No.12410
Anonymous
2026-09-15 01:13:18
thread about lesswrong
Does anyone know, how common rationalist thought is in the ranks of actual decision makers in SF?
No.12415
Anonymous
2026-09-15 04:18:50
No one actually acts rationally when there’s stakes involved
No.12416
Anonymous
2026-09-15 04:23:00
>>12414
hardcore group house save-the-shrimp rationalism is not that common I think but its strains are evident among more or less everyone in the bay area / hn demographic. because they all share the common attribute of considering themselves to be the smartest people in the entire fucking world.
hardcore group house save-the-shrimp rationalism is not that common I think but its strains are evident among more or less everyone in the bay area / hn demographic. because they all share the common attribute of considering themselves to be the smartest people in the entire fucking world.
No.12421
Anonymous
2026-09-15 11:59:38
Rationalism = retarded
No.12423
Anonymous
2026-09-15 12:16:37
They're wrong about everything but it's incredibly fortunate that utilitarians are in charge of implementing the next Mode of Production
Big Stein was a close friend of Yud's according to the Reddit files. If someone has the references to him also motivating some changes in 4chan's moderation or the creation of /pol/ I'd be interested, but it sounds like bullshit to me.
Anyway, there's no reasonable motive to say that Yud or any of the Less Wrongs ever went to the island or whatever (in my opinion) but I generally agree that he had some very interesting, very similar brainworms to these guys.
I've never actually read LessWrong itself, although I read a post Yud made about Bayesian reasoning, which was pretty informative and I appreciated but also seems to be a gateway drug to actually spending time with these people. Reddit on steroids doesn't sound like a good place to be, which sucks because the stimulants I take really make me wanna post someplace like that. I personally think these people have not felt a day of hunger in their lives and that makes them morally decadent or something, but I know that's a bit retarded (not really relevant to this discussion). Still, I think it sucks the chuddiest among them were the ones to actually make it into the mainstream and start building language models and shit.
I'm gay and autistic if it matters.
Anyway, there's no reasonable motive to say that Yud or any of the Less Wrongs ever went to the island or whatever (in my opinion) but I generally agree that he had some very interesting, very similar brainworms to these guys.
I've never actually read LessWrong itself, although I read a post Yud made about Bayesian reasoning, which was pretty informative and I appreciated but also seems to be a gateway drug to actually spending time with these people. Reddit on steroids doesn't sound like a good place to be, which sucks because the stimulants I take really make me wanna post someplace like that. I personally think these people have not felt a day of hunger in their lives and that makes them morally decadent or something, but I know that's a bit retarded (not really relevant to this discussion). Still, I think it sucks the chuddiest among them were the ones to actually make it into the mainstream and start building language models and shit.
I'm gay and autistic if it matters.
My review of If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies is forthcoming
No.12451
Anonymous
2026-09-15 23:54:02
Looking forward to it. I've known about that weirdo Yudkowsky (walking argument against homeschooling) and his cult in passing since 2010 and it's weird, though not unexpected, seeing him gain some prominence with emergence of AI as commercially viable technology. Another case of something that was once relegated to relatively small online spaces escaping containment.
No.12453
Anonymous
2026-09-16 01:26:46
If he is so rational, why is he fat?
Surely being fat is not rational
Surely being fat is not rational
No.12456
Anonymous
2026-09-16 01:41:10
It's not that he was homeschooled. He has Asperger's--a severe case.
From his writings circa 2000:
>1.6: Falling out of school
>At the end of seventh grade (14), when I was around eleven and a half, I suddenly lost the ability to handle school. I stopped doing my homework. Instead of going to classes, I would sit in the school office, crying, until my mother picked me up. I am told that I made it through eighth grade and graduation, but I remember little or nothing of it. I don't recall it as a period of intense misery, except when I was actually in the classrooms; I do recall it as a period when I spent a lot of time crying.
>1.7: "I can't do anything."
>When school was over, high school was pretty much out of the question. There was no chance I'd be able to handle it.
>"I can't do anything." That's the phrase I used then. To describe it in terms that might be tainted by later interpretation, I couldn't exert my will. I had no mental energy.
