Constance retweeted
Useful reminder to those complaining about refugees in Europe: if you want less refugees, your main enemy is the US Military Industrial Complex.
An incredible experiment in ground-up governance/electoral politics:
Student-led consensus-based noms, cross-vetting by elders, second round distributed consensus with majoritarian veto only (avoiding spoilers), final list of profs/artists/no “politicians”
We need to take notes
Sırbistan'da öğrenciler doğrudan demokrasi yöntemini seçim siyasetine taşıdılar.
Liderlere dayalı, yukarıdan aşağıya bir örgütlenme yerine, herkesin söz alabildiği öğrenci genel kurulları (plenum) oluşturdular. Kararlar tartışılarak, mümkün olduğunca uzlaşmayla alındı.
Bu yöntemi üniversitelerin dışına da taşıdılar. Mahallelerde, kentlerde ve köylerde yurttaş meclisleri (zborovi) kuruldu. İnsanlar kendi sorunlarını tartışmak, çözüm önermek ve birlikte karar almak için toplandı.
250 kişilik milletvekili aday listesini de şöyle oluşturdular:
1- Önce 250 adaylık kontenjanı, öğrenci sayılarına göre altı üniversite kenti arasında paylaştırdılar. Belgrad'ın listeye hâkim olmaması için diğer kentlerin de üst sıralarda temsil edilmesini sağladılar. Ardından her kentin kontenjanını fakülteler arasında dağıttılar.
2- Ülke genelinde 80'den fazla fakültede öğrenci genel kurulları toplandı. Öğrenciler kendileri aday olmadı ama her biri aday önerebildi ve neden o kişiyi önerdiğini açıkladı. İsimler tartışıldı, önce uzlaşma arandı, gerektiğinde oylama yapıldı.
3- Mevcut siyasi kadrolara kapıyı kapattılar. İktidar partilerinin mevcut ve eski üyelerini, iktidar adına görev yapmış siyasetçileri ve bürokratları, muhalefet partilerinin üst düzey yöneticilerini aday göstermediler. Böylece hem iktidardan hem de yerleşik muhalefetten bağımsız bir liste oluşturdular.
4- Fakülteler birbirlerinin adaylarını da denetledi. Önerilen bütün isimler ortak bir listede toplandı ve tüm fakültelerin incelemesine açıldı. İtirazlar öğrenci kurullarında tartışıldı. Adayın elenmesi için kurulların yarısından fazlasının veto etmesi gerekiyordu. Tek bir fakültenin itirazı yeterli değildi.
5- Elenen veya çekilen adayların yerine yedekler getirildi. Böylece profesörlerin, doktorların, bilim insanlarının, işçilerin, sanatçıların ve aktivistlerin yer aldığı 250 kişilik liste ortaya çıktı.
Constance retweeted
Everyone needs to know what actually happened in Serbia.
Instead of students just protest against their government, the students organized themselves into a student list and ran in elections against their government—and they have just won.
Dear Serbia, congratulations on your victory; you have just opened a new door in protesting. This is history
Constance retweeted
A jury found Meta liable for over 43 million violations. The judge reduced the statutory civil penalty from $219.5 billion.
Breaking News: Meta must pay $25 billion, one of the largest penalties levied against the tech giant, for deceiving users about data privacy. nyti.ms/4yvv5yZ
Constance retweeted
A brief review of recent technical “errors” at Meta:
1. Restricting the Facebook pages of Brazilian president Lula who is in a runoff election against a Trump-favored candidate
2. Shutting down the pages of Albanians protesting Jared Kushner’s plans to build a luxury resort in the country
3. Rejecting ads for a documentary critical of Elon Musk
4. Shutting down the No Kings instagram page in the middle of a major anti-Trump protest
Constance retweeted
UPDATE: I can confirm that the Ledger supply chain is compromised in Europe as well. @Ledger should initiate an immediate product recall to protect users.
I just purchased a second device from a different Mediamarkt location today, recorded the unboxing process, and discovered spyware once again (video linked in the second tweet).
