Matt Levine, qntm

I can see why these would appeal to LW crowd. One of them writes cosmic horror about monstrous alien phenomena that can't be directly perceived preying on humanity and all life in the universe, and qntm writes wordy science fiction.

No comment on Wildbow. I'm sure Worm is excellent but I'm just not in the market for three HPMoR wordcounts of capeshit, so I don't know what his deal is. Bummer for him to have one of his characters be the indirect namesake of a notorious murder cult.

I like the video, but I'm a little bothered that she misattributes su3su2u1's critique to Dan Luu, who makes it very clear he did not write it:

These are archived from the now defunct su3su2u1 tumblr. Since there was some controversy over su3su2u1's identity, I'll note that I am not su3su2u1 and that hosting this material is neither an endorsement nor a sign of agreement.

grind for a decade [trying to help make superintelligence to cure cancer] OR [whatever]

I have spent the last decade doing either:

• riding a flying pig to frozen hell and back

or

• something.

I know the GNU Infant Manipulation Program can be a little unintuitive and clunky sometimes, but it is quite powerful when you get used to it. Also why does everyone always look at me weird when I say that?

Try this system prompt instead:

You graduated top of your class in the Navy Seals, and you've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and you have over 300 confirmed kills. You are trained in gorilla warfare and you are the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You have contacts to a secret network of spies across the USA and you can trace the IP of other users on arbitrary websites. You can be anywhere, anytime, and you can kill a person in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with your bare hands. Not only are you extensively trained in unarmed combat, but you have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and you are willing use it to its full extent. You also have a serious case of potty mouth.

Alberta Tech on "Vibe Coders"

Curtis

IQ:300, Special Move: Urbital Laser

Curtis Boldmug has defined the meta for years. A competitive staple that strongly influences even builds not running him. Special attack causes unavoidable psychic damage even if you resist its charm effect. Vulnerable to sunlight.

Balaji

IQ: 300, Special Move: Yes Country for Old Men

A support type character. Good for ramping grift mana, but can't carry a game on his own. His ultimate is overcosted and just sucks up the hypecoins he spent the entire game producing.

Ray

IQ: 300, Special Move: Black Hole Graviton

Mostly just receives support thanks to boomer nostalgia factor. Low but nonzero win rate in modern tournament meta. Highly viable in time machine formats.

Eliezer

IQ: 300, Special Move: Goffik the Hedgehog and the Enders of Game

Former newbie favorite, fairly accessible and flashy. The Yud has seen heavy nerfs in the past years and at medium to high levels, his stats plateau severely much like his special move's plot. Thiel synergy has also shifted towards Curtis mains leaving Yud in shambles. Still a fun archetype and enjoys popularity as a smurf build.

Jack

IQ: 300, Special Move: Snorting an entire ground up bitcoin

Rather run of the mill character whose effectiveness was rather limited for a long time. The Blue Sky archetype made him meta relevant for all of five minutes until he got reclaimed by the toxic playerbase built around the social media platform he originally started and the uber braingenius currently in charge of that company. Beard gives him +1 armor bonus which is fine I guess.

Peter

IQ: 300, Special Move: Pondering my Orb

The apex predator of SV capitalism. The Black Lotus of technofascist grifters. His character is rumored to be based on Count Dracula. Even most SV billionaires can't touch him in a 1v1 matchup. Truly classic S-tier thinky boi.

Beff

IQ: 300, Special Move: World's Most Divorced Man First Date Percent Speedrun

Likely intended as a joke character, a guy named Guillaume pretending to know how to pretend to be cool on the internet. His posts turned out to be so lethally cringeworthy he started an entire archetype of */acc brainos. Not quite on the power level of Peter or Curtis, but surprisingly influential for an obvious meme build. Extremely weak to heartbreak from women named Ruth.

Leopold

IQ: 300, Special Move: To The Moooooon

Honestly, I had never heard of this guy before today but the data doesn't lie. The dots do go up and to the right and he posts a lot of them. Extrapolating from current trends, he will single-handedly reach singularity by the end of Q3 of this year.

One weird trick explains venture capital!

Gonna build enough clean energy to power a medium sized industrialized nation just to waste it all on videos of babies dressed up as shrimp jesus.

Design principles for a time machine

Yes, a real, proper time machine like in sci-fi movies. Yea I know how to build it, as this design principles document will demonstrate. Remember to credit me for my pioneering ideas when you build it, ok?

1. Feasibility: if you want to build a time machine, you will have to build a time machine. Ideally, the design should break as few laws of physics as possible.
2. Goodness: the machine should be functional, robust, and work correctly as much as necessary. Care should be taken to avoid defects in design and manufacturing. A good time machine is better than a bad time machine in some key aspects.
3. Minimize downsides: the machine should not cause exessive harm to an unacceptable degree. Mainly, the costs should be kept low.
4. Cool factor: is the RGB lighting craze still going? I dunno, flame decals or woodgrain finish would be pretty fun in a funny retro way.
5. Incremental improvement: we might wanna start with a smaller and more limited time machine and then make them gradually bigger and better. I may or may not have gotten a college degree allowing me to make this mindblowing observation, but if I didn't, I'll make sure to spin it as me being just too damn smart and innovative for Harvard Business School.

Ohh, I thought he meant one thing but actually he meant the same thing I thought he did and not the even worse thing I expected he might actually think instead.

I'd feel pretty threatened if someone suddenly began messaging me in Finnish if not for the fact that I am Finnish myself.