#robin hanson

[mitigatedchaos]

Robin Hanson begging, pleading. "How can I convince people not to constantly have wars and subvert infrastructure? How can I convince them to love each other and exchange money for goods and services?"

[gcu-sovereign]

[Minds Almost Meeting] Fertility again (Robin Hanson & Agnes Callard, with Lyman Stone) #mindsAlmostMeeting

https://podcastaddict.com/minds-almost-meeting/episode/193191015 via @PodcastAddict

Exactly halfway through, recommended!

It's very funny that the spectre of an Amish takeover is explictly invoked, but NOT a Haredi one. The denial of that future is given the same reason in both cases, but the Amish explicitly delight in labor, whereas I've heard the same complaints in English langauge coverage of Israel's politics for...20 years?

[flowerandthesongstress]

Updated

[rendakuenthusiast]

I like both the title of this blogpost, and how its first paragraph starts with referencing Jesus Christ encountering hostile questioners as a way of introducing Hanson's own situation.

[pazodetrasalba]

Thank you for supporting Overcoming Bias

Dear Caroline:

Just a few minutes ago I receive a message from Robin Hanson's substack with the heading above. It was both funny in its title and strangely adequate, as I was about to write an entry about this post of yours.

The post is actually an invitation to become a paid subscriber, which is something I think I will skip for now. But that is not to say that I do not appreciate Hanson's brand of weird, even if it sometimes gets irksome. These last weeks he has been obsessing and hammering in on the need to produce tons of kids for civilization's survival, and on quirky ways of achieving it. The last take -in the post mentioned above- is employing government debt to solve fertility. And besides, it seems he has some outrageously insensitive and silly things said about rape...

From what I've seen online, he seems to bit considered a bit of a fringe element in the Rationalist community -only marginally more centered and acceptable than, say, Richard Hanania-, and yet this feels at odds with some very reasonable things I sometimes read him stating (like in his AI debates with Yudkowsky). Perhaps he's a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans of sorts.

Among the books included in your defunct goodreads page was Hanson's and Simler's The Elephant in the Brain (it actually appears listed as 'currently reading', but with a 2018 date, so either it was more of a 'want to read' thing, or you read it and didn't rate it). I think it will make good company with other bias-dispelling volumes that are dear to both the Rationalist and EA communities and which I plan to peruse in the following months (Kahneman, Julia Galef and some more Yudkowsky). I am not sure I can consider it a recommendation of yours, but then again there are some books I am pretty certain you've read and would speak warmly of, but it just happened that you did that well begore you got your tumblr and goodreads started (like stuff by Singer, Ord or MacAskill).

Quote:

As I’ve described before, a private fertility solution would be to let parents endow their kids with debt or equity, which they could sell to pay for parenting expenses. While most people want to forbid this due to seeing it as “slavery”, they don’t mind collective national “slavery”, whereby infants are endowed with obligations to pay “their share” of national debt. Which all nations do. And this practice makes it in the simple financial interest of nations to pay huge amounts to induce citizens to have kids!

Robin Hanson

[gcu-sovereign]

If I anticipate going to a special restaurant, I will fast for plenty of time before going there!

Foodies are straightforwardly interested in signalling taste, but maximizing pleasure doesn't particularly enter into it [adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers]

If you have fasted for 48 hours before a particular high end meal, then you may lose the quality gradient between a 95/100 item vs a 90/100 item.

as silly as it is, i think the rationalist blogosphere has produced a bunch of weird interesting ideas from clever crazy people, which makes it extra bizarre that it all originates from robin hanson's comment section. because robin hanson is just like. a dumb guy. he's a midwit! for all you wanna say about yudkowsky, he's original, he's weird, he can be *compelling*. robin hanson is bland! he's like if you granted your average PMC dad-type the gift of gab

[gcu-sovereign]

Bleg for the scifi readers

Over a decade ago, I'd tried to keep abreast of David Brin's nonfiction writing. I distinctly remember souring on him for Reasons. Maybe it was that he got displaced in my head by Big Yud and Robin Hanson and Bryan Caplan? Maybe I'd dismissed him as indistinguishable from a run of the mill Democratic Party operative at the time?