The device was compromised in the exact same manner, featuring identical modifications (such as additional cables and an LTE module). This indicates its a widespread issue rather than an isolated incident, potentially affecting Ledger inventory across MediaMarkt and Saturn stores throughout Europe (comprising over 1,000 stores across 11 countries).
My initial hypothesis was that these devices were returns that looked unopened to the employees and were just sold again as new however, a MediaMarkt employee confirmed that the device I purchased was not a return, and that returned Ledgers are sent directly back to the manufacturer rather than resold.
Store records show the inventory originated from Aqipa GmbH. While Ledger's CTO was unsure if Aqipa serves as the direct distributor between Ledger and MediaMarkt, it appears to be the case. Given that Aqipa distributes across Europe, any physical retail store receiving stock through them may be at risk.
I sent the first ledger to mark and the second one is going to ledger now, so that they can analyse it.
If you purchased a ledger from anyone other than the official ledger store, make sure to check your device!!
Constance retweeted
A core tenet of fascism is to claim that all of society's problems are actually caused by a minority group, thus requiring the state to use its full power to attack that group.
Pure barbarism disguised as legal process.
Constance retweeted
Actress Susan Sarandon being arrested earlier today for protesting Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations. One is speaking out against genocide, one is committing it. One was arrested, one was not.
Unfortunately they want the panopticon. Unless we force them, by technological and social means, to understand that the cost is too high
Hester Peirce with another banger
“Today society is at a crossroads. Down one path lies the status quo: more data collection, more intermediary surveillance, more “know your customer” requirements that turn our financial rails into a panopticon. Down the other path lies an opportunity to use new technologies to improve our ability to catch criminals while collecting less personal information than ever before, and monitoring more sparingly to protect Americans’ privacy.” sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-st…
Constance retweeted
This is what happens when you let him get away with genocide. He’s now comfortable making threats to blow up the UN in a fucking UN speech
Constance retweeted
It's always strange how the US uses its unparalleled military and economic power to strangle and suffocate the economies of small nations it dislikes, then points to the intended devastation as proof that those countries are bad and don't work, with no reference to the US role.
Constance retweeted
This is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very bad decision that must be taken en banc or on cert to SCOTUS.
The Second Circuit holds that no warrant and no suspicion is needed to search a citizen's cell phone at the border. According to the court, per Judge Menashi, the border search exception authorizes searches to find criminals crossing the border, and Riley does not apply. #N
Constance retweeted
>be me
>discover effective altruism
>apparently normal charity is inefficient
>why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing
>fair enough
>buy mosquito nets
>save lives
>numbers look good
>feel powerful
>couple years later
>someone asks an innocent question
>why only count people alive today
>huh
>future people matter too
>obviously
>my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet
>reasonable.jpg
>keep following logic
>what about their grandchildren
>also yes
>what about people in 500 years
>sure
>5000 years
>why not
>500 million years
>starting to get weird but morality is morality
>open calculator
>humanity could survive for an astronomically long time
>could colonize galaxy
>could have trillions upon trillions of descendants
>maybe digital people too
>maybe simulated civilizations
>maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds
>calculator starts smoking
>realize currently living humans are rounding error
>8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta
>future contains potentially 10^something people
>can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets
>new moral priority unlocked
>protect the long-term future
>stop thinking in units of "people helped"
>start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved"
>malaria?
