WE DEMAND A CORRECTION TO uh various minor nitpicks
also we swear we totally didn’t get your email
bonus from thread:
I am having a lot of fun on Manifold, but if the team insists on inviting eugenics speakers to conferences, its probably time for me to leave :-/
What exactly is your objection to people exercising their bodily autonomy to implement voluntary eugenics?
Is the header image on that page an intentional joke at the expense of GenAI, or did someone seriously make that and add it to the page? Do they autogenerate their pics?
Hard to know if “Contovicsy” is an AI in-joke or a Grauniad in-joke. Or neither.
The more I look, the more I’m sure it’s just bad GenAI art. I mean, look at the random Big Ben with newspaper art extending into the ether behind it, the off-center knight-in-orb, the decomposed microscope thing, the physically impossible structural shadow on the disproportionate globe that simultaneously shows from Panama east to Borneo but somehow lacks India…
Well, they got their wish, the Guardian piece is now updated:
This article was amended on 17 June 2024 to include a comment from Oliver Habryka about the purchase of Lighthaven that was received after publication; in responding, Habryka disclosed an escrow document for the property’s purchase showing a $1m deposit from, and refunded to, North Dimension Inc, a subsidiary of FTX’s sister company Alameda, which he said meant “the relevant funds never entered our bank account”. An earlier version mistakenly said Lightcone, rather than CFAR, was the sole member of Lightcone Rose Garden, and that Habryka was the latter’s registered agent, when another individual is listed in that role. A reference to Manifund as a “prediction market” has also been corrected.
I think the Gruaniad had a lot of fun with this. By hyperfocusing on the nitpicks, the rats gave them an open goal in correcting tiny details (who now cares whether any money from SBF actually entered the account of Lightcone?) but left the bigger details in place: namely that Lightcone is tight with racists.
Edit a few libertarians(?) in the comments are urging Habryka to sue for libel in the UK, totally fine with using the power of the state to enforce speech! He modestly declines, likely he knows it’s not a slam-dunk win (especially if the newspaper actually amends the piece) and that news orgs live for being sued for defamation. It’s the classic sign of a bully to sue, and it generates a ton of press.
habryka on LW:
(To be clear, for LessOnline we didn’t invite anyone who I think even remotely fits that description, I think? It’s plausible we missed something, but like, actual racism is totally the kind of thing that would have caused me to remove someone from the “blogs we love” list, if it was part of their blogging.
Manifest runs a much stronger “just invite people who are popular and share interests, with less regards for why they are popular” policy, which I think has a bunch of stuff going for it, but definitely produces a very different selection of speakers as I think is apparent from looking at the invited speaker lists.)
the long list of race scientists are not “actual racism” ok dude. this is in reply to someone saying that it was these precise people that kept him from attending
i would think that for habryka “actual racism” means something like open calls to genocide, not, you know, actual racism.
I don’t think even that does it. Richard Hanania, one of Manifest’s promoted speakers, wrote “Why Do I Hate Pronouns More Than Genocide?”.
is it considered acceptable journalistic ethics at Vox for a journalist who reports on EAs and prediction markets to make prediction market bets on how a journalistic outlet will follow-up a story on prediction markets and EAs? My eyebrows have just levitated so high they’ve collided with a starlink swarm.
But betting? There’s being an insider and then there’s profiting, and aren’t most journalists prohibited from trading or betting on their covered areas?
Dang that slanderous Guardian describing Manifund as a prediction market when it’s a market where people make predictions. Totally misleading!
Since Ivan owns 50% of the project’s certs, his stake has tripled in value from $3,000 to $9,000; he sells them for $9,000 to The Good Foundation, netting a $6,000 profit. (Important note: for legal reasons, profits on Manifund impact certificates can currently only be used to donate to charity and can’t be cashed out in the normal way.)
Imagine being such losers that you get owned by the fucking Guardian, and as your brilliant followup, you start screaming “I’M NOT OWNED”
