This seemed like it might have a point in there somewhere but it was hard to be sure when it was posted two days ago via a site that turns social media sequences of posts into more normal looking articles [1].
The original social media form does not improve the situation.
A lot of the "AI Alignment" and "rationalism" talk really feels like it echos a lot of alt-right "race realist" talking points, but towards software rather than people from a different region or walk of life. "Ah, my mistake, clearly the outcome was obvious if we let them exist among us."
Granted there's obviously very different impacts between the implied out-groups being software plus those who enable LLMs, versus general populaces or marginalized demographics.
Still, it concerns me especially as it's not too far a stretch for those socially invested in Effective Outrage to turn the other heel when it suits them, it'd be only rational to be.
I do get some cult-like vibes from the Yudkowsky part of the rationalist community, but I think calling it a "sex cult" is going way too far unless there's some hard evidence. It's a community that has many polyamorous and kinky people in it, and many people who have been or are doing communal living, whether because they want to or because of Bay Area rents. That doesn't make it a sex cult. I've never seen any evidence that Yudkowsky, for example, is exploiting his status in the community and his minor degree of fame in order to obtain sex any more than the average person who has a bit of status and fame uses it to obtain sex. I'm not aware of any evidence of coercion or brainwashing. There have been some allegations of sexual abuse in that community, but from what I can tell no more than would be expected for any community of that size.
I just went for a walk, sorry it took me so long to reply.
But yeah, I've seen a TON of stuff that seems brigaded or astroturfed or otherwise like it's manipulation? The EA / TESCREAL stuff maybe is just the latest weird one? I don't know, but generally, I wish there were a lot more hopeful views of the world.
Like, we can live in a badass robot powered solar punk utopia if we decide to, but everyone I guess would rather daydream about skynet.
> Like, we can live in a badass robot powered solar punk utopia if we decide to, but everyone I guess would rather daydream about skynet.
Agree!
- there's a newer cozy game called "solar punk" if you need an escape
- the badass version is where non-Western countries are largely at, it's the West and its dysfunctional media ecosystems are stuck in a doomer loop we have to endure here
That's what I'm trying to build, at least my Alaskan version of it. Off grid cabin, robots zipping around, and solar lol. We'll see how it works out? I don't know, also, building stuff is tough, but I'm learning.
Having a crying session every 5 days doesn't seem very healthy to me, but showering once every 2 weeks might be fine. I've gone many days without showering many times in my life and nothing bad ever happened to me as a result. I'd usually shower before going out and interacting with people, but when sitting at home there just never seemed to be any point to it. And Aella's showering habits haven't stopped her from reaching her goals, so it doesn't really matter.
It's actually unhealthy that you think it's unhealthy to cry regularly. Perhaps you have trouble processing your emotions and just bottle them up instead, causing them to leak out in other situations or lead to outbursts?
I should clarify. I don't think it's unhealthy to cry every 5 days. I think it might be unhealthy to have the sort of mental state that makes you want to cry every 5 days. It's the underlying psychological situation that might be unhealthy, not the outlet of crying.
Schizophrenia really messes people up and they can't help it. It's not a disease and the likelyhood of developing it is genetic. Hard drugs can also increase the risk.
I used to read a lot of LessWrong, Yudkowsky, SlateStarCodex. Rationalism is really just another religion, with the faith parts carefully tucked away underneath concepts like priors or how one chooses to construct a model or assign/“update” probabilities. Their god is ASI. Their beliefs have no more fundamental basis in truth than any other faith.
There’s also a fundamental problem with the idea of using models and probabilities for decision making in that one has to choose a model before deducing any facts, and this leads to all sorts of post hoc rationalization. It’s basically just a culture of people with weird preferences coming up with mathy rationalizations for them.
It seems unfair to conflate the rationalism of Berkeley, Locke, Russell and Hitchens who hold critical thinking in the highest regard, to AI maximalists, who seem to be using rationalidm mainly as a cover for their own pet ideas on social reengineering.
The former is mainly about being true to the scientific process of evidence-led discovery, while the latter is... whatever it is (but rational it is not). From a critical thinking perspective, there is no evidence to suggest the current form of AI could achieve superintelligence, and mechanisms that could enable ASI have not been discovered yet. Their perspective, on the other hand, is far more activist.
