1y ago

Lightcone is so outraged at the Guardian article that they have started a prediction market about it

manifold.markets Will the guardian issue a correction to its EA/ manifest/ FTX article?

75% chance. The Guardian piece here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/16/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-eugenics-scientific-racism Reportedly contains many factual errors: See https://x.com/ohabryka/status/1802563541633024280?t=8IhUv03x6PKq_r5MwLbPuA&s=19 Resolves yes if one or mo...

WE DEMAND A CORRECTION TO uh various minor nitpicks

also we swear we totally didn't get your email

bonus from thread:

I am having a lot of fun on Manifold, but if the team insists on inviting eugenics speakers to conferences, its probably time for me to leave :-/

What exactly is your objection to people exercising their bodily autonomy to implement voluntary eugenics?

56 comments

Imagine being such losers that you get owned by the fucking Guardian, and as your brilliant followup, you start screaming "I'M NOT OWNED"
- Has anyone checked for kernels of corn growing behind their ears?
  
  idgi

lesswrong response
first comment:
The response from Habryka points out several factual inaccuracies, but I don't see anything that directly refutes the core issue the article brings up. I recognize that engaging with the substance of the allegations might be awkward and difficult, not constituting "winning" in the rationalist sense.
dutifully downvoted to -6 of course
- One problem with discussing this is that we here arguably have an asymmetric discourse situation.
  "I'd like to tell you my thoughts on these various eugenicists, but they would be ~~repulsive~~, ~~fedposts~~, impossible to convey accurately in public discourse.

Well, they got their wish, the Guardian piece is now updated:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/16/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-eugenics-scientific-racism
This article was amended on 17 June 2024 to include a comment from Oliver Habryka about the purchase of Lighthaven that was received after publication; in responding, Habryka disclosed an escrow document for the property’s purchase showing a $1m deposit from, and refunded to, North Dimension Inc, a subsidiary of FTX’s sister company Alameda, which he said meant “the relevant funds never entered our bank account”. An earlier version mistakenly said Lightcone, rather than CFAR, was the sole member of Lightcone Rose Garden, and that Habryka was the latter’s registered agent, when another individual is listed in that role. A reference to Manifund as a “prediction market” has also been corrected.
I think the Gruaniad had a lot of fun with this. By hyperfocusing on the nitpicks, the rats gave them an open goal in correcting tiny details (who now cares whether any money from SBF actually entered the account of Lightcone?) but left the bigger details in place: namely that Lightcone is tight with racists.
Edit a few libertarians(?) in the comments are urging Habryka to sue for libel in the UK, totally fine with using the power of the state to enforce speech! He modestly declines, likely he knows it's not a slam-dunk win (especially if the newspaper actually amends the piece) and that news orgs live for being sued for defamation. It's the classic sign of a bully to sue, and it generates a ton of press.
- habryka on LW:
  (To be clear, for LessOnline we didn't invite anyone who I think even remotely fits that description, I think? It's plausible we missed something, but like, actual racism is totally the kind of thing that would have caused me to remove someone from the "blogs we love" list, if it was part of their blogging.
  Manifest runs a much stronger "just invite people who are popular and share interests, with less regards for why they are popular" policy, which I think has a bunch of stuff going for it, but definitely produces a very different selection of speakers as I think is apparent from looking at the invited speaker lists.)
  the long list of race scientists are not "actual racism" ok dude. this is in reply to someone saying that it was these precise people that kept him from attending
  
  Lol this is not the great anti-racist response they might think it is.
  "We would never invite (especially blatant eugenics level) racists to LessOnline! The Manifestival on the other hand... (conveniently advertised on the LessOnline homepage and discount tickets if you go to both!)"
  
  i would think that for habryka “actual racism” means something like open calls to genocide, not, you know, actual racism.
- and yeah, nfw this piece wasn't closely inspected by legal and the writers are thinking "please please bring it the fuck on"

Dang that slanderous Guardian describing Manifund as a prediction market when it's a market where people make predictions. Totally misleading!
Since Ivan owns 50% of the project's certs, his stake has tripled in value from $3,000 to $9,000; he sells them for $9,000 to The Good Foundation, netting a $6,000 profit. (Important note: for legal reasons, profits on Manifund impact certificates can currently only be used to donate to charity and can't be cashed out in the normal way.)
- of course, with this lot “can currently only be used to donate to charity” is also not quite the firewall one would expect it to be …
  
  Paying 20-somethings to have orgies on the beach in Bali is a form of charity, if their laptops are nearby.
  
