Everything in this article is some deep cult shit. The tabletop game, the crying session, the debate with Kapoor. It just has such heavy feels of a cult
It’s a really good article. This part stuck out to me:
If you are seriously, legitimately concerned that an emergent technology is about to exterminate humanity within the next three years, wouldn’t you find yourself compelled to do more than argue with the converted about the particular elements of your end times scenario? Some folks were involved in pushing for SB 1047, but that stalled out; now what? Aren’t you starting an all-out effort to pressure those companies to shut down their operations ASAP? That all these folks are under the same roof for three days, and no one’s being confronted, or being made uncomfortable, or being protested—not even a little bit—is some of the best evidence I’ve seen that all the handwringing over AI Safety and x-risk really is just the sort of amped-up cosplaying its critics accuse it of being.
I think it’s a mixture of it being cosplay and these folks being extreme believers in capitalism, in the inevitability of it and impossibility of any alternative. They are all successful grifters, and they didn’t get there through some scheming and clever deception, they got there through sincere beliefs that aligned with the party line.
They don’t believe that anything can actually be done about this progression towards doom, just as much as they don’t properly believe in the doom.
The part about them sitting around crying made me big sad :(
yeah, I read the whole article. being an AI doomer must be absolutely miserable. the whole thing just reeks of cult behaviour but especially that part. they’re living in a bubble completely separate from reality
It’s reminiscent of the freakout among some of the rationalists when Roko’s basilisk first appeared. And they wonder why people keep calling them an apocalyptic cult.
Me and the gals having a totally normal evening at SBFs compound
This piece links to a recent New York Times story about our very good friends, by Cade Metz. Nothing in it will surprise SneerClub regulars too much, including how it ends up giving Yudkowsky too much credit. It says that the Sequences taught critical thinking, when they were cult shit all along; it says that in HPMoR, Harry uses real science, which is balderdash.
(If anyone says “Gell-Mann amnesia” I will fucking cut you.)
