this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
12 points (92.9% liked)

TechTakes

2605 readers
77 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
 

Want to wade into the rainbow-ridden surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid.

Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this, and happy 4th July in advance.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

And FDT asks: what action would my algorithm outputting make me expect to be the richest if it was settled at the start of time?

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Well you see, the acausalrobotgod actually hates dealing with assholes tying themselves in knots trying to predict its predictions, so actually you really are better off with CDT if you don't want to get 3^^^3 dust specks in your eyes for all eternity.

More seriously, once you start positing beings that can perfectly predict you and reward/punish various decision theories you can basically rationalize any decision theory.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 8 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (2 children)

FDT is a largely half-assed^1^ attempt at working backwards from "the timeless multidimensional robot god can't blackmail me from the future if I've already made up my mind about stuff, very strongly like" into something more formalistic so Yud can pretend to address roko's basilisk without acknowledging it.

I think there's also some "here's how two robot gods who can perfectly emulate each other might work things out" sprinkled in, but worse than it sounds.

  1. They never got back to the peer reviewers
[–] scruiser@awful.systems 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

here’s how two robot gods who can perfectly emulate each other might work things out

Just gotta solve the halting problem, no biggie for a superintelligence or Eliezer.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

he can pretend to address roko’s basilisk without acknowledging it.

Fun how hard they have to work to show both that it is not a thing that is taken seriously and it is a risk. And how much easier it is when you go 'yeah, that is silly, high intelligence isn't magic'. Of course the latter stance also means there is no AI god who will resurrect the dead.