Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 09/10/2026A country that executes people should not only do it publicly, but force its citizens to watch. 110
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 24/09/2026The “AI is not real” people should establish “human intelligence is real” first. Give falsifiable (and general, substrate-neutral!) definitions for terms like “consciousness“, “feeling”, and “understanding“. *Then* we can listen to arguments about what does or doesn’t have it. 100
Reposted by Spork MongerThe Integers, PhD @theintegers.bsky.social · 17/09/2026I have solved my trade deficit with the grocery store by deciding to starve to death 12116978
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 13/09/2026AI oversight lacks even an agreed-upon framework (what are the goals?), seems unlikely to be effective, and is way less important than [gestures around wildly]. Closer to tilting at windmills than anything else 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 09/09/2026[logs into bsky for the first time in week] We’re still talking about data centers? Buildings with computers in them? 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 20/08/2026[puts on internet atheist fedora] Religion is a permission structure for declaring your values to be universal, inevitable, the almighty’s will, regardless of how fiddly and fragile and petty those values are. God can inscribe into nature any shit you think up, no further examination required. 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 09/08/2026One of the more seductive features of LLMs is that they speak *you*, your private language. They understand you and respond in idiomatic you. This is both very helpful for having high-bandwidth conversations, and dangerous because it constantly reinforces your framing, no matter how wrong it is. 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 09/08/2026We just need to get Trump to read these 16 important LessWrong posts and discuss them with his cabinet 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 07/08/2026Trump has done a great job of quickly and thoroughly recoding free trade and the US-led world order more generally as left-coded, seemingly with no exercise of agency from any part of the left. It’s been remakable. 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 05/08/2026The thing missing in this discussion is why the bsky kids hate cheap goods and are willing to die on that hill: they like and can afford fancy things! And they want to feel *justified* in liking those fancy things; they want their aesthetics to match their class solidarity 371
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 27/07/2026I have been trying to figure out how to say “ankylosaurus” ever since listening to an audiobook that said it completely differently than I expected. Turns out no one knows? 021
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 05/07/2026Every country has weird mythologies they’re constitutionally incapable of critically examining, but this one seems pretty extreme. 010
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 28/06/2026There Is something really off with the CEO class and AI. AI really is super useful in programming and likely many other disciplines, but it just doesn’t grapple with reality to think you can outsource complicated technical work to an LLM in 2026. I think I know what’s going on. 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 28/06/2026Team “don’t build supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods because it will raise the rent” vs team “don’t build supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods because we don’t care about black people having access to things” 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 27/06/2026Escaping to another place to dodge your bills, I see! Or just someone PRETENDING to do that. I’m onto your scheme, fraudster! 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 27/06/2026The correct posture in the World Cup, consistent with theological and geometrical standards, however abstruse—and suggesting a rich inner life—is to root primarily for your favorite team and, barring their participation in the current game, whoever the underdog is 120
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 18/06/2026Sports advertising is exploring the concept that what the people really want is infinite, constant David Beckham 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 16/06/2026No one has helped Iran’s economy more than I have. They don’t thank me, they never do. But it’s a beautiful thing, the Strait. 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 13/06/2026There are two kinds of AI users. Test yourself like this: ask it to tell you how great you are. When it hits every g-spot on your ego, are you elated or horrified? Does it make you want to trust it or firewall your mind? 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 11/06/2026Trump has ended 10 wars all by himself. So with that in mind, why‘s it a big deal that he’s personally started ONE that he’s unable to ever end? 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 08/06/2026This is like how my two-year-old thinks he’s driving the car 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 08/06/2026People have been laundering (what sometimes seem to me very minor) doctrinal arguments into semantic ones since at least Nicea. It’s all very silly but the only approach that makes any sense is to let essentially anyone call themselves a Christian. 100
Reposted by Spork MongerDavid Dixon @dixondaver.bsky.social · 05/06/2026It really is emasculating: "Oh no, I can only inhabit the psychological, mental, and emotional spaces women leave for me. But when they arrive to a space I inhabit? It belongs to them and I have to go." 031
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 05/06/2026This is so funny to me. Dude can’t just say “I don’t follow hockey, I’m more of a basketball guy”, because he lives in deathly fear of being judged for his manliness. 5757