>terrible
>but only kills existing humans
>AI extinction could delete the entire light cone
>nuclear war could permanently derail civilization
>bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years
>someone invents wrong constitution in 2140
>quadrillions suffer
>better fund governance workshop now
>friend says maybe we should improve hospitals
>explain opportunity cost
>friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people
>explain scope sensitivity
>friend stops inviting me to dinner
>need to decide what to fund
>easy
>expected value
>suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction
>sounds tiny
>but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives
>multiply
>mother of god
>$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies
>charity evaluation complete
>someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from
>expert judgement
>which expert
>us
>how calibrated
>extremely thoughtfully
>reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative
>still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude
>epistemic robustness achieved
>someone says maybe project doesn't work
>assign 20% chance
>still astronomical
>maybe project makes problem worse
>assign 5% chance
>still astronomical
>why 5
>because 30 felt pessimistic
>publish 46-page report
>contains seventeen sensitivity analyses
>every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign
>critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities
>yes
>that's literally why it's important
>critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical
>make probability smaller
>critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong
>make probability smaller again
>critic begins rubbing temples
>discover AI safety
>perfect longtermist cause
>AI might kill everyone
>or create utopia
>or seize galaxy
>or tile universe with paperclips
>or create billions of conscious software minds
>finally a problem with numbers big enough for me
>start AI safety nonprofit
>mission: prevent dangerous AI
>hire smartest people available
>smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI
>interesting
>we must understand capabilities to understand safety
>we must scale models to study alignment
>we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first
>we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong
>we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous
>outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies
>complicated field
>company releases stronger model
>very concerned
>company begins training even stronger model
>extremely concerned
>company raises $14 billion
>concern reaches unprecedented levels
>need to influence government
>future is at stake
>normal democratic process too slow
>politicians don't understand exponential curves
>public doesn't understand x-risk
>experts must guide them
>who counts as expert
>people who understand x-risk
>who understands x-risk
>our friends
>someone objects that this seems politically convenient
>explain we're representing future generations
>future generations unavailable for comment
>develop concept of value lock-in
>terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever
>therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in
>whose values
>let's circle back
>begin with impartial morality
>end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want
>beautiful arc
>meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things
>voting wrong
>having parochial attachments
>loving family more than strangers
>caring about local community
>getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible
>evolutionary biases everywhere
>explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted
>except intuition that future digital people count
>and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad
>and intuition that our probability estimates are sane
>and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future
>those intuitions survived peer review
>someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter
>inefficient
>could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher
>think of all the simulated people you just killed
>okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly
>PR team says "future generations deserve a voice"
>much better
>journalist asks what longtermism means
>say "future people matter"
>everyone agrees
>great
>journalist asks what follows from that
>well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures
>journalist raises eyebrow
>return to "future people matter"
>motte has entered the chat
>critic: of course future people matter
>me: glad we agree
>critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them
>me: why do you hate our grandchildren
>eventually notice uncomfortable implication
>if future value dominates everything
>then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future
>education matters because future institutions
>health matters because future productivity
>democracy matters because future trajectory
>human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy
>see starving child
>feel compassion
>check spreadsheet
>child's direct welfare contribution negligible
>but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality
>compassion restored
>tell myself this is impartial altruism
>one day assistant asks obvious question
>"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?"
>silence
>open spreadsheet
>increase column width
>add confidence interval
>assistant asks again
>"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?"
>stare into cosmic light cone
>10^50 people staring back
>none of them exist
>none of them can tell me
>none of them can falsify my assumptions
>realize I have invented the perfect constituency
>infinitely important
>completely silent
>and always represented by me
“Ultimately, when the fate of all of humanity is at stake, these are extremely small sacrifices to make”
What isn’t justified under this philosophy ? Insane reasoning.
▪️Using an open-source model = 20 years in jail.
▪️All known AI researchers = under Government surveillance.
Another PauseAI volunteer, Max Winga, who's also a research engineer at Conjecture, presents more "creative" ideas on how to save us all from the AI apocalypse.
Trump and Xi need to mutually decide to "stop AI progress" and then:
1. "Using any open-source model is a huge crime - downloading it, having it in your possession on your hard drive, certainly running the model, distributing the model - make these significant crimes. Any of these things, 20 years in jail. Or even harsher penalties."
2. "You could stop all research. You could scrub the internet of the papers, and you can take all the people who were working on the models, and, at most draconian worse, 'we are saving the world, we will make some sacrifices,' you assign a spy or a government watch person to every single one of these people and ensure that they aren't designing AI models."
"Ultimately, when the fate of all of humanity is at stake, these are extremely small sacrifices to make."