Some of my experiences meeting people at bars when going with one or more friends:

• With two friends in a lefty bar in Berlin. We started talking French, the group next to us joined our conversation because they spoke French too.
• In another lefty bar, as part of a weekly meetup of an online social group. This group evolved all the time, so there was a smooth boundary between regulars we knew, newbies to the group, and people just in the bar, so we could smoothly move to conversations with random people.
• With a friend at a nerd bar in Paris. We decided to play a board game, chose one for four people, and asked the group of two next to us if they wanted to join.
• In queer bars in Paris, generally when I come with a friend, we say hi to someone alone, and start talking with them. (people alone at bars are probably waiting for someone to chat!)

at the bar, how do you know which groups of people are open to talking to another group and which groups are not?

I usually just ask. I also have good intuitions of which groups might be open to chatting, like groups with a more casual "we're just chilling" vibe, who are taking breaks in their conversations and looking around at who's in the bar. Usually, the moment when they're scanning is a good time to approach.

what sort of bars are good for this?

The bars where people go to meet new people. In my experience, it's the ones that have more of a third space vibe, where people go there just to chill, read a book, relax after their work day, attend an event there. I think a sufficient condition to check if it's a good place to meet new people is if there are people not part of a group, who are sitting alone.

• isn't it awkward if it turns out you don't like the other group?
• isn't it awkward if you are just making the rounds, speaking to one group after another?
• how do you even talk and get to know people when the music is so loud?

Those would only happen in a bar that's not the right place to meet people anyway. In my experience, in bars where people are here to be open to new encounters, they're also expecting people to move in and out of conversations as they please. And in those bars, the music is never an issue (either none, low volume, or people are drunk and talking louder than the music anyway)

I am in this picture, and I'm unsure how to feel about it

They casually-but-frantically google "wuckles" in the background to try to figure out what I meant.

I now need the "I'm in this picture and I am uncertain how to feel about it" react

Great to know! Thank you for taking the time to tell me.

I'm currently building scripts to automate cross-platform event creation, so it takes less time for me to send to so many different platforms. I'll always try to keep LW + Discord, so if you Subscribe to the LW group you should receive notifications.

¹

Noting that your footnotes redirect to the substack version of your article instead of the LW footnotes

In https://secularsolstice.vercel.app/feedback, "2022 (Or, "Where Ray's Coming From")" has the lyrics of "Five Thousand Years", which seems incorrect.

Edited to say it is not your position. I'm sorry for having published this comment without checking with you.

EDIT: Originally I said that was my best understanding of Mikhail's point. Mikhail has told me it was not his point. I'm keeping this comment as that's a point that I find interesting personally.

Before Mikhail released this post, we talked for multiple house about the goal of the article and how to communicate it better. I don't like the current structure of the post, but I think Mikhail has good arguments and has gathered important data.

Here's the point I would have made instead:

Anthropic presents itself as the champion of AI safety among the AI companies. People join Anthropic because of their trust that the Anthropic leadership will take the best decisions to make the future go well.

There have been a number of incidents, detailed in this post, where it seems clear that Anthropic went against a commitment they were expected to have (pushing the frontier), where their communication was misleading (like misrepresenting the RAISE bill), or where they took actions that seem incongruous with their stated mission (like accepting investment from Gulf states).

All of those incidents most likely have explanations that were communicated internally to the Anthropic employees. Those explanations make sense, and employees believe that the leadership made the right choice.

However, from the outside, a lot of those actions look like Anthropic gradually moving away from being the company that can be trusted to do what's best for humanity. It looks like Anthropic doing whatever it can to win the race even if it increases risks, like all the other AI companies. From the outside, it looks like Anthropic is less special than it seemed at first.

There are two worlds compatible with the observations:

• One where Anthropic is still pursuing the mission, and those incidents were just the best way to pursue the mission. The Anthropic leadership is trustworthy, and their internal explanations are valid and represent their actual view.
• One where the Anthropic leadership is not reliably pursing the mission anymore, where those incidents are in fact evidence of that, but where the leadership is using its capacity of persuasion and the fact that it has access to info employees don't have, to convince them that it was all for the mission, no matter the real reasons

In the second world, working at Anthropic would not reliably improve the world. Anthropic employees would have to evaluate whether to continue working there in the same way as they would if they worked at OpenAI or any other AI company.

All current and potential Anthropic employees should notice that from the outside, it sure does look like Anthropic is not following its mission as much as it used to. There are two hypotheses that explain it. They should make sure to keep tracking both of them. They should have a plan of what they'll do if they're in the least convenient world, so they can face uncomfortable evidence. And, if they do conclude that the Anthropic leadership is not following Anthropic's mission anymore, they should take action.

Nominated. One of the posts that changed my life the most in 2024. I've eaten oatmeal at least 50 times since then, and have enjoyed the convenience and nutrition.

I'll go buy some more tomorrow

Nominated. I used the calculator linked in this post to determine whether to take up insurance since then.