That was the party line in the American foreign-policy crowd since winter 2021/2022. They thought that if the ‘great power’ Russia invaded, Ukraine would fall. So Burja’s tweet was not even original, just the same thing any 23-year-old staffer in a new suit was writing.
Decker is a GMU Econ PhD student getting distracted by Twitter and Aella. I don’t think he has figured out that for a nerdy dude, “economist/quant” is a much better career path than “social media provocateur” (so delete X, get your PhD, sign on with a financial-services company, and frolic with sex workers on your own time).
Edit / he dropped out of his PhD program but wants to start a new one at Cambridge. I would not bet that he becomes Dr. Decker. He also has a date-me Google Doc.
He is a successful pulp writer and pop nonfiction writer and fundraiser, and women like him, but he does not seem like a riveting speaker. In some ways his withdrawal to Twitter and Washington State makes it easier for fans to imagine that he is whatever they need.
He cites Samo Burja and Nicholas Decker? And Cremieux is the twitter account he cites second most often, with Richard Hanania in 4th place?
Samo Burja (“How Roman Emperors Handled the Succession Problem”), SlateScott, and POTUS have all expressed interest in Herbert Hoover. Is this part of a broader online right thing in the USA?
I think Yud does not want the responsibility. LessWrong and Effective Altruism attracted so many people, and he discovered that trying to manage the communities was too much work, so he just tweets and publishes fanfic. This is convenient for his fans because they can pick and chose which of his ideas are the Real Yud Thought.
In a quick DuckDuckGo I can’t find any site that claims Samo Burja has a degree.
His concept of live player is just another way of saying that most people are NPCs. The manuscript appears to call Elon Musk an engineer which is like calling Cheops an architect (alternatively, Musk must “fundamentally understand engineering”).
Samo Burja of Leverage Research and Palladium Magazine is trying to pivot to respectability https://samoburja.com/ He also has a Substack blog. People call him a sociologist and a political scirentist but he seems (echo me) entirely self-published except for a few opinion pieces and his highest educational credential is “studied at the University of Ljubljana.” The Long Now Foundation gave him money which is disappointing.
The author characterizes EA as being more “businesslike and professional” than LW, then spends the article talking about how their plans all hinge on getting a rich patron.
The image of the beautiful gardens floored with Astroturf is sad.
I don’t know if the prosecution will say the accused talked her friends into this, or her friends talked her into it. Some people think Ziz talked someone else into taking their own life. Either story will be horrid.
The killings of outsiders remind me of the Symbionese Liberation Army because they don’t even follow from the ideology, just young people talking themselves into attacking their parents, their landlord, and the cops. I think the only reason Ziz and friends did not try armed robbery was that it does not pay any more.
On Old! SneerClub, the Zizian whose parents were murdered in their home has been charged with the killing. The story is horrid so I will not link. I just wanted to make fun of cranks not stare at horrors.
And these people know that crypto and GameStop and their friends’ startups did not keep growing rapidly forever. They know that just because donations to EA had been rapidly growing they did not continue to accelerate. They have friends who covered the logistic function / sigmoid at Stanford. Another Californian had a witticism about the trouble getting someone to understand something when he is paid to misunderstand.
Scott Alexander funded a prediction-market startup which uses points not dollars. I think many of our friends lack the ovaries to bet significant numbers of real dollars on Kalshi or Polymarket.
I think that backwards (like 1950s and earlier) views of autism are common in American psychiatry, but would love to hear more about his ideas from someone with relevant training. AFAIK no peer has ever commented on his biomedical blogging, like experts have commented on his eugenics promotion and cozy relationship with white supremacists and neoreactionaries. He never seems to have written for any professional venue either.
I think magazines like Liberal Currents, for a generally politically and culturally engaged white-collar audience, have been like this since they were printed on rag paper. The only difference between it and fandom drama is that the participants can rationalize it in fancier language.
I don’t understand the American social media and Old Media practice of everyone talking about some representative or candidate for the legislature. The only people who should be talking about a candidate for a district in New York State live in New York State.
The three American ratings agencies all decided that SpaceX bonds meet the minimum standards to be investment grade. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-gets-investment-grade-ratings-with-stable-outlook-top-agencies-2026-06-18/ I don’t own any American bonds and many people have a ‘government bonds only’ policy for reasons.
The moderators don’t exist. Sole moderator Oliver Habryka hasn’t commented on Reddit in 3 years, and is extremely busy with vastly more important things like AI safety, Lighthaven, and the actual LessWrong. Spammers continue indefinitely for months until, presumably, they earn a site-wide ban.
The guy who objects to delegating? I guess he decided that nobody on a forum can handle the responsibility of moderation?
I also don’t get it because they already hate pre-social-media institutions, so why are they still angry that American journalists were bad at transmitting public health science at the beginning of COVID? Even if you believe in a COVID lab leak, the United States broke the global public health response while countries in East Asia and the South Pacific showed what to do. There are lab-leakers who blame a partnership between traitorous American scientists and sinister Chinese labs to conduct research that was illegal in the USA.
Edit / this guy just comes out and uses COVID lab leak theories as an analogy for AI-box fantasies, but these people don’t just cite it as a parallel, they are MAD about what they think happened and want you to be mad too.