rationalism AI cultist creeps

These fools are the enemy of the true cybernetic revolution.

ok sam harris doesn't really belong here but c'mon

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/free-will-and-the-reality-of-love

Consider the present moment from the point of view of my conscious mind: I have decided to write this blog post, and I am now writing it. I almost didn’t write it, however. In fact, I went back and forth about it: I feel that I’ve said more or less everything I have to say on the topic of free will and now worry about repeating myself. I started the post, and then set it aside. But after several more emails came in, I realized that I might be able to clarify a few points. Did I choose to be affected in this way? No. Some readers were urging me to comment on depressing developments in “the Arab Spring.” Others wanted me to write about the practice of meditation. At first I ignored all these voices and went back to working on my next book. Eventually, however, I returned to this blog post. Was that a choice? Well, in a conventional sense, yes. But my experience of making the choice did not include an awareness of its actual causes. Subjectively speaking, it is an absolute mystery to me why I am writing this.

this is sub david brooks

this is not going to shock anyone but this frame of mind/crew of people trends very strongly into some supremely nasty politics

http://lesswrong.com/lw/hcy/link_more_right_launched/

ahahaa "Just so long as we don't end up with an asymmetrical effect, where the PUAs leave but the feminists stay."

ah god i don't think i've seen the term "race realism" before

The all-important gap between labeling yourself as a rationalist and actually using your reason; between labeling yourself as an empiricist and actually studying phenomena.

first thing i do after the singularity: allow myself to get a girlfriend! (i have actually read that from one of the big cahuna in a chat years ago. screencapped it but decided not to save for luls, i'm not that kind of guy)

next sentence written in the chat was of him again : "that was dumb."

everyone will be your girlfriend after the singularity iirc

also that basilisk thing is o_O

not least because it apparently relies in part on some absurd population ethics ("total utilitarianism" they call it)

http://lesswrong.com/lw/hcy/link_more_right_launched/

― R'LIAH (goole), Thursday, August 1, 2013 7:13 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why did you get me down the rabbit hole of a right-wing blog?

If there are multiple cultural/ethnic identities, they need to be either assimilated into one another, be distinctive and have clear guidelines for interaction, or be separated and with separate administrative structures.

i jumped ship at "race realism"

i think they are confusing cultural/ethnic identities with member planets of the federation?

also from that blog

When it comes to art and music, thinkers intuitively realize that the most popular works are the most trivial and idiotic, but when it comes to politics, the uninformed opinions of the masses are placed on a pedestal. The reason for this inconsistent view of a sort of Democratic pseudo-religion that has been in place in the Anglosphere since around 1848.

Advocates of Democracy try to rewrite history and imply that Enlightenment principles are fundamentally incompatible with Monarchy, but this is clearly untrue. Voltaire, known as one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, had a close relationship to a number of monarchs, including Frederick the Great, and advised him regularly. It was economic and cultural flourishing brought on by absolute monarchy in France that created the conditions for the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. All of this was underway well before the French Revolution.

what monarchy do you want!? do you want to join the commonwealth!?

For roughly 165 years (since 1848), democracy has caused social and economic mayhem worldwide. Rule-of-the-People has caused vastly increased crime (100X in the UK since 1800)

ladies and gentlemen, statistics!

i think it's pretty obv that these people are far less smart and rational than they claim to be and after that by their own rules we're okay to ignore them

aaaand now we're moving into infowars territory....

Speaking for myself personally, my key motivation is not having to witness or experience global nanowar. For a grasp of the capabilities that could be invoked during such a war, I recommend the obscure volume Military Nanotechnology: Potential Applications and Preventive Arms Control.

It’s laborious for me to explain why small robots would be a major risk, because it should be self-evident. Very small robots could be made exceedingly stealthy, they could provide comprehensive surveillance of enemy activities, and could inject lethal payloads of just a few microliters. Moreover, they could self-detonate after carrying out their mission, making them untraceable.

uuuughhhhh ok if i HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT TO YOU

lol goole you have the weirdest hobby

It was economic and cultural flourishing brought on by absolute monarchy in France that created the conditions for the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. All of this was underway well before the French Revolution.

