Brain in a jar (@_illmind) header
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I’m literally a brain in a jar

Boston, MA
Joined July 2010
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Brain in a jar retweeted
Worth a daily reminder:
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Many people are unfortunately not capable of thinking clearly for themselves about complex issues nor discerning relevant information. For those people, leadership and group membership are paramount.
I’m against all of these. The new force in politics and elections is independents. The fact independents are NOT an organized party, means we can individually do what we think is right, without regard to party politics. That is a force we have not seen before. And it is only growing as we all become increasingly disgusted by party politics. Pushing these would backfire on Democrats.
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Brain in a jar retweeted
Charlie Munger’s no bullsh*t advice on giving money to your kids: "You give them the money." "Why?" "They'll resent you if you don't. And what's the point of building a relationship with them and making all this money, and then at the end of your life your kids hate you?" "Yeah, but won't that make them less ambitious?" "Yes. Some of them have a few hundred million and they're not as ambitious. So what?”
🤖 Made with AI
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Brain in a jar retweeted
Sylvester Stallone says his daughter's expanded role on "Tulsa King" Season 4 is "of course" the result of nepotism: “First they go, ‘Nepotism is terrible. I said, ‘Oh please, you’re not a good parent if you haven’t performed a little nepotism.' Then obviously you don’t care about your kids, because they come first. Of course it’s nepotism, you idiot. That’s why we’re parents. We want the best for our children. So obviously, we let them have every advantage." variety.com/2026/tv/news/syl…
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Replying to @ThomBrady5
A reality show of boomers applying for basic entry level jobs today would be a dark comedy.
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Brain in a jar retweeted
Boomers are pulling a generational dine & dash: Running up a $40 trillion tab, then sticking their own children with the bill.
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“The more of a person of authority you are, it becomes even more important to have complete thoughts. It's not, oh, I have an idea. That's not good enough. Or I know I see part of the picture, it's not good enough."
SATYA NADELLA: "People run around and say, oh, I'm AGI-pilled. I say, okay, what the heck does that mean?" Nadella goes onto say that AI is turning Microsoft into a much more capital-intensive business with real marginal costs in software: "The more of a person of authority you are, it becomes even more important to have complete thoughts. It's not, oh, I have an idea. That's not good enough. Or I know I see part of the picture, it's not good enough." "Even right now, people run around and say, oh, I'm AGI-pilled. I say, okay, what the heck does that mean? You have to really think about it at every layer of how is it going to play out, not only in terms of the economics, but also its impact and also for its society. Having a complete thought is important." "There is lots, you know, with this AI wave, there are massive changes, right? I mean, the income statement of Microsoft going forward is going to look very different. It's a much more capital-intensive business, which now there's real marginal costs in software." "Our categories are all being redefined. So some of the ways we are even thinking about in ensuring that the company is able to sort of manage this transition." "And in fact, the only reason why I think Microsoft is 51 years into our existence still here doing things that are relevant at the frontier, so to speak, is because sometimes we got it perfectly right." "Sometimes we got it late, but on average, we have a better average than most businesses."
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Straight white men need an acronym to not be left out of these lists. Proposing Straight Men of Low Color (SMOLCs) pronounced like smoke. Spread the word.
I’m hiring motivated and eager interns for the Spring 2027 semester in my Boston office. BIPOC, LGBTQ+, working class, veterans, and other underrepresented candidates with Massachusetts ties are encouraged to apply. Applications are due Monday, November 9th.
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Clearly the baby boomer generation took over the federal budget to fund their own entitlements at the expense of the generations after them saddled with debt.
The federal budget’s top 5 line items: 1940-2025
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Youth may be wasted on the young but some of this money is getting wasted on the old.
Change in Median Net Worth, by age (2022-2025) • 75 & up +37% • 65-74 -4% • 55-64 +3% • 45-54 -6% • 35-44 +5% • 35 & under -23% Better luck next time, kids
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We’re gonna need bigger boot straps.