So my question for @st-just @drethelin @official-kircheis @dagny-hashtaggart is: do you know if this guy has written anything worth reading lately?

[chicago-geniza]

Hung out with my cousin this week and it turns out he runs in post-rat circles and went to vibecamp and found it hysterically funny that I was down bad for Agnes Callard alsjdjfjfnfjfjf

[gcu-sovereign]

[Robin Hanson screeching in protest]

Why did you (re)-introduce the 'noble' creature type (from homelands) and even errata cards, but never created tribal support for the type during the last 5 years? Feels like much effort for cosmetics, without any mechanical reason and gameplay value.

There are a lot of creature types, but we do a lot of typal effects, and eventually most creature types will have their day.

[fantastickkay]

From Entertainment Weekly, July 1997.

[0nemorestranger]

completely respect y'alls commitment to aus and more modern time periods but to me these guys just don't exist past 1989 and even THAT is a stretch

[superblysubpar]

steve harrington x you

2,390 words

warnings: nothing much, steve's got shaved hair as per the request for today, some kissing, some ednancy/dad eddie, you're eddie's best friend

A/N: thanks so much for your patience as I work on getting all of these posted that were missed. I hope you enjoy them, it's been great to get back into writing after a couple of really hectic weeks

a blurb for the "Trick or Treat, Freak?" event

Your lips purse around the neon green straw as your hips sway in time to Hanson booming out of the shitty speakers. The soles of your boots like velcro against the sticky cement while thuds of dart meeting board echo as you pass. Rum and cherry sweet on your tongue and warming you from the inside out as you look up and down the crowded bar.

A blue polished finger startles you as it crosses your vision and pokes your forehead.

“Dude, relax,” Robin laughs, leaning against the old wood top. Despite already having a drink in her hand, she hasn’t strayed far from the bar tonight. The bartender in a jersey serving up cocktails and beers with a red lipped smile and a musical laugh to blame you were sure. “He’ll be here. He’s probably just stuck in traffic. Or they stopped at their hotel before coming.”

“Right,” you blow a breath out of your nose and look over at the stairs that led to the bouncer, “Yeah, you’re right.”

Robin’s blue eyes sparkle under glittered lids, a dimple forming on her freckled cheek. “Hold on, can you say that one more time, a little louder? Where’s Steve, I need him to hear this.”

Your eyes roll just as brown fizzy soda sloshes over the side of your cup before it met your lips, narrowly avoiding a landing place down the front of your shirt as hands squeeze at your ribs, startling you with an accompanied:

“Boo!”

“Eddie!” The shriek loud and drawing the attention of most of the bar as you turn to face the menace behind your jump scare. You swat at your best friend’s chest. “Asshole.”

Eddie’s cheeks dimple, shorter curls bouncing across his forehead as he knocks a ringed knuckle under your chin. “I missed you too.”

Your arms wrap around his waist, his around your back in a tight squeeze, the kind of hug only old friends can share.

“I did miss you,” you murmur, drawing back to take in all the ways he’d changed and all the ways he hadn’t. He still had a faded band tee, the laundry detergent clinging to it new but mixed nicely with the familiar spice of his cologne. Ripped holes in the knees of well worn black jeans, but his hair shorter, broader shoulders. A smile that still lit up any room though you could see the sleep and stress heavy under his eyes. “You look like crap.”

Eddie rolls his eyes as he squeezes Robin and kisses her temple, murmuring something about scoring the digits of the cutie behind the bar yet, before he turns to you with a theatrical pout of his lips.

“You know, that’s a real shitty thing to say to your best friend who you haven’t seen in months that you know is dealing with a three year old who doesn’t understand the concept of quiet time when the baby is napping.”

Your snort is only slightly muffled into the rim of your cup, “Oh my god, you’re such an old man.”

