• They don't even care to check what Classic autism or Kanner autism was in 60s ~80s. They just act almost mockingly confused.
  
• Arguing from a ASD-1 standpoint because somehow pointing out Aspergers being early Schizoid PD is bigoted???.
  
• They quickly get mad when this study is posted to them despite fucking nagging people for proof?. That has ASD only adults displaying psychotic episodes.
  
• Get mad when Classic autism is used despite never crying when Paranoid SZ is used.
  

10 Warning Signs of Cult Recruitment

1. Social isolation. If you are seeing less and less of your family and peers in favor of your new best friends, ask yourself why. Cults gradually chip away at your community until only cult members remain. If the cult is your entire world—a closed system—then leaving it can feel really scary.
2. Cyber isolation. If all your Facebook friends agree with you, ask yourself why. Cyber isolation can lead to confirmation bias. That means you only see information that supports what you already believe. And your beliefs are also continually validated in the echo chamber of cyber isolation. The Facebook algorithm shows you things you want to see in a never-ending cycle of digital influence.
3. Promised rewards. If you find that you’re on the verge of amazing accomplishments or the fulfillment of your wildest dreams, ask yourself why. Cults promise gifts like a spiritual Wheel of Fortune: enlightenment, self-actualization, love, unlicensed psychotherapy, companionship, exorcism, peace of mind, perfect health, eternal life, great sex, a forever home, a loving family. Over-the-top rewards are part of the conversion process. How can anyone say no?
4. Phobia indoctrination. If you find that you have a lot of new fears, ask yourself why. Seeing threats everywhere? Cults use fear to induce people to stay within their ranks, where they’ll be safe. And naturally the only person who can truly protect you is the cult leader. Who is also responsible for punishing you. Their methods are effective because they alternate fear with love, leading to disorganized attachment.
5. Heightened emotion. If you find yourself feeling extremely happy, angry, or scared, ask yourself why. Cults trigger big emotional responses and then direct that emotion toward a strategic target when you’re at your least rational.
6. Love-bombing. If you find yourself feeling more loved than you ever have in your life, ask yourself why. This is a tactic that narcissistic manipulators use in interpersonal relationships, but it also applies to cultic attempts at thought reform. Cult members will spoil you with attention and affection in order to make you feel connected and important. And people keep coming back for the love drug.
7. Us vs. them mentality. If you find that you have a lot of enemies all of a sudden, ask yourself why. Cults invent enemies to help solidify the group identity. When you envision yourself as a missionary for good versus evil, there might be too much at stake for you to abandon your cause.
8. Social influence. If you find that everyone around you agrees on something, ask yourself why. Psychological studies show that compliance goes up with the number of people involved. Most people won’t reject an idea if the whole group supports it. And cult prospects are typically overwhelmed with group-ecstatic activities, which can lead them to poor information processing. Essentially, peer pressure makes it impossible for people to function at full capacity.
9. Intelligence-dampening. If you find yourself too tired or confused to make decisions, ask yourself why. Cults use techniques like sleep-deprivation, alternate states of consciousness, repetition, and thought-stopping to overwhelm someone’s cognitive resources and critical thinking skills. They destabilize your view of reality. And when your mind is under threat, you keep returning to the safety and love of your leader. It doesn’t mean you’re stupid, even if you develop false beliefs. All humans have false beliefs and a tendency toward magical thinking. But cult members depend on the cult for direction when their brains are disoriented.
10. Identity disturbance. If you feel like a new you–a better you–ask yourself why. Cults alternate reward and punishment to stress people out and disrupt their identities. From there, cults can inflict a new identity on a member, one that depends on submission and self-surrender. And it doesn’t help that other sources of identity, like work and school, are slowly taken over by cult participation.

• Gender: Non-Binary
• Race/Ethnicity: Filipino
• Residence: Philippines (international applicant)
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): N/A
• High School: Religious private school that isnt the most competitive or well-known in the country but pretty alright.
• Income Bracket: 35k (considered middle class in the Philippines, my father is the sole breadwinner working as a lawyer and I have 2 more siblings who are still studying in private schools)
• EFC: 2k to 3k USD (i needed aid from every school)

• GPA: 3.9 for Freshman/Sophomore/Senior year, 3.6 for Junior year
• of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: NONE, my school offered AP classes but I couldnt afford them
• Senior Year Course Load: Mostly humanities and social science classes, I did not have any science or math classes in my coursework.

