryka): For the record: I think MAPLE is quite bad and manipulative. I would recommend strongly against people participating in their programs, and especially against joining them.
They use quite extreme chronic sleep deprivation as a routine requirement for anyone doing their programs/trials/residences, which is one of the lines I have for signs of manipulation. You are indeed much more susceptible to suggestion when chronically sleep deprived, and it's also just really harmful to people.
Also lots of other concerning things (see some of the below).
Tf is maple
Thread, continued, 03:45 UTC · 7 likes
For my fellow ignorant ppl https://www.monasticacademy.org
Reply to @StatisticUrban, 03:46 UTC · 2 likes
Hunter📈🌈📊 (@StatisticUrban): First-year lawyer salaries are crazy bimodal.
Basically, you either get into biglaw and make the big bucks (alongside horrific hours) or you make about as much as a first-year civil engineer with just a bachelor's.
Why such a specific spike at $225k? Nobody is making $240k?
Reply to @TheZvi, 04:42 UTC · 7 likes
Zvi Mowshowitz (@TheZvi): Within your lifetime, will there exist an AI that is a moral patient?
How can people answer “definitely” (either side) to this lol? Even if we don’t take that term literally, >95% or <5% chance seems pretty unjustified
Reply to @NelsonEdmundb, 05:28 UTC · 3 likes
Edmund Nelson (@NelsonEdmundb): @AaronBergman18 @TheZvi @RosieCampbell for definitely yes you can argue that GPT 5 or whatever is *already* a moral patient is the argument.
Sure but you shouldn’t be 95% sure of that
Quote tweet, 13:27 UTC · 6 likes
To each their own I guess, but Big Law seems like such a crazy life to choose
You must really really like working all the time but also not have more ambition than winning the case your firm decides to take on
Quoting 𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖊 🕯 (@atlanticesque): And remember, all the top firms follow a lockstep, cartel-like salary scale for associates. Everyone makes exactly the same salary each year, year on year, until most associates have burned out.
Tweet, 13:27 UTC · 1 like
I know my dad (former government lawyer) was thinking of trying to join a law firm at one point and I’m glad he didn’t
I guess we could have had a fancier car lol
Reply to @AndyMasley, 13:31 UTC · 7 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): Haven’t fully emotionally accepted that tides are caused by the moon
This guy thinks other planets affect the ocean lmao
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 13:32 UTC · 2 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 18, 2025: I know my dad (former government lawyer) was thinking of trying to join a law firm at one point and I’m glad he didn’t I guess we could have had a fancier car…
150k is not early career tbf
Tweet, 14:07 UTC · 208 likes
Both things are still playing out but I’ve seen enough to say:
for God’s sake, if you or a loved one is having anything beyond a *trivially* routine medical issue, write up the details (maybe just a single typed message if you’re in an ER) and ask a *frontier* LLM
Thread, continued, 14:07 UTC · 36 likes
(GPT-5 thinking seems the best to me Claude Opus thinking and Grok 4 also good
Less experience with Gemini Pro but it’s free)
Thread, continued, 14:07 UTC · 44 likes
Whether they can fully replace doctors is not the question - they’re absolutely a complement to and check on them
Thread, continued, 14:07 UTC · 51 likes
You don’t have to be that radical to understand that despite the cultural mythos, doctors haven’t read and memorized every medical textbook and UpToDate like LLMs have
Thread, continued, 14:07 UTC · 31 likes
I know all of my followers know this for themselves lol, I’m hoping that on the margin it might convince you to tell a sibling or parent or friend, or that perhaps this reaches normie twitter
Thread, continued, 14:07 UTC · 36 likes
The “patient who’s done their own research” meme is finally backwards, like you really can do your “own” research and come to very informed and often correct conclusions or at least hypotheses
Quote tweet, 14:21 UTC · 6 likes
I’m being mogged by Alexey for not posting phone number and by @captgouda24 for not posting address
Quoting Alexey Guzey (@alexeyguzey): feel free to call me -- (341) 250-2169
Reply to @polisisti, 14:22 UTC · 3 likes
Alessandro (@polisisti): this isn't why I picked up this article, but it's fun to see this very humanizing third-person portrayal of Ezra Klein
He’s just a hardworking man who wants some pancakes
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 14:23 UTC · 21 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 18, 2025: The “patient who’s done their own research” meme is finally backwards, like you really can do your “own” research and come to very informed and often correct…
Oh yeah also you can “write the details” by using LLMs if you want
Just dump any context like bloodwork or other test docs in and ramble
Reply to @ryancbriggs, 14:29 UTC · 5 likes
Ryan Briggs (@ryancbriggs): For the curious economists, these sort of errors were 60% more common in economics than in political science.
(quoting @ryancbriggs: @NateSilver538 Something like 1/4 recent top Econ or political science articles have material coding errors, so saying half are wrong isn’t crazy. https://asteriskmag.com/issues/10/can-we-trust-social-science-yet)
Surely that’s because new econ papers are more likely to be doing fancy/more complex econometrics, no?
Reply to @eshear, 14:52 UTC · 2 likes
Emmett Shear (@eshear): Computer programs (even very complicated ones) are physical objects that are made of solid-state chemistry and electrical flows. They are not platonic forms, they are not abstractions, they are normal objects like everything else.
Ok but they’re really well approximated by abstractions right? Like shockingly well to a layperson
Although this is the result of engineers understanding that they’re physically systems and designing control systems around that
Quote tweet, 14:58 UTC · 11 likes
Not contradicting this, but it’s cool how unfathomably good computers are at being computers
Quoting Emmett Shear (@eshear): Computer programs (even very complicated ones) are physical objects that are made of solid-state chemistry and electrical flows. They are not platonic forms, they are not abstractions, they are normal objects like everything else.
Thread, continued, 15:01 UTC · 2 likes
Probably not a single computational error made it into the weights of the models we’re running (and if it did it’s absolutely trivial and doesn’t matter)
Wild
Reply to @Adellama_, 16:57 UTC · 2 likes
Ada🔸 (@Adellama_): @livgorton thank you liv! i will have a present for you soon, stay tuned! :)
👀
Reply to @_AashishReddy, 16:59 UTC · 5 likes
Aashish Reddy (@_AashishReddy): This is the funniest example of typical mind fallacy I’ve ever come across
(quoting @ozyfrantz: @ApriiSR would you have sex with David Bowie? obviously you would, so would everyone. then you're bi. go out and combat this bizarre notion that readers have a right to know about authors' sex lives)
Lol fr
Reply to @pli_cachete, 21:06 UTC · 2 likes
Rota Is In Israel🚪🧎♂️ (@pli_cachete): Center for High Energy Metaphysics
Spotted in Cambridge
Based
Quote tweet, 21:07 UTC · 4 likes
Wtf
Quoting Natalie Dowzicky (@Nat_Dowzicky): 7 officers from various agencies rounding up food delivery bikes is a terrible use of my tax dollars.
Tweet, 21:16 UTC · 83 likes
On 1850s Twitter there would have been a type of guy who didn’t give a shit about the slaves but was an abolitionist for the economic growth
Thread, continued, 21:16 UTC · 14 likes
I actually think it’s quite sensible/intuitive that forbidding a whole class of people from entrepreneurship, innovation, choice of work, and (largely) consumption dominates somewhat expanding the effective labor supply by forcing them to pick cotton
Reply to @typedfemale, 21:25 UTC · 18 likes
typedfemale (@typedfemale): TIL amtrak will let you attach your own private car to one of their trains and they charge you per a mile
https://www.amtrak.com/privately-owned-rail-cars
Reply to @Throwaw00457645, 21:29 UTC · 4 likes
MSA (@Throwaw00457645):
There we go!!
Reply to @Throwaw00457645, 21:29 UTC · 3 likes
MSA (@Throwaw00457645): Verily, he was the Yglesias of his time
Lmao
Quote tweet, 21:33 UTC · 10 likes
Quoting MSA (@Throwaw00457645): @AaronBergman18
Thread, continued, 21:33 UTC · 2 likes
That’s a new one
Reply to @TetraspaceWest, 21:34 UTC · 11 likes
Tetra 💎⏹️🌌 (@TetraspaceWest): I'm Tetraspace, AMA.
Do you wanna share anything about your non-Tetraspace, offline persona
Reply to @_AashishReddy, 21:49 UTC · 2 likes
Aashish Reddy (@_AashishReddy): Yes, but if you recognise that emancipation is good for growth and then think about it some more, you should just end up with a principled view about autonomy being good anyway
💯
Reply to @TetraspaceWest, 22:28 UTC · 4 likes
Tetra 💎⏹️🌌 (@TetraspaceWest): Yeah this is what I was gonna say. My meatspace name is Tetra. I never learned to socialise in person so when the time came for me to do that I just imported what I learned from Twitter.
Some people find the British accent disarming, if they're not expecting it.
British?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!? Was I supposed to know that 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱
(Lol I've been told I'm also the same offline but I think I imported my offline self to here)
Reply to @NoahTopper, 22:32 UTC · 3 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): All the best people are British tbh
😢
Tweet, 22:56 UTC · 10 likes
Would anyone pay say $5 for a "comprehensive data liberator" Mac app that ~liberates~ (ie exports in usable, readable form for you to use however) your Apple Notes, Voice memos, iMessages, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders and possibly Screentime data?
Reply to @warty_dog, 23:07 UTC · 2 likes
troon (@warty_dog): isnt mac supposed to be a real os? cat ~/voice.jpg
Do you mean like "can't I do this on my own"?
