14
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
14 points (93.8% liked)
TechTakes
2642 readers
37 users here now
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Lesswronger argues skynet might still be a decade away... because they'd rather have the eugenics wars instead: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iQzxxgJXXaAQjq7Jz/faq-isn-t-agi-coming-too-soon-for-reprogenetics-to-help
Comments are utterly mired in jargon
I don't think the term "FOOM" as ever been explicitely defined, it's just verbal tic/shorthand for "intelligence explosion". How can something explode slowly???
also nice save defining "AGI == humanity" => goal reached
I vaguely remember someone saying the term “foom” came from the sound of something blowing up/expanding quickly, could be wrong on that tho
But yeah “fooming slowly” is not fooming. That’s just it going slow
I mainly understand "foom" as a sound effect onomatopoeia from comic books. Which is totally appropriate given the foundational texts of LW
A common game along these lines I've seen: define the singularity as knowledge-work inventions allowing for more inventions. Thus we've been in the singularity since the invention of the ~~printing press~~ ~~writing~~ language.
why do they keep calling it *genics, as if everyone doesn't immediately understand what you mean
Well you see, if they used a real technical term for an existing genetics technique or technology, their fantasy might be limited by the limits of reality, so instead they user complicated jargon terms to signal they are talking about ~~fantasy~~ "near future" techniques and technologies.
They have a clause for "Most adult HIA methods (anything involving brain surgery or gene editing) would probably be somewhat hard to scale up a lot; some may be quite easy to scale up (e.g. non-editing brain drugs)."
Something something used surgical equipment in Ziz' van, something something they do like their pills.
Alpha is an investing term (whatever performance you can't explain by the market cycle and known mathematical properties of specific stocks). I feel so tired.
Stealing technical terms from other fields to make their fantasies feel more real.