  The phrase "legal reasons" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in their FAQ

I love how you can see people rushing in to buy the prediction right after the correction happened and before the author called it. This system is very secure totally.
- This is going to happen in any prediction market whose events are opened and closed manually. Unless you can automatically halt trading when the condition is met (this is probably what people call an "AI-complete" problem), there will always be people who notice the condition is met before the event runner. The unfair trades will certainly be reversed if this is a prediction market worth even a little bit of its salt.

The good news is that eugenics chuds are really easy to simulate.
- so sorry that you have to soil your diodes with these shitheads' tamagotchis
  
  With just a little bit of creative bin-packing they can share a core with the processes that simulate the smell of sewage and leafblower noise.

Kelsey Piper holding herself up as some avatar of responsible tech journalism, as if she isn’t…not even compromised, because I can’t accuse her of being compromised when she is explicitly in this business not even to take the rationalist side but as a literal rationalism advocate
Like you can object when someone (allegedly) goofs in writing up an investigative takedown, but at least they’re in the fucking business of starting from the facts and working up to that. And you’re personally fucking offended? Jesus fucking Christ, how high is that fucking stables you’ve built on all that sand?
You know, fuck it, pick your side and have at it, be the “reasonable one” and do your best to make everything about both sides. Please, engage in long navel-gazing private discussions with Sam Bankman-Fried about how he never actually gave a shit about anything now, including your shared ideals, now that it turns out he’s being sent down for giga fraud - we love it when you ultimately decide that that shit makes good copy. But have the basic fucking decency to at least pretend to remember what you are.

Is the header image on that page an intentional joke at the expense of GenAI, or did someone seriously make that and add it to the page? Do they autogenerate their pics?
- i think they honestly think this shit is cool
  
  Hard to know if "Contovicsy" is an AI in-joke or a Grauniad in-joke. Or neither.
- It's still hard to beat the dck pck
- Contovicsy isn't a river in Ukraine.

is it considered acceptable journalistic ethics at Vox for a journalist who reports on EAs and prediction markets to make prediction market bets on how a journalistic outlet will follow-up a story on prediction markets and EAs? My eyebrows have just levitated so high they've collided with a starlink swarm.
- she's literally paid from an EA grant for the work at vox, so she can hardly compromise her journalistic ethics more.
  
  There really is a difference in professional ethics guidelines, though. Matt Levine used to work at Goldman, he totally always sides with financialization, and for that matter everyone at Bloomberg is paid by Mike Bloomberg, but they still have professional guidelines preventing them from most trading.
  ETA: lol. lmao, even
  A Vox spokesperson declined to comment on whether the company has an ethics policy in place around reporters betting on sports they cover.
  
  from an SBF grant!
  not that that stopped her shanking him lol
- yes, she's ingroup
  
  But betting? There’s being an insider and then there’s profiting, and aren’t most journalists prohibited from trading or betting on their covered areas?

Once again hyperrationalists insist on DEBATE and CORRECTION when the best way to handle a "hit piece" like this is to ignore it.
- If they're pedantic enough with FACTS and LOGIC they can rationalize it so they're being oppressed by the normies and not at all responsible for the consequences of their actions.

Oh fuck. It took me to see the twitter avi to remember but I have Oliver Habryka registered as “absolute psychopath” in my tortured memory box since way back. Nice to see him doing so well but I wish I could remember what triggered the original mental note, assuming that it was ever anything that specific
- Back in the pre-Elon days I idly wished Twitter had something like RES to be able to tag idiots. Now ofc the blue check does a good job as a first-pass filter.
- LW thread linked downthread there implies that he organized lessonline

Good god, that certainty. And only 56 betters? lol.

56 comments