Eric Levitz

Think outloud for

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

A few months ago, I wrote about a similar issue to the one that Joe flags here. When prompted in languages spoken primarily in an authoritarian state, LLMs tend to give more pro-regime answers, partly because state media produces so much paywall-free text https://t.co/YxtqvkQiL2

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

Some centrists fantasize that because all LLMs have the ideology of Ezra Klein, that we may be on the doorstep of a great political moderation.

I wrote about a fascinating paper from @ahall_research and Sho Miyazaki that, to my mind, opens the door to a very different outcome.

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

Good ad

[David Weigel @daveweigel]

A head-turning new "Michigan First" ad from @AbdulElSayed - he names some issue he agrees with MAGA voters on, then plays a supercut of Fox News hosts/Tucker praising him or bashing Mike Rogers. https://t.co/RhE0YlBp68

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

It's over

[Michael Millerman @millerman]

Claude just discovered an unpatchable zero day vulnerability in rawlsian liberalism

[Dan Williams @danwilliamsphil]

Yeah, I think it's a bit unfortunate how some of the discourse surrounding this - even from smart, knowledgeable people - has underplayed or omitted prosaic, clearly fixable factors.

People often gesture at Hugging Face, etc., as self-evident vindication of worries about catastrophic misalignment leading to human extinction, but it's unclear whether the incidents we have observed are more likely under the doomer worldview than the 'normal technology' one.

[Bhaskar Sunkara @sunraysunray]

Free @BenBurgis

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

@therealmugomar Fair enough. I still think that someone could reasonably identify as a supporter of Block the Bombs while approving of how Mamdani is navigating these issues, which don't directly concern the weapons transfers. But I'm not a DSAer so, not really my fight

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

I don't think Zohran Mamdani is in a position to block US arms transfers to Israel

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

@therealmugomar Yes

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

@WPhillyTurkey it happens

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

Your credit card rewards are funded by a de-facto tax on the poor.

Rewards are financed by "swipe fees" -- the fee stores pay to banks when you use credit. To offset these costs, stores typically raise prices -- even for low-income customers who tend to pay in cash (and get no rewards).

Thus, the system channels money from low-income Americans to the affluent.

We can mitigate this injustice by following the EU's lead and capping swipe fees. https://t.co/HWngHmm85B

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

Credit cards are good. They help people weather unexpected expenses and irregular incomes. And they cost money to provide.

But America's swipe fees are higher than they need to be. Other rich countries maintain credit card systems with much lower rates. https://t.co/jq57NNo5kH

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

Your credit card rewards are funded by a de-facto tax on the poor.

Rewards are financed by "swipe fees" -- the fee stores pay to banks when you use credit. To offset these costs, stores typically raise prices -- even for low-income customers who tend to pay in cash (and get no rewards).

Thus, the system channels money from low-income Americans to the affluent.

We can mitigate this injustice by following the EU's lead and capping swipe fees. https://t.co/HWngHmm85B

[Joe @JoePostingg]

Finding Frances is perhaps the greatest hour of television ever produced. There has never been anything like it and there probably never will be again.

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

@baseballcrank I don’t think I am oppressed

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

I wrote about this concern last year. One answer is that many elites today advocate for progressive redistribution, out of a desire for meaning and/or social esteem.

But yeah, I share Cassie's unease

(paywall free link: https://t.co/prQUTWrHfS)

[Cassie Pritchard @hecubian_devil]

One fundamental problem I have with the idea of an AGI utopia is: if no human is needed anymore for labor, military service, etc, and a small number of humans own the “safe” “aligned” robots, why would they bother sharing any of the output with the rest of us?

[Matt Huber @Matthuber78]

Interesting problem: efforts to reduce fossil demand lower prices, creating more consumption/emissions *elsewhere*.

Efforts to restrict supply yields higher prices, profits, & fossil investment ("carbon lock-in").

So, neither is a substitute for massive clean energy buildout.

[Husk @huskirl]

Introducing DoubleAI

[Dan Williams @danwilliamsphil]

Unambiguous evidence of the absurdity of the law, which must be changed.

[Eric Levitz @EricLevitz]

What's obviously wrong imo: The suggestion that margins of victory (relative to your party's national margin in a given election year) is completely irrelevant to evaluating the electability of a candidate -- so much so, one should assume that anyone arguing otherwise is just making a bad faith attempt to belittle progressives for ideological reasons

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

This is one of these arguments that's so obviously wrong it makes you wonder about the whole editorial process.

[alex bronzini-vender @alexbronzini]

This is a bad argument from Perry Bacon.

Whether progressives overperform the national environment is extremely important to any argument about the party's future! The climate won't always be this blue.