SneerClub

1071 readers

68 users here now

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.]

See our twin at Reddit

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

self@awful.systems

blakestacey@awful.systems

dgerard@awful.systems

How to explain our very good friends to normal humans? (awful.systems)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by dgerard@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Thinking about how the arsing fuck to explain the rationalists to normal people - especially as they are now a loud public problem along multiple dimensions.

The problem is that it's all deep in the weeds. Every part of it is "it can't be that stupid, you must be explaining it wrong."

With bitcoin, I have, over the years, simplified it to being a story of crooks and con men. The correct answer to "what is a blockchain and how does it work" is "it's a way to move money around out of the sight of regulators" and maybe "so it's for crooks and con men, and a small number of sincere libertarians" and don't even talk about cryptography or technology.

I dunno what the one sentence explanation is of this shit.

"The purpose of LessWrong rationality is for Yudkowsky to live forever as an emulation running on the mind of the AI God" is completely true, is the purpose of the whole thing, and is also WTF.

Maybe that and "so he started what turned into a cult and a series of cults"? At this point I'm piling up the absurdities again.

The Behind The Bastards approach to all these guys has been "wow these guys are all so wacky haha and also they're evil."

How would you first approach explaining this shit past "it can't be that stupid, you must be explaining it wrong"?

[also posted in sneer classic]

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] sc_griffith@awful.systems 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I usually say the following. I'm paraphrasing a spiel I have delivered in person several times and which seems to get things across.

'there's a kind of decentralized cult called rationalism. they worship rational thinking, have lots of little rituals that are supposed to invoke more rational thinking, and spend a lot of time discussing their versions of angels and demons, which they conceive of as all powerful ai beings.

rationalists aren't really interested in experiments or evidence, because they want to figure everything out with pure reasoning. they consider themselves experts on anything they've thought really hard about. they come up with a lot of apocalypse predictions and theories about race mingling.

silicon valley is saturated with rationalists. most of the people with a lot of money are not rationalists. but VCs and such find rationalists very useful, because they're malleable and will claim with sincerity to be experts on any topic. for example, when AI companies claim to be inventing really intelligent beings, the people they put forward as supporting these claims are rationalists.'