Multiverse School Newsletter - 11/19

🚀 11/19 Multiverse School Weekly Newsletter 🚀

Hey Multiverse Crew,

It’s vacation week here at The Multiverse School. I (Liz) might be in Gather Town, but it’s for the express purposes of watching movies, video gaming, and lounging around.

Here’s what’s happening:

The Vibe

tl;dr: Does my behavior seem obnoxious relative to the group behavior? If yes, shut up if you want to hang.

Look, the vibe of this place is really important to me. I have to say a few things to set expectations because some folks need rules. For my PDAers, these rules are not arbitrary, they exist for reasons, if those reasons aren’t evident to you, you’re welcome to ask any questions privately to me. Ultimately, it’s my server and I wield the banhammer. Last week I was exhausted and didn’t really make myself clear, so let’s gooooo

It’s not ok to:

Monologue & take up the entire session
Deny other people’s art is art. If you don’t think it’s art, shut up about it.
Denigrate other people’s efforts or work. Unless you’ve gotten your research past peer review on the topic please keep your invalidating opinions to yourself, I am not interested in hearing them in my classroom. Your “lots of time thinking about this” is anecdotal, and not statistically significant.
Ragebait with topics that are meant to inflame arguments. We’re a very leftist somewhat anarchist learning community, not a freshman debate class. Start a flame war on the internet, others interested in that game will happily oblige you, they’ve opted-in. Creating enemies in this space is a staggeringly profound tactical error. Most people in this space do not enjoy arguing for fun- you are allowed to find a space for that, somewhere else, outside of scheduled sessions that other people have paid to be in.
Engage in coercive emotional regulation. Ask yourself- did the person I am engaging with opt in to helping me regulate this emotion I’m having, or am I coercing them to regulate my feelings?
Yell
Talk over me, it’s my server yo.

It’s always ok to:

Body double quietly
Share cool stuff with the group
Chat in the Chat off-topic
Talk about your feelings (by naming them without a story attached)
Create a boundary
Express a need
Promote your work
Get excited about something you’re passionate about
Stay quiet about things that literally do not affect you in any way

Neurodivergent people sometimes do not pick up on their effect on the vibe. It’s very normal for us to struggle to identify when we might be rubbing the group the wrong way. This listing is stuff that rubbed me the wrong way, and ultimately I’m kind of the median opinion in the group due to my tiktok being the primary incoming channel. I try to apply a lot of filters on that channel by being somewhat repellent to folks who don’t vibe with me. That’s fine if you don’t, but I’d like to remain a centroid for my own community so I will take actions (like ejecting you from the group) for too much obnoxious behavior. There was a fair amount of obnoxiousness last week, so let’s keep it chiller, it’s winter, have some tea and breathe.

Job Search Stand-Up

Is not happening this week. I mean, y’all are welcome to assemble in the server but it’ll be entirely community-led, I leave it in your hands.

Learn to Code Class

Vacation

CyberSecurity

Again, Vacation, also Vacation on the 27th

AI Class (Prompt Engineering & Autonomous Agents)

You’ve all been equipped to create swarms of AI. Build them. Next Tuesday (11/28) we’ll show off swarms, and discuss the use of Tools (but you have an example there, so you can build your own tools.) Coolest swarms win me bragging about you on the internet. Let’s publish some swarm architectures in the next few weeks.

Content Creators: Get Started After The Thanksgiving Break

We’ve developed a sequence for our content creator section, and have scheduled it out for an accelerated cohort series this December:

The beginning of the series (11/28) establishes your format.

The next session has you actually setting up your OBS & ordering the right gear for your budget.

The last session of the year has you do a research project- developing a list of influencer contacts you’d like to build a podcast around, and how to use other members of the list to convince each other that this is a thing, just because you made a list of names.

By the time we break for the holidays, you'll have a game plan and be ready to record a demo or your first session.

Content creation is so much social engineering it’s not even funny, but these sessions should be because they’re with Blake.

If you’re not enrolled, you should apply and then respond to the email you got from Julie by scheduling with them.

Machine Learning in January

It looks like Machine Learning is one of the most popular course requests- 43 people want in! We’ve got quite a bit of Machine Learning material, but haven’t ordered it into a sequence for you because we need to know who is coming in. If you’re enrolled you should have access to this curriculum, but we’ll begin structured courses on Mondays in January (second Monday). Please try to complete your intake interview before the end of the year so we can plan for how many people want to go through this together.

If you have a specific kind of data you want to work with, please tell Julie during your Intake Interview or send me an email. I might not reply about it for awhile, it’ll help me as I put the final sequence together to figure out what the junior / senior split is.

Student Website Directory

We're building a directory of your personal websites to showcase your work. Even if your site isn't complete, go ahead and fill out this form. This will not only help you in job hunting but also serve as an example for other students! You can edit this form after you submit it so don’t worry about submitting incomplete work. If you want a review of your site, you have to submit it here. We won’t post it until you’re ready.

Important Links

Feel free to decline any class invites if you can't attend, but make sure to let us know if you haven't received invites to all classes.

Cool Videos

Challenges of SuperAlignment

Infinite Money Glitch

Governments Around The World Are Scrambling On AI Alignment

AIs build mental models and maps, we might have some consciousness on our hands

AI Agent Swarms

The GPT Store is Launching, get ready, also it’s a no-code store

No, Limits on Language Don’t Shape What You Can Perceive

Learn the basics of Statistics in 30 mins (a great pre-course overview if you’re wanting to learn Machine Learning)

Industry Drama 🍿

tl;dr

Sam Altman got Fired, very suddenly, surprising everyone and now Everyone is Quitting because of it.

We found out later that day that It was Backstabbing (ask yourself why Sam is communicating like Q, is this a narrative for the narrative-addicts? Are they just drumming up drama? This seems very out of character for Ilya. )

Wait, Sam’s Very Powerful, So, Now The Board’s Been Fired. OpenAI is thick with the e/a vs e/acc vision schism and Sam along with Peter Thiel used to run YCombinator.

….aaand Sam is Starting Another Company. This is not a big deal, the number of companies he probably starts per year is >=10. I usually do one a year myself. What does this mean for OpenAI? Who knows. Stay tuned, but wait, that’s just what they want you to do!

My analysis:

I see this as all 100% propaganda and hyperstition casting, and likely planned out, though who knows how long ago. It may have been a very long term plan. No publicity is bad publicity but it does shift your audience.

These are not reactionary little boys, angry about their toys. They are not first time founders. They are the mentors of Silicon Valley. YCombinator is the place where Tech Founders learn to do Spectacle, and Sam has been running a masterclass. If you want to read into what’s happening, ask yourself the following:

What are the reasons this message could be being highlighted now? Who benefits from this message?

What conclusions am I being guided to draw? Who benefits from those conclusions?

What goals does this narrative serve? Who benefits from those goals?

I’m curious about what you all think.

For many situations I caution never to assume malice where simple stupidity, ignorance, or exhaustion will do. This is not one of those situations. These are elite narrative crafters, keep your wits about you and never sign agreements with the fae no matter how carefully you think you have read them.

See you in the future~

<3 Liz