• SAT/ACT: Went test optional but I took it once and got a 1230 (LOW AS HELL BYE)
• ENGLISH TEST: Took the Duolingo Test and got 155

• Elections Project - assistant project head of a city wide youth elections project where we conducted mock elections, podcast interviews with politicians, and daily news coverage of the national 2022 elections.
• National Newspaper - writer contributor of a political editorial article to a national newspaper
• School Play on Social Justice - wrote and directed a play that tackled social justice issues in the country, I was the overall head of the class project and the play had runs with audience members from invited schools
• Student Council - was the student body vice president (junior year) and student body president (senior year), I was the main organizer of projects and events such as the annual school carnival, christmas fundraiser, student assistance programs, family day activities, etc.
• School Newspaper - was the news and sports editor of the school newspaper for 3 years, i also competed in journalism competitions as the representative of my school paper
• Dance Varsity - was part of the hiphop dance varsity team of my school for 4 years, we won in many national competitions
• Photography Business - owned a mini-photography business for 2 years at which I was mostly working on freelance photo editing
• International Screenwriting Competition - won 3rd place in two screenwriting competitions during my junior year
• Elderly Volunteer Organization - was part of an organization that conducted monthly outreach programs to the elderly, I served as the treasurer of the organization for 2 years
• Tutor Services - worked as a tutor of an organization that offered free onsite tutor services to elementary children, i tutored language (Eng and Fil) subjects

• Academic Honors 9th-12th Grade
• Leadership Recognition 9th-12th Grade
• Community Service Recognition 9th-12th Grade
• Awards for Journalism Competitions
• Awards for Screenwriting Competitions

• Common App Essay - went with prompt 3, wrote about my favorite author and how my reading habits mirrored my flaws in handling everyday life. 8/10 could have been more fleshed out and i crammed it first week of Jan.
• Supplementals - yeah I just copy and pasted a lot of these from my supplemental essays to other schools. 7/10 to 8/10

• Media Studies Teacher - 10/10
• English and Literature Teacher - 8/10

• UPD, UST, ADMU, DLSU (Top 4 universities in the Philippines)
• University of Denver - Dean Scholar (29k) + International Diversity Award (11k)
• Brandeis University - Presidential Scholarship (15k)
• Syracuse University - Dean Scholarship (10k)
• Marquette University - Pere Marquette Scholarship (29k)
• Hofstra University - Presidential Scholarship (29k)
• Drexel University
• Rutgers New-Brunswick
• University of Maryland
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• PennState

• Wake Forest University
• Franklin & Marshall College

• Kenyon College
• Sewanee College

“Secrets, Heartbeat” Atavista by Childish Gambino : an Album Review

5.5/10.

Newsletter link:

uses the so-called “left-wing” propagandists and their information platforms (websites, media and social platforms) to discredit the support of Ukraine by international partners, justify Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine, accusing Western countries of creating conditions under which Russia was forced to launch the so-called special military operation, fomenting wars in Ukraine by providing it with weapons, etc. As a result, they are used by Russia to systematically convey pro-Kremlin narratives to the population of Ukraine and Ukraine’s allied countries…
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the World Socialist Web Site “WSWS” has regularly published articles in various languages aimed at discrediting Ukraine and representatives of governments around the world for assisting Ukraine in its fight against the aggressor state.

an online publication of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated sections in the Socialist Equality Parties around the world, which covers the main socio-political problems around the world from the position of revolutionary opposition to the capitalist market system, with the aim of establishing world socialism through socialist revolution.

The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site denounce the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Despite the provocations and threats by the US and NATO powers, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine must be opposed by socialists and class-conscious workers. The catastrophe that was set in motion by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 cannot be averted on the basis of Russian nationalism, a thoroughly reactionary ideology that serves the interests of the capitalist ruling class represented by Vladimir Putin.
What is required is not a return to the pre-1917 foreign policy of tsarism, but, rather, a revival, in Russia and throughout the world, of the socialist internationalism that inspired the October Revolution of 1917 and led to the creation of the Soviet Union as a workers state. The invasion of Ukraine, whatever the justifications given by the Putin regime, will serve only to divide the Russian and Ukrainian working class and, moreover, serve the interests of US and European imperialism.
In the two major statements that he has made during the past week, Putin has justified his actions by enumerating the provocations and crimes of the United States. There is, no question, much that is factually true in his denunciation of Washington’s hypocrisy. But the viciously anti-communist and xenophobic ideology that he invokes and the interests that he claims to be defending are thoroughly reactionary and incapable of appealing to the broad mass of the working class in Russia, let alone in Ukraine and throughout the world. A substantial section of the working class in Russia and Ukraine will be repelled by the cynicism of Putin’s glorification of the heroic struggle waged by the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in World War II while denouncing the October Revolution and the existence of the USSR as a multi-national state.

