on the topic of bunk wiki articles, what is this lmao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_of_astronomical_suffering
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2025
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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.
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Was checking out the QOI image format and the politics of the dev and found that he is pretty comfortable around the ladybird people. (sigh) Also the r slur on twitter.
Really amazing that such a simple format achieves PNG sizes and faster encoding speeds. 1-page specification, though it's more like 2 with a bit bigger text, for bragging rights.
Wait Ladybird is anti-woke? Sigh am I going to have to make my own browser?
(I know I know I'm a lot better about posting about wanting to do cool stuff than actually doing it, hazard of having a full time job)
Dominic Szablewski also founded the German image board pr0gramm where he is known under the name cha0s. It's similar to 4chan in many ways. That he enjoys the Ladybird crowd isn't surprising.
Another response to Ptacek. "Vibe coding as contempt for materiality" part is particularly good.
give this its own post
Concurring with everyone else that this is a 10/10 read. This article lays out a very reasonable theory that explains why tech maniacs are the way that they are.
Probably worth a thread in its own right. I find the "contempt" framing to be particularly powerful. Contempt as illustrated herein is the necessary shadow of the relentlessly positivist "you can do/be anything!" cultural messaging that accompanied the rise of the current tech industry. (I'm tempted to use Neil Postman's term "technopoly," but I feel the need to reread his book at least once more before appropriating it wholesale into these discussions.) The positivism is the seed that drives people to take an aggressively technical approach to reality, and contempt is one possible response to reality imposing constraints through technical limitations. Not necessarily one that I have ever chosen myself, but I see now that much of what we discuss here comes from people who have.
Overall I think this essay is going to be a bedrock reference for a lot of people going forward.
That is the kind of writing that absolutely anyone can get a thing out of. Will cause me to introspect.
We were joking about this last week if memory serves, but at least one person out there has started a rough aggregator of different sources of pre-AI internet dumps.
It's all gotta be in the models by now, but it's gonna be a cool resource for something, right?
It’s all gotta be in the models by now, but it’s gonna be a cool resource for something, right?
It'll also be helpful for helping the 'Net recover from the slop-nami once AI finally dies.
Update from Brian Merchant: The first edition of AI Killed My Job has just dropped
✨The Vibe✨ is indeed getting increasingly depressing at work.
It's also killing my parents' freelance translation business, there is still money in live interpreting, and prestige stuff or highly technical accuracy very obviously matters stuff, but a lot of stuff is drying up.
Woke: pile driving AI advocates
Bespoke: pounding prediction market peddlers
Apparently Jan Marsalek worked for the GRU. Trashfuture is going to feast:
AI powered lie detectors spotted in the wild - https://pimagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/100.png => https://eyecanknow.com/
Brought to you by researchers at the University of Utah. smh.
Dan McQuillian just dropped the text of a seminar he gave: The role of the University is to resist AI
Last Week Tonight's rant of the week is about AI slop. A Youtube video is available here. Their presentation is sufficiently down-to-earth to be sharable with parents and extended family, focusing on fake viral videos spreading via Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest; and dissecting several examples of slop in order to help inoculate the audience.
Starting this off with Baldur Bjarnason sneering at his fellow techies for their "reading" of Dante's Inferno:
Reading through my feed reader and seeing tech dilettantes “doing” Dante in a week and change, I’m reminded of the time in university when we spent half a semester discussing Dante’s Divine Comedy, followed by tracing it’s impact and influence over the centuries
I don’t think these assholes even bother to read their footnotes, and their writing all sounds like it comes from ChatGPT. Naturally so, because I believe them when they claim they don’t use it for writing. They’re just genuinely that dull
At least read the footnotes FFS
If they were reading Dante for pleasure, that’d be different—genuinely awesome, even. But all of this is framed as doing the entirety of “humanities” in the space of a few weeks.
They'd have a better chance convincing techbros to do a serious literary analysis of the video game.
There is a reason they picked books to speedrun and not games, speedrunning games takes skill.
Not to cast aspersions, I thought the issue rocked as a teen and re-bought a copy about 20 years ago.
But it's still "based on a story by Dante Allighieri" rather than being the real stuff.
PZ Myers boosted the pivot-to-ai piece on veo3: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/06/23/so-much-effort-spiraling-down-the-drain-of-ai/
Following up on the thread that spawned from my comment yesterday:
https://awful.systems/comment/7777035
(I'm in vacation mode and forgot it was late on Sunday)
I wonder if Habryka, the LWer who posted both there and on Xhitter that "someone should do something about this troublesome page" realized that there would be less pushback if he'd simply coordinated in the background and got the edits in place without forewarning others. Was it intentional to try to pick a fight with Wikipedians?
