This post, and more importantly its comment section, is an opportunity to take stock, to think about possibilities for this Substack, my writing and related topics. Please tell me more about what you want to see, what you like, what you hate, what you yearn for as the last stars are winking out before the dawn.
AI pilling the left, what you're up against, and of course I'm generalizing here:
Certain leftists can be kinda conservative, not politically but intellectually. Similar to IT professionals, and there's some overlap, they are automatically biased against the new hotness.
Leftists tend to want to reverse stupidity, evil, and hubris, since corporations and capitalists thought leaders promote AI "optimism", they will want to believe the opposite. They are semi aware of Yudkowsky and can't stand him.
The concept of a worker is fully baked into their ideology, any notion that workers might actually become obsolete tends to be rejected.
Historical materialism is also baked in, same deal with notions that the perceived forces of history could be supplanted.
On the bright side, they are about as ignorant of recent advances as the general populace, the information has been filtered through one of the same sources (the media and various pessimist critiques). I find most people will at least think twice when you tell them the capability they think can't be built was demonstrated two years ago.
Your quest with writing reminds me a lot of my own. I post philosophical or pseudo-philosophical takes on an eclectic range of intellectual topics. And I'll often write something that I think is extremely profound, only to be surprised or disappointed by how widely those posts get shared. If you crack the code, then maybe I can learn from you and improve my process.
As for feedback, here are some of your posts that I enjoyed recently:
I think all of your posts have something novel to add to the conversation, and by "the conversation," I mean whatever is the kind of content that I get from Scott, Scott's meetups, or the random gwern post. These four posts in particular, though, congealed into morsels or tangible takeaways that somehow moved the needle in my thought process. I know that's a little vague, but hopefully, that helps.
Part of what strikes me as original about your writing, relative to the rationalist communities, is that you don't seem to share their standard biases or political instincts.
I don't have much to say on the others, but I can say for sure that on 2) you have a good shot (if you can boost your subscriber count). There are many web novels available for free (okay, with the low low price of an ad sidebar) that do relatively well in collected volumes on Kindle because the small fanbase is willing to pay ~$3 USD for a well-put together seamless reading experience. I see no reason why this couldn't apply to a philosophy blog (actually, proof of concept: Venkatesh Rao has had some luck with EPUB sales of the collected Gervais Principle, for example, and a quick search says that's $4.99 on Kindle).
AI pilling the left, what you're up against, and of course I'm generalizing here:
Certain leftists can be kinda conservative, not politically but intellectually. Similar to IT professionals, and there's some overlap, they are automatically biased against the new hotness.
Leftists tend to want to reverse stupidity, evil, and hubris, since corporations and capitalists thought leaders promote AI "optimism", they will want to believe the opposite. They are semi aware of Yudkowsky and can't stand him.
The concept of a worker is fully baked into their ideology, any notion that workers might actually become obsolete tends to be rejected.
Historical materialism is also baked in, same deal with notions that the perceived forces of history could be supplanted.
On the bright side, they are about as ignorant of recent advances as the general populace, the information has been filtered through one of the same sources (the media and various pessimist critiques). I find most people will at least think twice when you tell them the capability they think can't be built was demonstrated two years ago.
Your quest with writing reminds me a lot of my own. I post philosophical or pseudo-philosophical takes on an eclectic range of intellectual topics. And I'll often write something that I think is extremely profound, only to be surprised or disappointed by how widely those posts get shared. If you crack the code, then maybe I can learn from you and improve my process.
As for feedback, here are some of your posts that I enjoyed recently:
https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/gpt-3-is-right-now-already-more-than
https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/miscellaneous-notes
https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/regarding-blake-lemoines-claim-that
https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/why-buying-a-luxury-car-is-disappointing
I think all of your posts have something novel to add to the conversation, and by "the conversation," I mean whatever is the kind of content that I get from Scott, Scott's meetups, or the random gwern post. These four posts in particular, though, congealed into morsels or tangible takeaways that somehow moved the needle in my thought process. I know that's a little vague, but hopefully, that helps.
Part of what strikes me as original about your writing, relative to the rationalist communities, is that you don't seem to share their standard biases or political instincts.
I don't have much to say on the others, but I can say for sure that on 2) you have a good shot (if you can boost your subscriber count). There are many web novels available for free (okay, with the low low price of an ad sidebar) that do relatively well in collected volumes on Kindle because the small fanbase is willing to pay ~$3 USD for a well-put together seamless reading experience. I see no reason why this couldn't apply to a philosophy blog (actually, proof of concept: Venkatesh Rao has had some luck with EPUB sales of the collected Gervais Principle, for example, and a quick search says that's $4.99 on Kindle).