Yeah but the computer this guy is typing this on is a product of capitalism proper which is only possible after the French Revolution and the death blow it dealt to the vestigial feudalism

Also questionable whether absolute monarchy 'brought on economic flourishing'? Weren't the poor in the period leading up to the Revolution having to subsist on grass and hay?

I'd love to be clever enough to write an algorithm that measured the ratio of pro-reason rhetoric to actual chains of reasoning in all forum posts and comment boxes on the internet

don't i know it, j.

For roughly 165 years (since 1848), democracy has caused social and economic mayhem worldwide. Rule-of-the-People has caused vastly increased crime (100X in the UK since 1800)

yeah nah

Is that quote from The Third Man?

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ipm/a_map_of_bay_area_memespace/

http://rationality.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Bay-Area-memespace1.jpg

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ipm/a_map_of_bay_area_memespace/

sorta want cali to fall into the ocean right about now

the meme of trying things and learning from the real world

"Heuristics and biases research" is a meme that was not derived from any group or subculture. It sprang up ex nihilo?

I have to say, the people I know who are into this stuff are actually really nice

A lot of what that map says is wrong, but they got a few things right.

I stopped reading when I got to this: "Some of the basic building blocks of rationality come from computer science".

Maybe it is just poorly worded, but I stopped, nonetheless.

also most interesting ppl around ime xp

i mean the weirdo transhumanist singularity bros, not the boring libertarian redditers or the alternative approaches to wellness peeps

the ones i know are experimental rationalists who obsessively prod their biases and play elaborate group games aimed at this purpose, not really any of the three categories above i think

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ldv/harpers_magazine_article_on_lwmiricfar_and/

“Come with us if you want to live: Among the apocalyptic libertarians of Silicon Valley” bootlegged and discussed on LessWrong

He’d founded a music-licensing start-up called Sir Groovy.

need to read that, came across it a little while ago. these guys are so funny.

John_Maxwell_IV 13 December 2014 12:05:41AM * 5 points [-]

I'm curious what the goal of communicating with this journalist was. News organizations get paid by the pageview, so they have an incentive to sell a story, not spread the truth. And journalists also are famous for misrepresenting the people and topics they cover. (Typically when I read something in the press that discusses a topic I know about, they almost always get it a little wrong and often get it a lot wrong. I'm not the only one; this has gotten discussed on Hacker News. In fact, I think it might be interesting to start a "meta-journalism" organization that would find big stories in the media, talk to the people who were interviewed, and get direct quotes from them on if/how they were misrepresented.) If media exposure is a goal, you don't work with random journalists who come to you telling you that they want to include you in stories. You hire a publicist or PR firm that does the reverse and takes your story to journalists and makes sure they present it accurately.

literally everything these people say reads like a joke

for a bunch of guys who "have it all figured out" they all seem strangely, fundamentally unhappy

I think it might be interesting to start a "meta-journalism" organization that would find big stories in the media, talk to the people who were interviewed, and get direct quotes from them on if/how they were misrepresented.

it's about ethics in journalism!

lol

a onetime student of mine, very sharp, hyper-rational type, rose (not through any assistance i gave) to the heights of the philosophical elite, where he worked on far-future-focused effective altruism. he has since joined an ALTRUISM STARTUP based in SAN FRANCISCO.

i never really wondered about him until i started reading about the overlap between far-future EA and the lesswrong don't-think-about-the-AI people

but now…

for a bunch of guys who "have it all figured out" they all seem strangely, fundamentally unhappy

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, December 16, 2014 12:27 PM (29 minutes ago)

of course not

these guys are basically motivated by the same insecurities of audiences you find at self-help/guru seminars