this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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This is my article on one of the dumbest and most obviously false claims Yudkowsky has ever made, about biology not using covalent bonds.

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[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Thanks for all the effort, also that you post these on all the various LW-sphere related places. Interesting to see the various places react.

E: 18 hours later, I notice that on LW your 38 vote score went down to 30 while the amount of votes increased from 17 to 70, and on EA it also dropped from a higher positive (forgot how high) to a sad 9.

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)
[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

"If you take only the statements where I was vague instead of the ones where I was explicitly wrong and interpret my words in the way that I am now telling you to, you will see that I am right."

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yudkowsky:

Talking to the general public is hard.

Multiple commenters on FanFiction.net replying to chapter 23 of HPMOR: Genetics don't work that way. If magic were recessive, then wizard parents would always have wizard kids and there would be no such thing as squibs. Look, I drew the Punnett square....

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago

Don't patronize fans, Yud.

[–] locallynonlinear@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago

"I'm LessWrong than you're implying!!!"

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 12 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I must have missed the class in material physics where they explained that all material has a generic "strength" that determine which material can cut which. Is it perhaps abbreviated STR?

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Only someone with high INT can discover this brilliant theory. As luck would have it, they have high CHR too!

[–] locallynonlinear@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago

Unfortunately such characters tend to dump stat WIS.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago

He never played dwarf fortress confirmed, else he would be talking about shearing, compression, tearing, impact and whatever else values DF uses for materials.

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The so called "experts" say that spider silk is stronger than steel, but steel beams can hold up bridges while I can break a spider web with my little finger. Looks like the "experts" are wrong and spider silk isn't very strong after all - probably because it's made of proteins held together by weak van der Waals forces instead of covalent bonds.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

@GorillasAreForEating @mountainriver

Yes but if you had a five ton, meter wide strand of spider silk…

[–] YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAM@awful.systems 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I reply: Because the strength of the material is determined by its weakest link, not its strongest link. A structure of steel beams held together at the vertices by Scotch tape (and lacking other clever arrangements of mechanical advantage) has the strength of Scotch tape rather than the strength of steel.

This is sub-childishly false and he opens with it. Unbelievable.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

He also writes: "The entire human body, faced with a strong impact like being gored by a rhinocerous horn, will fail at its weakest point, not its strongest point."

If a rhino comes at Yud, he can use his mighty cranium, which is not his weakest spot, to defend his weak meat parts. Since the rhino horn only impacts his head and not his weak points, his body can not fail, and thus he lives.

Reminds me of Cyrano de Bergerac's Travel to the Sun, where the protagonist encounters a thin chain carrying a great load. Since all links of the chain were equally strong, it couldn't break as chains always break in there weakest link. De Bergerac had the excuse of writing his sci fi in the 17th century (he also features some pre-Newtonian physics), Yud lacks such an excuse.

[–] YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAM@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago

There are too many comments in here going for the stringy lean detail and not pointing out magnificent conceptual errors like this

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Quoth Yud:

I'm sort of skeptical that you could write something that works as science communication for a general audience, though lord knows I'm not necessarily succeeding either.

All the faux modesty of Tommy Tallarico saying "my mother is very proud".

The key valid ideas to be communicated are [made-up sci-fi bullshit about nanobots]

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Bone is weaker than diamond, then, because... why?

Well, partially, IIUC, because calcium atoms are heavier than carbon atoms. So even if per-bond the ionic forces are strong, some of that is lost in the price you pay for including heavier atoms whose nuclei have more protons that are able to exert the stronger electrical forces making up that stronger bond.

i don't even know where to begin. stay in school, kids

[–] earthquake@lemm.ee 5 points 11 months ago

Guy with 4 wiki pages open, determined to win an argument, even if it means stacking shit until the other person stops responding.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 11 months ago

this entire response reads like "diamond is the hardest metal" copypasta

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago

"yeah but no also :words:"

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Okay that's so much word vomit, and I know next to nothing about biology and medicine so I have to ask: is any of this actually relevant to pandemics, virulence, lethality or whatever was his initial point?

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

His argument, as I understand it, is that he knew about the covalent bonds between proteins but didn't mention them because he was simplifying things for a lay audience, and that those covalent bonds don't matter because they aren't the "load bearing" elements in flesh.

There are two problems I see

  1. His earlier statements suggest he actually had no knowledge of that whatsoever

  2. I think his revised explanation is still wrong, because the extracellular matrix that holds cells together and connective tissue are composed largely of proteins that have these covalent crosslinks and rely on them for strength. When you tear a ligment it's not just van der waals and hydrogen bonds being broken, those alone would be far too weak.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What I mean specifically is, he wrote:

The nanomachinery builds diamondoid bacteria, that replicate with solar power and atmospheric CHON, maybe aggregate into some miniature rockets or jets so they can ride the jetstream to spread across the Earth's atmosphere, get into human bloodstreams and hide, strike on a timer.

Would "diamondoid bacteria" be inherently, significantly better at killing us? Or wait is he imagining the bacteria literally slashing at us???

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

From what I could understand is that he talks about diamondoid (and these other things) just because he has read one book about the subject. ‘Nanosystems’ by Drexler apparantly. (Never read it, can't say anything about it).

I'm not sure Yud is really engaging with what is being said vs just going on and on about how AGI can kill us all via nanomachines (son), because handwave theory something.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's like he heard the phrase "flesh-eating bacteria" and decided they would be more scarier if they had tiny knives and forks.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The worst part is when they start to season you with salt and pepper...