Post

personally I think it's more financially predatory, but in an indirect way I first ran across yud when a guy I know in the bay area pointed me at the singularity institute for artificial intelligence, which later became miri; it was very clear that it existed for the purpose of fundraising

the next year I started semi-reading lesswrong for the sole reason that my friend hal finney had posted about his als diagnosis there. never had an account tho it was around this time I started joking that it'd be real funny when their "agi" gets popped with a parsing vuln. (still is!)

anyway, I watched ea develop far enough to get a bunch of true believers, then a concerted multi-year effort on miri's part to convert the believers to ai doomerism I admit it's been an effective (har!) way to get money but I think a lot of people are willingly blind to who their altruism benefits

I sort of can't not compare it to the development of langsec, especially since the two fields came into being around the same time and both have the academic-outsider founder effect thing going on we've probably made less money directly than their scheme but I think we've made it more honestly

also none of our workshops have ever had the cops show up, so we got that goin for us, which is nice