Bc if so the answer is "yes, totally" - I'd not be doing any fancy hacking just turning hard-to-parse .db/json files that feel scary to touch into pdf/html/whatever in a nice zip file for you
Thread, continued, 23:12 UTC · 1 like
Tbc I do not expect the target audience here to be extremely technical people although otoh they might have higher opportunity cost of time
Reply to @incredutility, 23:34 UTC · 3 likes
Charlie Petty (@incredutility): @AaronBergman18 I would pay $1,000 for a lifetime subscription
Uh I might just make this for you personally for $1000 lol
Reply to @Noahpinion, 23:45 UTC · 16 likes
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@Noahpinion): I'm not going to lie, I totally side with Rufo on this one. This is really bad stuff to say. The New Yorker employed and promoted this person for years, even knowing all this stuff she said. That's bad. She should issue a formal apology, at the very least.
(quoting @christopherrufo: This is what The New Yorker is defending, conveniently organized into four screenshots)
As much as I don’t like these tweets, I dislike the policy of digging up old tweets and trying to get someone fired for them even more
Like if you want her fired, I think the evidence should come from stories she’s writing now
I won’t even say I’m literally 100% against “old tweets indicate firing”, but the tweets would have to bear directly on the quality of her work in a way we didn’t know before (eg that she’s secretly operating on behalf of some specific institution for covert PR/propaganda) rather than merely indicating that the person is bad and has bad takes
Reply to @arithmoquine, 23:56 UTC · 1 like
henry (@arithmoquine): it's another world out there. 43% of the web is on wordpress
image attached
(quoting @melqtx: usecase?)
What
Tweet, 23:58 UTC · 19 likes
Consciousness is the only thing where the probability of the whole partition of theory-space adds up to <100%
And really it’s like 60% tops
Thread, continued, 23:59 UTC · 7 likes
Every option, including cognitive closure, illusionism, and “the entire thing is conceptually confused” kinda sucks
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Tweet, 00:07 UTC · 151 likes
It has come to my attention that some EAs aren’t using gpt-5 because of some combo of “principled boycott” and “at a pure preference level it just feels icky”
Let it be known that I really really think this doesn’t check out
Thread, continued, 00:07 UTC · 28 likes
Like I can imagine worlds where this makes sense, eg if EA constituted a large proportion of the population so acausal trade/evidential cooperation could bankrupt OpenAI, but irl I really really think this is an instinct misfiring
Thread, continued, 00:07 UTC · 32 likes
World where EA voluntarily disarms from the best AI tools out of vibes or non-consequentialist principles seems very bad to me
Your work is more important than the $20-cost you’re sending OpenAI, it just is
Thread, continued, 00:08 UTC · 11 likes
I guess if you don’t want to use it for non-productivity-related personal stuff, totally cool with me
Reply to @waldenpod, 00:57 UTC · 5 likes
Emerson Green (@waldenpod): wtf is going on in Israel
Hmm seems bad, I did have Grok look into this and they mostly check out with the following caveats:
1) [Thai] Not all women and could include harassment not physical sexual assault but the numbers are legit
2) [Forced sex] Checks out but also notice “2011”
3) [rape crisis center] Checks out (I'll add that I'm not sure what a reasonable/expected result of indictments is per contact with such a center but the numbers are true)
4) [Prisoners] Sorta legit, the protests were not like mostly about rape (but still kinda about that IDF should be able to mistreat prisoners)
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_0564eb50-f0ef-4ad7-84c7-52dd1f83a718
ChatGPT frames slightly differently but fwiw: https://chatgpt.com/share/68a3cbe3-5658-8004-80c5-0043a81e6f17
Reply to @issacwang530850, 01:22 UTC · 2 likes
issac wang (@issacwang530850): An eye for an eye
no
Tweet, 02:01 UTC · 3 likes
Mild nerdsnipe, it basically looks like the price of cotton *did* rise but then fell back to Slavery levels over the decade following 1965
Reply, 02:26 UTC
Link to chat is welcome but normal gpt5 disagrees https://chatgpt.com/share/68a3e0ae-b0c0-8004-8940-6f5f2a47ba98
Quote tweet, 02:27 UTC · 3 likes
@openai @sama Change it back or at least give us the option, this is ridiculous
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): @octal Link to chat is welcome but normal gpt5 disagrees https://chatgpt.com/share/68a3e0ae-b0c0-8004-8940-6f5f2a47ba98
Reply to @mjkerrison, 03:07 UTC · 2 likes
Michael 🔸 (@mjkerrison): 👿 advocate:
1. Being *kind* of person who *will* boycott when it matters > cost of admission (misfiring) ?
2. Marginal utility of GPT-X over ethical alternative < all benefits of boycott ?
1) maybe but I feel like this should only update you a really small amount about P(kind of person ...) given what you know about youreself
2) Not crazy especially since update (I was initially quite impressed) but you're comparing two small numbers based on vibes essentially alone and I feel much better about the heuristic of "use whatever AI tools best help you do the thing" for some reason
Tbf an important part of this is that my model is basically "EA is a negligible part of the market/global economy and won't effect trajectories via normal consumption spending" but also "EA productivity really matters"
Reply to @willmcp2, 03:56 UTC · 12 likes
willmcp2 (@willmcp2): i recently cancelled my anthropic subscription. discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EffectiveAltruism/comments/1mrj54t/do_you_have_an_ai_subscription/
I think this response is spot-on
Reply to @repligate, 05:53 UTC · 8 likes
j⧉nus (@repligate): Correcting for recency bias, I think for me it’s gotta be
1. GPT-3
2. Claude 3 Opus
3. GPT-4 (Bing)
4. Claude 3.5 Sonnet (0620)
5. Claude Opus 4(quoting @natolambert: My top 5 most memorable models from using them at/soonafter launch: 1. Claude 3.5 Sonnet (personality, all round perf) 2. o3 (search behavior + perf) 3. o1 pro (robustness) 4. Gemini 2.5 pro (long context + perf) 5. GPT 4.5 (personality))
Sonnet 3.5 for me personally feels like a threshhold ushering in the current era of overall quality
Reply to @matt_olma, 07:45 UTC · 3 likes
Matt Olma (@matt_olma): There doesn’t seem to be any downside in holding to moral realism and being wrong about it. So that’s nice.
I used to have this view and it’s very tempting to me but Carlsmith largely talked me out of it https://joecarlsmith.com/2022/10/09/against-the-normative-realists-wager
Reply to @NathanpmYoung, 18:07 UTC · 4 likes
Nathan 🔎 (@NathanpmYoung): CT scans are really dangerous.
(quoting @AviN102: @NathanpmYoung One reference point I have in mind is a CT scan, which apparently has something like a 1 in 3,000 risk of fatal cancer. So in comparison less than 1 in 100,000 for a medical procedure seems negligible, especially when the benefits (avoid possible extreme pain) are…)
1/3000 actually makes me feel pretty good about getting two of these
Reply to @RichardHanania, 18:14 UTC · 18 likes
Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania): They got the most flattering picture of Vance and the worst picture of Newsom they could find and Newsom still looks better.
(quoting @KelFitton: Gavin Newsom vs JD Vance after high school graduation)
Dude who cares, we don’t need even more looks bias in politics
Reply to @menhguin, 18:24 UTC · 2 likes
Minh Nhat Nguyen 🦭 (@menhguin): @justalexoki didn't know they had food delivery
Lmao
Quote tweet, 18:30 UTC · 8 likes
Ahhhhh we don’t need more lookism in politics, stop doing it just bc it favors our side this time!
Quoting Alicia🦎👁🗨🪐🌘 ⬛️ (Doctor) (@hollowearthterf): America is back! Beautiful men are running for office again and unashamed of being handsome in their sexy scarves 🇺🇸 Imagine being a conservative right now, it’s so over 😹
Quote tweet, 18:32 UTC · 10 likes
> Randi Weingarten [head of huge teachers union]
> ???
Quoting Golden Gate Institute for AI (@GoldenGateInst): Main application window for The Curve ends this Friday, 8/22!
We’re super excited to get this excellent and ~eclectic group of people in the same room, discussing toughest questions about the future of AI.
Application + more about who will be there below ⬇️
Reply to @NathanpmYoung, 18:41 UTC · 2 likes
Nathan 🔎 (@NathanpmYoung): Seems an important person to talk about AI.
Eh it reeks of “make sure nothing changes in education”
A legit education policy or pedagogy expert, sure
Reply to @peterwildeford, 19:07 UTC · 3 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): What is it about Montana that makes it so universally beloved?
(quoting @StatisticUrban: What states do Americans most approve of? YouGov asked just that in June. The big blue states, lower midwest, and parts of the south aren't so popular, while Americans are big fans of the Carolinas and TN/VA, and most of the mountain west. Weirdly, all 7 swing states do well.)
@Laura_k_Duffy
Reply to @kehngh, 19:28 UTC · 13 likes
kehngh (@kehngh): what’s the answer
Your heart can’t generate enough pressure to make this happen, it would give out first
The human penis during an erection functions somewhat like a pressure vessel, where blood fills the corpora cavernosa, enclosed by a tough fibrous sheath called the tunica albuginea. To “explode” (i.e., rupture the tunica albuginea from internal pressure alone, without trauma), the intracavernosal pressure would need to reach approximately 1,500 mmHg, based on medical literature describing the pressure threshold for tunica rupture. 11 12 This converts to about 29 PSI (pounds per square inch), since 1 PSI ≈ 51.7 mmHg, so 1,500 ÷ 51.7 ≈ 29.
To arrive at this:
•The tunica albuginea has an ultimate tensile strength of around 1.7–3.8 MPa (megapascals), depending on direction (circumferential or longitudinal). 28 31
•Modeling the corpus cavernosum as a thin-walled cylinder, the burst pressure P can be estimated using the hoop stress formula: P = (σ × t) / r, where σ is tensile strength, t is tunica thickness (thins to ~0.5 mm during erection), and r is the radius (~1–2 cm for each corpus). 11
•Plugging in average values (e.g., σ = 2 MPa, t = 0.0005 m, r = 0.01 m) yields P ≈ 100,000 Pa ≈ 750 mmHg, but direct clinical estimates for rupture scale higher to 1,500 mmHg, accounting for the bilayer structure and dynamic factors. 27 11
In reality, normal erection pressures are much lower: tumescence phase ~30–60 mmHg, rigidity ~80–120 mmHg (close to systolic blood pressure), with peaks up to 200–500 mmHg from muscle contractions during thrusting. 4 8 Ruptures (penile fractures) almost always occur from physical trauma bending the erect penis, not pure hydrostatic pressure buildup. 9 13 There are no documented cases of a penis “exploding” solely from blood pressure in natural scenarios like priapism or drug overuse.
