601–610 of 952 posts
Lesswrong.com has been in operation since 2009 and is closely related to the SL4 mailing list which dates back to 1998 or 1999.
[Former member of that world, roommates with one of Ziz's friends for a while, so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on this.] The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community. As relevant here: 1) While following logical threads to their conclusions is a useful exercise, each logical step often involves some…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The OP is just taking the "everything I don't like is fascist" trope to it's natural conclusion. Up next: Stalin actually a Nazi. That's terminologically wrong, yet practically sensible conclusion. Some European countries in fact ban both communist and nazi ideologies and public display of their symbols as their authoritarian and genocidal tendencies are incompatible with democratic principles in said countries cons…
Countries like Hungary. Not a place I think anyone should try and emulate.
The list of European countries that ban Nazi symbols includes Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia, and Sweden.
When people talk about EU countries banning of Nazi symbols, they are always referring primarily to Germany. It is the archetypical example of "countries that ban Nazi symbols".
If you want to focus on one country from that list, which is a valid thing to do, you either need to pick the archetype, or acknowledge it and then say why you're focusing on another example from the list instead.
If instead, you immediately pick the one example from that list that suits your narrative, while not acknowledging that every single other example doesn't suit your narrative, that is a bad faith argument.
In any case, recent politics aside, Hungary is an amazing country. I'm not sure about emigrating there, but I definitely recommend visiting.
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Just like HN grew around the writing of Paul Graham, the "rationalist community" grew around the writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky. Similar to how Paul Graham no longer participates on HN, Eliezer rarely participates on http://lesswrong.com anymore, and the benevolent dictator for life of lesswrong.com is someone other than Eliezer. Eliezer's career has always been centered around AI. At first Eliezer was wholly optimist…
What puzzles me about Eliezer Yudkowsky is this: He has no formal education. He hasn't produced anything in the actual AI field, ever, except his very general thoughts (first that it would come, then about alignment and doomsday scenarios). He isn't an AI researcher except he created an institution that says he is one , kind of as if I created a club and declared myself president of that club. He has no credentials (…
Also, this page lists 3 ex-Googlers as being currently employed by Eliezer's org: https://intelligence.org/team/
Nisan Steinnon who worked for Google also did some research work for the Eliezer's org.
[Former member of that world, roommates with one of Ziz's friends for a while, so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on this.] The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community. As relevant here: 1) While following logical threads to their conclusions is a useful exercise, each logical step often involves some…
Most of the news coverage I've seen of this story is omitting what some might consider a relevant detail: almost all the members of this group are trans. This is a divisive topic, but failing to mention this makes me worry a story is pushing a particular agenda rather than trying to tell the facts. Here's what the story looks like if the trans activism is considered central to the story: https://thepostmillennial.com…
Honestly, being trans is the least interesting thing about this dude (girl?). This is not some random angry person with uncontrolled emotions.
I don't know if these statistics are even kept, but the current social environment in the US feels like a ripe breeding ground for cults. I've had so many people in the past couple years be like "I just want to farm with my friends and family and get away from all this".
But at the risk of sounding smug and condescending, as someone who actually bought 10 acres "to get away from it all", I get the sense that the type of people in this saga would pack up pretty quick after a little taste. Lesswrongers aren't exactly known for pragmatism, which is sorta the only mindset that works. There's all this work that you don't know you don't know about. I just fell down the rabbit hole of the ziz lore and goddamn do these people sound inept. Like they couldn't even fix their RV to get off their landlord's property. Lots of quasi-intellectual masturbatory posting and not a lot of skills.
All that is to say I'm not super worried about any of these cults really taking off. Logistics remain challenging.
The Zizians were only ever a tiny fraction of lesswrong.com, which gets about 2 million page views per month (according to a site maintainer) -- not as much as HN surely, but not a small web site. Lesswrong.com has been in operation since 2009 and is closely related to the SL4 mailing list which dates back to 1998 or 1999.
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The distinction is is in the derivative: progressives ("leftist" is less well defined) support the expansion of universal constitution law (which, right or wrong, is a change to the existing law), whereas conservatives except in the case of compelling evidence default to making no changes. Hence, being "conservative" about making changes.
This reasoning implies the current President and his party are not conservative, which is an interesting conclusion.
The Zizians were only ever a tiny fraction of lesswrong.com, which gets about 2 million page views per month (according to a site maintainer) -- not as much as HN surely, but not a small web site. Lesswrong.com has been in operation since 2009 and is closely related to the SL4 mailing list which dates back to 1998 or 1999.
And yet so many cults and politically extreme movements seem to originate out of the LessWrong-o-sphere. Strange, that.
Eliezer is very idealistic and attracted many idealistic young people. On one or 2 or 3 occasions, some man with sociopathic or narcissistic tendencies on the periphery of the community around Eliezer has taken advantage of some of the idealist young people (which BTW got these one or 2 or 3 men banned from Less Wrong and banned from in-person gatherings).