One of the many funny things about whatever this group is, if you ask 100 members who E.T. Jaynes is, or some of his follow ons like MacKay or others in the same school of though like Polya, Shore and Johnson, better than 99 out of 100 will have a deer in the headlights look. I would wager the actual intellectual progenitor of a lot of the applied Baynesianism (Jaynes) is rolling in his grave right now.
> There has been a great effort over many years to distance AI Safety discussion and policy from its origins and intellectual center, because its center is a sex cult started by a fan fiction author. If you want to be taken seriously you have to hide that.
This may be true, but it means that those readers are using irrelevant ad hominem to allocate respect, meaning that the flaw is in them rather than the author. It's like dismissing Feynman's physics for playing the bongos.
It should make no more difference that an author is in a polycule than that they are gay or straight. And how the heck is a history of writing fan fiction an indicator of their scientific or engineering or judgement?
Would a formal scientific and/or engineering education be an indicator? (Or lack thereof as is the case here)
Happy to fast-forward a bit: I will not take “sat and thought deeply” as a qualification, which would make all other prophets qualified for scientific/engineering judgement.
This seemed like it might have a point in there somewhere but it was hard to be sure when it was posted two days ago via a site that turns social media sequences of posts into more normal looking articles [1].
The original social media form does not improve the situation.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985
A lot of the "AI Alignment" and "rationalism" talk really feels like it echos a lot of alt-right "race realist" talking points, but towards software rather than people from a different region or walk of life. "Ah, my mistake, clearly the outcome was obvious if we let them exist among us."
Granted there's obviously very different impacts between the implied out-groups being software plus those who enable LLMs, versus general populaces or marginalized demographics.
Still, it concerns me especially as it's not too far a stretch for those socially invested in Effective Outrage to turn the other heel when it suits them, it'd be only rational to be.
I do get some cult-like vibes from the Yudkowsky part of the rationalist community, but I think calling it a "sex cult" is going way too far unless there's some hard evidence. It's a community that has many polyamorous and kinky people in it, and many people who have been or are doing communal living, whether because they want to or because of Bay Area rents. That doesn't make it a sex cult. I've never seen any evidence that Yudkowsky, for example, is exploiting his status in the community and his minor degree of fame in order to obtain sex any more than the average person who has a bit of status and fame uses it to obtain sex. I'm not aware of any evidence of coercion or brainwashing. There have been some allegations of sexual abuse in that community, but from what I can tell no more than would be expected for any community of that size.
This got flagged immediately - but why? There’s nothing I saw in there that wasn’t true?
1. it's a dupe post, there are other commenters who've shared links to prior submissions with more comments (and not flagged)
2. some of that group hangs around HN, there is an amount of (likely uncoordinated) voting/flagging patterns
2 seems more relevant here, IMO.
HN has been kind of wild with influence campaigns over the last 6 months or so?
there has always been an amount, I notice it more with Trump related comments since 2.0, but inconsistent
EA is a newer in frequency topic on HN, so unclear thus far, but the other submissions remain unflagged
I just went for a walk, sorry it took me so long to reply.
But yeah, I've seen a TON of stuff that seems brigaded or astroturfed or otherwise like it's manipulation? The EA / TESCREAL stuff maybe is just the latest weird one? I don't know, but generally, I wish there were a lot more hopeful views of the world.
Like, we can live in a badass robot powered solar punk utopia if we decide to, but everyone I guess would rather daydream about skynet.
> Like, we can live in a badass robot powered solar punk utopia if we decide to, but everyone I guess would rather daydream about skynet.
Agree!
- there's a newer cozy game called "solar punk" if you need an escape
- the badass version is where non-Western countries are largely at, it's the West and its dysfunctional media ecosystems are stuck in a doomer loop we have to endure here
That's what I'm trying to build, at least my Alaskan version of it. Off grid cabin, robots zipping around, and solar lol. We'll see how it works out? I don't know, also, building stuff is tough, but I'm learning.
I'll try the game out, thanks for the rec.
It's a dupe and was a story last week.