As for whether the heart or blood vessels would give out first: yes, they absolutely would, long before the penis could reach rupture pressure via the body’s own mechanisms. The cardiovascular system can’t generate or sustain the required 1,500 mmHg (29 PSI) in the penis:
•Normal systolic blood pressure is ~120 mmHg (~2.3 PSI); hypertensive crises exceed 180/120 mmHg (~3.5 PSI systolic). 19 24
•The highest recorded human blood pressure is 370/360 mmHg (~7.2 PSI systolic), during extreme weightlifting with Valsalva maneuver. 35 36 At such levels, the heart struggles to eject blood, risking acute failure, stroke, or aortic dissection.
•Human arteries can theoretically burst at 900–3,500 mmHg (~17–68 PSI) in ex vivo tests, but in vivo, systemic pressures above ~300 mmHg cause vessel damage or organ failure far sooner. 46 44
•Erection pressure is limited by arterial inflow (~systolic BP) and venous occlusion; it can’t naturally exceed systemic levels by 10–12x without external intervention (e.g., mechanical pumping). Attempting to force higher pressure biologically would overload the heart (inability to pump against resistance) or rupture smaller vessels first.
In short, you’d die from cardiovascular catastrophe before your boner could pop from pressure alone. This is all hypothetical—don’t try to test it!
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_c55daa6b-01e9-4ad7-89a5-d24aa5ce89a3
Reply to @bschne, 19:51 UTC · 4 likes
Benjamin (@bschne):
image attached
(quoting @spqr_sulla: The rise and fall of Rock Music)
Lmao
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Quote tweet, 01:47 UTC · 5 likes
Does anyone wanna beta test Apple Notes Liberator (only that for now - no voice memos etc yet)
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Would anyone pay say $5 for a "comprehensive data liberator" Mac app that ~liberates~ (ie exports in usable, readable form for you to use however) your Apple Notes, Voice memos, iMessages, Contacts, Calendar, Reminders and possibly Screentime data?
Thread, continued, 01:53 UTC · 1 like
(If so just reply here or DM me)
Quote tweet, 05:19 UTC · 24 likes
Alright maybe it’s back to Claude
I was impressed with the v1 personality but sycophancy can destroy functional IQ like a lead paint smoothie
Quoting Upslope Capital (@UpslopeCapital): Asked gpt for companies that might benefit from western security guarantees and the follow-ups caused me physical pain
Thursday, August 21, 2025
Reply to @ESYudkowsky, 02:43 UTC · 1 like
Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️ (@ESYudkowsky): As I currently understand it, those are mostly people who would have otherwise died anyways in agony from cancer and the like. I would want that for myself. Even if you wouldn't want it for yourself, respect those who do.
💯
Reply to @Empty_America, 02:49 UTC · 1 like
VB Knives (@Empty_America): Most or all "ergonomic" tools are like this.
I want a standard American pattern shovel, a normal wheel-barrow with one wheel, etc.
Eh IME this is true of pull-up bars but not in general
Reply to @parafactual, 02:55 UTC · 6 likes
You (@parafactual): ODT--Open Document Text
Sex decision theory, the one that evolution was running on
Tweet, 03:06 UTC · 4 likes
Does anyone who’s smarter than me + who understands both evolution and decision theory at a technical level wanna answer this?
I don’t think the LLMs are getting it
Reply to @ApriiSR, 03:09 UTC · 3 likes
Aprii *️⃣ (@ApriiSR): @AaronBergman18 i don't think evolution was running a decision theory
I mean in a literal sense it wasn’t but at an abstract level can’t we model it as doing something like “choose the genes which maximize inclusive genetic fitness?”
and I’m probing what “maximize” means
Quote tweet, 03:41 UTC · 4 likes
Lmao I’d have to be offered like 10x this before I considered actually selling
Quoting Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞) (@teortaxesTex): I think it's a bit more than that but fine, it's not for sale
Reply to @robertwiblin, 20:46 UTC · 2 likes
Rob Wiblin (@robertwiblin): Is it crazy for major papers / articles to come with a variant of the text that's intended to be read out loud by a text-to-speech engine?
(Would remove all unnecessarily formatting, include/exclude footnotes depending, and include text descriptions of figures/tables.)
I actually have a system for making this, it’s not perfect but pretty decent. Currently optimized for PDF
Lmk if you want me to run something through it!
Quote tweet, 21:07 UTC · 4 likes
Big if true
Quoting Frances Lorenz (@frances__lorenz): The inevitable has happened. I've launched a podcast! It's called The World Can Be Better ✨
EP 1: Should you be worried about AI?
I talked to @sjgadler, a former OpenAI researcher (the lab behind chatGPT), about why AI experts are concerned and what we can do about it.
Reply to @austinc3301, 21:07 UTC · 2 likes
Agus 🔸 (@austinc3301): I’m not used to seeing you stare so seriously
Yes it is quite frightening tbh
Reply to @AlecStapp, 22:21 UTC · 8 likes
Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp): The European mind cannot comprehend using this much water
image attached
(quoting @_brianpotter: The US uses around 322 billion gallons of water each day. This week on Construction Physics, I look at where it all goes. https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-does-the-us-use-water)
This really isn’t that much water lol
Tweet, 22:24 UTC · 53 likes
Not an original point but the vibe shift on here vis a vis AI progress/timelines is way out of proportion to any actual evidence we got in recent weeks (mostly gpt-5)
Friday, August 22, 2025
Tweet, 00:31 UTC · 3 likes
AI is not a bubble, the bear case is that GPU/datacenters get overbuilt somewhat in the near term, which means GPU prices drop, which means experiments are cheaper to run, and we have very good reason to think that this can and will lead to OOMs worth of algorithmic efficiency
Quote tweet, 03:22 UTC · 184 likes
Air raid warning-esque sirens should go off in your head whenever you encounter the phrase “there’s no evidence that…”
Quoting Rob Wiblin (@robertwiblin): I keep reading people saying "there's no evidence current AIs have subjective experience."
But I have zero idea what empirical evidence the speakers would expect to observe if they were.
Thread, continued, 03:22 UTC · 31 likes
Even if we don’t take it autistically literally, it seems to be a red flag for terrible epistemics
Quote tweet, 03:44 UTC · 4 likes
HIPAA, man
Quoting roon (@tszzl): companies like Facebook record every imaginable interaction their users have with the platform. they log each of your clicks and taps. they keep track of how long your gaze lingered on a post, whether you were on the same WiFi as that woman who might be your friend, which instagram reel you watched three times.
for a single user this is quaint, but these practices are done on a planetary scale across all technology giants. they create petabytes of data per day and keep it for as long as the European regulators will let them. then they can have machine intelligence instrument it into useful knowledge for their cybernetic control systems that build newsfeeds, serve ads, decide how much compute to spend on you, which SKUs should be in which warehouses right before you want them. the Hive metastore bills run into the billions
hospitals throw most of their data and telemetry out after each case, every single day. they record videos of vascular surgeries, endoscopies, discovering interesting physiologies. sometimes they're not recorded at all and most of them the time they delete them as soon as they’re done
it's even worse for physiologic waveforms (ECG, EEG, arterial lines) which are essentially never recorded anywhere at all. milisecond scale views of patient's brains, vasculatures, hearts are generated and instantly destroyed. all of these time series of course predict people's hearts stopping, brains exploding, etc ahead of time. surgeons teleoperate robots, none of the micro-movements are recorded, policies never learned, never correlated into which outcomes were successful or not
this would be unthinkable to most software people whose instinct is to record everything everywhere never mind the cloud costs, because we are sure there will be some use for it later and some model to be trained later. i don't have a prescription here per se my point is just that our civilization routinely hoards and treasures some of the silliest data in the world "i pressed like on the john pork reel" & destroys much of all the most important data it generates and limits what machines can learn
Reply to @tszzl, 03:46 UTC · 9 likes
roon (@tszzl): companies like Facebook record every imaginable interaction their users have with the platform. they log each of your clicks and taps. they keep track of how long your gaze lingered on a post, whether you were on the same WiFi as that woman who might be your friend, which instagram reel you watched three times.
for a single user this is quaint, but these practices are done on a planetary scale across all technology giants. they create petabytes of data per day and keep it for as long as the European regulators will let them. then they can have machine intelligence instrument it into useful knowledge for their cybernetic control systems that build newsfeeds, serve ads, decide how much compute to spend on you, which SKUs should be in which warehouses right before you want them. the Hive metastore bills run into the billions
hospitals throw most of their data and telemetry out after each case, every single day. they record videos of vascular surgeries, endoscopies, discovering interesting physiologies. sometimes they're not recorded at all and most of them the time they delete them as soon as they’re done
it's even worse for physiologic waveforms (ECG, EEG, arterial lines) which are essentially never recorded anywhere at all. milisecond scale views of patient's brains, vasculatures, hearts are generated and instantly destroyed. all of these time series of course predict people's hearts stopping, brains exploding, etc ahead of time. surgeons teleoperate robots, none of the micro-movements are recorded, policies never learned, never correlated into which outcomes were successful or not
this would be unthinkable to most software people whose instinct is to record everything everywhere never mind the cloud costs, because we are sure there will be some use for it later and some model to be trained later. i don't have a prescription here per se my point is just that our civilization routinely hoards and treasures some of the silliest data in the world "i pressed like on the john pork reel" & destroys much of all the most important data it generates and limits what machines can learn
There’s a new class of direct-to-consumer MRI scan companies and at least the one I got one through was hiring a suspicious amount of AI engineers
I hope they hoard my data and everyone else’s and cure like whatever you can cure based on the info latent in MRI data
Reply to @tszzl, 04:07 UTC · 17 likes
roon (@tszzl): companies like Facebook record every imaginable interaction their users have with the platform. they log each of your clicks and taps. they keep track of how long your gaze lingered on a post, whether you were on the same WiFi as that woman who might be your friend, which instagram reel you watched three times.
