Do you have any experience of seeing vulnerable idealists destroyed, not by manipulative gurus, but by the indifference and incomprehension of ordinary society? The latter is closer to what I’ve seen happen to “TESCREAL believers”. But as I always say, I have been remote from the center of things, if the center is identified by money and media attention. Perhaps at that center it’s more as you say.

I have a question about the nature of this “anti-TESCREALism”. “TESCREALism” has an intellectual content that includes things like life extension, philanthropic utilitarianism, and concern with the long-term future and the rise of superhuman AI. Then there’s a host of things that have no inherent connection to that intellectual content, like the sex parties, belief in racial IQ differences, consorting with tech billionaires, etc. Where would this nonprofit’s opposition be focused?

This seems a good time to remember Dale Carrico, the Berkeley rhetorician and Hannah Arendt fan who was opposing what he dubbed “superlative” futurological discourse, as long ago as 2009.

I’ve been on their online forums, but I have literally zero experience of the Bay Area rationalist scene or any other. Of course I know about the billionaires, but I thought the answer was going to be that the rationalists come from wealthy families and social circles.

their problem is … [several items omitted] … they can always talk a friend into wiring them another $100,000

Assuming you’re correct about that, I would love an explanation of how they come to have this enviable problem. Is it primarily a matter of social class, or is there some more specific category of origin which produces people who can’t invest or run a business, but never run out of opportunities to keep trying?

Visit his blog and you’ll find he has genuine paranoid delusions (he claims to be “Q from the Qanon movement” and has a post about his ex-wife’s conspiracies against him)

Sounds like a job for RationalWiki

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Infrasound