Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are there so many rationalist cults?

asteriskmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 947 posts

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#931

Post by 77pt77 »

sitkack wrote: post #876
emmelaich wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reminded of Hubbard too. In particular the "[belief that one] should always escalate when threatened" strongly echoes Hubbard's advice to always attack attack. Never defend. The whole thing reminds me of EST and a thousand other cults / self-improvement / self-actualisation groups that seem endemic to California ever since the 60s or before.

Money and Heat has a strong ability to encourage crazy.

If that were the case you'd see this kind of crazy in Miami and you don't.

You see other kinds though.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#932

Post by doubleunplussed »

thedudeabides5 wrote: post #925
doubleunplussed wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly something they're aware of - the same concept was discussed as early as in 2007 on Less Wrong under the name "evaporative cooling of group beliefs" https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...

haha, classic LWer reply "someone wrote a weirdly labeled thing about this once so they must not be subject to the phenomena' does the existence of a piece of writing on a topic really immunize the community from the disease @doubleunplussed?

I didn't say it did, I said they're aware of it.

Also thought it was worth pointing out that the LW "weird label" predates the label in the comment I replied to.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#933

Post by doubleunplussed »

thedudeabides5 wrote: post #926
doubleunplussed wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking people on Twitter doesn't necessarily imply intolerance of people who disagree with you. People often block for different reasons than disagreement.

He surrounds himself with people who disagree with him, discourages social isolation. lol blocking people is literally encouraging social isolation by limiting your exposure to people who disagree with you. not very rational mind you

I don't think you really understood my comment

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#934

Post by fulafel »

plorkyeran wrote: post #682
fulafel wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has he fared in the fields of philosophy and AI research in terms of peer review, is there some kind of roundup or survey around about this?

EY and MIRI as a whole have largely failed to produce anything which even reaches the point of being peer reviewable. He does not have any formal education and is uninterested in learning how to navigate academia.

I see. But should this really preclude review, "peer" or not? Philosophers talk about ideas from non academic thinkers all the time after all.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#935

Post by rsynnott »

ben_w wrote: post #928
rsynnott wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, this is the religion/philosophy which produced Roko's Basilisk (and not one of their weird offshoot murder-cults, either, it showed up on LessWrong, and was taken at least somewhat seriously by people there, to the point that Yudkowsky censored it. Their beliefs about AI are... out there.

> and was taken at least somewhat seriously by people there, to the point that Yudkowsky censored it. Roko isn't taken seriously. What was taken seriously is ~ "if you've had an idea that you yourself think will harm people to even know about it, don't share it".

But if you think that knowing about the basilisk is harmful to people who don't know about it, surely you are taking it at least somewhat seriously?

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#936

Post by ben_w »

rsynnott wrote: post #935
ben_w wrote: post #928

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and was taken at least somewhat seriously by people there, to the point that Yudkowsky censored it. Roko isn't taken seriously. What was taken seriously is ~ "if you've had an idea that you yourself think will harm people to even know about it, don't share it".

But if you think that knowing about the basilisk is harmful to people who don't know about it, surely you are taking it at least somewhat seriously?

Not necessarily, it also comes from taking your users seriously before you even know what they were saying.

Consider: If you trust the people on your forum to be sensible, and one day one of your users writes:

  "I have realised something which is dangerous to know. Here it is: …"
then the sensible choice is to (1) stop reading immediately, don't even find out what's after the ellipsis, (2) delete/hide/otherwise remove their message, and (3) put in a general statement of "don't write things that you think are dangerous for people to know".

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#937

Post by davidgerard »

skybrian wrote: post #874
davidgerard wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at the British Medical Journal at the time. We got wind of COVID being a big thing in January. I spent January to March to get our new VPN into a fit state that the whole company could do their whole jobs from home. 23 March was lockdown and we were ready and had a very busy year. That COVID was going to be big was obvious to a lot of people and groups who were paying attention. We were a health-related org,…

I don't think anyone said they were unique? I was countering a claim that they just agreed with the WHO.

they consistently try to talk it up like they were uniquely on the ball.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#939

Post by aa-jv »

throwanem wrote: post #791
aa-jv wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say all of this of drug-oriented seekers of superpowers, too. Trust the SSRI cult much? It just seems to be a human condition that whenever anyone tries to find a way to improve themselves and others, there will always be other human beings who attempt to prevent that from occurring. I don't think this is a cult thing - I think its a culture thing. Humans have an innate desire to oppress others in their envir…

The phrase you failed to find is "crab-bucket thinking," but the one you really should have paid attention to this morning is "take with food."

I am interested in your ideology and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re: Why are there so many rationalist cults?

#940

Post by radekn »

ImaCake wrote: post #490
throwanem wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article attempts to establish disjoint categories "good rationalist" and "cultist." Its authorship, and its appearance in the cope publication of the "please take us seriously" rationalist faction, speak volumes of how well it is likely to succeed in that project.

Not sure why you got down voted for this. The opening paragraph of the article reads as suspicious to the observant outsider: >The rationalist community was drawn together by AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky’s blog post series The Sequences, a set of essays about how to think more rationally. Anyone who had just read a lot about Scientology would read that and have alarm bells ringing.

It's been 17 years since the series was written and rationalists haven't become a cult with Yudkowsky as leaders, so it's safe to say those were false alarms
Post reply on HN