I find astonishing that one can speculate about censorship without mentioning how big American corporations armed with the monopoly over certain technologies, ESG scores and the support of the USA government and its agencies have launched an aggressive campaign to control the discurse and silence any dissenting voice all over the world.

Here in Europe we now have to think and to speak in the way that some "intellectuals" from the USA deemed politically correct if we don't want to find ourselves casted out of society. Despite how absurd most of the linguistic directives are in a language that it is not English.

I, a former famous creator and a legally registered transexual woman, have been explicitly or shadowy banned from almost all platforms for saying things like that you shouldn't give interventions that lead to permanent infertility to kids or that affirmative action should be frown upon.

As all the big platforms are controlled by a reduced number of investors who share the same discourse, I lost my ability to make a living out of my art, for example.

Just look at what happened if, relying on evidence, you doubted the usefulness of masking during the CoViD pandemic.

I think that it is possible that it has never existed a more widespread and subtly malignant campaign of censorship than the one established by the USA. They destroy competitors just to force you to use their platforms just so they can say "hey, don't use our social networks if you don't like them". Social networks that are employed to influence public discord, to initiate unrest and to propagate misinformation with carefully curate algorithms.

An example: My previous Facebook account was banned for sharing official data about the gender and age distribution of refugees during the Syrian crisis without making any personal observation of the data.

The inappropriate laughs reminded me to this recording of a speech from David Foster Wallace: This Is Water. 

Is unwarranted, incredulous laughter a sign of a too big cognitive distance between the speaker and the audience? I.e., if the speaker is too smart or too dumb compared to his listeners, are the latter going to find the whole situation so disorienting as to be funny?

That's a good argument, thank you. I see how expecting people to watch videos about one little assumption made in the original message instead of carefully laying out the core of the arguments and presenting them in a way that more precisely answered to my concerns about what was written in the thread was a bad approach and could be interpreted as too general or derailing even. I will try to do better next time.

As someone born as male who registered as female this year, I believe that one of the ways in which it is possible to negate reality in the most radical manner is to act as if you can truly change your sex. 

The map indicates that I'm a woman, but the territory won't be changed by that. I'm a man, no matter what all the documents say. 

It would be unhealthy to pretend otherwise. 

I would have just put the cup at the end of the ramp, introducing its edge between the ramp and the book. If that didn't count as placing it on the floor, even if I had taken a little, unimportant, piece of the edge of the cup and put it separately on the floor, I would have destroyed the cup, made it a hundred little pieces to put them everywhere, so the ball would have landed in some piece at some point in its trajectory or I would have made a barrier with a long piece to stop the ball at some point in its rolling. It that wasn't valid, I would have kept the cup on the floor facing up, but handling it with my hand to correct the position in real time. If that didn't count either, I would have put the cup on its side expecting to intercept the trajectory of the ball when it rolls down the floor. If nothing of the previous things were allowed, I would have gone by gut feeling, which is commonly pretty good at predicting physics. 

How did I do? Have I killed all of humanity? 

PD: I answered without reading the explanation, to force myself to think. 

I disagree with that alleged preponderance of the external. While it obviously has a big influence, personality factors like high openness to experience and low agreeableness, plus low latent inhibiton plus high cognitive abilities play, in my opinion and experience, a larger rol by a wide margin.

Consider that I can only talk from my experience. 

It is a risky move, for sure, and you are going to piss off some people. But I have found out that said pissed off people are almost always inclined not only to forgive you if you make the smallest gesture of peace, but to befriend you and to appreciate you. I have found out that people really appreciate honesty, and acting this way comes of as idealistic and honest. Whereas I have found out that you can't really recover in practice from being seen as pathetic, whiny or weak (only a long time and a miracle can make you recover from that). And I believe that most delicate approaches are perceived as low status and coming from frailty. In my experience, women are way more unforgiving towards weakness and more lenient towards assholeness. With men, you will need to concede and lose from time to time, I strongly advise against "wining" too much against men, you need to let them take some jabs even if you have thought the perfect answer and you can always come on top. 

The worst of this approach will be felt when the other person is depressed, very insecure and places himself at the lowest echelon of the hierarchy, but don't accept said position and deludes himself into thinking that he is much better than what he is. I say: avoid as a general rule that kind of people, and this is a good test to detect them; they are usually vulnerable narcissists, or something very similar to that, and they can't take the slightness jab without feeling injured and vengeful. If you feel deeply hurt and resented with any kind of negative feedback, learn how to sincerely laugh at yourself. The more secure and healthy the people around you, the better they will receive this approach. Low status people who don't delude themselves will also look up to you. Particularly timid people who would like to act like you, but they don't find the courage to do so. 

You must also come up as fundamentally good. If you are seen like ultimately evil and wanting to cause real harm, this approach won't work with decent people, but it will still work with terrible people. If you feel venom in your mouth, swallow it. Only talk when you really find it funny and you are not moved by anger. You must be seen as generous and just, and I recommend to truly be generous and just instead of pretending to be those things, but, while still being truly generous and just, make a show out of it, I always celebrate out loud everything good that I do, particularly when it is a little thing, big things are better discovered indirectly, but you should boast about your little gestures, I always say: 'look at how good I am' at the smallest favours I do, but I also say: 'don't worry about it, I like you, we are friends' at the big favours, because people really love a rascal with a heart of gold. 

Also, and I can't stress this enough. Take as much as you give. Being generous must be accompanied by the ability of being the receptor of generousness, otherwise you will also be seen as too needy and weak. 

I think that, despite mentioning Larry David, you didn't consider the most useful technique when it comes to steer a conversation, which is to be an asshole while using a hefty dose of humor. 

In my experience, if you try to have a meta-conversation, no matter how delicately you put it, you are, in my experience at least, going to ruin the situation and make people uncomfortable. But if you are funny and shameless enough, you can get away with murder, you can be as blunt as you want to be and people is going to to laugh it off while still giving you points for being able to correct the situation. 

When it comes to social dynamics, my experience tells me that power triumphs delicacy and decency. The times I have been myself in a situation in which someone did 80% of the talk I just said out loud something like:

'Hey! Come on! Why don't you shut the fuck up already? You are driving me crazy, I don't even remember the sound of my own voice anymore. It was masculine? I thought that it was masculine. And deep. Heavenly even. It is not? Not a little bit heavenly? You ruined me. That's what you did with that much talking. I'm now a listener!'. 

The other person may fight back or may feel bad. In the first case, you can banter a little; in the second, you just say: 'oh, don't take it so seriously, I really like you, you know that, I just want to hear what other people has to say and I'm a little bit of an asshole, everyone knows. We can still be best friends, right? What are your thoughts on betrayal, bestie?'. 

I have cultivated an image of someone who always says what he wants and who can take many jabs without feeling insulted. So people let me say anything and laugh at it while still listening to what I say. 

I have found out that the most intelligent thing in social situations, no matter how smart the other people are, is to pretend that you are rude and stupid when necessary, almost feral. I have found out that the only thing that makes you lose prestige in a social situation is to appear as someone weak that can be stepped on. 

I believe that for highly educated, highly intelligent, sensible people this is hard to accept. But it is my experience. Confidence and bluntness beats carefulness and thoughtfulness every time. And rationality is about wining, isn't it? To win, you sometimes need to act as an idiot and an asshole. 

Even if you don't have a sense of hierarchy, I can assure you that other people have it. 

Nobody seems to explicitly state that AGI won't kill anyone. Even the most optimist among those who believe that AGI will be safe just consider that it won't end humanity as a whole. Nobody seems to believe that AGI won't cause at least some number of casualties.