I think humanity’s actions right now are most comparable those of a drug addict. We as a species dont have the necessary equivalent of executive function and self control to abstain from racing towards AGI. And if we’re gonna do it anyway, those that shout about how we’re all gonna die just ruin everyone’s mood.
Aristotelis Kostelenos
Karma: 8
Reading this thread (and the post above) made me think of a potential way for a society to handle recreational drugs. Have them be legal, but make them weak, diluted. A 3.5% limit on alcohol content. Nicotine pouches with barely any nicotine and an unpleasant taste. Weak weed with a foul smell. You can buy any substance you want, but the more addictive it is, the more cumbersome the acquisition and administration. I won’t claim to be at all sure about how well this would actually work. Also, a government wanting to use this idea to tackle drug abuse starting today might need to do some weird stuff during a transitional period. Already established illicit production and distribution would have to get dismantled for this to work since I’d bet a nontrivial number of people would still seek the cheaper stronger illegal versions if they remained available.
I’ve been lurking for not years. I also have ADHD and I deeply relate to your sentiment about the jargon here and it doesn’t help that when I manage to concentrate enough to get through a post and read the 5 substack articles it links to and skim the 5 substack articles they link to, it’s… pretty hit or miss. I remember reading one saying something about moral relativism not being obviously true and it felt like all the jargon and all the philosophical concepts mentioned only served to sufficiently confuse the reader (and I guess the writer too) so that it’s not. I will say though that I don’t get that feeling reading the sequences. Or stuff written by other rationalist GOATs. The obscure terms there don’t serve as signals of the author’s sophistication or ways to make their ideas less accesible. They’re there because there are actually useful bundles of meaning that are used often enough to warrant a shortcut.
Maybe not super relevant to this discussion but multi million dollar markets have been getting incorrectly resolved on Polymarket on a routine basis. There was one market about a Ukraine minerals deal that resolved to YES even though no minerals deal happened:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/polymarket-faces-backlash-7m-ukraine-010306627.html
https://x.com/Domahhhh/status/1905258165777596812
These false resolutions didn’t happen because Polymarket overrode its consensus-based resoluton mechanism, but because that mechanism itself is susceptible to large stakeholder manipulation plus voter misinformation campaigns. As for Polymarket having a lot of reputation to lose, yeah it does. And it has been losing it. I doubt that the specific market mentioned would become a target for a false resolution, it would be too brazen to attempt such a scam there. However, the fact that such a thing is possible, makes any investment in the platform orders of magnitude more risky than buying a bond of a western country, and the 3% return is just not worth it when said bond would provide a similar return.