United Healthcare, whose CEO was murdered in December, is being sued by shareholders for not warning them that the company would start following the law now, in a way that would impact their profits. #moloch

We may be about to live in a world where machines are more intelligent than everyone and are scheming to prevent themselves from being shut down (because this is useful towards whatever goals it has).

Today we see this happening sometimes. But they may soon be smart enough to hide it from us.

If I could choose to be born anywhere 100 years earlier, I might choose Austria-Hungary: tons of opportunities to be a language nerd.

OTOH they often had a paralyzed parliament over it, just like Belgium + it also fragmented their militaries. Hard problems. How did the Swiss always manage so well?

History sure rhymes. Insightful piece by Jules Evans. HT Oshan.

I don't believe AIs can have first-person experience, and I dislike the fact that many people are starting to take this idea seriously (I'm on Team Save Human Civilization).

BUT... if you're going to philosophize about it anyway, please use the right words.

It looks like older generations of Americans really cared about privacy. How did people stop caring?

This week my total time in Germany passed the 1 year mark (over 3 stays). Berlin life is pretty sweet, except for some minor annoyances (and yes, I'm writing this in February). Ask me anything!

TIL about Gelephu Mindfulness City in Bhutan.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g_t...

Fascinating initiative in Bhutan, the country known for tracking/prioritizing its GNH (Gross National Happiness), and whose king imposed democracy on his people, many of whom really didn't want that.

This May 10th I saw a bit of aurora near Asheville, but the most interesting thing were the "waterfalls" that seemed to flow down towards the Earth, which I wasn't able to capture with my camera.

TIL the waterfalls are named STEVE.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH7b...

Having criminal immunity be dependent on holding office creates some terrible incentives. We are seeing this today in Israel.

On the topic of mapping out solmization systems (a.k.a. which countries use fixed vs movable do), I can't seem to get a straight answer. Even Claude contradicts itself.

In German, the string that we associate with the major scale CDEFGABC actually refers to the mixolydian scale (i.e. the 7th is flattened). The English "B" is written "H".

In Germany, fictional books are helpfully labeled as such ("Roman"). Kinda like Community Notes.

Relative to the US, most food in Berlin is half-price.
This includes restaurant meals, but does not include chocolate, which is more like 25-35% of USA prices.

Off to Berlin!

This is me two years ago, at a Berlin airport.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/transcript-interview-stuart-russell-lex-fridman-alfonso-r-reyes
The idea of AI subjugating humanity goes back to Alan Turing in 1951. (Lex Fridman interview with Stuart Russell)