OK so the “problem” these people (EAs) are facing is that they are strongly pro-“progress”, in that they are very much against any sort of criticism of existing capitalism, but they have identified one specific outcome of this (rampant AI) as very very bad.

That, and only that.

Climate change? Not a problem. Technological neo-feudalism? Not a problem. Global thermonuclear war? Not a problem, will not kill everyone after all. Global pandemic? Same thing, what doesn’t kill us will make us stronger.

So a reasonable person will look at current energy demands of GenAI, look at the existing benefits, and make the reasonable conclusion that this is bad and we should stop it. But that’s WRONG. Stopping it for those reasons is anti-progress. You can only stop it if it prevents AI takeover.

Cf. smarm-meister Zvi, who can’t understand why people don’t want datacenters when they don’t want coal plants slightly less, and cites fuckin’ Cremieux as a lede:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EDKw7KyonrvskqZ7o/the-american-people-really-hate-data-centers

Here’s an example

Transmission Lines Are The Control Group

Transmission lines are straight up good, with approximately zero downsides.

Transmission lines polling remarkably close to coal plants, when the coal plants actively not only cook the planet but poison the people around them, is crazy. This one absolutely is straight up moral panic.

Well yeah transmission lines are fucking ugly, and most people, when asked if they want something fucking ugly built near them will say “heck no”. Sure, imagining that transmissions lines cause cancer is false, but it’s an easy thing to believe when the people building the lines are energy companies, who people hate because they’re expensive and cause wildfires. Also I bet dollars to donuts that Zvi doesn’t live near a transmission line.

He “knows” transmissions lines are good, because they get power to his home, and he figures because he wants power, it’s good, and everyone should just be happy to have a high-voltage line near their home because that brings him power. It’s remarkably un-empathetic.

But let’s take a step back. Isn’t opposition to data centers good for preventing AGI? NO, it’s not, it’s Luddism! You have to accept data centers because they are good for capitalism now, but IF they start to produce the Robot God, THEN they’re bad.

It’s an incoherent position and it’s so fun to watch these people turn themselves into pretzels over it.

Here’s someone who really does not know what they’re talking, because both alternatives sound absolutely horrible:

(it’s how to build opinion against AI)

Basically the idea is to take nuclear vs. renewables as a model. Build a public movement that says one kind of tech (AI) is bad, and another kind of tech (what I’d call “human-potential technologies” - economically complementing humans rather than substituting for them - so stuff like genetic engineering, thought interfaces, pharmaceuticals, prosthetics etc) is good. So that researchers and investors get pushed away from the former and into the latter.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ht4JZtxngKwuQ7cDC/tsvibt-s-shortform?commentId=n7uEsxcRzMhfJKcBW

Hippocratic oath is government-imposed oppression apparently

“OpenAI has tapped out one petrostate already, time to move to the next one!”

FWIW I have no clue how the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund is managed. The principal idea is to sequester windfall earnings from hydrocarbon extraction from the normal day-to-day economy, avoiding a boom-and-bust cycle and the resource curse.

That said, it’s pretty useless to just store a bunch of money to use “later”. I can imagine a portion is used for infrastructure (all those marvelous tunnels) but taxes on income and VAT are eye-wateringly high (and I say that as a Swede!). So there has to be some political pressure to raid the piggy bank, not least for election winning purposes.

So presumably the fund is insulated from day to day meddling. On the other hand, you can’t just hand over the reins to 25 year old coke-addicted MBAs.

My main point is that for the proposal to happen, someone will have to try to convince the people in charge of the fund that betting the farm on Sama not ripping you off is worth doing. Possible? Maybe. Probable? I fucking hope not.

I ruthlessly cull any helpful “suggestions” from my YT recommendations and try to do some due diligence on the people I do follow.

here’s someone who cutesly spells “EA” as “∃Ɐ” and posts

Norway Should Buy OpenAI

the move to Kazakhstan is news to me

at least there shouldn’t be any problems with Israeli students attending as Kazakhstan and Israel have normal diplomatic relationships … but downtown Almaty in midwinter isn’t that balmy

noted internet blowhard John Gruber complains that the stochastic parrot output is now less stochastic, because EU

Anthropic’s ‘Watermark’ Text Adulteration in Claude Is a Perversion of Writing

hard to tell if he’s madder that EU is trying to enforce a minimum of accountability for slop usage, or Anthropic for bowing the knee to Brussel mandarins

oh well there’s always Grok

presented without comment

If the Markets Reject OpenAI and Anthropic, the US Should Nationalize Them

user has previously decried bans against genAI assisted writing by stating that every neuro-atypical person writes like that so it would discrimination to ban

https://lobste.rs/c/nadrad

Comments are utterly mired in jargon

Humanity should count as actual AGI, but it remains slow.

It’s a weird middle ground, where it is fooming but pretty slowly. (I mean, as a human, I would think that, i.e. I would experience time on a scale that’s somewhat faster than humanity’s foom.)

I don’t think the term “FOOM” as ever been explicitely defined, it’s just verbal tic/shorthand for “intelligence explosion”. How can something explode slowly???

also nice save defining “AGI == humanity” => goal reached

glad to hear there’s still a career as a rent-a-cop once software eats my job

“monument to the first 500” or something, really fun concept - rich people pay a massive amount for essentiially suicide, get a monunment for their pains

I kinda like the Revelation Space universe, but I am literally stuck at 85% on book 4 or 5

Good luck with your novel!

nominative determinism strikes again

it gets better. Godier (the guy who misled Gruber) admits to using genAI to create a website that just to happened to almost exactly duplicate an existing website:

https://blog.terrygodier.com/2026/08/09/mea-culpa-dark-hours.html

no mention of the submission of an astrology app to the App store and getting rejected

Noted Apple blowhard John Gruber makes a mistake, is naturally a performative dick about apologizing for it

https://daringfireball.net/2026/08/retraction_app_store_rejection_of_the_week

(nothing to do with AI or crypto, I just think Gruber is a dick. And the subject of the story - an app developer who apparently felt so secure in his indie rep he could do some light fraud for clicks - is a recognizable figure)

the orifice will pulse invitingly

gonna be the biggest flop since that facehugger apple made

enjoy ur hypertopical vibecoded website du jour

https://coldcardwatch.com/