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.

  • -dsr-@awful.systems
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    1 year ago

    So, uh…

    • “almost all of the talented executives and ops people were in 1950” ::> what the ever-living fuck? Citations needed. Many, many citations, because what would be special about the people born in 1900-1925 to distinguish them from the people born in 1950-1975 or any other particular period?
    • Also, why would anyone think that they didn’t have children?
    • or that executive/operational success is heritable
    • or even repeatable?
    • “no blog post I can figure out how to write could even come close to making more people being good executives” ::> I’m not sure anyone proceeding from these unexamined assumptions could write a blog post explaining how to make pickles.
  • carlitoscohones@awful.systems
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    1 year ago

    Regarding the descendants of their heritage, this would make a great pseudo-scientific paper that executive competence will positively correlate with Mormonism or fundamentalist Christianity. If Jack Welch had 10 kids, and they each had 10 kids, they could run the entire Fortune 100.