Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
I wonder how soon we’re going to hit the “we have team $foo building that internally since we can’t use $serviceX for that (externally hosted has security issues)” phase of corporate fafo
why am I thinking of this? oh, no reason. just pondering the cyclic nature of history I guess you could say.
Not a sneer, but a deeply cursed dream from a friend:
Hey, that's the epic battle fantasy guy. I loved his games back in the flash days.
ABSOLUTELY CURSED
In other news, https://creative.ai/ was put up for purchase because the original owner considers AI's reputation a lost cause.
(In other other news, its my 24th birthday.)
Happy birthday. I thought you were 40 years old!
🎂
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday!
xcancel link, and it’s a fairly interesting set of posts too (with exactly the type of dumbass hustle culture replies one would expect from Twitter, with people essentially demanding first dibs on the domain)
(In other other news, its my 24th birthday.)
happy birthday!
Artists using GenAI tools are among the most hardworking and innovative creators I've encountered.
oh sweet fuck, dude, it's not our fault everyone you hang out with has the innovativeness and work ethic of a concrete slab
brutalists want to know your location
Arguably a literal concrete slab does more hard work by holding up structures etc than a GenAI influencer
OT: whats the best way to explain rationalism et all to complete normal people with no connection to tech?
decentralized cult which worships the concept of rational thinking as superior to evidence. has lots of little rituals which are supposed to invoke rational thinking. uses AI in the place of angels and demons. no core holy texts, but the closest things are a sequence of blog posts and a harry potter fanfic. very influential in silicon valley, very intermingled with various explicitly fascist groups
Longer than I'd intend, but the way I describe it is probably as
A mystical Harry Potter based sex cult deeply embedded in the techbro scene. They want what many cults want: to commune with God, achieve immortality or enlightenment, and obtain power in the current world, but they dress it in the trappings of science and computer programming.
Do to demographic features, their desire to be clever, and a certain contrarian attitude, they will often seek to rationalise harmful social practices, which leads them to support anti-feminist and race realist positions with shocking frequency.
Because of their close connections to the tech scene, along with the personal relationship the cult founder had with Peter Thiel, and the fact that the cult has been indoctrinating kids since the aughts, they are shockingly influential in the AI scene.
As most cults, they claim to want to teach people to think correctly (rationally), but they actually value the community of being in a cult (and the potential social networking and financial benefits) over thinking rationally.
In terms of style, they like long works with unclear arguments, being clever or witty over being right, and strongly signalling their rationality (sometimes even using good tools), but not allowing that to interfere with the core features of being a cultist.
(1-3) are what I'd consider core. (4-5) are what I'd add if the person seems interested. If they seem really interested, I'd also discuss other connections (e.g. to Effective Altruism, the Future of Humanity Institute, George Mason University, Future Perfect, neoreaction), their ideology in more specific terms (e.g. the Sequences, Roko's Basilisk), and associated members (e.g. EY, SSC, Aella, SBF).
Techish (I would use the word techbro here, but that needs an explantion even) people who want to make their fictional science fiction utopia real, but got so scared of their own science fiction ideas going wrong and killing everybody they started a cult around rationality, sort of a Vulcans fan club. They have a pattern where they think they and their methods are smarter and better than actual experts.
When trying to do their own research with an open mind, but they left their minds so open that all kinds of sexists and racists crawled in. Who are welcomed as long as they are verbose enough.
And to close it off, Musk is a fan.
Their minds are open to all ideas, so long as the idea is a closed form solution that looks edgy.
Yes, there is a certain yearning for 'secret forbidden' knowledge and contrarianism, but I tried to keep it short and simple. Almost never do they find a solution in anything in the left side of politics.
Personally I might try explaining some of the foundational stuff before going into the big R. Scientism, utilitarianism would be my starting points.
I first read this comment before having coffee and thought that "R. Scientism" was a joke about Asimov's robot novels.
I knew R. Scientism. I went to high school with his son. He was a real piece of shit
can't unsee
SV Scientology, they can't land you a leading role in a summer blockbuster but they sure as hell can put you in the running for AI policy related positions of influence or for the board of a company run by one of their more successful groomings. Their current most popular product is court philosophers for the worst kind of aspiring technofeudalist billionaire.
If this gets them interested you'll eventually get your chance to do a deep dive to any details of cosmist lore you find relevant.
the problem of my life. I have literally found it easier to explain Scientology than Roko's basilisk.
It can't be that stupid. You must be explaining it wrong.
Weirdly and widely applicable, as always
It's a little bit like a tiny version of the Mormons if Joseph Smith had read the collected works of Isaac Asimov instead of the Bible and also his name was Yud.
Or to go with less of a sneer, the Rationalist/TESCREAL/Californian Ideology is a loose grouping of fringe beliefs rooted in old-school science/tech fetishism with a lot of science fiction overlays and libertarian/reactionary politics that effectively define "let ultrawealthy tech capitalists do whatever they want" as the only reasonable choice and make it a moral imperative.
Actually the Mormon thing might work given its a priest I’m talking with. Thank you!
ah, he'd understand people then? Heavy on the slipping into cultishness then
She’s like the vicar of dibley so this is really quite funny when you think about it.
I tried to think of a smaller cult that's still pretty well-known or influential but kept coming up with Heaven's Gate or the Branch Davidians.
Scientology would seem like the obvious one, then.
Peoples Temple?
I was trying to think of one that didn't end in a mass murder/suicide/conflagration-of-violence though.
There are a couple 19th century ones that fit and didn’t go lethal. The New Motive Power guys would be the best match imo.