An engineer is working at his desk in his office. His cigarette falls
off the desk into the wastebasket, causing the papers within to burst
into flames. The engineer looks around, sees a fire extinguisher, grabs
it, puts out the flames, and goes back to work.
A physicist is working at his desk in another office and the same
thing happens. He looks at the fire, looks at the fire extinguisher, and
thinks “Fire requires fuel plus oxygen plus heat. The fire extinguisher
will remove both the oxygen and the heat in the wastebasket. Ergo, no
fire.” He grabs the extinguisher, puts out the flames, and goes back to
work.
A mathematician is working at his desk in another office and the same
thing happens. He looks at the fire, looks at the fire extinguisher, and
thinks for a minute, says “Ah! A solution exists!” and goes back to
work.
An AI researcher is posting on Twitter from the National Rationalist
Compound and the same thing happens, except with an overheated vape pen.
He doesn’t notice the fire. Someone else draws his attention to it. He
thinks about something unrelated for a minute, says “Ah! A solution
exists!” and makes an arrogant post about how easy fires are to
extinguish.
The same thing happens with a roomful of researchers. They all make prediction market bets on whether someone will eventually put out the fire. One of the ones who betted against starts surreptitiously fanning the flames.
After the fanner has stumbled out of the charred wreckage, he writes a blog post about how his actions were altruistic and he's going to repeat them, because one day it will make him enough money to put out many more fires.
Engineers realize just how much bullshit assumptions have to be made in order to get anything done, ergo very practically getting shit done.
Source: am engineering student, don’t know half the shit being talked about and I’m still going into junior year.
Hey Yud, why does it have to be in San Francisco? There’s plenty of
land that could be had in the continental US for very cheap where
there’s going to be very limited zoning restrictions, and at that point,
surely it’s just a matter of sorting out a few more coordination
problems to figure out how you’re going to get running water,
electricity, and other necessary infrastructure?
He can't go to far from the central mainframe situated in the silicon valley, where all the dipships of this californian ideology come from, or he'll lose all functions.
Clearly by arbitrary structures he means digging tunnels underground
to build all the roads and suspending mobile homes with giant steel
cables, a practical and financially viable set of ideas that is exactly
how a utopia would work.
Where the citizenry are all science literate in science papers reported in likelihood ratios and not p-values. And the science and technology is screened by the Keepers and Very Serious People to protect the citizenry from ~~thought crime~~ infohazards.
This is even funnier in context since the original tweet is talking about regenerative farming.
Now, I'm not an agriculture expert, but I don't think zoning laws are necessarily the reason that there aren't more regenerative farms in San Francisco.
iirc regenerative farming is a way to increase soil conditions while maintaining various crop yields in a sustainable way. So it is good imho.
No idea if this can be done inside a city however, which seems like a bad idea anyway, due to air pollution.
I could easily see regenerative farming being good. I was sleepy and trying to convey the idea that the "trend" she's recognizing says more about her social group than the popularity of whatever she's talking about
hey now, let’s be fair. we don’t know how much Cities: Skylines he’s played
An engineer is working at his desk in his office. His cigarette falls off the desk into the wastebasket, causing the papers within to burst into flames. The engineer looks around, sees a fire extinguisher, grabs it, puts out the flames, and goes back to work.
A physicist is working at his desk in another office and the same thing happens. He looks at the fire, looks at the fire extinguisher, and thinks “Fire requires fuel plus oxygen plus heat. The fire extinguisher will remove both the oxygen and the heat in the wastebasket. Ergo, no fire.” He grabs the extinguisher, puts out the flames, and goes back to work.
A mathematician is working at his desk in another office and the same thing happens. He looks at the fire, looks at the fire extinguisher, and thinks for a minute, says “Ah! A solution exists!” and goes back to work.
An AI researcher is posting on Twitter from the National Rationalist Compound and the same thing happens, except with an overheated vape pen. He doesn’t notice the fire. Someone else draws his attention to it. He thinks about something unrelated for a minute, says “Ah! A solution exists!” and makes an arrogant post about how easy fires are to extinguish.
Hey Yud, why does it have to be in San Francisco? There’s plenty of land that could be had in the continental US for very cheap where there’s going to be very limited zoning restrictions, and at that point, surely it’s just a matter of sorting out a few more coordination problems to figure out how you’re going to get running water, electricity, and other necessary infrastructure?
Clearly by arbitrary structures he means digging tunnels underground to build all the roads and suspending mobile homes with giant steel cables, a practical and financially viable set of ideas that is exactly how a utopia would work.
Man needs to safely align his beard first
“If you were to give me absolute power, I would be able to solve this problem that I’m pretty sure that I know I could do.”
https://twitter.com/esyudkowsky/status/1422600528974860288
I say let him do it. Give him an acre of swampland.
I actually agree with Yud’s previous take: zoning laws are way too restrictive in most major cities.
And like what the hell is this regenerative farming thing she’s talking about? Sounds almost as insufferable as Yud does usually
yud needs breathing room!
This is a lot of words for “I don’t understand mutual aid and am scared of the poors learning how to do it before I do”
For someone saving the world from existential doom every single day it sure is.