Comment by 6nne on Shutting Down the Lightcone Offices · 2023-03-15T18:43:24.863Z · LW · GW

Could someone explain exactly what "make AI alignment seem legit” means in this thread? I’m having trouble understanding from context.

1. “Convince people building AI to utilize AI alignment research”?
2. “Make the field of AI alignment look serious/professional/high-status”?
3. “Make it look like your own alignment work is worthy of resources”?
4. “Make it look like you’re making alignment progress even if you’re not”?

A mix of these? Something else?

Comment by 6nne on Does polyamory at a workplace turn nepotism up to eleven? · 2023-03-05T18:27:34.398Z · LW · GW

Given the way you wrote this, it sounds like you're using the word "polycule" to mean something like "a group of people who are all dating all of each other." I've recently heard a few people use the word "polycule" as if this is the definition.

But, uh, I've been polyamorous for 8 years, and I've literally never heard of this happening. The closest thing I've seen is a triad, in which a group of three people are all dating each other, but that's quite rare and often isn't very stable. (Newly-nonmonogamous married couples sometimes explicitly seek out a bisexual woman to date both of them, but this almost never works out. This behavior is referred to as "unicorn hunting," and it's generally frowned upon within the polyamorous community.)

"Polycule" refers to a network of one-on-one polyamorous relationships. (It's a play on "molecule" -- when you draw these graphs, they look kind of like molecules.) 

For example: Alice is married to Bob; Bob is dating Carol; Carol is dating David; David is dating Edward; Carol is married to Francis. In that example, Alice *might* have a relationship with Carol, depending on how close she likes to be with her partners' partners, and depending on how serious the relationship between Bob and Carol is. But she likely has zero relationship with David, Edward, or Francis.

A "polycule" is more of a fun little diagram, and less of an actual social entity. When my "polycule" technically splits in half because I break up with a partner, there are often no substantial consequences to my life besides the change in my relationship with that one person. "Joining a polycule" just means starting to date an individual person who happens to be dating other people -- it doesn't somehow give you political power by being connected to everyone else in the polycule.

In many cases, the monogamous equivalent of "someone in my polycule is joining my team at work" would be something like "my wife's friend's tennis partner is joining my team at work." (Especially because many polyamorous relationships are pretty casual.)