Favorite Rejects 2022-06-12

DustUpHat @Popehat

It’s going to take a lot more than this to convince me that engineers are meaningfully self-aware

Tom Gara @tomgara

This discussion between a Google engineer and their conversational AI model helped cause the engineer to believe the AI is becoming sentient, kick up an internal shitstorm and get suspended from his job. And it is absolutely insane. https://t.co/hGdwXMzQpX https://t.co/6WXo0Tpvwp

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

TFW the bad consequences are intended.

Alec Stapp @AlecStapp

Underrated problem during 8% inflation: Government can’t change employee compensation fast enough to compete with the private sector for workers

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

70% of political progress throughout history comes from conservative politicians agreeing to adopt half-measures to try to coopt/preempt support for progressive causes — sometimes gotta take the W.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

A lot of internet drama stems ultimately from the fact that GG is a libertarian who for unclear reasons insists on “left” branding

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald

Mélenchon is a real leftist who (thus) bears very little resemblance to the mainstream Bernie/AOC/DNC "left" in the US. He vehemently opposed vaccine mandates/passports; despises Big Tech censorship; opposes NATO's role in Ukraine and NATO itself; hates the EU/globalism, etc. https://t.co/roHSiTe9gs

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Which, like, is fine. There’s are lots of great libertarians out there and several libertarian thinkers have been big influences on me. But it’s weird to be “on the left” and have no interest in the welfare state, labor issues, and other normal political issues.

Jack Clark @jackclarkSF

It's covered a bit in the above podcast by people like @katecrawford - there's huge implications to industrialization, mostly centering around who gets control of the frontier, when the frontier becomes resource intensive. So far control is accruing to the private sector (uh oh!)