this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]
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I think it is a little bit more complicated, Im one of the few mentioning this however, so it isnt a common idea I think. I think it isnt directly a cult/religion, but stealing the language of Silicon Valley, it is a cult incubator. Reading these things, having these beliefs about AGI and rationality makes you more susceptible to join or start cult like groups. The less wrong article "every cause wants to be a cult" doesnt help for example, neither does it when they speak highly of the methods os scientology. The various spinoffs and how many of these groups act cultlike and use cultlike shit makes me think this.
So it is worse in a way.
There's also the communal living, the workplace polyamory along with the prominence of the consensual non-consensual kink, the tithing of the bulk of your earnings and the extreme goals-justify-the-means moralising, the emphasis on psychedelics and prescription amphetamines, and so on and so forth.
Meaning, while calling them a cult incubator is actually really insightful and well put, I have a feeling that the closer you get to TESCREAL epicenters like the SFB the more explicitly culty things start to get.
Yeah but tescreal is a name we give them, themselves organise in different groups (which fit into the term yes). They have different parts pf the tescreal, but it all ends up in culty behaviour, just a different cult.
Btw see also love bombing with Quantum Scott. There was also the weird LW people who ended up protesting other LW people in the crazy way (didnt it include robes or something, I dont recall much). Or calling Scottstar the rightful caliph when Yud was posting less.
So my point is more they morph into different cults, and wonder how much they use this lack of singular cult as a way to claim they are not a cult. Or whatever rot13ed word they used for cult.
E: not that all this really matters in the grand scheme of things. just a personal hangup.
It's impossible to read a post here without going down some weird internet rabbit hole isn't it? This is totally off topic but I was reading the comments on this old phyg post, and one of the comments said (seemingly seriously):
And I'm just thinking, riight highly hypothetical.