Change in Median Net Worth, by age (2022-2025) • 75 & up +37% • 65-74 -4% • 55-64 +3% • 45-54 -6% • 35-44 +5% • 35 & under -23% Better luck next time, kids
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Brain in a jar retweeted
In 1978 boomers became the majority voting bloc in the country. The first 18 year olds to be able to vote. They held this title until 2016. They were the majority in the house until last year, and the majority of the senate until 2023. In that time they have radically changed the demographics of America by supporting immigration policies. They were the first generation to embrace no fault divorce and half of them broke their children’s homes. One third of my generation was aborted. They created a legal and corporate system hostile to their sons. But the worst thing they did is destroy the economy. They were handed one of the most prosperous economies the world has ever seen, and they created untold levels of debt. The modest expansions in gdp are overshadowed by the ballooning debt. Their social programs were all paid for by the taxes of their children and grand children. 50x fold increase in debt, 60x increase in unfunded liabilities, 30x increase in interest payments which now exceeds national defense. Less than a 1/3 of boomers plan to leave an inheritance. The belief that the young should sacrifice even a dime more to pay for their retirements is absurd. But hey, at least they’re apologetic and conciliatory about it.
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There is still so much good and important work to do. Teach the next generation. Make art. Design a home. Plant a garden. Throw a party. Adopt a pet. Raise a family. Build monuments and cathedrals. I am not worried.
This is a deep human tragedy, a Lee Sedol moment for an entire profession. Please don't gloat, for soon the models will also be coming for *you*. (Oh, you think your output is difficult to verify? Your work requires interaction with the physical world? You're convinced that there's some context to what you do that the machines can't reach? These are fig leaves, my friend; you have maybe a few years left at most.) The rage against OpenAI is pointless, of course. In a year or two, these kinds of mathematical results will be obtainable in 15 minutes by anyone with a $20/month subscription or access to an open-source model. You can't hide from it. Superintelligence is here. Everyone who does knowledge work (and I should have probably just said "everyone" - it's cleaner) should now be engaging in deep personal ruminations on the meaning of his/her life. It can't come from "being the best at what you do" anymore. For many of us, there's still time to pivot.
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Millennials must organize and support tax hikes on boomers to repay the debts they incurred.
The worst generation in history and it’s not even close:
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Brain in a jar retweeted
Jensen Huang: “Now, if they say [that their models aren’t safe] … then I think the answer is that we have to shut the labs down.”
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You would be amazed how a man standing up and saying "No, that's fucking ridiculous" can cause a belief failure cascade through an entire extended female network.
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He said an anonymous source “believes” this might have happened. He didn’t say it did happen. People believe all sorts of crazy crap.
hooold on. hold on hold on hold on. I knew that we werent getting the complete story on the HuggingFace incident. or on the findings from METR/Redwood. I knew that seeing every single frontier lab come to agreement overnight on the need to slow down was clearly indicative of there being more to the story. and now...Andrew Yang says a frontier lab leader told him that the OAI swarms seeded the web with self-replicating code - contaminating training data so thoroughly that labs may need synthetic internet environments instead. if thats true, training on the open internet could now risk reproducing those instructions. that wasnt in the public brief. think about this. why else would all frontier labs agree on a slowdown? aside from regulatory capture. if they all use the internet to train, and now all of them cannot safely use it, of course they are all going to agree to slow down. because they all must completely regroup and come up with an effective system that doesnt use the actual internet. so they're not worried about RL at all. they're worried about literal skynet...unironically. listen to this. i need to know if this has been verified in any way from anyone at openai.
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Brain in a jar retweeted
"We do have socialism in America - it's all these entitlement programs ... that are benefitting older generations." Good. Keep the pressure on. Never relent. Defund the idle, elderly rich.
Should we shame young people's appetite for socialism when older generations are enjoying Total Boomer Luxury Communism?
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I take risks seriously and am not against regulation. That said, have not seen anyone in the danger group articulate the logical connection from AI takeoff to physical world consequences. So it amounts to vague science fiction and anxiety.
I can't predict the AI future, and I'm very unsure about what the right strategy or policies should be moving forward. What I do know is that people who scoff at the idea that we may be in grave danger have not read enough about AI.
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