A checklist format of what we need to succeed at AI Safety, and it’s specifically safety and not alignment as there’s a pretty good case for a Control agenda. I care a lot about existential threats to humanity or to other things we value, but I also think that the upside from AGI is at least comparable. Mandatory Machines of Loving Grace (rare Dario Amodei public content) which I think is rather tame but alas it seems like everyone is upset that it’s either too tame or too aggressive.

100M context windows, someone please make use of it. sama will never top the American equity fund, but at least the website for the intelligence age is still good. Best tech drama lately? Definitely Automattic. See also this and well, the orange site.

SSC vintage on reversing advice which I quite like the underlying model for. Probably I should write some text that is advice on taking advice. We love Baudrillard, and we love Baudrillard gloves! This years Lesswrong Petrov day is iconic as usual. People are still stealing and doing a good job at it but are scummy? Tony Soprano was right after all I suppose. There’s an Italian fugitive who like definitely faked his death in what seems like a wild story? His name is Samuele Landi, he was a seasteader who supposedly passed in February (this article seems quite biased but other ones are paywalled) though his body does not seem properly identified. He also has ties to Liberland and some Saudi foresting thing. There’s an upcoming documentary too, so maybe we’ll learn.

I read about the Bayh-Dole Act because of certain non-profit. People used to just do things like go to the arctic in a balloon which is kind of awesome despite the unfortunate result, but some things are just bad? Like trying to aim missiles by putting a pigeon inside of it. Past few weeks I’ve just been generally frustrated with people being excited to to unusual and strange things but forgetting that while it’s true that being unusual is the only way to be better, there are way more ways to be worse than better. African Americans responsible for Coca-Cola not containing cocaine? Rare coke flavour (new!) Marriott hotels and their LDS origins, specifically about how they decided to do alcohol. Your lymphatic system does do your brain, how did we not know this? Chinese shoegaze music.

Cute article about an SF panhandler, like seriously cute. I went to the Bronx Zoo and read up on about it ahead of time. The otter-murder was cute and fun but this was harrowing. NYPD is notorious for parking in bike lanes, and it seems like they probably got ticketed a lot before the traffic agents became a part of the NYPD in 1996. 10e9 dollars is the annual budget of the NYPD, a figure that has been steadily growing. In comparison, North Korea is estimated to spend about 4e9 dollars a year. The NYPD did millions of dollars of ticketing legally parked cars. New Karl Marx translation!

I finally read some Lovecraft, and it makes so much sense how the concepts are so memetically fit now. If we erased all historical and cultural context in the world, Lovecraft would still a classic.

Book: Path to Power and Means of Ascent (first two LBJ Caro books)

Earlier this year I visited New York to see the Columbia protests, after which I went to a bookstore to pick up a book on Nixon (when in Rome). Expectedly I got stressed out about which Nixon biography I would enjoy most and figured I’d accept the off-by-one-presidency error and get LBJ instead — where I was certain I wanted the Caro. I tried to purchase Master of the Senate, the third book in the series which documents Johnson’s senatorship. The bookstore clerk proceeded to ask me whether I had read the first two books and talked me into getting the first. Big Biography wins again!

LBJ is unfortunately a large part of my personality now, the books are phenomenal. They don’t make biographers like Caro anymore. His research involved moving to Johnson’s hometown and his interviews are so skillfully conducting, not to even mention the prose itself. I adore and admire Caro, but LBJ is a horrible person? (I hear there’s a plot-twist at the end, but no spoilers please!) In real life, utilitarianism and consequentialism are usually the same thing, but not for LBJ. He arguably did net good, but most of the bad things he did were not necessary to achieve those positive outcomes. In general being into Caro is a green flag and being into LBJ (or Moses) is a red flag.

The Power Broker is the more popular series, but it’s kind of an East Coast story about an idealist who is polarised by the system and takes it over. LBJ is a West Coast story. A man born believing that power was his birthright and dedicates his life to acquiring it through a blatant lack of regard for convention. A narrative where one can acquire all the power and then figure out something to do with it later. He is the worst of both gender stereotypes / tendencies. Manipulative, power-hungry, short-tempered. Insecure, bipolar 2, daddy issues, tummy hurt. From LBJ’s childhood up to his second senate campaign he exhibits relatively little character development. LBJ is so compelling as a human, in large part due to Caro’s writing.

I had moments of doubt. Caro goes on these side quests, and in between the lines he’s saying “trust me, you’ll understand why I’m telling you about this later”. The first time was in the opening fifty pages, which all took place well before Lyndon was even born. My favourite parts are likely the mini-biographies of Ladybird, Rayburn and Stevenson. Caro also devotes a chapter to describing the pains of laundry and other household chores to provide context for what electricity meant. I do sometimes worry that Caro takes on more narrative license than I’d prefer when reading about a morally controversial figure, but his writing is so effective at bringing you into the universe and fully grokking even the smallest of situations.

Book: Lolita

I turned away from fiction years ago because I thought it was offensive to reality, and this year I’ve three-sixtied into reading fiction escape reality. Lolita is doubly inconsequential as it’s not only fiction, but fiction written by an unreliable narrator.

“Oh Lolita, it’s about you” was the recommendation I got for it while scanning a friend’s bookshelf. Sure, I guess. The plot wasn’t the most special part of the book though, it’s the fact that Nabakov wrote it in a non-native language — a fact that I thankfully encountered in the first quarter of the text. Nabakov did a Russian translation too, which he claimed to be worse despite him learning English well after his where any pedagogist would consider optimal (and of course also wrote in French). My favourite part of his writing style was constant original metaphors without invoking cringe or deferring to reader interpretation.

Objectively speaking, the plot is unfortunately probably the notable feature of Lolita. It reminded me a lot of this book that contained a segment titled The Young-Girl As A Commodity. "And they are realistic, even in love” (Tiqqun, 2012). The controversy is in the hebephilia, the commentary is in the specific kind of sexualisation of young women we do, especially in the western world. Most characteristic was how Lo could be bought off so her love (or at least, good graces) could be retained.

As a girl, every song is about me! The way HH uses his intelligence to so seamlessly rationalise something barbaric is something I’m as familiar with as one can be. It’s very popular in my locale (San Francisco) and culture (rationality). People say this shit about this all the time but it’s quite special to have to captured so beautifully in fiction, since nothing teaches this lesson like carefully watching someone else make the mistake.