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Rationalists sometimes like to deny that they're hugely intertwined with the current big-money big-tech AI scene, but like, they do come out and admit it a lot, as famed rationalist blogger Scott Alexander did in this 2026 Harpers piece: harpers.org/archive/2026...

Famously, Sam Altman Tweeted in February 2023 that he thinks rationalist god-king Eliezer Yudkowsky has "done more to accelerate AGI than anyone else" and "it is possible at some point he will deserve the nobel peace prize for this."

Rationalist overlord Eliezer Yudkowsky sure seems cranky about the fact that Sam Altman explicitly cited him as an inspiration, but oh well!

Holden Karnofsky - co-founder of GiveWell, co-founder and former CEO of Open Philanthropy/Coefficient Giving, husband of Anthropic President Daniela Amodei (whose brother is Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei) - claimed in 2024 that he wishes AI development would pause. He works for Anthropic now.

It is genuinely just silly for leading rationalists, effective altruists, and big AI companies to claim they're somehow totally separate entities and movements when you've got massive overlaps like this (from a 2023 Forbes piece) : www.forbes.com/sites/alexko...