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This is another great, approachable explainer on “the rationalist wackos who have managed to take over much of the AI industry, and who now have tons of money and political power.” www.iankduncan.com/personal/202...

the rationalists secular solstice doom holiday is just the funniest shit ever, I’m sorry but omg www.interfaithamerica.org/article/at-b...

bless your hearts

the Eliezer Yudkowsky superhero origin story is truly so intensely dorky as to defy all attempts at parody. you could not waterboard any of this out of me web.archive.org/web/20010309...

here we find Eliezer Yudkowsky engaging in the classic 90s and 2000s genre of “insecure straight guy getting really defensive about liking Buffy the Vampire Slayer”

“Yes, I like Buffy, but not for the stupid reasons you plebeian ignoramuses do,” he says, while wearing a fedora and khaki cargo shorts (did Yud ever go through a Hawaiian shirt phase?)

Reading this makes me feel really bad for Eliezer Yudkowsky’s parents tbh

While I am no psychologist or psychiatrist, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s account of his own life does read exactly like the writing of every other reasonably articulate person with a severe personality disorder:

Here is Eliezer Yudkowsky explaining (like a very normal person who absolutely does not have some kind of acute personality disorder) why, on the basis of his childhood test scores, he is a special genius uniquely qualified to change the world: web.archive.org/web/20010309...

like I suspect many of you on This Website, I think a core reason why I find Eliezer Yudkowsky and his rationalist and effective altruist satellites so intensely annoying is because I had a VERY similar “being a super weird, pretentious, hyper-literate kid” experience - I just, you know, grew up.

As a former pretentious little shit who grew out of it, rationalists (et al) annoy the piss out of me because they are adults with the mentality of tweens - they are somehow still convinced they are the greatest geniuses who have ever walked the earth. It is the worldview of an arrogant baby.

It is no coincidence that rationalists and EAs tend to be straight white guys from well-off families, because for everybody else, the world usually conspires to knock some sense into you about your inherent god-emperor genius by the time you’re old enough to drink.

That post is just a brilliant piece of writing of which you should be proud.