I usually say the following. I’m paraphrasing a spiel I have delivered in person several times and which seems to get things across.

'there’s a kind of decentralized cult called rationalism. they worship rational thinking, have lots of little rituals that are supposed to invoke more rational thinking, and spend a lot of time discussing their versions of angels and demons, which they conceive of as all powerful ai beings.

rationalists aren’t really interested in experiments or evidence, because they want to figure everything out with pure reasoning. they consider themselves experts on anything they’ve thought really hard about. they come up with a lot of apocalypse predictions and theories about race mingling.

silicon valley is saturated with rationalists. most of the people with a lot of money are not rationalists. but VCs and such find rationalists very useful, because they’re malleable and will claim with sincerity to be experts on any topic. for example, when AI companies claim to be inventing really intelligent beings, the people they put forward as supporting these claims are rationalists.’

about 3 in 100 americans are in prison, on parole, etc. so if that’s the definition of a criminal, you would get 97% accuracy by just guessing not criminal every time

it has to be. you can’t do better than this. who is going to be like “they told me my child would be gifted but the kid is actually mid at best”

I beat the shit out of my kids. I mean I just fucking thrash them every chance I get. I am going to destroy these little bastards and I am racist

what did the collinses mean by this

they must be understandably seriously shook, because this is the most coherent, concise, grounded thing I can remember seeing a rationalist write. ofc I have no idea about the facts but it’s not even obviously dishonest

BEEP BOOP WHAT THE FUCK

I really don’t get it. they see something they don’t understand and immediately just start writhing on their keyboard in rage. “what the FUCK is THIS”

it’s definitely linked to rationalism (and various far right bullshits), which right away means people who get into it are likely to be at least cult adjacent. not the most stable spot to be in, psychologically

tangent, as a callow youth I listened to rationally speaking, which used to be a cohosted show with julia galef and massimo pigluicci. mostly after leaving the show pigluicci ended up getting really into stoicism and would post shit about how unhappiness is purely one’s own choice etc. when I asked him if jewish people in WWII concentration camps were just choosing to be unhappy he was like yes. so, yeah, that’s stoicism for you

they don’t think it’s a messy and inevitable fact of the world that certain people have outsize wealth. they think it fucking rules

hate this feeling and yet that’s also a big part of why I keep tabs on them. they’re there whether we choose to look at them or not

why is there a coherent community of people I hate? wtf >:(

between this and the submersible guy I’m starting to think we need more billionaires in the ocean. maybe peter thiel is onto something

The finished novella is “set in Edwardian England and loosely based on [Ellison’s] sister Kate’s imagined amorous exploits, to Kate’s great delight,” her mother wrote.

this can’t be what it sounds like. it just can’t be

god I hope this is true

to the extent that it’s been created

I’ll say it again urbit is the most unintentionally funny software ever created

my friend in Canada was trying to send me money and we ended up using a check. also my landlord from two apartments ago refused to take rent any other way. she was very old

misanthropic means person hating; possessed of contempt and malevolence toward humans as both individuals and a class. connotations of bitterness or cruelty

What if our simulated universe is actually way, way less terrible than the real world? What if the simulation was created specifically to have lower suffering/higher utils than in reality?

certain sentences you’ve extracted suggest the author considers severe suffering incomparably worse than any pleasure (for example why would ‘removing suffering’ necessarily improve the universe? in a framework where suffering and pleasure are comparably significant factors, it is possible that removing suffering would remove enough pleasure to tip the balance negative).

that’s a point of view I’m very sympathetic to, but it means external reality would almost certainly be worse than the simulation, because the external reality contains the simulation, and therefore contains at least as much severe suffering as the simulation. put another way, is it worse for a torture chamber to exist, or for torture chamber makers to exist?

I think what this is highlighting is a disconnect in their thinking between what I presume to be a greatest good based utilitarian framework, and what they actually think is cool and are talking about, which is heroic individual action. they want to present as hari seldon but they’re really wanking about pulp adventure shit

I’m so on board with this