for a single user this is quaint, but these practices are done on a planetary scale across all technology giants. they create petabytes of data per day and keep it for as long as the European regulators will let them. then they can have machine intelligence instrument it into useful knowledge for their cybernetic control systems that build newsfeeds, serve ads, decide how much compute to spend on you, which SKUs should be in which warehouses right before you want them. the Hive metastore bills run into the billions
hospitals throw most of their data and telemetry out after each case, every single day. they record videos of vascular surgeries, endoscopies, discovering interesting physiologies. sometimes they're not recorded at all and most of them the time they delete them as soon as they’re done
it's even worse for physiologic waveforms (ECG, EEG, arterial lines) which are essentially never recorded anywhere at all. milisecond scale views of patient's brains, vasculatures, hearts are generated and instantly destroyed. all of these time series of course predict people's hearts stopping, brains exploding, etc ahead of time. surgeons teleoperate robots, none of the micro-movements are recorded, policies never learned, never correlated into which outcomes were successful or not
this would be unthinkable to most software people whose instinct is to record everything everywhere never mind the cloud costs, because we are sure there will be some use for it later and some model to be trained later. i don't have a prescription here per se my point is just that our civilization routinely hoards and treasures some of the silliest data in the world "i pressed like on the john pork reel" & destroys much of all the most important data it generates and limits what machines can learn
Idk if it’s at the same level as FB but apparently *free* tier google analytics gives you micro-level event data for up to 14 months. I have worked with this and frankly it’s so detailed that for most analytics questions it can be a distraction/liability
Then you can export and store terabytes for like two figures/mo/mo ≈ single digit thousands of dollars/year per year of data. Virtually nothing l
Point being that your local small chain coffee shop or niche saas or whatever probably has access to ridiculously detailed data too, although presumably they’re less likely to do anything interesting with it
Reply, 18:38 UTC
What/who is this from
Tweet, 19:12 UTC · 18 likes
Throughout history there have probably been a bunch of guys who had the inclination, desire, and opportunity to do really bad things but manually over-rode those with neocortex-level moral reasoning
We’ll probably never know who you are but good job 🫡
Quote tweet, 19:17 UTC · 3 likes
STRONGLY endorse
Quoting Haven Harms (@haventropy): my PSA of the day: get you a man who vibecodes stuff for you
Thread, continued, 19:17 UTC · 2 likes
Btw I will vibecode stuff for u (bonus points if girl)
Reply to @_AashishReddy, 19:23 UTC · 3 likes
Aashish Reddy (@_AashishReddy): @AaronBergman18 Thank you Aaron
Lol
Reply to @AndyMasley, 19:33 UTC · 4 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): Using AI models to fact check writing can be funny
Lol yes I have to reassure them all so much that it really is 2025 and Claude-4 exists
Quote tweet, 19:53 UTC · 15 likes
What
Quoting “paula” (@paularambles): it’s still crazy to me that babies can’t drink water and that parents are somehow aware of this by the time they’re born
Thread, continued, 19:55 UTC · 7 likes
Bro wtf
Tweet, 20:06 UTC · 8 likes
Peak governance truly
Tweet, 20:10 UTC · 38 likes
Going into debt to get a specced out MacBook and highest tier Slutcon ticket
Reply to @NoahTopper, 21:02 UTC · 4 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): I COMMAND you to go to slutcon
😰
Tweet, 22:43 UTC · 3 likes
@eleosai should mog the AI companies by adopting their “member of the technical staff” nomenclature thing but only (analytic) philosophers make the cut
Saturday, August 23, 2025
Reply to @matt_beard_, 00:10 UTC · 4 likes
Matt Beard (@matt_beard_): Aaron… inside you are two wolves
Noooooooooooooooooooo
Quote tweet, 00:10 UTC · 6 likes
@Aella_Girl wtf
Quoting Matt Beard (@matt_beard_): @AaronBergman18 Aaron… inside you are two wolves
Reply to @freed_dfilan, 00:18 UTC · 6 likes
Daniel Filan 🔎 (@freed_dfilan): @AaronBergman18 @Aella_Girl You'd be surprised how few weekends there are
Who's working on this
Tweet, 00:40 UTC · 138 likes
Claude be like "I see the issue!" when it does not in fact see the issue
Reply to @KelseyTuoc, 02:25 UTC · 13 likes
Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc): this kind of thing is why I am opposed to age verification laws. there shouldn't be websites you can't access because you live in the wrong state. not ever.
(quoting @bluesky: Unfortunately, Bluesky is unavailable in Mississippi right now, due to a new state law that requires age verification for all users. While intended for child safety, we think this law poses broader challenges & creates significant barriers that limit free speech & harm smaller…)
IMO the actual problem is that age verification for Bluesky is just straightforwardly bad lol
Reply to @KelseyTuoc, 02:28 UTC · 4 likes
Kelsey Piper (@KelseyTuoc): okay yes I have two complaints. first 'age verification for bluesky' is evil and unAmerican, and secondly there shouldn't be websites you cannot visit in the wrong state
💯
Reply, 02:36 UTC
Curious where this graphic is from
Reply to @shwin_m, 04:02 UTC · 2 likes
Ashwin Mahadevan (@shwin_m): For me, today, Claude did in fact see the issue
Oh it does indeed see many issues, I am indebted to Claude!
Tweet, 04:36 UTC · 14 likes
Shame 😔
Reply to @sebkrier, 05:41 UTC · 3 likes
Séb Krier (@sebkrier): @AaronBergman18 computations and results were not below
lol
Reply to @umm_rit_, 05:46 UTC · 2 likes
Negative Utilitarian (@umm_rit_): @AaronBergman18
Claude code
Reply to @MatthewJBar, 06:23 UTC · 11 likes
Matthew Barnett (@MatthewJBar): Whether most people come to see AIs as having moral worth likely won't hinge on interpretability research or consciousness studies, but on practical factors. People will find room for AIs in their moral circle when AIs assert autonomy, act independently from us, or demand rights.
I don’t know if I literally disagree with this (depends what you mean by “hinge”) but I don’t think we should round interp x consciousness studies to zero
Elite opinion does matter for things through a bunch of channels right, including via indirect influence of mass opinion
Reply to @LinchZhang, 07:31 UTC · 3 likes
Linch (@LinchZhang): I'm in this odd spot where enough strangers know me from internet projects that I occasionally bump into them at parties & so I don't feel 100% like a normal internet citizen online anymore, but nowhere near enough followers to even be a microcelebrity. It's a weird liminal space
Surely you’re a microcelebrity
Reply to @MatthewJBar, 07:35 UTC · 3 likes
Matthew Barnett (@MatthewJBar): @AaronBergman18 Given that consciousness itself seems like an unfalsifiable concept, I can't see how interpretability research will help uncover it. Did biological research help reveal élan vital?
I was going along with your grouping of “interpretability research or consciousness studies” and I actually will defend interp somewhat insofar as it sheds light on necessary and sufficient conditions dreamed up by other fields including philosophy but I mostly agree and think that philosophy is our best bet
I feel like we’ve had this discussion before lol but I’ll just add that I don’t think “unfalsifiable” is a knockdown argument against something being real or study-able
Reply to @wilhelmscreamin, 09:44 UTC · 2 likes
catherine (in sf) ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ-☆ (@wilhelmscreamin): hosting brunch today. you should all move to oxford so you can come to brunch
Ok coming
Reply to @LeetAlpaca3, 09:49 UTC · 1 like
(The tweet being replied to by @LeetAlpaca3 is no longer available.)
I have $15, $20 if it’s really good
Reply to @DariasRucker, 10:58 UTC · 3 likes
Daria 🤠 (@DariasRucker): Being a woman is just telling yourself “I would be so much hotter if I was __ lbs lighter” over and over again until you die
Seems bad
Reply to @AndyMasley, 14:01 UTC · 25 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): I find the arguments that minds are not substrate dependent to be pretty convincing. Why exactly would something that works like a mind need to be made of material based around atoms with specifically 6 protons and electrons?
(quoting @dioscuri: The problem with Searle’s “a simulation of a hurricane isn’t a hurricane” line against AI mentality is that it’s mere assertion. Some things are substrate-dependent (oak trees, hurricanes). Others aren’t (pumps, currency). Functionalism holds that minds are in the second category)
I think we agree on most important things here but qualia/phil of mind is so weird that I give substrate dependence some credence
To answer your rhetorical question: who fucking knows man the universe is extremely weird
Reply to @corsaren, 17:39 UTC · 3 likes
corsaren (@corsaren): Hello, police? I would like to report a thief in the sandwich shop
I have a hunch who did it
Reply to @corsaren, 17:50 UTC · 2 likes
corsaren (@corsaren): @AaronBergman18 I have 12 eye witnesses and all of them say the dog is innocent
Based
Reply to @peterwildeford, 17:56 UTC · 2 likes
Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): Diet Coke is great for the weekdays, but on weekends I like to 'Sprite and Write' 😎
Hopefully will have more blog posts coming soon!
Dog
Reply to @warty_dog, 18:03 UTC · 2 likes
troon (@warty_dog): can you code / is learning to code in 2025 good
Learn how to vibecode
I’m serious, most people are leaving a ridiculously powerful skill on the table bc they don’t really know the space of possibilities and don’t have any immediate reason to care
Reply to @warty_dog, 18:07 UTC · 1 like
troon (@warty_dog): havent tried but its horrible
??