>Trying to do anything would exhaust me, especially if it was something I didn't want to do. You can imagine how well that went over with two people trying to apply normal parenting heuristics to the situation. I can imagine how well it's going over with my average reader right now. But a spoiled brat exhibits defiance, and I couldn't even do that. I could argue, rationally, with my parents. I would break down in tears if the conversation got stressful, but I could keep arguing rationally.
>My parents would have a brand new idea for what I should do next. I would see the disaster coming, and try to convince them of it. They would not be convinced. They would keep pushing me, and I would go along with it - not because I agreed, but because I couldn't stand up to them. Because my will was broken. Because I was only thirteen. (And fourteen. And fifteen. And sixteen.) I would try, and I would run into a problem, and I would break. And my parents would have a new bright idea, and the pattern would repeat. Over and over.
>My parents were well-meaning people, totally out of their depth and refusing to realize it. They relied on their memories of being bright kids themselves, with no conception of the gap. They were immune to logic because, in their memories of being smarter than their parents, they could prove anything with logic and it didn't mean anything. So they could safely ignore anything I said, any argument I made, because it was just the sophistry of a bright child. They were parents now. It was their turn to be in charge of the situation, and nobody was going to take that away.
>It was a classical, predictable, entirely natural mistake, and I don't blame them for it. It was the Bayesian Probability Theorem that got them. In the vast majority of situations where the parent thinks they know what's best for a child, they do. But sometimes the theory breaks down, and then someone has to pay the piper.
>I never hated my parents. They said they loved me, and the cultural wisdom of the science-fictional literature said your parents genuinely love you no matter what you disagree about. The books I read showed parents who cared about their children, and the foolish, unwise children rejecting them out of anger. I believed in that scenario, and I refused to give in to it. People can love you and care about you and want what's best for you and still use their power to screw up your life and put you through hell. Behold the foundations of my morality. Sometimes, awful things happen and there isn't anyone you can rationally blame for it.
He did make this forecast back then...was he correct?
>Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm sure AI would be solved eventually. In about 2020 CRNS [Current Rate No Singularity - assuming no nanotechnology, no Singularity Institute, and so on], the weight of accumulated cognitive science and available computing power would disintegrate the ideological oversimplifications and create enough of a foothold in the problem to last humanity the rest of the way.
From his writings circa 2000:
>1.6: Falling out of school
>At the end of seventh grade (14), when I was around eleven and a half, I suddenly lost the ability to handle school. I stopped doing my homework. Instead of going to classes, I would sit in the school office, crying, until my mother picked me up. I am told that I made it through eighth grade and graduation, but I remember little or nothing of it. I don't recall it as a period of intense misery, except when I was actually in the classrooms; I do recall it as a period when I spent a lot of time crying.
>1.7: "I can't do anything."
>When school was over, high school was pretty much out of the question. There was no chance I'd be able to handle it.
>"I can't do anything." That's the phrase I used then. To describe it in terms that might be tainted by later interpretation, I couldn't exert my will. I had no mental energy.
>Trying to do anything would exhaust me, especially if it was something I didn't want to do. You can imagine how well that went over with two people trying to apply normal parenting heuristics to the situation. I can imagine how well it's going over with my average reader right now. But a spoiled brat exhibits defiance, and I couldn't even do that. I could argue, rationally, with my parents. I would break down in tears if the conversation got stressful, but I could keep arguing rationally.
>My parents would have a brand new idea for what I should do next. I would see the disaster coming, and try to convince them of it. They would not be convinced. They would keep pushing me, and I would go along with it - not because I agreed, but because I couldn't stand up to them. Because my will was broken. Because I was only thirteen. (And fourteen. And fifteen. And sixteen.) I would try, and I would run into a problem, and I would break. And my parents would have a new bright idea, and the pattern would repeat. Over and over.
>My parents were well-meaning people, totally out of their depth and refusing to realize it. They relied on their memories of being bright kids themselves, with no conception of the gap. They were immune to logic because, in their memories of being smarter than their parents, they could prove anything with logic and it didn't mean anything. So they could safely ignore anything I said, any argument I made, because it was just the sophistry of a bright child. They were parents now. It was their turn to be in charge of the situation, and nobody was going to take that away.