Eddie grabs a beer from Robin’s hand offering it up without looking away from the bartender chatting with her. He smiles at them, then you again as you drop the act and tug on his wrist and whine, “Where’s the pictures I was promised? Does Amelia know how to say her favorite Aunt’s name yet?”

He laughs, “Not yet. Although yesterday she said ‘tuc’ when a big school bus drove by, so like, no big deal, but my baby’s a genius.” He takes a sip, shrugging his shoulders like it was a joke, but you know it’s not. He nods his head towards the entrance, “Nance has the pictures.”

“She didn’t come in with you?” Your frown disappears and melts into a smile when you see her talking animatedly with her hands while descending the stairs.

“Speak of the devil,” Eddie looks around and leans down to whisper in your ear, timing perfect with the wrinkled nose of Nancy as she looks around the shitty dive bar, “She’s gonna hate this place.”

Your smile widens as Nancy mumbles something to the man entering with her, honeyed eyes roaming over the crowd as he laughs at whatever she said. Steve’s still dressed in his work clothes, a blue sweater and a gray peacoat, dark wash jeans that fit him just right and have you distracted already.

Eddie whistles, nudging your shoulder. “Christ babe, these shoes are new and here you are drooling all over them. I get enough of that at home.”

Your hand pinches his side, his yelp drawing the attention of his wife and Steve. He smiles at you, hand waving a little before it adjusts the black cap still sitting on his head.

Eddie sighs deeply next to your ear and grumbles, “Can you two just fucking, like, do the damn thing already? My god, just go up and-“

“Nancy!” Your yell overly loud and too enthusiastic as you dig a heel into Eddie’s toes and he snorts a half laugh, half grunt of pain.

Your arms envelope her and the two of you rock back and forth and squeal like girls after a Summer break of not seeing each other every day of school. Over Nancy’s shoulder, Steve places a large hand on the back of Robin’s shoulder and whispers something in her ear. She pokes at his beanie that he quickly tugs down further with a scowl. A paranoid glance around before his gaze meets yours and a timid smile forms on his lips before he turns back to Robin.

Nancy’s quick to whip out the photos from her little clutch when you ask and Robin squeals, the pair of you look over her shoulder and coo at their perfect kids. Brown curls and bright blue eyes and dimples worthy of her dad smile up at you in a photo of their toddler holding up a drawing she made.

“Oh shit,” Eddie pats at his jeans, “Beth told me…” he frowns as he searches his pockets, “Sweetheart, where’d-“

Nancy’s already pulling something out of her purse, a neatly folded triangle with your name written in Nancy’s neat penmanship, with a crudely drawn heart around it.

“For me?” You swoon as you grab it and hold the little piece up to your chest when Robin frowns.

“Wow, they’re so not getting good Christmas presents from Aunt Rob-“

Nancy holds up another triangle, cutting her off.

“They can have whatever they want. Do hey have college funds set up yet?”

Nancy and Eddie laugh, a puzzle piece fitting with another as his arms wrap around her waist and her hand reaches up and caresses his chin that hooks over his shoulder.

He kisses her neck, “Want your usual?”

“Yes please,” she kisses his temple before he untangles his arms, squeezing her hips gently before he heads over to the bar.

The interaction makes something in your chest ache, something deep inside of you yearning for a connection that just works like they do. Knowing you don’t need it, but it’d be nice to have someone grab your usual, to hold and ground you when life gets a little crazy.

Nancy’s whisper is all knowing, her blue eyes cutting into yours just as much. “It’ll happen.”

“What?” Something stuck in your throat that you clear away, thumbs brushing over your drawing as you avoid her stare.

“I’m just saying it’ll happen, I know it sucks waiting for your person, but they’re probably closer than you think.”

The searching glance up isn’t intentional, but you’re startled to find Steve staring at you already. Your body flushes when he smiles at you from the bar next to Eddie.

“Oh,” Robin laughs, tucking her drawing into her lavender blazer pocket, “They’re close alright.”

Nancy looks at her then you, finding you glaring at Robin. Your mouth opens to tell her to shut hers, when a drink appears in front of you.