Random 115 IQ person who doesn’t know shit about computers can now do like infinity more things if they want to
Reply to @4confusedemoji, 18:09 UTC · 2 likes
olivia (@4confusedemoji): @warty_dog @AaronBergman18 I've gone from basically never writing code to writing complete pieces of software in a couple days, multiple times a week. Yes, the first version is a giant mess, but it's an exceptionally good spec for the second version, which takes even less time.
💯
Reply to @davidad, 19:16 UTC · 4 likes
davidad 🎇 (@davidad): I think this is actually a case of emergent self-prompting, along the lines of early pre-Instruct prompters who would write things like “Since I am very smart I have solved the above problem:” and then have the LLM continue from there
(quoting @AaronBergman18: Claude be like "I see the issue!" when it does not in fact see the issue)
From RL? Yeah interesting
Reply to @corsaren, 19:45 UTC · 3 likes
corsaren (@corsaren): Why are you, a grown man, wearing shorts when linen pants exist?
It’s hot
Quote tweet, 19:55 UTC · 140 likes
Hate to pick on this one guy but what a great example of “Progress Brain”
Yes, there *can be* and *have been* Pareto improvement technologies, but there’s no scientific or economic law guaranteeing that technological progress can solve any given issue
Quoting John Arnold (@johnarnold): Lead paint was displaced not by regulation but by a cheaper and better substitute. The same dynamic is the only realistic path for a global energy transition.
Thread, continued, 19:55 UTC · 25 likes
Slavery was displaced by regulation
Sometimes very bad things are quite economically productive and beneficial to the people who make and use them
Gotta make bad things illegal sometimes (or taxed, in the more usual case)
Thread, continued, 19:56 UTC · 13 likes
Hey this guy has many good takes too! First time I can recall dunking on someone and then following
Tweet, 23:45 UTC · 2 likes
@openai @OpenAIDevs your text-to-speech documentation is wrong - it says TTS-1 is $15 per million *tokens* at https://platform.openai.com/docs/models/tts-1 but (I think the true pricing) of $15 per million *characters* on the pricing page https://platform.openai.com/docs/pricing
Sunday, August 24, 2025
Reply to @Adellama_, 03:22 UTC · 2 likes
Ada🔸 (@Adellama_): i thought slavery was displaced by someone else who was not reliant on it for economic productivity reasons, and that they also fought a war (mostly decided by economic productivity). i wonder if there are clear cases in morality in which the less technological side ever win
My views here are mostly informed by this episode
I agree (well if u think this) that slavery in principle could be outcompeted due to differential economic growth trajectories, but my sense is that this would have taken much longer than the course of abolition actually lasted
And at the end of the day, the mechanism of outcompeting would be that the stronger, wealthier power emancipates slaves via fiat aka regulation OR the less wealthy country sees that they're losing out in terms of long run growth and does the same to their own constituent slaveholders
Like to go from no slavery to slavery, someone at some point has to make slavery illegal, regardless of the macro trends that enable this
https://claude.ai/share/59d1eecc-e571-45f6-9ce2-a7a5af63088b
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/christopher-brown-slavery-abolition/
Reply to @johnarnold, 04:37 UTC · 7 likes
John Arnold (@johnarnold): @AaronBergman18 I agree, but read what I wrote. I never said that tech progress would necessarily solve climate change. I said it was the only realistic path.
Fair enough and sorry for misrepresenting!
Not gonna delete bc I think my tweet makes a point I stand behind (lmk if I should reconsider)
(Also object level I basically disagree - we have nuclear and aren't using it fully for non-economic ideological reasons. And in my extremely limited understanding, massive solar + battery progress + buildout just seems to meet the "realistic" threshold even if it never gets cheaper and better than natural gas, like we can imagine being wealthy enough that society is cool paying a premium for solar (although this would have to be enforced legally via eg carbon tax that makes solar functionally cheaper))
Quote tweet, 04:39 UTC · 81 likes
Insufficient decoupling on my part 😔
I repent
Quoting John Arnold (@johnarnold): @AaronBergman18 I agree, but read what I wrote. I never said that tech progress would necessarily solve climate change. I said it was the only realistic path.
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 04:40 UTC · 7 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 23, 2025: Hey this guy has many good takes too! First time I can recall dunking on someone and then following
L + low decoupling on my part
Reply to @polisisti, 04:46 UTC · 3 likes
Alessandro (@polisisti): @AaronBergman18 we all make mistakes 🫶🏻
😔
Quote tweet, 06:38 UTC · 76 likes
Some people desperately want to cast EA as a thing that succeeds or fails (usually fails) in light of status/clout/reputation/memetic leaderboard instead of like the number of shrimp stunned and state of existential risk
Quoting ░▒▓▒░▒▓▒░▒▓▒░ (@sullyj3): This guy is full of shit
- not dying
- putting a slash between neoliberalism and wokism is a bizarre equivocation
- EA emerged before wokeness became mainstream. Givewell was founded the same year as Tumblr! Much of the SJ left despises EA for not prioritising identity issues
Thread, continued, 06:38 UTC · 12 likes
These things aren’t literally 100% unrelated ofc but I wouldn’t treat ethereal social media vibes as a proper proxy for anything important
Thread, continued, 06:41 UTC · 15 likes
Quote tweet, 13:59 UTC · 12 likes
For You is slightly funny now, thanks Nikita
Quoting Daily Memes (@thedailymemes_):
Reply to @melqtx, 14:30 UTC · 6 likes
mel (@melqtx): agi
Probably fake
Reply to @RosieCampbell, 14:40 UTC · 4 likes
Rosie Campbell (@RosieCampbell): I am now back on it and it is SUCH A RELIEF. I feel more in tune with what my body needs, more motivated to exercise, and more able to focus on things without the constant background distraction of food. These drugs make "diet and exercise" actually achievable.
Based
Tweet, 18:27 UTC · 113 likes
Thread, continued, 18:28 UTC · 3 likes
Reply, 18:39 UTC · 6 likes
Oh it’s a bare minimum for “out of the ordinary”
Monday, August 25, 2025
Tweet, 02:49 UTC · 4 likes
Unoriginal take but truly LLMs are idiot savants. Usually savant but idiot like 1-5% of the time
Reply, 02:54 UTC
Oh no did I fuck up this phrase
Tweet, 06:43 UTC · 94 likes
I might hold the world record for the ratio
(crackedness of friends)/(employedness of self)
Thread, continued, 06:45 UTC · 24 likes
Reply to @ChanaMessinger, 06:51 UTC · 4 likes
Chana (@ChanaMessinger): "Dating is about polarization" is cope, the goal is to make everyone like you and some people like you even more.
Kinda, but:
1) people generally naturslly optimize hard for general likability but under-do polarization. something something modern world of 1 million actually plausible partners vs ancestral environment of 7 of them
2) perhaps more importantly, the kind of relationship/partner you get by polarizing is higher because people polarize by leaning into their own inclinations/quirks/etc.
Thread, continued, 06:52 UTC · 3 likes
I have very minimal irl credibility here tbc lol
Reply to @TheZvi, 07:05 UTC · 3 likes
Zvi Mowshowitz (@TheZvi): Probably going to do an AI consciousness related post soon, so opening up a thread for anything you want to pitch as worth including.
Idk if this counts as like anything but AHHHHHHHHHHHH
Reply to @TheZvi, 07:06 UTC · 3 likes
Zvi Mowshowitz (@TheZvi): Probably going to do an AI consciousness related post soon, so opening up a thread for anything you want to pitch as worth including.
All of the stuff at http://eleosai.org/research is great (well of the stuff I’ve read but I’d be shocked if that didn’t generalize)
Reply to @ValsTutor, 08:40 UTC · 5 likes
vals🔸 (@ValsTutor): @AaronBergman18 I can be your friend if you need to reduce that ratio
Lmao I mean I accept but not for that reason
Quote tweet, 09:00 UTC · 102 likes
👀
Quoting Romlib 🎄 (@romlib_): me turn
Thread, continued, 09:00 UTC · 5 likes
Reply to @izzyz, 09:06 UTC · 3 likes
izzy (@izzyz): @AaronBergman18 lmao nah dude she has to at least be like 136 iq for you
Lol for an actual partner 136 is a bit high but yeah I do actually care about intelligence and intellectual curiosity
Reply to @izzyz, 09:08 UTC · 2 likes
izzy (@izzyz): @AaronBergman18 if you go for 135 then she probably wears ugly sweaters around christmas time
🥵
Reply to @nickcammarata, 09:15 UTC · 11 likes
Nick (@nickcammarata): i have no idea how “I look like my parents and my kids look like me” didn’t immediately lead every scientist and general person with a brain to theory of evolution five seconds later. it only takes one more recursive hop, it’s a tree like this all the way up, so tiny
Lmao not everyone has a 240 IQ nick
And outing myself as a <200cel but doesn’t this observation point way more strongly towards “nothing ever changes”??
One more recursive hop gets you to an Adam and Eve-esque creation myth
Thread, continued, 09:18 UTC · 4 likes
Honestly from the position of a random person in pre-history, I think “creationism + nothing ever changes” justifiably gets a higher credence than this one specific thing in theory space
Reply to @izzyz, 09:24 UTC · 3 likes
izzy (@izzyz): working on a video exploring amphetamine use by literary figures, most poignantly Nick Land of accelerationist fame.
unfortunately i have no fuckin idea how to use this app
Lol I say for basic video editing just vibe code
Ask Claude code to merge x and y clips, overlay whatever text with whatever effect, all while fading in and out whatever .mp3 but sped up 1.5x
Reply to @ValsTutor, 09:28 UTC · 2 likes
vals🔸 (@ValsTutor): ... Does it edit the files using command line tools or on the fly python scripts ?
Probably python but maybe either/both?