>It was a classical, predictable, entirely natural mistake, and I don't blame them for it. It was the Bayesian Probability Theorem that got them. In the vast majority of situations where the parent thinks they know what's best for a child, they do. But sometimes the theory breaks down, and then someone has to pay the piper.
>I never hated my parents. They said they loved me, and the cultural wisdom of the science-fictional literature said your parents genuinely love you no matter what you disagree about. The books I read showed parents who cared about their children, and the foolish, unwise children rejecting them out of anger. I believed in that scenario, and I refused to give in to it. People can love you and care about you and want what's best for you and still use their power to screw up your life and put you through hell. Behold the foundations of my morality. Sometimes, awful things happen and there isn't anyone you can rationally blame for it.
He did make this forecast back then...was he correct?
>Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm sure AI would be solved eventually. In about 2020 CRNS [Current Rate No Singularity - assuming no nanotechnology, no Singularity Institute, and so on], the weight of accumulated cognitive science and available computing power would disintegrate the ideological oversimplifications and create enough of a foothold in the problem to last humanity the rest of the way.
No.12460
Anonymous
2026-09-16 01:55:31
>I am in an open relationship with Erin, and am the master of Brienne.
>On a typical Friday night I am reading downloaded fanfiction from my Kindle, or being serviced by my slave.
>The most private thing I’m willing to admit:
>My fetishes are orgasm denial (of her); tickling (either of her, or with me allowed to fight back); and I am strongly sexually sadistic but if I don't believe she's turned on by it, it does nothing for me.
>On a typical Friday night I am reading downloaded fanfiction from my Kindle, or being serviced by my slave.
>The most private thing I’m willing to admit:
>My fetishes are orgasm denial (of her); tickling (either of her, or with me allowed to fight back); and I am strongly sexually sadistic but if I don't believe she's turned on by it, it does nothing for me.
No.12462
Anonymous
2026-09-16 02:27:15
To what extent are rationalists' obsessions over p(Doom), AI takeover, and so on, an extension of The Yud's sadomasochism? There are correlations between autism and interest in BDSM; BDSM is autosexual, and relieves anxiety which would otherwise happen when you were in bed with somebody. Like people who go to Star Trek conventions and they can just recite lines from the show--no need to make genuine conversation. Is there something sexual about the idea of AI taking over the world?? Infinite power over bodies and minds? Notably he has a fetish for *not* letting his 'slave' (who later on become his wife, then after divorcing him became a trans man) orgasm.
>>12432
Sexual misconduct apologia was a significant part of LessWrongism from the start. Robin Hanson has a bunch of posts pontificating on the relative wrongness of 'gentle rape' relative to cuckoldry and on whether pedophilia is bad if the child consents. Yudkowsky wrote a short story about a utopian future society where rape is legal. Today, the unwashed whore Aella serves as a fake-rape orgy madam for tech bros.
Sexual misconduct apologia was a significant part of LessWrongism from the start. Robin Hanson has a bunch of posts pontificating on the relative wrongness of 'gentle rape' relative to cuckoldry and on whether pedophilia is bad if the child consents. Yudkowsky wrote a short story about a utopian future society where rape is legal. Today, the unwashed whore Aella serves as a fake-rape orgy madam for tech bros.
>>12480
They are undoubtedly very bad things, but our society is incapable of being reasonable and level-headed about rape and paedophilia and there is a certain aspect of the autistic brain which gets hooked on these no-go-zones for discourse as easily as a trout takes a barbed angle. See also: race realism. This is the more prosaic reason for why these topics seem to come up unreasonably often in rationalist spaces, although I won't discount the possibility that some of them are perverts.
They are undoubtedly very bad things, but our society is incapable of being reasonable and level-headed about rape and paedophilia and there is a certain aspect of the autistic brain which gets hooked on these no-go-zones for discourse as easily as a trout takes a barbed angle. See also: race realism. This is the more prosaic reason for why these topics seem to come up unreasonably often in rationalist spaces, although I won't discount the possibility that some of them are perverts.