You’re expecting to see silver rings around the cup, but all you find is a gold class band and you swallow, looking up to see Steve offering it to you.

“Extra cherries, right?”

The words come out of plush pink lips surrounded by a dusting of dark scruff and it may as well have been a question asking you to take off your underwear from the way your body heats up.

“Ye-yeah,” you stumble over the word as your fingers meet his, “Thanks.”

“Oh,” Nancy hums, “That is close.”

“Told ya,” Robin snickers into her cup.

“What?” Steve blinks at them, gold and green disappearing with fluttering lashes each time he does.

Nancy points at the bar, “Oh, Eddie, what’s? Yup.”

She disappears quickly with her obvious fake call from Eddie.

Robin doesn’t even attempt to be subtle, she just smiles at Steve, winks at you, and turns away.

Steve watches her go with a frown, then looks at you. “Do I wanna know-“

“No,” you shake your head, tight smile. It warps into a real one when you look down at the piece of paper though. You hold up your drawing, “Did you see what Beth made me?”

He smiles at the drawing that is so clearly you and her on a face time phone call, “Wow, a real Beth Munson artwork. I’m jealous. I must have it. What’s your price?”

Your laugh is effortless around Steve, and you hold it close to your chest, playing along. “Sorry sir, this item is not for sale. Nothing you offer could ever convince me to part with it.”

The freckles next to Steve’s eyes disappear when his smile makes the laugh lines there crease. His two on his cheek lift as he grabs at your elbow, gently nudging you over to the wall to avoid a group of rowdy boys entering the bar. He has to lean in when they all whoop and whistle, hitting backs and shouting about teams winning. His lips brush your ear with each word.

“Everything is for sale. Come on, name it. Anything you want, it’s yours.”

The words invite a shiver to trickle down your spine, something loosening in your shoulders, like someone cracked an egg on the top of your head and it’s leaking into every nerve you have. Your brain feels fuzzy from the way he smiles. Your tongue too heavy in your mouth, but somehow you swallow down butterflies that seek to escape through your throat and say:

“How about a date?”

Steve’s hand does a poor job of hiding his smile, his chin dips down in defeat, but he clears his throat. His eyes melt like brown sugar and butter right in front of you as they hold your stare. “Sure, but I was already going to take you on one, so I feel like I’m practically stealing this original, one of a kind artwork. Anything else you want?”

His head tilts with the question, and the tip of his shoes tap yours, a hand squeezes at your waist, grounding you as the room spins from how dizzy his lips being so close to yours is making you feel.

“I’m,” you suck in a breath as you lean in, the Backstreet Boys crooning overhead in an ironic soundtrack to the moment as you shake your head, “I can’t think of anything. What’d you have in mind?”

Steve’s hand moves from your hip to your lower back, gently nudging you closer. His adam’s apple bobs before he asks, “A kiss?”

Your answer is a nod that bumps your already too close lips together. Steve catches your bottom one with his, gently parting your mouth as his hand slides up your spine.

It’s a dizzying kiss, one that makes your stomach flip and your feet press up onto your toes to chase him more. One that melts and flows into more than one kiss, your hand with your drink and drawing resting against his hip while your other clings to his neck. Steve’s nose bumps against yours as he deepens it. Tongue tracing your lips before it meets yours and he’s gasping for a deeper breath against your mouth, but unwilling to part from it.

Your hand slides up the nape of his neck, pushing at the beanie as your smile breaks the kiss when loud cheers echo through the bar. Steve shakes his head no at the sound, smiling too, but still refusing to part from your kiss until your hand pushes under his hat and you gasp.

“No, no, don’t-“ Steve’s already laughing at your look of pure joy, admiring the way your face is brighter and lips shinier from his kissing, so he doesn’t even try to stop you when you rip the hat off.

“Holy shit!” Robin’s voice is louder than anything in the bar when you reveal that Steve’s hair is shaved. “What happened? I mean why?”

Robin, Eddie and Nancy rejoin your group, wide smiles at you that you roll your eyes at. Steve gently takes the cap back from you and puts it back on with a frown.

