Links (June 2022)
Idea Machines, AI videos, and TikTok primitives
This century is a turning point in human history. Let’s navigate it together.
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Hey team! Links post this week.
FUN LINKS
TikTok
The Onion
Christian Parents Encourage Child To Save Self For Church Leader
Politician Supports Right Of Protesters To Assemble Anywhere SUV Can Plow Through Them
Babylon Bee
TOTALLY UNFUN, SERIOUS LINKS
0/ Article of the Year. Idea Machines by Nadia Asparouhova.
How “idea machines” (memeplexes) spread through financial capital + people capital turning into outcomes.
See effective altruism, retroactive public goods funding, and progress studies.
1/ What I’m reading. Books on paleoanthropology to understand how homo sapiens evolved.
The Third Chimpanzee, Lone Survivors, After The Ice.
2/ Cool new AI music videos.
First one uses lyrics to generate DALL-E-style GAN images:
3/ Second one uses deep fakes to change who is singing:
4/ Private companies, not academia, control the AI frontier.
4/ Packy on Optimism and the Abundance Economy.
5/ In 1948, the UN ratified the Declaration of Human Rights. We need a Declaration of Obligations.
6/ Clear, specific example from Liv Boeree on how Moloch + AI drives a negative arms race for Instagram beauty.
7/ Although U.S. adults haven’t really changed their views on abortion in 50 years…
…Young American support is increasing.
8/ Extremely interesting self-license for future simulations to use your mind with good intentions.
9/ 12-year-old Palestinian kid raps about growing up in a war zone.
I want freedom for the population
2 million prisoners living in dislocation
Shouting at the wall, but nothing is ever changing
That's life under an occupation
10/ American Idle, by Eugene Wei. A+ sequel to his old post, Status as a Service.
On how TikTok works as a memetic ecosystem.
TikTok is perhaps the most evolved meme ecosystem to date.
By network effects of creativity, I mean that every additional user on TikTok makes every other user more creative.
TikTok's Duet feature belongs in the social media hall of fame of primitives alongside features like Follow and the Like button.
11/ Infinite depth 3D canvas:
12/ Evolution of humanoid robots. 2040 will be cool and scary.
13/ Good 30min video on how we need to return to a simplified energy lifestyle if we can get renewables, nuclear, and fusion figured out:
14/ New post from Vitalik: Two thought experiments to evaluate automated stablecoins. We should socially shame all new Luna-style volcoins that break these two experiments.
15/ Crypto crash is re-syncing market cap to developer activity.
16/ Uvalde newspaper on May 24.
JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES
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Join Season 7 for The Intentional Society.
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Ongoing Job Boards:
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EVENTS
The Cultural Evolution Society Conference. 21-23 September 2022. Denmark.
Upcoming ETH events
Upcoming Effective Altruism events
MUSIC
This music section often has TikTok duets.
This one is 10/10: fun topic (crypto), great puns, smooth mashup.
Hope you have a great week!
Warmth, Rhys
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