1. The new world order that the United States wants to establish looks like this very possible picture: Russia and China are to be subordinated to imperialism and divided, if that is necessary to maintain direct control over their natural, industrial-technological and human resources.
   
2. The European imperialist powers support the United States for their own place in the new redivision of the world. At the same time, European imperialism, while placed on rations by the United States, sees a way out of its economic and geopolitical predicament only in a redivision of the world in which it can regain its former greatness.
   
3. Japan, South Korea and Australia support the US only as much as it suits their interests in the struggle against China in the Pacific region. These countries will support the US as long as it allows them to compete with China. The process of dividing spheres of influence will revive the contradictions between the Pacific capitalist powers, which are as much in limbo as Europe.
   
4. The crisis of 2008 revived class struggles around the world. The Arab Spring of the early 2010s is vivid evidence of this revival. It forced US and European imperialism to take more decisive measures. In 2014, they supported a coup d'état in Ukraine. Through this coup, the US was able to create all the conditions to build a bridgehead in a future war against Russia.
   
5. The Covid-19 pandemic that erupted in 2020 exacerbated the contradictions of capitalism and was the trigger for a more rapid expansion of US imperialism in preparation for war against Russia and China. The US embarked on a more provocative path of abandoning the “one-China” policy, and increasing its support for Ukraine, as expressed in the NATO summit in August 2021, which supported Zelensky’s “Crimean platform.”
   

The reactionary regime of Vladimir Putin emerged from the treacherous dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy and the restoration of capitalism. The policies of Putin, in the final analysis, are aimed at safeguarding the wealth of the post-Soviet oligarchy against the pressure of Western imperialism from above and, even more critically, against the movement of the Russian working class from below.

Within this geopolitical and social context, Putin’s adventurist invasion of Ukraine on February 24 was the Russian oligarchy’s response to NATO’s relentless expansion to the east. The Putin regime’s main objective was to achieve through the pressure of its “Special Operation” a new round of talks with the US-NATO, since the last round ended up crossing “red lines” on the part of the US-NATO, which caused Putin’s invasion [emphasis added].

1. The Russian bourgeoisie’s desire for an “equal partnership” with the West was one of the most utopian delusions. This delusion, historically derived from Stalin’s policy of “Popular Fronts” and then “peaceful coexistence,” developed among the fledgling class of Russian capitalists in the 1990s.
   
2. The Putin regime has not gotten rid of this utopian delusion. Its whole policy has been to maneuver and seek compromise with the West, with whom the Russian oligarchy wanted to be “on equal footing.” Except that Western imperialism, with its conquering ambitions for Russia, did not care about these conciliatory tones of Putin’s regime.
   

The course of the war after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine increasingly emphasizes the reactionary nature of this invasion. While claiming to be fighting for the independence of the Russian people from the threat of Western imperialism, Putin is in fact only defending the independence of the Russian oligarchy to exploit the Russian working class and the country’s raw material wealth.

the Putin regime has no way out of the current crisis for Russian society. It will not have such a way out in the future. All of the military and political activities of the Putin regime will only contribute to the escalation of Western imperialism and the deterioration of conditions for the Russian, Ukrainian and international working class.

1. The prospects for the present war, when thought within the framework of the capitalist system, are very bleak. First, this war will take on a long-term character and will not only be fought between Ukraine and Russia. It is the first step in inflaming the world situation to the point that the threat of a third world war is simply inevitable. All countries of the world will take part in the future war.
   
2. Secondly, the nature of the war will be determined by the policies of the ruling classes, which now stand on a blatantly anti-human position. The ruling classes are recklessly moving toward the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict, thereby creating the real possibility of a nuclear Armageddon. The specter of planetary destruction arises from the insane policies of imperialist and capitalist governments. The recklessness of the ruling capitalist elite compels young people to ask whether they will be allowed any future at all.
   

It is not the rich minority, but the poor majority—the unemployed, workers, peasants, teachers, doctors, office workers—that will be sent into the bloody meat grinder. Now, with the adoption of the new law, the number of men deprived of basic human rights, who will be captured and hunted down like animals and sent to the front, will increase many times over.
The profits of those who benefit from this war will also increase many times over … These huge profits will be divided up between the military-industrial complex, its lobbyists in the American and European establishment, and the Ukrainian oligarchic top brass.

The only “crime” that Bogdan committed was his conviction that Ukraine can become truly free only through the independent struggle of the Ukrainian working class, acting together with the international working class against imperialism and war. He advanced a principled political position based on a Marxist understanding of the war, opposed to the fanatical worship of Ukrainian nationalism as well as the reactionary Russian nationalism of the Putin regime. Like our entire movement, he has fought for the unification of workers in Russia and Ukraine with the workers in the imperialist countries, to put an end to a fratricidal war that has claimed the lives of at least half a million Ukrainians and tens of thousands of Russians.

