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AI Companies and Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

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Re: AI Companies and Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

#41

Post by sh34r »

fjoireoipe wrote: post #15

Can we finally talk about this site, and how it relates to these cults? There's a number of lesswrong, e/acc, and other pseudo "rationalist" blogs that get shared and upvoted on this site. Most of their assumptions go unchallenged. Not saying they shouldn't be read, or debated. But their writing should be viewed in context - it's fringe stuff, written by people from a peculiar subculture with values out-of-whack with…

9. Anyone who doesn’t recognize Roko’s basilisk as a bad ripoff of Pascal’s wager is an ignoramus. Anyone who is seriously concerned about it for more than an hour should consider a vasectomy.

10. I can’t think of a better form of “effective altruism” than paying for LessWrong members’ vasectomies. Not because I’m concerned about their genes. They’d just be terrible parents, and gods those kids would need lots of therapy.

Re: AI Companies and Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

#42

Post by arp242 »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #25

Part of it is ultra concentration of white men with few or no women in the Bay Area imo. If you have zero social life and zero chance of a social life and the aperture of available activities is purely constrained to ultra pure social media groups of similar white men and you never interact with women individually or as a group … Society is generally breaking down and falling apart at that point. Normally I would exp…

It seems to me that women and non-white people are just as vulnerable to hype cycles and cult behaviour as white men are.

I do agree that lack of "well-roundedness", for lack of a better word, in some tech circles is part of the cause of this sort of thing. But again, non-white men are just as vulnerable to that as white men.

Re: AI Companies and Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

#43

Post by makerdiety »

fjoireoipe wrote: post #15

Can we finally talk about this site, and how it relates to these cults? There's a number of lesswrong, e/acc, and other pseudo "rationalist" blogs that get shared and upvoted on this site. Most of their assumptions go unchallenged. Not saying they shouldn't be read, or debated. But their writing should be viewed in context - it's fringe stuff, written by people from a peculiar subculture with values out-of-whack with…

I would prefer cults about nerd topics (which only someone with a desktop or even laptop computer would read about, forget mobile device users) over nationalism based on phenomenological skin color.

And e/acc is more of a little club than it is a cult. But I guess you could also consider it to be a criminal gang very much not unlike the Crips and the Bloods. Why? Because they're part of a counter-culture and naturally they want to diverge from the mainstream thought process. And the criminal activity e/acc engages in is non-compliant computer engineering. Which the Cathedral (pardon my language) dislikes.

Basically, this is evolution in action. You're looking at the beginnings of a new species. Millions of new species are coming, really.

Re: AI Companies and Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

#44

Post by the_only_law »

fjoireoipe wrote: post #15

Can we finally talk about this site, and how it relates to these cults? There's a number of lesswrong, e/acc, and other pseudo "rationalist" blogs that get shared and upvoted on this site. Most of their assumptions go unchallenged. Not saying they shouldn't be read, or debated. But their writing should be viewed in context - it's fringe stuff, written by people from a peculiar subculture with values out-of-whack with…

As with other accelerations manifestos I’ve read, I’m still not unconvinced e/acc isn’t a shitpost at best, and drug induced psychosis at worst.

Re: AI Companies and Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

#45

Post by anonreeeeplor »

arp242 wrote: post #42
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #25

Part of it is ultra concentration of white men with few or no women in the Bay Area imo. If you have zero social life and zero chance of a social life and the aperture of available activities is purely constrained to ultra pure social media groups of similar white men and you never interact with women individually or as a group … Society is generally breaking down and falling apart at that point. Normally I would exp…

It seems to me that women and non-white people are just as vulnerable to hype cycles and cult behaviour as white men are. I do agree that lack of "well-roundedness", for lack of a better word, in some tech circles is part of the cause of this sort of thing. But again, non-white men are just as vulnerable to that as white men.

The topic was AI cults. Do you see minorities building them? No. Too busy trying to work to get even the basics, no time to start a cult

Re: AI Companies and Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

#46

Post by anonreeeeplor »

15457345234 wrote: post #35
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #25

Part of it is ultra concentration of white men with few or no women in the Bay Area imo. If you have zero social life and zero chance of a social life and the aperture of available activities is purely constrained to ultra pure social media groups of similar white men and you never interact with women individually or as a group … Society is generally breaking down and falling apart at that point. Normally I would exp…

You make a good overall point here but you've really compromised it by saying 'white men' because: 1. That particular phrase has been massively overused in a disparaging way by 'wokists' and a lot of people are going to see those words and just assume you're 'one of them' and ignore you and 2. The SV AI set isn't particularly white.

I have never seen a group of Asians organizing an AI cult. All the OpenAI people doing cults are white.

Have you seen any Indian or Asian people or women building a cult?

Re: AI Companies and Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

#47

Post by sooajjja »

anonreeeeplor wrote: post #46
15457345234 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good overall point here but you've really compromised it by saying 'white men' because: 1. That particular phrase has been massively overused in a disparaging way by 'wokists' and a lot of people are going to see those words and just assume you're 'one of them' and ignore you and 2. The SV AI set isn't particularly white.

I have never seen a group of Asians organizing an AI cult. All the OpenAI people doing cults are white. Have you seen any Indian or Asian people or women building a cult?

Yes, to all of these demographics.

Guru-led cults are particularly popular in Indi, and there are some internationally infamous ones too, e.g. the cult of Sathya Sai Baba.

Re: AI Companies and Advocates Are Becoming More Cult-Like

#48

Post by 15457345234 »

sooajjja wrote: post #47
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never seen a group of Asians organizing an AI cult. All the OpenAI people doing cults are white. Have you seen any Indian or Asian people or women building a cult?

Yes, to all of these demographics. Guru-led cults are particularly popular in Indi, and there are some internationally infamous ones too, e.g. the cult of Sathya Sai Baba.

> Sathya Sai Baba

They're an odd bunch

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