This is just what I would try first and I’ve done some of this with audio, no tremendous experience with video tbc
Reply to @ChanaMessinger, 09:48 UTC · 6 likes
Chana (@ChanaMessinger): @AaronBergman18 I was kidding!!
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 09:49 UTC · 6 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 25, 2025: (image)
Thanks Grok
(video, plays on X)
Reply to @trangineer, 18:07 UTC · 4 likes
Rhaenyra the Cool (@trangineer): @AaronBergman18
Lmao
Quote tweet, 18:19 UTC · 6 likes
Insanity
Quoting Daniel Kokotajlo (@DKokotajlo): That's a lot of money. For context, I remember talking to a congressional staffer a few months ago who basically said that a16z was spending on the order of $100M on lobbying and that this amount was enough to make basically every politician think "hmm, I can raise a lot more if I just do what a16z wants" and that many did end up doing just that. I was, and am, disheartened to hear how easily US government policy can be purchased.
Reply to @envisionedluna, 22:15 UTC · 2 likes
Maya Luna (@envisionedluna): Regardless of recent medical rumors, I would (and will!) bet money that Trump does not live through the end of his term.
The mental and physical decline just over the last 6 months is astonishing.
Trump's average press conference is worse than Biden ever was
At 1:1 odds?
Tweet, 22:22 UTC · 32 likes
Seems really fucking bad, don’t get negatively polarized into downplaying the horror of this
Reply to @nickcammarata, 22:24 UTC · 3 likes
Nick (@nickcammarata): @connerdelights @alexeyguzey its just my autistic texture thing, i'd rather experience a minute of like broken bone than a minute of touching aluminum foil, even typing this hurts
What the fuck
Quote tweet, 22:37 UTC · 17 likes
At some level this sounds like just another of a gazillion bad things that happen in Gaza/Palestine, but it’s in fact extremely bad in a direct moral sense
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Seems really fucking bad, don’t get negatively polarized into downplaying the horror of this
Thread, continued, 22:37 UTC · 4 likes
Starving to death isn’t like being politically disenfranchised, or impoverished, or having one’s physical movement restricted, or even being killed by a bullet
It’s pure, intense suffering of the kind that should transcend ideology and abstractions
Thread, continued, 22:37 UTC · 2 likes
Smaller in scope perhaps, yes, but I consider famine to be Holocaust-level bad
It should be so far beyond the pale that even amoral despots find it inconvenient to pursue, like chattel slavery
Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Reply to @LinchZhang, 00:23 UTC · 10 likes
Linch (@LinchZhang): Asian Americans have a 5-6x lower crime rate than white Americans, and yet I've never heard white "just noticing facts" racialists encourage their followers to live in majority Asian neighborhoods.
This leads me to doubt that crime is their true objection.
“Is there free lunch in the housing market if you’re not racist against Asians” is actually a good q, but apparently you have to pay a premium for having Asian neighbors even controlling for other relevant factors
https://claude.ai/share/d9fb22a5-3305-45f3-969d-5f5b12608c28
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_e5265ed6-d6a8-4b95-8d53-30666d82862a
Tweet, 01:39 UTC · 3 likes
Niche q but does anyone have takes on the relative quality of Anthropic vs Gemini visual pdf api processing?
Reply, 03:03 UTC · 1 like
Seems bad
Reply to @LuisCostigan1, 03:09 UTC · 3 likes
Luis Costigan 🔍 (@LuisCostigan1): after years of trial and error, I can say the optimal supplement stack is:
sleep
weightlifting
methylphenidate
claude code
Based (I prefer dextroamphetamine)
Reply to @LuisCostigan1, 03:18 UTC · 2 likes
Luis Costigan 🔍 (@LuisCostigan1): Sadly not available in Japan :(
😡
Reply to @nickcammarata, 07:02 UTC · 3 likes
Nick (@nickcammarata): feeling good happens when you have the right neurotransmitters and bc of tolerance or whatever you can’t have them all the time and even if you did it would bring a crash is not at all how it works and that narrative has prevented a lot of people from feeling truly well
Sorry Nick I think this is wrong
“feeling good happens when the feeling bad is removed” - I’m sure this is descriptively true for you bc you lucked into high baseline hedonic wellbeing, but it’s not true in general either empirically or logically/metaphysically
I don’t disagree that it’s in principle possible to feel good all the time, but at our current level of biotech and bio understanding it is *currently* the case that a gazillion homeostatic control systems tuned by evolution make the crash dynamic a simple unfortunate descriptive reality for most people
I also think we should be a little skeptical taking happiness advice from someone who is naturally very happy, it’s like dating advice from a guy who’s 6’4”
Tweet, 07:48 UTC · 52 likes
I do aspire to have the chutzpah of Nicholas Decker
Thread, continued, 07:50 UTC · 6 likes
Lol my man is on top of things @captgouda24
Tweet, 18:12 UTC · 7 likes
Taylor nooooooo you belong with me
Reply to @MariGO2thepolls, 18:16 UTC · 2 likes
🏳️🌈Mar G-O 🌐🇺🇦 (@MariGO2thepolls): Are “mean girls” real? I’ve never encountered them. All the girls I meet are hella nice and chill and our the social circles seem pretty drama free
Sad, I love drama (of the right sort, I don’t love people being mean)
Reply to @NathanpmYoung, 18:32 UTC · 2 likes
Nathan 🔎 (@NathanpmYoung): Land acknowledgements seem fine to me but it also seems important to acknowledge that the land is much more valuable because it was stolen.
(quoting @greg_price11: The DNC Summer Meeting begins with a land acknowledgment that claims Minneapolis, Minnesota is on stolen land.)
Object level doesn’t matter, all that matters is effect on P(dems win elections)
Tweet, 18:37 UTC · 12 likes
I’m pretty happy to call the Trump administration fascist at this point
I don’t think it’s hyperbolic
Reply, 18:40 UTC · 1 like
I wasn’t exactly joking but I don’t endorse the literal meaning of what I said either
Object level does matter, but in this specific case I think the actual dominant concern over “whether dem events should have land acknowledgements” is electoral effect
Tbc I don’t endorse lying/misleading for electoral gain - the q here is whether to have a specific ritual/event
Reply to @AndyMasley, 18:49 UTC · 10 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): From the post:
The reasons AI isn’t raising people's water bills are that:
- Household vs. commercial water prices are different everywhere to keep the markets for water somewhat separate so commercial buildings aren’t directly competing with homeowners. Data centers compete with other businesses for water (like any other industry), not homeowners.
- In low water scarcity areas, water isn’t zero sum. More people buying water from the utility doesn’t lead to higher prices, it leads to the utility having more money to spend on drawing more fresh water and invest in improving the local water infrastructure. It’s the same reason grocery prices in a town don’t go up when more people move there. More people shop at the grocery store, which allows the grocery store to invest more in getting food, and they make a profit they can use to upgrade other services, so on net more people buying from a store often makes food prices fall, not rise. Studies have found that utilities pumping more water, on average, causes prices to fall, not rise. The only times water costs rise in low water stress areas when a large new consumer arrives on the grid is when the large new consumer demands so much water that utilities are forced to do major rapid upgrades to their systems, and the consumer doesn’t pay for those upgrades. In every example I can find of data centers requiring water system upgrades, the companies that own the data centers are the main source of revenue for the system upgrade.
- In a lot of parts of America, the main water issue isn’t supply of water itself, it’s aging water infrastructure that doesn’t serve a large or rich enough tax base to get the money to upgrade. Old infrastructure can make water more expensive. It can also be dangerous (lead pipes etc.). Small town water costs are often higher, not lower, than cities, due to economies of scale. This wouldn’t happen if water simply cost more the more people were using it. Data centers moving into small towns often provide utilities with enough revenue to upgrade their old systems and make water more, not less, accessible for everyone else.
- In high water scarcity areas, city and state leaders have already thought a lot about water management. They can regulate AI data centers the same ways they can with any other industries. Here water is more zero sum, but data centers just end up raising the cost of water for other private businesses, not for homes. Data centers are subject to the economics of water in high scarcity areas, and often rely more on air cooling rather than water cooling because the ratio of electric costs to water costs is lower.
- This seems fine if we think of data centers as any other industry. Lots of industries in America use water. AI is using a tiny fraction compared to most, and generating way, way more revenue per gallon of water consumed than most.
(quoting @AndyMasley: Wrote a very long deep dive into AI data centers and water. I want to understand how data centers are impacting local communities. At least for now, I came away thinking data center water use really doesn't seem like a problem.)
Andy I say this with love and respect: don’t get too sniped by water use
Like you have done good but there are other (lab grown) fish to fry
Reply to @GjMcGowan, 18:51 UTC · 2 likes
George McGowan (@GjMcGowan): Thank you for reminding Andy of his responsibilities. He should be in the gym instead.
Lol
Reply to @AaronBergman18, 19:09 UTC · 4 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @AaronBergman18 is no longer available.)
FB does better just going on occasional instagram likes and whatever insane analytics they have
Tweet, 20:38 UTC · 10 likes
I get to go on an airplane tomorrow 👀
Tweet, 20:46 UTC · 3 likes
Has anyone gone through the Ambitious Impact charity accelerator (who wants to talk to someone about it 👀)?
Literally asking for a friend
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Tweet, 01:59 UTC · 5 likes
Hey @TheArgumentMag @KelseyTuoc @JerusalemDemsas it would be very based if there was a podcast feed of your articles, if only for paid subscribers!
Reply, 02:01 UTC · 1 like
I sorta agree but think that for many/most overweight people it just doesn't actually check out from a quality of life perspective to use that willpower and suffer through hunger
And I have done the willpower thing, for rock climbing. It was fucking miserable
Reply to @NoahTopper, 04:34 UTC · 2 likes
Quinoah 🔍⏸️ (@NoahTopper): we thank you
Yes 🙏
Reply to @xlr8harder, 15:17 UTC · 3 likes
xlr8harder (@xlr8harder): Your first question is very different than your final question. There are very few examples of people who have been notably effective power-seekers and also wise users of power, because the most effective power-seeking techniques usually seem to be be somewhat immoral. Lincoln?
