richard ngo

Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo

2026-08-05 — saved image

Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo · 1h
Where else should I be looking?
1 reply, 4 likes, 326 views

John David Pressm... @jd_pressm... · 1h
Right now nowhere, which means that if you did actually have a solution to the alignment problem there isn't actually anywhere to publish it, and there is in fact no useful audience for such a thing.

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Nathan @NathanpmYoung

2026-08-03 — saved image

Nathan @NathanpmYoung · 5m
Thought provoking, doesn't feel entirely right, but something correct about it.

[Quoted tweet]
Richard Ngo @RichardMCNgo · Jun 28
Four analogies for a country:

1. The nationalist right views it as a family or community. So applying the same bar to citizens as to outsiders is nonsensical, because the country is of, by, and for its citizens.

2. The tech right views it as a company: you should bring in only the people who will benefit it. But this view is ultimately empty, because it doesn't tell you what the interests of a country actually are. Hence the tech right (who are usually positive-sum thinkers) keep falling back on zero-sum concepts like "being competitive" or "winning against China" to justify their preferred policies. (Yarvin makes the "country as corporation" analogy particularly explicit.)

3. The tech left views it as a charity. To them, wanting others not to receive what you're been given is hypocritical. This view is also empty, because it doesn't tell you where the windfall actually comes from—and once you start to talk about the benefits of culture, ethics, institutions, etc, it becomes clear that citizens (and their ancestors) *built* that windfall rather than just being given it.

4. The woke left views it as a cancer: something that is aggressive and parasitic by its very nature. Countries are inherently violent (in asserting their borders) and exclusionary (of non-citizens) and therefore shouldn't exist (or at least shouldn't be allowed to police their borders, which is effectively the same thing). A charitable read is that this is a trauma reaction to the holocaust and colonialism—but regardless, it has become so deeply anti-civilization that it seems descriptively accurate to call it evil and insane.

Paul's tweet below most directly corresponds to the tech left bucket. Unfortunately people in that bucket are rarely willing to push back on the core tenets of the woke left, and so end up aiding and abetting them. As one example, he's surely smart enough to recognize that his tweet makes no sense to people who view country as an extension of family. But acknowledging that is a slippery slope towards legitimizing ethnonationalism, so he pretends to not understand the pushback.

[Quoted tweet]
Paul Graham @paulg · Jun 28
Nearly all those who say the US should only admit the most talented immigrants would not themselves clear the bar they're proposing. They're effectively saying "Immigration is ok so long as you keep out people like me."

63 replies, 154 reposts, 1.4K likes, 69K views

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