yes, that’s his high-volume account, linked from @ESYudkowsky
Or maybe society would run a prediction market about whether ten years later the 24-year-old would think that it was a terrible terrible idea for them to have microdosed LSD as a kid. If society’s rules were that sensible
Wha’the fuuuuuck
indefensible: voting for laws
sensible: gambling for laws
He very much wants you to know that he knows that the Zizians are trans-coded and that he’s okay with that, he’s cool, he welcomes trans folks into Rationalism, he’s totally an ally, etc. How does he phrase that, exactly?
That cult began among, and recruited from, a vulnerable subclass of a class of people who had earlier found tolerance and shelter in what calls itself the ‘rationalist’ community. I am not explicitly naming that class of people because the vast supermajority of them have not joined murder cults, and what other people do should not be their problem.
I mean, yes in the abstract, but would it really be so hard to say that MIRI supports trans rights? What other people do, when those other people form a majority of a hateful society, is very much a problem for the trans community! So much for status signaling.
He’s saying the loud part out quiet
Ow god im a fool, totally read over what that meant. Thanks, jesus fuck (and to think I mentioned the animal rights people).
I understand where he probably got the neologism “glomarize” from (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer) but his willingness to beat you in the face with it until you accept it is a big part of what makes his writing style so offputting. And, uh, this level of enthusiasm for specialized jargon continues to fail to overcome the cult allegations.
One of the only reasons I’m hesitant to call Rationalism a cult in its own right is that Yudkowsky and friends always seem to respond to this element of cultiness by saying “oh, let me explain our in-group jargon in exhaustive detail so that you can more or less understand what we’re trying to say” rather than “you just need to buy our book and attend some meetings and talk to the guru and wear this robe…”
I would say that the in-group jargon is more of a retention tactic than an attraction tactic, although it can become that for people who are desperately looking for an ordered view of the world. Certainly I’ve seen it a lot in recovering Scientologists, expressing how that edifice of jargon, colloquialisms, and redefined words shaped their worldview and how they related to other people. In this case here, if you’ve been nodding along for a while and want to continue to be one of the cool guys, how could you not glomarize? Peek coolly out from beneath your fedora and neither confirm nor deny?
I will agree that the ratsphere has softer boundaries and is not particularly competently managed as a cult. As you allude to, too, there isn’t a clear induction ritual or psychological turning point, just a mass of material that you’re supposed to absorb and internalize over a necessarily lengthy stretch of time. Hence the most clearly identifiable cults are splinter groups.
in the shipped club. straight up ‘glomarizing it’. and by ‘it’, haha, well. let’s justr say. My peanits.
Glomarizing is the new squanch
I dont smurf any of this.
Saying that a 30-year-old cannot have sex with a 17-year-old (in CA) or a 16-year-old (in NY) is not a crazy law; it is the sort of “I would like to live in a civilization” law that I prefer to obey.
age of consent quoting aside, why would you make it sound like you only follow this law because you want to live in a society
This is the wildest ride of a tweet I’ve ever fucking read. Like seriously, I didn’t expect a tweet with multiple paragraphs about how he doesn’t like lsd or laws against it, to include him not liking age of consent laws but prefers living in a world with them to without them, a casual disclosure of how the underlying opinions behind all that relates to his bdsm practice, all to wind up with the tweet being about how he believes the zizians are wrong about him sleeping with an underage person.
Also he puts rationalist in quotes and asserts its what they call themselves as though he isn’t one of the leading members of the ideology.
And apparently, one of their FOUNDING BELIEFS, is that I had sex with somebody underage (mutually desired sex, according to the Zizians)… and then MIRI, a nonprofit I started, paid money (to a third-party extorter) to hush that up… which payment, according to the Zizians, is in violation of DECISION THEORY… and, therefore, for THAT EXACT REASON (like specifically the decision theory part), everything believed by those normie rationalists who once befriended them is IRRETRIEVABLY TAINTED… and therefore, the whole world is a lie and dishonest… and from this and OTHER PREMISES they recruit people to join their cult.
Yudkowsky is the first person I have ever seen describe this as a load-bearing belief of the Zizians. Offhand, I don’t recall the news stories about the murders even mentioning it.
What’s kinda fun is that Yud prefaces this with basically “i have not personally read up on the zizian texts”, and then follows it up with this stuff. Now, did he make this stuff up himself in a weird ego play, or did he hear it from someone else and decided to hold onto it, also as an ego play?
This from a man who runs an all-ages Discord to discuss his BDSM teacher-student AI-doom philosophy fanfic, including users who have identified themselves as minors
