I had a situation yesterday were I was forced to explain that requiring a public userID with a curl request is not a safety measure. This is worse, somehow.
I have only had the minimum of time to look into it, so far I only found his own vague justification, his wife supposedly(?) being part of Open AI, a multimedia platform he made then maybe or maybe not un/ethically provided the data of it to Ubisoft, him supposedly lobbying against section 230, and even more vague accusations of 'Zionism'.
That participation list is not especially selective, politically aligned or sinister.
Many are there because they are famous or influential in politics, business, journalism etc.
More just connecting people from non-related sides. Some names I recognize:
Preet Bhara,
Sam Harris,
Tyler Cohen,
Kaja Kallas (VP European Comission),
Elon Musk,
Jared Kushner,
Steven Pinker,
Lawrence Summers (always Larry)
Garry Kasparov,
Ezra Klein,
Jonathan Haidt,
Joseph Gordon Levitt (actor)
...I think an "on the record" society makes more sense. People wear smart glasses, everything recorded, transcribed and fed into an LLM. People can have a mute button, but generally discouraged. Suitable in the age of prediction markets, high definition streaming and fast software development. Humans can be verified at the door.
May as well have some opt-in regarding the matter. In the process, news stories could become, well, automated... the interviews are done in the society. The hellish part would be a clanker coming up to you and asking a bunch of probing questions, that's why I think they should be banned. Then again, people could start talking in code words to confuse listeners.
I am somewhat disappointed in Sam Harris being on the list. I do not agree with him on every topic, but I did enjoy some of his views back when he was more about philosophy than politics.
I do find Ted Cruz being involved to be absolutely hilarious though.
I'd argue Sam Harris' content was mostly political masquerading as philosophy. Most of his criticisms were very concentrated toward one group, and due to that, he has put himself into a corner.
For example, when he's been asked about Israel being a 'promised land', as an atheist to agree with that and to overlook the atrocities it took/takes to achieve that, is pretty hypocritical.
Did you see much about how his name is tied to it? I wonder in which capacity he intended to be involved and why.
He has been associated with other things in the past, only to discover later that he was in a list of people who declined to participate or something.
I'm not sure I'd put it past him, regardless. I like some of his ideas quite a bit, but—in one of his favourite phrases—there's a lot of daylight between us on some topics. More and more over time, it seems. That's fine, overall I mostly respect his ideas.
I guess he didn't get invited again.