No bourgeois regime is capable of resolving the crisis other than through war and destruction, because any other way would be contrary to its fundamental capitalist interests. The contradictions of capitalism cannot be resolved within national borders and on the basis of a defense of private property. Only the international working class armed with the program of world socialist revolution will be able to put an end to the wars and resolve the fundamental crisis. To do so, however, it must fight for its unity with its brothers and sisters around the world.

Who Believes In “AI Imminence”?

Is AI risk the only field where someone can write an article about how they’re not (much) of a doomer when they think that the risk of catastrophe/disasteextinction is 33%?

Why Am I Sceptical?

• Superforecasters and financial markets are not giving high credence to transformative AI. Both groups have good track records, so we should strongly consider deferring to their views.
  
• The transformative AI argument is "fishy" (to borrow Will MacAskill’s argument against “The Most Important Century”). It implies that not only we are at an unusually pivotal time in history (perhaps the most important decade, let alone century), but that consequently, rationalists are perhaps the most important prophets in history. When your claims are that extraordinary, it seems much more likely that they're mistaken.
  
• The “inside view” arguments do not seem very robust to me. That is, they are highly speculative arguments that are primarily discussed among an insular group of people in usually relatively informal settings. I think you should be wary of any argument that emerges via this process, even if you can’t point to any specific way in which they are wrong.
  

Why I’m Against Highly Immodest Epistemology

Try to spend most of your time thinking about the object level. If you’re spending more of your time thinking about your own reasoning ability and competence than you spend thinking about Japan’s interest rates and NGDP, or competing omega-6 vs. omega-3 metabolic pathways, you’re taking your eye off the ball.

Why I’m Also Sceptical of Moderately Immodest Epistemology

What Should We Make Of Surveys Of AI Experts?

What Are The Potential Consequences Of Overconfidence?

Conclusion

• Eliezer Yudkowsky (these days) is probably causing harm, and people with moderate concerns about AI should distance themselves from him. Espousing views that we are all likely to die from AI should not be tolerated as a merely strong opinion, but as something that can cause meaningful harm to people who believe it. I feel this might actually be happening to some degree (I think it’s notable that e.g. the 80,000 Hours podcast has never interviewed him, despite interviewing plenty of other AI-risk-concerned people). But I would like to see more of a “Sister Souljah moment” where e.g. a prominent EA thought leader explicitly disavows him.
  
• Yudkowsky being the worst offender doesn't let everyone else off the hook. For instance, I think Scott Alexander is much better at taking modesty seriously, yet I don't think he takes it seriously enough.
  
• We should be generally suspicious of arguments for crazy-sounding things. I have not only become more suspicious of arguments about AI, but also other arguments relatively popular in rationalist or EA circles, but not so much outside it (think certain types of utilitarian arguments that imply that e.g. maybe insect welfare or the long-term future outweighs everything else). I appreciate that they might say something worth considering, and perhaps weak-form versions of them could be reasonable. But the heuristic of “You probably haven’t found the single most important thing ever” is something I think should be given more weight.
  

1. Go to law school
2. Go to school to become a high school teacher
3. Go to school for mental health counseling
4. Go back to undergrad for athletic training/physical therapy

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been the standard measure of economic growth since World War II. It is widely believed that accelerating economic growth as measured by the GDP will translate into improved living standards. However, this view is being challenged with the argument that it is better to focus on measures of wellbeing than GDP because, despite robust economic growth over the past several decades, there are still millions of citizens living in poverty.Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been the standard measure of economic growth since World War II. It is widely believed that accelerating economic growth as measured by the GDP will translate into improved living standards. However, this view is being challenged with the argument that it is better to focus on measures of wellbeing than GDP because, despite robust economic growth over the past several decades, there are still millions of citizens living in poverty.

Perpetual Growth

Perpetual Growth

Technological Revolution

Quality of the GDP

Conclusion

References

Paul Lalovich

Tesha Teshanovich

A venture builder differs from other capital funds in that it depends mainly on the quality and dynamism of its networks (INSEAD, 2018). It means that a venture builder must find out which the best resource combination for creating the most explosive outcomes for it to gain market greater share faster than its rivals.

Goals and purpose of Venture BuilderGoals and purpose of Venture Builder

The Distinction Between Incubators and Accelerators

Process of creating a Venture Builder

Conclusion

Paul Lalovich

Tesha Teshanovich