The problem with utopia Specifically with respect to status.

I really try to not care about status, but to not care is not not be human, it seems.

Most theories and hypotheses in psychology are verbal in nature, yet their evaluation overwhelmingly relies on inferential statistical procedures. The validity of the move from qualitative to quantitative analysis depends on the verbal and statistical expressions of a hypothesis being closely aligned—that is, that the two must refer to roughly the same set of hypothetical observations. Here I argue that most inferential statistical tests in psychology fail to meet this basic condition.

see: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jqw35_v1

via: https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/reads

As per usual, Avilo beautifully articulates an affirmative vision of leftism and dives deep into the history of contemporary American fascism. Du Bois, I will get to step back into the sun again.

But I think there’s a more radical slipperiness in that “our sense of right and wrong” and “the social reaction of others” are not as separable as we like to think. Elsewhere, the article tries to get past the fear of accidental harm by encouraging the reader to make use of the “common-sense understanding of offensiveness that you have developed as a minimally functional adult living in a society.” The issue, I think, is that one’s common-sense understanding of what makes people feel uncomfortable or unsafe is built by receiving or observing social consequences.

I’m still haunted by the sense that my attraction to women is in some way inherently, almost psychically, harmful. I just don’t have the practice in more representative circles to have worked through it on an instinctual level.

Oh my God. Such beautiful application of contemporary philosophy to the pains of social life.

Web app for easy viewing/comparing different translations of the Tao Te Ching

Bro is starting off the year strong:

God, though, I understand why so many people are chasing that dragon, even though it’s going to ruin their careers, and maybe even their lives. I get why people fall for this, in spite of the externalities that they must know of by now. In spite of the colossal waste, the loss of fresh water resources, the fact that AI datacenters are the fastest growing source of carbon emissions, the people suffering sky-rocketing power bill and rolling outages near these new datacenters, the reams and reams of fascist propaganda these machines are producing to tear our society apart, the corruption, the market manipulation, the plain and simple fact that the ultimate purpose of these tools is to put their users out of a job entirely… well, once you finally get a taste of what it feels like to be great… I suppose all of those problems seem so far away.

Clickbait Title: I’m so tired.

This blog post comes basically in two parts: the role which LLM assistants are trained for is horribly undefined and ontologically hella strange, and AI safety “””researchers””” are basically goading LLMs into misalignment without any concern for the consequences.

As per usual, Dougherty takes a big problem, finds the right abstractions, ruthlessly argues their way to the truth, and settles their realizations succinctly in the original context. One of the best philosophers of our time, on God.

The article considers structuralism as a philosophy of mathematics, as based on the commonly accepted explicit mathematical concept of a structure. Such a structure consists of a set with specified functions and relations satisfying specified axioms, which describe the type of the structure. Examples of such structures such as groups and spaces, are described. The viewpoint is now dominant in organizing much of mathematics, but does not cover all mathematics, in particular most applications. It does not explain why certain structures are dominant, not why the same mathematical structure can have so many different and protean realizations. ‘structure’ is just one part of the full situation, which must somehow connect the ideal structures with their varied examples.

Very nice philosophy paper by one of the progenitors of category theory on structure. The idea to show a correspondence between Bourbaki and category theory seems like a nice grad school project.

At some point in the 20th century, we filled out the last few basis vectors of humanity. We explored the whole game map. This is what it means to live at the end of history: every aesthetic movement, political and economic system you can imagine can be understood as a linear combination of things that have come before. Asking for a new aesthetics is like asking for a new continent, one north of 90° and with imaginary longitude.

This is easily the most raw thing I’ve ever read on LessWrong. I see a lot of similarities between myself and this person, and I think I don’t really want to be like them?? I dunno. The commends on this post are also quite fascinating.

Intelligence does not make you a feminist.

It was impossible for most folks to sit on their couch and watch TV while a guy who was riding his bicycle across America was camped in their backyard. What if he was famous? So I was usually invited into their home for desert and an interview. My job in this moment was evident: I was to relate my adventure. I was to help them enjoy a thrill they secretly desired, but would never accomplish. My account in their kitchen would make this legendary ride part of their lives. Through me and my retelling of my journey, they would get to vicariously ride a bicycle across America. In exchange I would get a place to camp and a dish of ice cream. It was a sweet deal that benefited both of us.

I think the author could do more here to unpack his privilege, but it’s a nice parable nonetheless.