“I work in an elementary school, what do you think happened?”

“Oh no,” Nancy laughs, covering her smile with fingers polished ballet slipper pink as Eddie shakes his head.

“It looks good,” you murmur, fingers reaching forward with a mind of their own and brushing along the base of the cap behind his ear.

“Yeah?” He asks, leaning in again, smile and eyes only for you as you nod.

His nose bumps yours but he stops just shy of your lips when Robin groans loudly.

“Thank god you’re moving back, I don’t think I could stomach this alone.”

Your head whips over to the trio, Nancy and Eddie smiling at your shocked expression.

Eddie waves his hands next to his sides like he’s a magician saying ‘ta-da’.

“Surprise!”

Your drink spills to the ground as you leap towards them both, shouting about how excited you are as you all hug and cry and you pester them with accusations and too many questions on the level of an interrogation.

Steve’s hand rests on your lower back the whole time, thumb soothing brushes up and down your spine. Eventually he whispers something about grabbing you another drink before he kisses your cheek and disappears with a promise of being right back.

[mousathe14]

So yeah, Red Tornado had been here this entire time and Bart is going to quickly regret his insolence.

You know, back when i researched him when he first showed up on Justice League Unlimited I assumed Red Tornado was a robot, but it turns out he’s a lot more complicated than that?

He’s some kind of wind spirit inhabiting a robot body? It’s weird, but that’s comics for you.

The weirdest part that I found out only a few days ago is that he is not the first Red Tornado. The first was a lady everyone called Ma Hunkel who was a big strong lady with a pot on her head.

Is Hanson actually that bad or is this just a joke. Anyone got a recommendations? May ad well find out if they actually suck or not.

Ah yes, the Ego, Superego, and Id, one of the few things coming out of Freud that actually seems interesting and not a load of weird sexual bollocks.

Or if nothing else it’s great for initial character dynamic design.

I do love that Tim here must be pointed out as the only one with a normal boyhood and that normal boyhood is mostly not giving their kid an appropriate amount of attention from relatively rich parents followed by becoming Batman and Robin’s most dedicated stalker.

Imagine being annoyed so much by other people it drags you out of your clinical depression just so you can tell you hate them.

The Red Tornado regaining his humanity out of irritation was mostly what I wanted to post, but I wanted to at least build the context.

[fallauween]

By Robin Constable Hanson

[gcu-sovereign]

I'm not even saying Big Yud is merely over 9000 hornier and more knowledgeable in the ways fetishistic, Robin is just below the bar.

Listening to early seasons of Minds Almost Meeting is ample proof to this

if robin hanson was a woman it would be over for me. if there was a woman who was robin hanson nothing could save me. unsalvagable

[max1461]

I didn't know rationalism of the online rationalists was not the same as the one that has the Wikipedia article. When I first saw the term on Tumblr I went to that article and skimmed it and decided I don't really get what those bloggers' perspectives are. After your post I now have even less knowledge than I did before.

The following is an oversimplification, so for those who have quibbles with the history here, well, forgive me.

Online rationalism was founded by two guys named Eliezer Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson on the blog LessWrong. Of these two figures Yudkowsky has been much more influential. The ideology that Yudkowsky promoted is roughly as follows:

humans are, relatively soon, likely to develop a superintelligent AI which has the capacity to self-improve by rewriting its own code. This will cause the AI's intelligence to rapidly explode beyond anything we can imagine, a process which rationalists onomatopoetically call "FOOM".

This superintelligent AI, if it could be harnessed and controlled, could cure death, and possibly revive all already-dead humans in a simulated world, leading to a technological utopia in which humans have merged with machines; this is called "the singularity" (the idea of the singularity predates the rationalists, and is a broader transhumanist trope).

