Share this page!

Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
Twitter logo
2 Mar, 4 tweets, 2 min read
I am trying to wrap my head around "this small tax would generate at least $3 trillion". Like. If you generate $3 trillion then it's not a small tax. It's a $3 trillion tax. You can't. Just. Stick the word "small" next to "$3 trillion" to cancel it.
You must also say "20% over ten years generates $3T" or "2%/year generates $300B/year" if you want to be honest, but this kind of dishonesty is so routine in USA politics that I was only startled by the other phrasing, which seemed newer and wilder.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Eliezer Yudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ESYudkowsky

Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
28 Feb
Cade Metz's byline is on the NYT hit piece to absorb blame, but the blameworthy one is more likely to be Metz's editor. The higher aristocrat is usually closer to being "the" source of the problem. Who was Metz's boss on this piece? Who'd they report to? Who ordered the hit?
Seeing a nice big name of an non-management employee, that was put out by the BigCo to take the blame, and then heaping blame on that first name you saw - trying to make *that* name infamous - seems like mental laxness to the point of being the NYTrash's willing tool, ya know?
You think Pui-Wing Tam (NYT tech editor) or Mark Thompson (CEO) give two shits if you ruin Metz's life? Tam and Thompson have a thousand eager guys with journalism degrees desperate to take Metz's place, per job opening. Metz is a very replaceable cog to them.
Read 12 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
28 Feb
Complicated rules always advantage the rich over the poor and the big over the little. The modern era of increasing Gini and bigco dominance has such an obvious cause in increasing regulatory complexity, that to the econoliterate it seems pointless to discuss littler causes.
(Two exceptions that I've heard taken seriously by econoliterates are software-world good-duplication yielding winner-take-all, and "trade decreases global inequality but increases local inequality" though I don't see why latter is necessary true absent rules complexity.
That is, those two are taken seriously as plausibly having an effect large enough that it plays in the same park as the incredibly vast increase in richadvantagers, or "regulations" as the naive call them.
Read 5 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
26 Feb
What on Earth is up with the "even after being vaccinated, you can't change your behavior" thing? Insane, yes, much of society is insane, but this insanity has some root that I don't understand. It's not the equilibrium of anything obvious-to-me.
So far, something like 1 rings truest to me, maybe with side doses of 2 & 3. People are performing virtuous compliance and there's no controlling legal authority, not even science or a vaccine, that can say it's okay to dial the performance down?
Requiring public mask-wearing for everyone, because you don't want to check vaccine certifications each time - that would make sense, sure. But in this case you would then add, "That said, go ahead and visit and hug your also-vaccinated friends in private."
Read 6 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
14 Feb
Real journalism serves an important function in society. I've just subscribed to @TheEconomist to do my part and underscore this point: my call to bury the rotting corpse of the NYT is not meant as an attack on the very few real journalist institutions remaining. We need more.
Clarification: I think having Big Buildings Containing People With Press Passes, that do at least some real journalism, is still horrifyingly vital to modern society. If you just want one more honest blogger, sure, support them directly via Substack.
"Why?" you ask. (A): Because some investigations work better when you show up with an Official Press Pass that places you in the recognized social role of an Investigator to the bureaucrat, and announces you have a non-dismissable moderately powerful institution behind you...
Read 7 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
14 Feb
It's honestly really really easy to filter out this entire class of mistakes if you're a "high-decoupler", as I expect most real scientists are, and know about the is-ought type distinction and the naturalistic fallacy. Low-decouplers are endlessly paranoid about such, mostly...
... realistically speaking because it's a political performance, for which you are not the intended audience. But also because they genuinely can't do an easy mental slice that distinguishes eg "how people evolved" and "what is good"...
...and they genuinely can't imagine what it's like for that mental motion to produce a clean slice that just works. Or so I suspect.
Read 5 tweets
Eliezer Yudkowsky Profile picture
5 Feb
Does a known cryptographic system exist which:
- Enables proving who voted
- Enables proving the result of the vote
- Doesn't prove who voted for what
- Doesn't let anyone prove who they voted for, even voluntarily by revealing a key or a calculation
(I realize this sounds pretty impossible; but, to me, it sounds substantially *less* impossible than zk-SNARKs, so at my level it's a fair question.)
Clarification: By "proving who voted" I mean being able to verify a complete list of all the voters/keys who voted, and that no extra votes outside the list occurred. We'd like it to be publicly verifiable that there were no extra or illegal votes.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @ESYudkowsky has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @ESYudkowsky!

Read all threads by @ESYudkowsky