confidence level: I am a physicist, not a biologist, so don’t take this the account of a domain level expert. But this is really basic stuff, and is very easy to verify. Recently I encountered a scientific claim about biology, made by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I searched around for the source of the claim, and found that he has been repeating versions of the claim for over a decade and a half, including in “the sequences” and his TED talk. In recent years, this claim has primarily been used as an argument for why an AGI attack would be extremely deadly. I believe this claim is factually incorrect.

This is my article on one of the dumbest and most obviously false claims Yudkowsky has ever made, about biology not using covalent bonds.

  • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
    8·
    11 months ago

    From what I could understand is that he talks about diamondoid (and these other things) just because he has read one book about the subject. ‘Nanosystems’ by Drexler apparantly. (Never read it, can’t say anything about it).

    I’m not sure Yud is really engaging with what is being said vs just going on and on about how AGI can kill us all via nanomachines (son), because handwave theory something.

    • blakestacey@awful.systemsMEnglish
      11·
      11 months ago

      It’s like he heard the phrase “flesh-eating bacteria” and decided they would be more scarier if they had tiny knives and forks.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systemsEnglish
            9·
            11 months ago

            Fun fact, as the agi is trained on the internet as long as we keep chatting about how we are weak to salt, it will eventually think we are like snails, making any malicious agi easy to spot.