Yudkowsky writes,

How can Effective Altruism solve the meta-level problem where almost all of the talented executives and ops people were in 1950 and now they’re dead and there’s fewer and fewer surviving descendants of their heritage every year and no blog post I can figure out how to write could even come close to making more people being good executives?

Because what EA was really missing is collusion to hide the health effects of tobacco smoking.

  • swlabr@awful.systems
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    1 year ago

    It’s somewhat uncharacteristic of Yud to produce something of such a high sneer density. Usually, it would take weeks of long-form articles for that to happen. Maybe he’s actually learned something since dropping out of school!

    How can Effective Altruism solve

    The only things that EA has even approached a solution to are redistributing a small amount of wealth from tech salaries, and… actually, that’s pretty much it.

    the meta-level problem

    I had to google what this was, and surprise, it’s an invented term from LW. He hasn’t learned a thing. My initial analysis was incomplete. He’s just created a framework that crams huge amounts of sneer into every word, waiting to be explosively unpacked. Like an atom bomb of cringe.

    If you aren’t familiar with this term, LWers use “object-level” and “meta-level” to describe problems at different levels of abstraction. To use this tweet as an example, I think what is being compressed here is that the “object-level” problem is that shit’s fucked, and to unfuck shit, we need good execs/“ops people”. The “meta-level” problem is as stated:

    where almost all of the talented executives and ops people were in 1950

    Go live in an abandoned 50’s themed diner, and keep your MAGA-scented implied sexism/racism/conservatism off the internet.

    and now they’re dead

    . <- world’s tiniest violin right here for you, buddy.

    and there’s fewer and fewer surviving descendants of their heritage every year

    I guess Yud thinks the potential to do Exec shit/“ops” is hereditary? Lamarck would never.

    and no blog post I can figure out how to write could even come close to making more people being good executives?

    Good joke. We all know you have a post lubed up and ready to spill all over the internet.