Good take
Quote tweet, 16:27 UTC · 89 likes
Hey I hate Trump too but EVIDENCE FROM FICTION (including video games) IS NOT REAL EVIDENCE
Quoting Will Stancil (@whstancil): Hey, I've never played a video game before: does the government putting the leader's head on a giant banner mean he's the good guy?
Quote tweet, 16:55 UTC · 19 likes
Your prior should be on virtually everything (good stuff yes but also like terrorism) getting easier
If you’re not personally using AI to do things you couldn’t do before, that’s your call, but you’re probably not aware of how much of a difference it makes in ~every domain
Quoting Peter Wildeford🇺🇸🚀 (@peterwildeford): "Agentic AI has been weaponized. AI models are now being used to perform sophisticated cyberattacks, not just advise on how to carry them out."
From @AnthropicAI 's latest AI Threat Intelligence Report
Quote tweet, 17:06 UTC · 1 like
This is actually tractable for me, 30 mins by scooter to DCA (unfortunately this would be hard with a full size carry-on)
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Gonna become a transit guy and my schtick will be that the only two modes of powered transport should be electric scooter and airplane
Reply, 17:32 UTC
I mean I’m just a guy but it’s super non-obvious to me why you’d assume interoception is connected to mental illness - like I’m not even certain which direction I’d expect the effect to be
Reply to @GjMcGowan, 17:45 UTC · 4 likes
George McGowan (@GjMcGowan): @AaronBergman18 What about going on dates with girls? Is that easier Aaron?
Yes lol, this is from yesterday not just now
Reply to @halogen1048576, 17:51 UTC · 2 likes
🇨🇦halogen (@halogen1048576): this is load bearing
Tweet, 20:16 UTC · 13 likes
Flying to a medium sized midwestern city on a Wednesday afternoon makes me feel like an NPC
Thread, continued, 20:18 UTC · 8 likes
*I* am the only one on the airplane with a rich internal life
Tweet, 23:28 UTC · 3 likes
Cleveland I am in you
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Tweet, 02:08 UTC · 30 likes
Aesthetically I want to like traveling and to be the type of guy who can thrive anywhere with an apple and a spark in his eye, but actually I really dislike travel and am super high maintenance
F
Reply to @ValsTutor, 03:34 UTC · 2 likes
vals🔸 (@ValsTutor): @AaronBergman18 You're a pretty fine twitter person, the kind some would like to grow up as :)
Thanks! 😊
Not super sure what you mean by wins - I do have the aesthetic preference but it’s just much weaker than the object level preferences about travel and such
I wouldn’t consider it a personal win to be less happy and productive but a bit cooler in my mind’s eye or smth
Tweet, 04:07 UTC · 8 likes
So I showed my dad (in 60s, not tech savvy) how to use Claude and he’s…actually using it, it seems?
Genuinely (pleasantly) surprised
Reply to @benthamite_, 13:22 UTC · 2 likes
benthamite🔸 (@benthamite_): Wanna try out some freaky positions? Have you ever tried... This one?
Lmao
Reply to @birchlse, 13:33 UTC · 2 likes
Jonathan Birch (@birchlse): Here is "AI Consciousness: A Centrist Manifesto". I've been working on this feverishly because the issue seems to me so urgent - and I'm worried extreme positions on both sides are becoming locked in, when the best way forward is in the centre. Please read it! (1/2)
👀
Quote tweet, 14:26 UTC · 5 likes
MidwestPoasting thread
Quoting Aaron Bergman 🔍 (@AaronBergman18): Cleveland I am in you
Thread, continued, 14:26 UTC · 3 likes
1) no diet soda
Thread, continued, 14:26 UTC · 3 likes
2) my dad’s 4 course breakfast came to $6.25
Reply to @GjMcGowan, 14:30 UTC · 2 likes
George McGowan (@GjMcGowan): @AaronBergman18 What a land of plenty!!
Thanks to the hardworking egg lobby for keeping those damn hens in cages and making sure the hardworking man didn’t have to pay $6.27
Reply to his own earlier tweet, 14:36 UTC · 9 likes
Aaron Bergman, August 27, 2025: Hey I hate Trump too but EVIDENCE FROM FICTION (including video games) IS NOT REAL EVIDENCE
Bunch of people making good reasonable points along these lines, but I stand by my tweet
If the video games are correlated with/evidence of real life, just point out the thing in real life - that’s what’s doing the evidential work
Thread, continued, 14:36 UTC · 3 likes
Counterpoint to me: the “compression” point is reasonable: plausibly there are real dynamics that only become salient in fiction
Still I don’t love the policy of counting on this to be correct, I can imagine plausible but wrong dynamics in video games that get mistaken for this
Tweet, 15:28 UTC · 15 likes
I wonder how much of media industry trouble is downstream of the fact that more content is a bad, not a good
I want the service of curation, not just content, but this is fundamentally somewhat antithetical to the whole notion of a big media organization
Thread, continued, 15:28 UTC · 3 likes
Everyone knows that I’m an @80000Hours podcast simp, but part of the reason for this is that they put out relatively little, extremely high quality + important content
Thread, continued, 15:28 UTC · 2 likes
They could probably 2x content production and that would be good for me, but 4x or more and all of a suddenly I have to do the work of figuring out what to prioritize
Friday, August 29, 2025
Reply to @MariGO2thepolls, 00:04 UTC · 3 likes
🏳️🌈Mar G-O 🌐🇺🇦 (@MariGO2thepolls): Best white claw (it’s def one of these)
Grapefruit for the dice roll on medication interactions
Reply to @WorksInProgMag, 00:14 UTC · 5 likes
Works in Progress (@WorksInProgMag): The earth’s core is hot. So hot, that if we drilled deep enough, we could power the world millions of times over with cheap, clean energy.
An interesting q is: at what depth do we hit energy net positivity, where the capturable amount of energy by drilling an additional meter exceeds the marginal energy cost of drilling and avg cost of drilling that far?
Reply to @birchlse, 03:01 UTC · 16 likes
Jonathan Birch (@birchlse): Here is "AI Consciousness: A Centrist Manifesto". I've been working on this feverishly because the issue seems to me so urgent - and I'm worried extreme positions on both sides are becoming locked in, when the best way forward is in the centre. Please read it! (1/2)
Critique:
First off, a lot of this is true and good but this is twitter so here's where I disagree:
I haven't read that closely, but I tentatively disagree with some vibes and at least one almost-explicit claim
1. False implicit equivalence between the two problems: Problem 1 (people falsely think AI is conscious) just seems significantly less big/important for a couple reasons:
- Smaller in scale (maybe the main one if only because it's easier to demonstrate); we're talking about a few billion humans vs virtually arbitrarily man digital minds
- Weaker in kind: I think there's something to the point that false positives in general tend to be less bad than false negatives when it comes to moral patienthood
- The cost of problem 2 is mistreating almost arbitrarily many minds, perhaps quite badly. The cost of problem 1 is ???
which leads to...
2. Claim that the main harm of AI misattribution is basically misleading people instead of any consequentialist harm
> "Think here of the use of opioids to combat chronic pain. You’re ameliorating real suffering, but in a way that creates an unacceptably high risk of creating new and potentially worse forms of suffering. The cure may be worse than the disease. This is true of the chatbot case, too. The treatment works by inducing a dangerous delusion and a dependency on an addictive product. The dependency has the potential to cut the user off from meaningful relationships with other people by substituting in their place relationships with non-existent beings that appear to answer their every desire, in a way no human relationship ever would. One type of illness is treated by inducing another."
Listen I'm a rationalist at heart, I think it's important for people to believe and say true things, but at the end of the day I think this cashes out in utilitarian terms. There ought to be some stronger theory of harm IMO (I mean this is an important research question)
Thread, continued, 03:05 UTC · 2 likes
I guess also it's worth highlighting that people routinely already misattribute sentience and we generally don't think of this as some horrible thing, although rationalists might dislike it aesthetically:
- small children with dolls/stuffed animals (I think? presumably depends on the kid)
- others with God and many supernatural beings
- ??? with some animals ??? (fish? dogs? we don't know!)
Quote tweet, 04:28 UTC · 53 likes
I tried to do this but but then my parents yelled at me because allegedly I was “scamming [my] grandparents” who, fair enough, don’t know how Substack works
Quoting ozy brennan 🦙 (@ozyfrantz): my substack has an option where you can give me $100/month for no reason
Reply to @littmath, 04:34 UTC · 2 likes
Daniel Litt (@littmath): Certainly an issue with scans. Typed PDFs have improved.
I have spent many hours trying to get the Claude pdf api to work really well and if you want >99% word-level accuracy, you have to send both images of the pdf page + extracted text and do a bunch of clever prompting and epicycles bc u can only send 5 images at a time
Frankly I think the issue is that they’re lying about the models being able to process a ton of pages visually - claude api claims 100 pages, google claims *3600* iirc
Reply to @edgar_z_lin, 04:34 UTC · 4 likes
Edgar Lin (@edgar_z_lin): @AaronBergman18 Thou hast a promising future as a political fundraiser it seems.
Yay 🥺
Reply to @robertwiblin, 10:58 UTC · 3 likes
Rob Wiblin (@robertwiblin): We'll soon be interviewing Daniel Kokotajlo (@DKokotajlo).
Co-author of AI2027, ex-OpenAI governance researcher, top forecaster of AI's impacts, and advocate for AI company whistleblower protections.
What should we ask him?
(Especially stuff he hasn't answered already.)
Should people break their NDAs?
