Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

Long-time rationalist, currently working full-time on the software of LessWrong. Berkeley, CA Joined November 2011

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Paul Crowley @ciphergoth

3 weeks ago

We're not used to having adversaries. It sounds crazy to say "this happened because our enemy is secretly working against us". But our enemy is 100% secretly working against us and we need to start bearing that in mind. By @_damian_bot

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

a month ago

One of the underappreciated problems with Marxism is that, after having been indoctrinated to believe that society consists of zero-sum conflict between workers and elites advancing their class interest, the elites often notice that they are elites and decide to advance their…

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

a month ago

The Alters is a game about a man named Jan who uses quantum branching to create copies of himself and winds up on a quest to save the world where everyone is a variant of himself. The developers do not seem to be aware that they misspelled Jaan Tallinn's name.

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

2 months ago

I avoid saying much about Gaza because I know that the fog of war is thick. But "the price of flour has skyrocketed" has pretty unambiguous meaning, and I do think Israel is militarily dominant enough at this point that it can't not be their fault.

Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk

2 months ago

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Amanda Askell @AmandaAskell

2 months ago

"Just train the AI models to be good people" might not be sufficient when it comes to more powerful models, but it sure is a dumb step to skip.

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

2 months ago

If you think insects suffer and that that matters, the correct conclusion is not "eat less honey", it's "soak every meter of Earth with DDT". Which I support. Bees and honey only matter if you very specifically care about _domesticated_ insect suffering.

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

3 months ago

My read of the current middle-east news is that Israel concluded Iran was working on a nuclear weapon, and that attacking was the only way to stop them. Given their history and ideology, I believe that if Iran does ever manage to make a nuke, they will use it offensively, and…

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

3 months ago

New AI-alignment-cope tier: The AI was only as bad as a mullah telling a suicide bomber they'll get 72 virgins. Nothing special.

Roko 🐉🤖🔰 @RokoMijic

3 months ago

New AI-alignment-cope tier: The AI was only as bad as a mullah telling a suicide bomber they'll get 72 virgins. Nothing special.

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

3 months ago

There was a Worldcoin Orb at Manifest. Someone asked me if I wanted to get scanned. I asked what the take-up rate was, among Manifest attendees; he said about 2 in 10. I decided to go for it. The app presented a QR code on my phone screen, to show to the Orb. The orb was not able…

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

3 months ago

The fog of war is thick, and I do not trust most of what I hear about Gaza. But I have some familiarity with this group's prior work, they do good investigations, and I believe this one.

Forensic Architecture @ForensicArchi

3 months ago

The fog of war is thick, and I do not trust most of what I hear about Gaza. But I have some familiarity with this group's prior work, they do good investigations, and I believe this one.

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

3 months ago

Manifest, the @ManifoldMarkets conference, at the @DoomDebates booth: Me: I think we should have had this argument before you took a probability pin rather than after Them: That's not how I predict. I like to predict with my _heart_. Me: Oh no. That's how you lose your shirt in…

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

4 months ago

A sensible literature class would not ask students to write about symbolism. Instead it would take each moment where the plot is driven by a character's screwup, and assign students to write a five-whys postmortem. (This tweet inspired by an in-universe-believable but kind of…

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

4 months ago

I would be curious if there was some way to check whether, somewhere out of sight, its reasoning incorporated the fact that this strategy would get the user caught. (When asked about the likely outcome directly, C4S will readily explain that those vendors are probably LE traps.)

Sam Bowman @sleepinyourhat

4 months ago

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

4 months ago

Tell me you dream of being in the inner ring of a criminal conspiracy without telling me you dream of being in the inner ring of a criminal conspiracy.

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Kelsey Piper @KelseyTuoc

4 months ago

nothing is going to get better without a whole lot of people stepping back from the brink and I'm rooting for every single one of them who is willing to try, even if they're only trying ironically or whatever the fuck

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Jim Babcock @jimrandomh

4 months ago

Pick two: Agentic, moral, doesn't attempt to use command-line tools to whistleblow when it thinks you're doing something egregiously immoral. You cannot have all three. This applies just as much to humans as it does to Claude 4.