However, it is almost certain that a superintelligent AI could not be harnessed and controlled; in fact, if such an AI was created, there is a very high probability that it would end the world (in rationalist jargon this is called an "x-risk"), perhaps usurping all of the accessible matter and energy on earth, then in the solar system, then in the galaxy and beyond in pursuit of its inscrutable goals. Thus, humans have a responsibility to make sure we never create such a superintelligent AI (in a recent op-ed in Time, Yudkowsky went so far as to say that the US should use drone strikes to destroy any datacenter found to be training a large AI model).

The reason that people do not recognize the truths above is because people are too irrational to see them. Therefore, people need to be taught to be more rational, by Yudkowsky via the blog LessWrong. The tenets of being more rational are laid out largely in a series of blog posts known as "The Sequences", later published as a book. The main take-aways are: (1) use Bayes' Theorem all the time to estimate the probability of things, and (2) to eliminate one's various cognitive biases, as outlined in The Sequences.

LessWrong attracted a lot of people who did not agree with Yudkowsky about AI, but who liked the Bayes' Theorem stuff and the commentary on cognitive biases. There is a joke that "anyone who has ever disagreed with Yudkowsky is a rationalist". The people who settled on LessWrong were largely drawn from the milieu of Bay Area tech workers, economics blog enthusiasts, and sci-fi fans. They would come to be known as LessWrongers, rationalists, or aspiring rationals. From this group, two major subgroups worth mentioning were spawned:

First is the Effective Altruists. Effective Altruism, to my knowledge, isn't a strictly LessWronger phenomenon, and has also been influenced majorly by philosophers like Peter Singer. However, they have been so intertwined with LessWrongers throughout their history that I think they are worth mentioning as essentially an offshoot of rationalism.

Effective Altruists believe that, in order to do the most good in the world, one should use one's money in a way that does the maximum amount of good per dollar. Rather than e.g. donating to charities willy-nilly based on what feels important, one should use quantitative methods to estimate how much impact each dollar is making, and donate in a way which maximizes that. The Effective Altruists are split along one main ideological line: neartermism vs. longtermism. The neartermists are basically focused on what we would traditionally think of as charitable activities: fighting disease, giving people clean water, that kind of stuff. I think neartermist Effective Altruism is pretty sensible, and I think they've done a lot of good work evaluating charities and so on. GiveWill is an essentially neartermist Effective Altruist organization, and I think their activities are very worth supporting.

The longtermists, on the other hand, are focused on "the long-term interests of humanity". They are, well, in my opinion, basically a bunch of people trying to turn their sci-fi fantasies into a reality. They are often very worried about AI x-risk, like Yudkowsky, and they're often pro-singularity, and sometimes pro-eugenics, and a bunch of other stuff. Remember Sam Bankman-Fried, the guy who committed the largest act of financial fraud in human history? Well, he was an Effective Altruist with some longertermist sympathies. Some of the money that he stole he actually gave to worthwhile charities, but some of it he used on stupid longtermist sci-fi fantasy shit. His girlfriend Caroline Ellison, who helped him do a bunch of that fraud, was a member of rationalist tumblr. Some of my mutuals were mutuals with her.

The other major group spawned out of LessWrong were the Neoreactionaries, or NRx. These guys, too, weren't a purely LessWronger phenomenon; they were also majorly influenced by people such as the philosopher Nick Land (former student of Baudrillard, who took a far-right turn in the 2000s and started advocating for "hyper-racism") and blogger Curtis Yarvin a.k.a. "Mencius Moldbug". These guys are a rag-tag group of authoritarians, eugenicists, and racists, who are interested in rationality insofar as they view it as a path that leads to their desired sci-fi-inflected far-right future.

Oh, right, last but not least I should define the term "rat-adj". It means "rationalist-adjacent". Uh. So, I was never a LessWronger, and as I think my description makes clear, I find like 90% of this rationalist stuff either goofy or actively harmful. But I have, somehow, ended up basically acquainted with a bunch of people formerly or presently part of the LessWrong milieu, and in light of this I am what one calls "rationalist-adjacent". I talk to various rationalist bloggers somewhat often. And most of them are much more normal than all this would suggest, part of the rationalist discursive sphere but not really believers in the imminent AI apocalypse. Uh. So, there you go.