Wow, this is shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_alignment
Edit: I have been informed that the correct statement in line with Wikipedia's policies is WP:WOWTHISISSHIT
Rather than trying to participate in the "article for deletion" dispute with the most pedantic nerds on Earth (complimentary) and the most pedantic nerds on Earth (derogatory), I will content myself with pointing and laughing at the citation to Scientific Reports, aka "we have Nature at home"
The whole list of "improved" sources is a fascinating catalogue of preprints, pop sci(-fi) schlock, and credible-sounding vanity publishers. And even most of those appear to reference "inner alignment" as a small part of some larger things, which I would expect to merit something like a couple sentences in other articles. Ideally ones that start with "so there's this one weird cult that believes..."
I'm still allowed to dream, right?
I poked around the search results being pointed to, saw a Ray Kurzweil book and realized that none of these people are worth taking seriously. My condolences to anyone who tries to explain the problems with the "improved" sources on offer.
The wikipedia talk page is some solid sneering material. It's like Habryka and HandofLixue can't imagine any legitimate reason why Wikipedia has the norms it does, and they can't imagine how a neutral Wikipedian could come to write that article about lesswrong.
Eigenbra accurately calling them out...
"I also didn't call for any particular edits". You literally pointed to two sentences that you wanted edited.
Your twitter post also goes against Wikipedia practices by casting WP:ASPERSIONS. I can't speak for any of the other editors, but I can say I have never read nor edited RationalWiki, so you might be a little paranoid in that regard.
As to your question:
Was it intentional to try to pick a fight with Wikipedians?
It seems to be ignorance on Habyrka's part, but judging by the talk page, instead of acknowledging their ignorance of Wikipedia's reasonable policies, they seem to be doubling down.
Amazing how both accounts refuse to directly answer the 'are you involved in LW/SSC' question, but work around that question so much (and get so defensive) that they are very suspicious.
Habryka runs the fucking site
Lol ow haha, jesus, admitting he is the lw sysadmin might have been nice.
Following up because the talk page keeps providing good material..
Hand of Lixue keeps trying to throw around the Wikipedia rules like the other editors haven't seen people try to weaponize the rules to push their views many times before.
Particularly for the unflattering descriptions I included, I made sure they reflect the general view in multiple sources, which is why they might have multiple citations attached. Unfortunately, that has now led to complaints about overcitation from @Hand of Lixue. You can't win with some people...
Looking back on the original lesswrong ~~brigade organizing~~ discussion of how to improve the wikipedia article, someone tried explaining to Habyrka the rules then and they were dismissive.
I don’t think it counts as canvassing in the relevant sense, as I didn’t express any specific opinion on how the article should be edited.
Yes Habyrka, because you clearly have such a good understanding of the Wikipedia rules and norms...
Also, heavily downvoted on the lesswrong discussion is someone suggesting Wikipedia is irrelevant because LLMs will soon be the standard for "access to ground truth". I guess even lesswrong knows that is bullshit.
Adding onto this chain of thought, does anyone else think the talk page's second top-level comment from non-existent user "habryka" is a bit odd? Especially since after Eigenbra gives it a standard Wikipedian (i.e. unbearably jargon-ridden and a bit pedantic but entirely accurate and reasonable in its substance) reply, new user HandofLixue comes in with:
ABOUT ME You seem to have me confused with Habryka - I did not make any Twitter post about this. Nonetheless, you have reverted MY edits...
Kinda reads like they're the same person? I mean Habryka is also active further down the thread so this is almost certainly just my tinfoil hat being too tight and cutting off circulation and/or reading this unfold in bits and pieces rather than putting it all together.
I think they're different people but may be in communication out of band.
edit a search for "HandofLixue" on Google only gives one hit, an old profile on LessWrong now renamed to "The Dao of Bayes":
Because of course.
Or was it a consequence of the fact that capital-R Rationalists just don't shut up?
Habryka doesn't really know how not to start fights
Maybe instead of worrying about obscure wiki pages, Habryka should reflect why a linkpost titled Racial Dating Preferences and Sexual Racism is on the front page of his precious community now, with 48 karma and 22 comments.
You know, just this once, I am willing to see the "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat" label and be content to leave the bag closed.
Is it praxis when you put theory into inaction?