For sure I think part of the problem would be my suspicion of how these tools are being trained. If they’re hiring conservative philosophers to weight the value of tacit knowledge, then great. But if they’re just mashing the “only two genders” button, or like scoring up articles about immigrant crime, as I suspect they are, they the question is, circumvent that process enough, and I wonder if it bleeds into the reasoning process.
To be honest I don’t think an LLM that more accurately represents this kind of reasoning would actually be more representative, per your observation, I’ll say plainly I don’t think the types of people on the right who are most likely activists in this area are doing so because of a passion for different types of reasoning. I think it specifically does desire to advance positions without needing reason.
> The best we can do is put forward as many points of view on a topic as possible and let the reader choose.
If an LLM equally weighted flat earth and spherical earth or creationism and evolution so I could decide I would never use that LlM again. And I suspect I’m not alone. I think you’ve outlined an LLM that would hypercharge my concerns.
But also I want to point out the specific nature of my concerns isn’t monodirectional - it’s that if a political position is not arrived to rationally, and it is trained to ignore structured argument - than does that form of epistemology bleed over into subjects they aren’t specifically political.
Grok is described as one of the less accurate LLMs. I wonder if it is possible to both be politically “unbiased” and maximally truth seeking.
I’ve been going down a bit of a conservative philosophical rabbit holes lately — and while conservatism may be maximally truth seeking in a religious sense, in an epistemological sense, it’s suspicious that rationality is the right way to determine how institutions should be organized. Conservative arguments aren’t meant to be built on a rational foundation.
Not that liberal positions are inherently rational, but if you’re position is that there should be no abortions no exceptions, than the entire chain of thinking that may lead to some kind of compromised position on abortion is inherently “liberal”.
The greatest tech companies haven’t let the government dictate their ambitions toward disruption. The resignation described by the flock CEO suggests to me maybe he doesn’t have the right mindset for success?
> These results are consistent with AI hiring tools being completely racially unbiased, and real-world hiring managers feeling social pressure to hire underqualified black people
And so managers are feeling social pressure to hire under qualified Asians as well? I must not be up to date on the latest culture war talking points, because I thought Asians were underrepresented.
1. We should absolutely pursuing these kind of ideas but given then nature of technological progress and our history with “democratization” things are likely to get worse before we get better. Matt is hedging a lot here reflecting this.
2. Maybe all this stuff is as promising as the various threads suggest but it’s bizzare that this is all being argued in culture war terms (you vs the gatekeepers) and not like shared human flourishing terms. Again maybe it’s working, but it’s also being marketed to a certain kind of persons fears, not as the future of human understanding.
Seems like this could lead to some awkward Oval Office conversations. I don’t think Larry Ellison bought Tik Tok under the assumption he would be sued for billions by Republicans.
> The idea that facebook is this "well-documented do-bad-for-the-world organization" that has caused "damage to the world" is a perfect example of scape-goating.
True, none of us are innocent.
> When you step back and try to explain exactly what the company has done that's so bad, there's nothing there.
The thing that bugs me is like, how tone deaf can you be in the moment?
Mandatory disclaimer - im not a socialist and dont have a problem with wealth accumulation, but it really feels like in 2026. I would spend a lot of time thinking about how to thought lead around the good old traditional “business owners create jobs” and not “billionaires=good”. Also, in our regulatory captures, giving companies $60 billion dollars - it’s not the hardest working founders that win, it’s the best capitalized.
Sure Uber made a better product, but was it that or the subsidized rides that truly allowed them to capture the market.
So, I want people to dream big, but what happened to medium sized businesses where you could make $20 or so million dollars. Why advocate for consolidation in this scale?
> Do you see how you are making the same mistake? If you earn the millions you wanted then you will still be just as well off as you would have been before you found out about someone earning a trillion.
It’s not the same mistake. I’m doing fine. I have completely tuned my life and aspiration to my income. I need know more and I am personally satisfied. But forget morality and “who has enough”. Money is just not moving sufficiently in the system. And even traditional capitalists are sounding the alarm on this. It’s not about how much Elon Musk has compared to me. It’s looking at the total distribution of money.
But like all the rules about the economy and capitalism not being a zero sum game are dependent on moderation and a set of rules. AI companies really are sucking up all the capital leaving less money for smaller firms.
Depending on how AI companies tie themselves to the government, you could see bailouts and inflation that make us all poorer.
The thing about capitalism, is that there used to be a lot of things like say - stock buybacks that were implicitly immoral or against norms.
JD Rockefeller aside from starting a monopoly had deals with the railroads most people at the time found immoral and this was either against or before the concept of common carrier.
So like - there are a lot of ways in which - I want to be a sort of economically conservative capitalist. I want to live in a world where we have a set of rules that create a level playing field. But we’ve had this slow drip of deregulation and norm breaking over the past 100 years, and yet debates of socialism vs capitalism still sort of come down to oversimplified debates of “are you meritocratic or not”.
And then cap this off with the fact that business wealth is extremely concentrated in the magnificent 7; capitalism isn’t capitalism without competition. I forget the name of the group, but there are even though leaders on the right that see that like wealth is not currently distributed the way any reasonably moderate person - left or right - idealizes it to be. It feels like we are so far from the colloquial definition of - “someone has a good idea, invents it, sells it to people, and gets rewarded”.
On some level, if Elon musk sold 100 million cars and pocketed 10k each, I might not care if he was a trillionaire, but we need to realign incentives with tangible value and not financial games.
> Consider the opportunity cost of snacking and seek the meal - the textbooks, docs, papers, manuals, longform. Allocate a 4 hour window. Don't just read, take notes, re-read, re-phrase, process, manipulate, learn.
I think it’s more of a bell curve. Andrej and I clearly have different definitions of fun, if he doesn’t think deep learning is fun. In fact I’d say I’ve only learned anything when I’m having fun. I might add almost every time I’ve sweat it’s been out of fun. I’ve never gotten a good workout from “vegetables” (though I like vegetables). Being miserable might work for him, but I don’t know if this advice is generalizable (his point is not entirely terrible, but maybe taken a little far. I think the problem is less “is this entertaining” and more “is this deeply enganging”
There’s a reasons I described it as accelerationism. I think whatever the next thing is probably hasn’t been invented yet, but I would hope the discomfort of exclusion might inspire it. It only works if enough people feel left out - I.e. all under 16s
But yeah, it’s not without risks.
But there’s two sort of self-identified reasons for freedom of speech.
One is to get the best ideas on the table. I’m a little suss of this one (when taken to extremes) because speech that costs nothing is just noise.
The second is to make sure everyone has an outlet to express themselves so they don’t rebel. And while I certainly don’t want to see violent rebellion, I think maybe a bit more social and political rebellion wouldn’t be the end of the world.
I’m becoming something of an accelerationist on this issue. I think we’re at a dead end with like 5 companies controlling most of the internet. If this pisses people off and encourages them to get active politically or create new modes of communication. Great!
Freedom has to be more than “you can choose any walled garden you want!” We need more spaces that aren’t mediated.
I feel like we’ve accepted this terrible definition of freedom, out of fear it could get worse, not because we love what we have.
But not to worry, I feel comfortable having contrarian views, because my one vote isn’t going to radically change the world.