Max Read

A classic: https://maxread.substack.com/p/a-literary-history-of-fake-texts?r=71yg…

I don't think anyone who hangs out on Hacker News has any chance of succeeding as a post-apocalyptic warlord. Best case scenario they end up like the guy who tried to take over Pine Bluff Arkansas[0,1]. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39802157 [1]https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff-arkansas

I’m enjoying Read Max, a newsletter about Pop Culture. https://maxread.substack.com/ There was a Dune article that got some traction here a few months ago.

> Sam says he presented Gemini with a few possible options to help his model stand out, and the chatbot selected one in particular: the “MAGA/conservative niche,” referring to it as a “cheat code.” Plus, it said, “the conservative audience (especially older men in the US) often has higher disposable income and is more loyal. Reminds me of: https://maxread.substack.com/p/predictions-markets-and-the-suckerficat…

Thanks, that (i.e., the linked blog post https://maxread.substack.com/p/a-literary-history-of-fake-texts) is exactly it.

From another piece about the Zizians [1]: > The ability to dismiss an argument with a “that sounds nuts,” without needing recourse to a point-by-point rebuttal, is anathema to the rationalist project. But it’s a pretty important skill to have if you want to avoid joining cults. [1] https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationalist-death

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupational-infohaz… https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and… https://medium.com/@zoecurzi/my-experience-with-leverage-research-17e9… https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationalist-death The last link and especially the second half expands from examining the latest example into the broader landscape of Rationalist cultism.

A cynical but imo largely correct take on this phenomenon: "People prefer A.I. art because people prefer bad art" https://maxread.substack.com/p/people-prefer-ai-art-because-people (TL;DR - AI art is by design an attempt to reach the lowest common denominator, which makes it easy to digest, and a lot of people like stuff that's easy to digest.)

Some related material that digs into the Zizian branch of these people https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationalist-death

This isn't true. https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationalist-death

Previous context: https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff-arkansas

Maybe I’m just jaded/untrusting, but the message reminded me of the initial opening text from various wrongnumber/pig-butchering scams. https://maxread.substack.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-all-those-weird Discussion of above - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31949731

Here’s a really fun review of the Jelly 2 that someone showed me a few months ago. https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-worlds-stupidest-smallest-smartphon…

And move where? Most of the cities that are growing have a housing crisis. Most of the cities that are shrinking can have major safety issues - see @pontifier's misadventure in Pine Bluff, AR[1] for a particularly extreme anecdote. 1. https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff-arkansas

Context - https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-man-who-bought-pine-bluff-arkansas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32498217

According to a recent post on HN, some of the scammers might actually be held captive and forced to scam people: >Captives are subjected to violence and torture, which is sometimes filmed and sent to relatives to spur them to send ransoms. Some have been killed and their deaths reported as suicide, according to workers who have escaped. https://maxread.substack.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-all-those-weird https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31949731

That how it works https://maxread.substack.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-all-those-weird

Can't speak about VCs, but for celebrities and promoters there seem to be questionable cross-promotions: https://maxread.substack.com/p/mapping-the-celebrity-nft-complex

It's also a market which can sell security-like things while believing it's exempt from SEC enforcement, so you can just have celebrities flog it on TV: https://maxread.substack.com/p/mapping-the-celebrity-nft-complex

I suggest you read the section starting "The Zizians, believe it or not, are not the only cult-like groupuscule to have emerged from the heady stew of the Rationalist community" from [1] Some quotes: > (Alignment Group) would attempt to articulate a ‘demon’ which had infiltrated our psyches from one of the rival groups, its nature and effects, and get it out of our systems using debugging tools > there were also psychotic breaks involving demonic subprocess narratives,” and where people in positions of power would “debug” underlings. “I experienced myself and others being distanced from old family and friends, who didn't understand how high-impact the work we were doing was,” > Scott Alexander, maybe the most prominent Rationalist besides Yudkowsky, suggested that the problem was not really M.I.R.I. or C.F.A.R. so much as that Taylor was in a cult-like group centered around a former M.I.R.I. head > I don’t know that I have the patience or energy to really get to the bottom of it all except to say: It all kinda sounds pretty culty to me! And I haven’t even gotten into the Burning Man camp Black Lotus or the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth etc [1] https://maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizians-and-the-rationalist-death

The article's funny, and kind of surreal read considering a dimension fading away while all the characters become cartoons and the landscape becomes vague. Have similar thoughts occasionally. However, also creepy. Not sure if its the way humans have always written, that ChatAI got too good too fast, or that they all secretly had them all for years (Multiple massive AI releases in a year???, "had em all in a box in the back") The 2nd image (with pair of images) on the Sharing Photos subsection [1] literally looks like StableDiffusion++. Somebody wrote two prompts, that had something like "Male with frizzy hair next to girl in pink shirt with glasses with brick building behind" and then it didn't care whether it was the same male in both, or what skin color. Most text also seems weirdly similar to: Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra [2] [1] https://maxread.substack.com/i/137044198/sharing-photographs-as-dimens… [2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03442.pdf