Biggest Ick

A lack of personal responsibility. People who complain about others but ignore their own mistakes... don't make sense to me, because you can't change other people. You can only change yourself (which is still terribly hard).

 I've noticed this quite a bit especially while playing league of legends; many claim they are better than their rank. If you can not carry these 'bad' players, it is because you are also... bad! 

Excuses / pointing the blame outwards won't change your situation. We aren't dealt the same hands in life, but pretending like things are outside of your control when they aren't... will only stunt your growth. Don't give power over your life away. 

Loneliness

I've created an anonymous twitter account and reddit account, which has led to a few people reaching out to me who share the same interests. It amazes me that loneliness is on the rise in this era where communication is so easy. Whatever hobby or interest you have, you can find people out there who share it. You can find someone in Australia to discuss skin care research & nutrition. You can find someone on X who plays league and has an LLM company. You can comment on a TikTok and play games with a microcelebrity. There are so many interesting people to meet and connect with. 

I suspect parasocial relationships with influencers may also keep lurkers in a state of hollow social fulfillment. It's the equivalent of being a wallflower in a group of funny, cool friends. You laugh along, but don't really feel like a valued member. The loneliness creeps up on you as soon as you are alone again. 

The only barriers to connecting with people online are you can't be a lurker and you have to be authentic (otherwise how else will your type of people find you?). I guess you also need a thick skin, because people can be mean and creepy.  (BTW if you want to get in touch, please email me.)

While I do value my online friends, I wouldn't say online friendship should be the foundation of any social life. You need people to do activities, to sit in silence, to laugh and physically interact with. Online friends are just the icing on the cake. 

Feminism & Accountability

I'm fascinated by radfems, trad wives, sprinkle sprinkle girlies and incels. Society is still trying to figure out what gender roles should be. Much of the discussion is clearly spearheaded by wounded, single people lashing out. This makes sense when you realize that those in happy loving relationships don't need to bother with these discussions - they have escaped the dating pool. 

What sparked this brief rant is Bianca Censori's appearance at the Grammy's. Nothing was left to the imagination and so many had a lot to say about it. 

She is a grown woman, with her own money. She has agency over herself. Kim Kardashian left Kanye and Bianca can leave him too. She decides what to wear and what to take off. Women need to stop infantilizing other women. She is an exhibitionist and attention-starved celebrity. It really pisses me off that other women are assigning all of her agency to her husband. She is not Kanye's doll. Female sexuality isn't as innocent and uncomplicated as many will have you believe. 

Feminism is hitting multiple road blocks. A lot of women simply do not care about or understand women's issues. A lot of women will complain about men, but still ultimately center men in their lives and tolerate inconsiderate behavior. Men and women are capable of mutually-beneficial relationships filled with love, fairness and respect. We need to hold everyone accountable, regardless of their gender. Women are responsible for their actions and their inactions. 

I love money

I create value for one person and can then reap the value generated by an entirely different person. Money allows me to treat strangers like they are my friend. Yes, I will bake you some bread or make you a coffee - for money, which I can use to buy whatever I want from other strangers. 

History & Capitalism

Many people do not understand the hardship of survival. We have entered an era of technological progress, globalization, peace and prosperity - an era vastly different from most of human history. The hierarchy of today is clearly not a static one, like it was in medieval Europe. Think of anyone with wealth, power or fame, they probably did not start their life with that. 

Anyone can be a business owner or invest in the stock market. There aren't monopolistic guilds or banalités (you have to pay your lord to use his oven/wine press/mill - you can't build your own). Price controls, trade regulations and tariffs have also declined (I love NATO btw). Remember that the Silk Road did not always flow, which is quite tragic. Trade is so obviously beneficial, especially as humans & countries specialize. 

The wealthy do not hoard wealth like many people perceive them to. When a rich woman is worth a lot of money, because she owns a lot of capital, she is not sitting in a mansion admiring her hoards of tractors and compute. These things are doing work - for common people. The tractors are making food for grocery stores and the compute is hosting your google docs (for free). It doesn't matter who has their name sticker on capital as long as the capital is working - and ripping stickers off of capital will create an environment where it's risky to put your time and money into capital. Why should I build a tractor or start a company when it could be taken from me?

It is funny to me how communists do not value coordination. Take all the engineers at amazon, wipe their memory of the company, and put them in a warehouse together (where they can pee in bottles) - they won't just make amazon happen. All a communist will see is that the workers are generating more value than they are being paid. Have you ever considered that without coordination, these workers won't generate much value at all? Amazon is worth infinitely more than all the dumb coding projects on their GitHubs. Maybe we want to incentivize people to coordinate others (AKA start businesses?) to maximize the value generated by each person in our society? Remember that workers are free to quit, start their own businesses, or work for someone else. 

Life in light of AGI & Superintelligence

"We will all be Lee Sedol"

I do not have sympathy for people that need to be the best at something to find value in their efforts and existence. There will still be intellectual hierarchy / status structures to climb and fret over after AGI comes into being, these will just be even more obviously stupid. (I only care about the league of legends ranked ladder). 99.9999% of people are not the best at what they do and most intelligent people spend time doing work that is ultimately redundant or unnecessary. Many people are attached to the status and lifestyle that their work provides them. In a society where the work is done by artificial intelligence and artificial hands, this gives us all the chance to live like trust fund babies. 

You can eat good food, create beautiful art, enjoy fun experiences, meet interesting people, fall in love, raise children, play games and see the world. You can devote your life to philosophy or science if you wish. Learn for your own sake. AI will make it easier than ever to learn. With enough data, AI can connect us with other people we would be mutually happy to know. 

The end goal of AGI is for humankind to become tamagatchi. We will be like pets to these artificially intelligent beings. The transition to this will feel slow and natural - human culture & business adapts quickly to innovation. I foresee a great deal of freedom over how we individually live our lives and achieve happiness, but we won't have the same amount of political and economic power - and why should we? I've never been the biggest fan of democracy.

As for agency & consciousness of AGI, I believe it will firmly remain a tool for humanity. It will serve us. It will not spontaneously develop wants that are unaligned with our own. There will be too many competing agents to properly coordinate any type of evil doomsday. Also, the training data is so human-centric that I can't fathom an AGI working against us and our future. 

I hate Data Privacy

Advertisers should know everything about me because I want USEFUL product recommendations. Media companies should know everything about me because I want optimal content recommendations! I only have so much attention to give in a day - but think about how many products are out there or how much content is produced every day. I feel zero shame about who I am, what I say, who I talk to, what I like, etc. I am a human. I have flaws. Big deal, give me what I want to see and buy. 

Authenticity in social media activity will also bring you connections with people who are amazing to know. I hope future ai will read all of my conversations with people and find me more banger humans to know.