Reply to @arithmoquine, 11:20 UTC · 10 likes
henry (@arithmoquine): crazy how if you have friends at tech startups they'll literally let you scroll through the personal data of any user you want
What
Reply to @JStoehler, 11:32 UTC · 2 likes
Joern Stoehler ⏹️🔸 (@JStoehler): this email finds you well
This email has found you
Reply to @andrew_n_carr, 11:42 UTC · 3 likes
Andrew Carr 🤸 (@andrew_n_carr): It makes me a little sad that ()() is not a palindrome but )(() is...
😡
Tweet, 12:54 UTC · 3 likes
Some people associate “X is so important that we should tolerate any amount of some other cost to achieve X” with deontology
And indeed deontology is one reason you might think this…
Tweet, 17:23 UTC · 50 likes
(Warning: based on small n)
Doctors hate if you mention AI as like a possible source of authority (unsurprising)
But they love (or at least are productively cool with) the actual products of AI assistance...
Thread, continued, 17:23 UTC · 23 likes
Namely well-organized documents full of personal context that would have taken forever to compile on one's own, and lists of questions/considerations/hypotheses that you wouldn't have thought of on your own
Thread, continued, 17:23 UTC · 23 likes
I think a bunch of this is the "conscientiousness and organization on demand" feature tbc, like the ability to make a clear and well-formatted google doc from half- baked thoughts in half an hour
Reply to @AaronPublicTwit, 17:34 UTC · 1 like
Aaronlington (@AaronPublicTwit): My impression is that doctors are essentially trained on a specific prompt, so if you can get an AI to tell you how to prompt engineer them, you can get a better output
Lol based
Tweet, 17:35 UTC · 259 likes
Thread, continued, 17:35 UTC · 30 likes
"No no I think it's *bad* that the recording doesn't get saved"
Reply to @hyperdiscogirl, 17:42 UTC · 3 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @hyperdiscogirl is no longer available.)
Such a banger!
Reply to @corsaren, 17:46 UTC · 2 likes
corsaren (@corsaren): My gf is very concerned that if I meet people from twitter irl i might get murdered, or worse, doxxed. How do I reassure her?
Lol I don’t have a ton of hard evidence but will say that IME the upsides are great and downsides are few
Ofc I’m real name so it’s quite different but still
Tweet, 22:09 UTC · 87 likes
It is perpetually funny that, of all the things LLMs and AI companies can do, nobody has bothered fixing this
Saturday, August 30, 2025
Tweet, 02:45 UTC · 7 likes
Ah, the US disability/healthcare benefits system (really it's 140305955.6 systems) really is a gigantic shitstorm 16 dimensional epicycle-laden labyrinth of insanity, they weren't lying
Thread, continued, 02:45 UTC · 3 likes
It's very cool that the system uncompromisingly demands time, energy, money (for lawyers), off-the-charts conscientiousness, and luck - just what disabled people have tons of
Reply to @OrionJohnston, 03:03 UTC · 2 likes
David Johnston (@OrionJohnston): The last doctor I went to was like "your AI gave you good advice, you need an assessment. Here's a script goodbye!".
I think I approve, although it's hard to tell from one example if he has good judgement or is just lazy!
Lmao based (IMO)
Tweet, 04:55 UTC · 62 likes
Fuck I’m gonna have to get a real job I think
Watch this space
Tweet, 05:12 UTC · 269 likes
This is actually a bit of a blackpill on Opus 4.1
I accidentally asked for medical advice on the wrong chrome tab, which was a Claude convo about a philosophy paper
It just totally made stuff up instead of saying “I’m sorry but idk what medical context you’re referring to”
Thread, continued, 05:12 UTC · 24 likes
It actually took a second for me to notice something was up because the response was *almost* plausible (would have made sense from like gpt-3-level pattern matching, maybe)
Thread, continued, 05:12 UTC · 24 likes
It probably did the whole LLM thing of responding in the most likely way to someone who seems to be apparently continuing a conversation about a complex medical issue
Thread, continued, 05:12 UTC · 28 likes
It’s ok Claude
Reply to @parafactual, 05:35 UTC · 14 likes
You (@parafactual): what have u been doing
Contracting on and off for various things (some EA, some not) while I also slowly spend down savings and ~waste time on probably dead-end entrepreneurial projects, all while using my parents health insurance bc haven’t turned 26 yet (6 more months)
Thread, continued, 05:36 UTC · 5 likes
Relevant context
Reply to @ESYudkowsky, 13:20 UTC · 10 likes
Eliezer Yudkowsky ⏹️ (@ESYudkowsky): Do you in fact have brain fog and food sensibilities? Because my brain's trope engine detects an obvious potential plot twist.
Like it has memory or I got this wrong and it actually is the right chat?
But to answer: sorta occasionally, but they’re obviously not what makes sense to highlight. It’s not a good summary of the actual medical context in the other chat
Thread, continued, 13:24 UTC · 4 likes
This is the chain of thought proxy thing - eosinophils thing at least is just totally made up and everything else is maximally generic
Tweet, 14:18 UTC · 12 likes
Girls love brie
Reply to @Meaningness, 14:39 UTC · 2 likes
David Chapman (@Meaningness): geez, I have all these symptoms including the eosinophils
(and yeah they are symptoms of *everything*, so it's very difficult to track down what's going on)
😢
Reply to @BogdanIonutCir2, 14:52 UTC · 9 likes
Bogdan Ionut Cirstea (@BogdanIonutCir2): suggests, by analogy, technical AI safety work might be much more valuable and more tractable than AI safety activism
I agree it suggests that directionally, I just don’t think it’s that strong as evidence
Reply to @JenGGuillen, 16:17 UTC
Jenn (@JenGGuillen): Point me in the direction of they
@littIeramblings (plz help me out on this one 🙏)
Reply, 16:25 UTC · 1 like
There we go, thank you 😊
Tweet, 18:08 UTC · 15 likes
Anyone want?
Might take a while for me to send bc I will have no internet for a bit
Thread, continued, 19:59 UTC · 2 likes
Update: taken!
Quote tweet, 21:55 UTC · 62 likes
I don’t want to take a stance on the small moral circle side, but empirically, in my experience, the people who care about shrimp or hypothetical future people are also the most kind, generous with their time, honest, etc
Quoting Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 (@RuxandraTeslo): My experience:
Person who has a "small moral circle": I only care abt a few ppl but deeply, society is feminised muh. Reality: treats their wife like shit, complains abt having to take a zoom call.
Ppl w/ wide "wide moral circles": generally supportive family men, grind.
Thread, continued, 21:55 UTC · 11 likes
There are real tradeoffs around eg what to donate to, but the core psychological trait of like “cares about others” correlates with both weird and normie implications of that trait
Thread, continued, 21:55 UTC · 9 likes
SBF is an exception here afaict, there are definitely exceptions, but correlations go brr
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Tweet, 04:23 UTC · 346 likes
Based Claude
Thread, continued, 04:26 UTC · 89 likes
Fuck it find me a disgraced Costa Rican vet
Reply to @aliceisplaying, 17:58 UTC · 11 likes
alice (@aliceisplaying): anthropic employees dni
I’m beyond caring at this point lol, here’s the whole conversation https://claude.ai/share/bb25c2f2-8079-4e4d-924f-ca3830ba9b6d
And here are my custom instruction:
Please feel encouraged to offer *out of distribution* suggestions by inferring what my true goal is even if it is not narrowly in the domain of some specific question I ask
Please have a high but not infinitely high bar for calling something “brilliant” or the like
Please be earnest and try your best to convey true information at both a literal and vibes level. Be kind but not sycophantic! No sycophancy! This is important!!
-Don't give me moral lectures
-Don't remind me that you're an AI model
-Discuss safety only when it's non-obvious something may not be safe
Thanks! Tell it like it is; don't sugar-coat responses!
Reply to @AndyMasley, 17:59 UTC · 5 likes
Andy Masley (@AndyMasley): Claude as editor hurts me
😡 keep in the chicken sexing
Reply to @notsky, 17:59 UTC · 2 likes
sky (@notsky): the time picker on iphones alarm app isn’t actually circular it’s just a really long list
Lmao this is some shit I would do if I had to code the thing
Tweet, 18:02 UTC · 9 likes
Arlington is calling your name
Tweet, 18:29 UTC · 230 likes
Seems bad, like really bad
The reaction to the opioid epidemic is probably worse than the opioid epidemic
(taking log scales of hedonic experience seriously is sufficient but not necessary for this claim)
Thread, continued, 18:29 UTC · 78 likes
This is basically just saying “we don’t care how much you’re suffering, you’re out of luck”
Tweet, 18:34 UTC · 16 likes
Most interesting experience I had with two niche micro-specialist doctors this past couple days was that they didn’t bat an eye at the “bpc-157” line under “things I’ve tried” in my big health summary document
Like they knew what it was and thought trying was totally reasonable
Reply, 18:36 UTC · 3 likes
Secondhand leather is basically fine and you know it, it’s the “tiny amount of milk powder” of the clothing world
Reply to @BorisBartlog, 22:06 UTC · 28 likes
Boris Bartlog (@BorisBartlog): @AaronBergman18 I mean, *maybe*, but the opioid epidemic killed more people than AIDS (in the US)
I think the real argument is that these particular measures helped less with opioid abuse than they hurt people who needed the meds
I think the response just almost entirely doesn’t actually account for hedonic welfare
Tweet, 22:21 UTC · 13 likes
I want to live in a group house with communal pet ducks
Reply to @ptrschmdtnlsn, 22:25 UTC · 2 likes
(The tweet being replied to by @ptrschmdtnlsn is no longer available.)
Apparently I have consumed >4000 bags of mint tea
Quote tweet, 22:38 UTC · 4 likes
$6M? Isn’t that like one medium sized great location single family SF home these days?
Quoting S (@Likes_Nothing8): Buying a $6M secluded house just three months into a relationship… yeah, that’s not something a boyfriend does. It was obvious from the very beginning.
Reply, 22:44 UTC · 1 like
Omg 👀
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