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 05/06/2026I’m George Fucking Santos, of course I have a Chrysler minivan! 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 04/06/2026Regulatory frameworks are like vaccines, the international order, free trade, institutional competence, the rule of law, etc: people hate them because the costs are obvious, the benefits taken for granted. But just look at countries that don’t have these things. Where we’re headed, *on purpose* 110
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 04/06/2026A thing I wonder about media people on this site is: do you really subscribe to like 100 subscription news sites and substacks and so on, or is there like an Epic pass or something? It’s a little bewildering how many links there are to a wide variety of paywalled content sites. 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 04/06/2026Maybe you in particular hate data centers because you think AI is a waste of electricity and don’t use it. Fine, no argument here, but the revealed preference of Americans in general seems to be that AI is pretty great. It follows that being anti-data-center is mostly an odd form of NIMBYism 200
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 03/06/2026You can almost hear the media getting wrong-footed by this, not knowing quite what to do, and just moving on from it 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 26/05/2026In normal times filled with normal people, “because I want it to be true and I crave attention” would get you laughed out of the room. But here we are 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 23/05/2026Everyone is rightly blasting this because it’s facially absurd, but on a slightly more serious note: “empty hedonistic quests” are fucking awesome and everyone ought to have at least one. You are not a subsistence farmer and you should live a little. 120
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 23/05/2026I keep thinking about how the next administration will have to scrub every little nook and cranny that Trump and his goons have shat in. It‘s going to be exhausting, fractal work 111
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 20/05/2026So what is, like, the psychology of this? Like the MAGAs I know personally are true believers, but they’re just random idiots. Are these guys too? Or do they go home from these struggle sessions and cry in the shower at their own cowardice? Is it just an absurd show they are cynically performing in? 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 20/05/2026Look, I get that this is odious as hell. But I just can’t stop laughing at the six genders thing 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 18/05/2026Has an empire ever fallen in such a petty, undignified way? The president doing transparent pump-and-dumps will barely register on the newd; that’s how shabby it all is 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 18/05/2026This is from an article about how bad Trump is doing in the polls but I can only take away the reminder that 30% of Americans are unsalvageable idiots. They’re a kid, mouth stained with crayon, gleefully pushing all the buttons on the industrial equipment, utterly incurious about what they do. 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 16/05/2026Ah, the manly men, the alphas, Nietzsche’s supermen, walking gingerly through an infinite hellscape of arbitrary and absurd rules of their own making just to demonstrate fealty to masters they can barely identify, all in service of insecurities so totalizing it‘s a miracle they haven’t suffocated 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 13/05/2026Untamed was great, but Sam Neil's inability to do an American accent is really distracting. Eric Bana's is better, but still slips, especially in the dialog with Neil. 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 11/05/2026This is amazing, actually. Not so much that I think they should be a state (do they even want to?) but that the process would be so utterly destructive to what little coherence MAGA has left. 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 10/05/2026I think his plan is “acceptable by any theological and geometrical standards, however abstruse, and suggested a rich inner life”. Just need to send him a green hat. 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 08/05/2026Rulers who "overrule" the constitution when this fits their ends are despots. 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 01/05/2026They really, really insisted on a gerrymandering war, and like the dog who finally caught the car, I’m not sure they’re going to like it 110
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 26/04/2026The “he shouldn’t have been able to get that far!” reflex, in perpetuity. Engaging with the perimeter in any way triggers calls for its expansion 020
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 24/04/2026Hard to overstate how evil this is www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/u...nytimes.comTrump Talks on Sending Afghans to Congo Draw Bipartisan Ire 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 24/04/2026If you spend even a little time on Reddit, this won‘t surprise you. People are just awful at probability, and very confidently so 100
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 14/04/2026We have been trying for decades to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (people really want to live here) and we may have finally succeeded. We were never stuck in here with the immigrants; they were stuck in here with us. This is an en masse economic and cultural suicide. 010
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 07/04/2026This feels like the most insane moment of an insane presidency 000
Spork Monger @sporkmonger.bsky.social · 07/04/2026Clark is my rep and I like her, but this isn’t strong enough. Every member of the house needs to be publicly, explicitly calling for impeachment. 100