How about the title?
https://x.com/Aella_Girl/status/1874676723910098955
24 showers and 71 crying sessions in a year. That lifestyle doesn't seem particularly healthy...
What's the intent of this comment?
Edit: I.e. are you implying something about the submitted writeup? Or just demeaning her? Or something else?
She looks depressed.
Having a crying session every 5 days doesn't seem very healthy to me, but showering once every 2 weeks might be fine. I've gone many days without showering many times in my life and nothing bad ever happened to me as a result. I'd usually shower before going out and interacting with people, but when sitting at home there just never seemed to be any point to it. And Aella's showering habits haven't stopped her from reaching her goals, so it doesn't really matter.
It's actually unhealthy that you think it's unhealthy to cry regularly. Perhaps you have trouble processing your emotions and just bottle them up instead, causing them to leak out in other situations or lead to outbursts?
I should clarify. I don't think it's unhealthy to cry every 5 days. I think it might be unhealthy to have the sort of mental state that makes you want to cry every 5 days. It's the underlying psychological situation that might be unhealthy, not the outlet of crying.
Here, I was going to say it's actually unhealthy to shower twice a month. This is some super-power nose blindness.
I haven't cried in years and no outbursts... What makes you cry so often?
Schizophrenia really messes people up and they can't help it. It's not a disease and the likelyhood of developing it is genetic. Hard drugs can also increase the risk.
I used to read a lot of LessWrong, Yudkowsky, SlateStarCodex. Rationalism is really just another religion, with the faith parts carefully tucked away underneath concepts like priors or how one chooses to construct a model or assign/“update” probabilities. Their god is ASI. Their beliefs have no more fundamental basis in truth than any other faith.
There’s also a fundamental problem with the idea of using models and probabilities for decision making in that one has to choose a model before deducing any facts, and this leads to all sorts of post hoc rationalization. It’s basically just a culture of people with weird preferences coming up with mathy rationalizations for them.
It seems unfair to conflate the rationalism of Berkeley, Locke, Russell and Hitchens who hold critical thinking in the highest regard, to AI maximalists, who seem to be using rationalidm mainly as a cover for their own pet ideas on social reengineering.
The former is mainly about being true to the scientific process of evidence-led discovery, while the latter is... whatever it is (but rational it is not). From a critical thinking perspective, there is no evidence to suggest the current form of AI could achieve superintelligence, and mechanisms that could enable ASI have not been discovered yet. Their perspective, on the other hand, is far more activist.
I meant the modern community, I think they adopt the same “Rationalism” name. Basically the LessWrong community but HN is also pretty adjacent.
One of the many funny things about whatever this group is, if you ask 100 members who E.T. Jaynes is, or some of his follow ons like MacKay or others in the same school of though like Polya, Shore and Johnson, better than 99 out of 100 will have a deer in the headlights look. I would wager the actual intellectual progenitor of a lot of the applied Baynesianism (Jaynes) is rolling in his grave right now.
You don't know what this group is, but you confidently spew statistics about it?
AI safety is not the same as all the Yudkowsky weirdness.
The Venn diagram has huge overlap.
> There has been a great effort over many years to distance AI Safety discussion and policy from its origins and intellectual center, because its center is a sex cult started by a fan fiction author. If you want to be taken seriously you have to hide that.
This may be true, but it means that those readers are using irrelevant ad hominem to allocate respect, meaning that the flaw is in them rather than the author. It's like dismissing Feynman's physics for playing the bongos.
It should make no more difference that an author is in a polycule than that they are gay or straight. And how the heck is a history of writing fan fiction an indicator of their scientific or engineering or judgement?
Would a formal scientific and/or engineering education be an indicator? (Or lack thereof as is the case here)
Happy to fast-forward a bit: I will not take “sat and thought deeply” as a qualification, which would make all other prophets qualified for scientific/engineering judgement.
> Would a formal scientific and/or engineering education be an indicator?
It's a lot more relevant than their sex or fiction writing preferences.
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49746654
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985
This was a stupid waste of time the first time it was posted here.
The hubris is probably more damning than the fact it's a sex cult. Or at least an incestuous clique.