I'm always confusing Yudkowsky with all the other internet names like Curtis Yarvin and whoever. I really should know more about it, both being adjacent to that online space/demographic for years but also for the sake of accuracy... but I just can't be damned to differentiate these people or to take these ideas even at face value
No.12535
Anonymous
2026-09-16 12:42:41
>>12530
When?
When?
No.12537
Anonymous
2026-09-16 12:56:35
>12499 you sound like such a redditor holy shit. bragging about your ignorance on a subject is not an impressive virtue signal. if you aren't interested in learning something by all means don't, but don't then use it as a boast of your superiority
No.12543
Anonymous
2026-09-16 13:07:42
Learn how to quote, newfag, before you call someone retarded for not following your internet heroes. Lmao at you admonishing me like I'm smearing Enlightenment philosophers or something
>>12483
There's a significant overlap. A random sample of autistic males has a similar prevalence of paraphilia to a sample of sex offenders. In Schottle at al. 2017 43% of male autists had sadistic fantasies, 28% exhibited sadistic behaviors, 39% had voyeuristic fantasies, 28% had pedophilic fantasies.
There's a significant overlap. A random sample of autistic males has a similar prevalence of paraphilia to a sample of sex offenders. In Schottle at al. 2017 43% of male autists had sadistic fantasies, 28% exhibited sadistic behaviors, 39% had voyeuristic fantasies, 28% had pedophilic fantasies.
I read yudowskys entire Harry Potter fanfic ask me anything
No.12573
Anonymous
2026-09-16 14:39:09
>>12571
interesting, but gotta be an element of neuroticism / rigid thinking / ocd here as well... i would guess a very large proportion of striaght men have fantasised about slapping a girl's bottom in bed, probably the autistic brain considers this a 'sadistic fantasy' while the normie brain does not.
interesting, but gotta be an element of neuroticism / rigid thinking / ocd here as well... i would guess a very large proportion of striaght men have fantasised about slapping a girl's bottom in bed, probably the autistic brain considers this a 'sadistic fantasy' while the normie brain does not.
>>12572
i learned relatively recently that it's actually incredibly long, like twice as long as middlemarch. which begs the question... why did you do that to yourself?
i had a friend at uni who read the whole thing but he was a bit autistic and really liked fanfiction to start with so i guess it was a natural fit
i learned relatively recently that it's actually incredibly long, like twice as long as middlemarch. which begs the question... why did you do that to yourself?
i had a friend at uni who read the whole thing but he was a bit autistic and really liked fanfiction to start with so i guess it was a natural fit
>>12572
Ohhh, he's that guy. Lol I remember downloading it and getting like 20 words in.
So, what can you explain about it?
Ohhh, he's that guy. Lol I remember downloading it and getting like 20 words in.
So, what can you explain about it?
No.12583
Anonymous
2026-09-16 14:54:32
>>12574 while reading about yudowsky last year I realized that I had actually read some of it when I was 13 or 14 and recalled enjoying the added homoeroticism between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. so I opened it out of curiosity and then became kind of intent on knowing how it ended without realizing how long it was. Because of sunk cost fallacy I wound up finishing it over the course of several weeks.
>>12578 it only makes any sense if you know the Harry Potter lore but luckily I had a phase as a kid so I kind of got most of the callbacks. The main plot twist is that the reason Harry Potter acts like a lesswrong self insert is that he was actually an adult in a child’s body created by Voldemort. And the whole story was dumbledore doing 5d chess plans to stop the prophecy that he will literally destroy the universe by exploiting the holes in jk rowlings shitty world building
>>12578 it only makes any sense if you know the Harry Potter lore but luckily I had a phase as a kid so I kind of got most of the callbacks. The main plot twist is that the reason Harry Potter acts like a lesswrong self insert is that he was actually an adult in a child’s body created by Voldemort. And the whole story was dumbledore doing 5d chess plans to stop the prophecy that he will literally destroy the universe by exploiting the holes in jk rowlings shitty world building