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[Travis B.]

If being "rationalist" is anything like how you depict it, I want no part of it.

[Ares Land]

What's up with Twitter anyway?
I've seen people I know IRL and with whom I had nothing but perfectly friendly and rational conversations turn into creatures of pure id on that site.

It's not as bad as Usenet was, but it's getting close.

(Usenet ca 2002 brought trolling to an art form, and reached levels of nastiness that not even 4chan matched. I remember checking up on a literary newsgroup and being treated to a very, very disturbing story involving gorillas. I'm not sharing that story but believe me, I haven't found a nastier conspiracy theory yet.)

[Nachtswalbe]

What's up with Twitter anyway?
I've seen people I know IRL and with whom I had nothing but perfectly friendly and rational conversations turn into creatures of pure id on that site.

It's not as bad as Usenet was, but it's getting close.

(Usenet ca 2002 brought trolling to an art form, and reached levels of nastiness that not even 4chan matched. I remember checking up on a literary newsgroup and being treated to a very, very disturbing story involving gorillas. I'm not sharing that story but believe me, I haven't found a nastier conspiracy theory yet.)

The reason it elevates the id in people so much is that its lack of characters means you have to express yourself as quickly as possible and nuance is literally evaporated, so you can't have a lengthy reasoned discussion.

Also, the fact that you can delete tweets (while not being able to delete threads) means that if someone doesn't like what you say, you can delete it, which fuels lots of screenshotting, paranoia etc. about what people have said.

Third, twitter has "promoted topics" which will pop up occasionally so Discourse revolves around those, as well as long-running arguments (e.g for communists, whether religion is bad or merely useful)

Finally, the constant infighting between esoteric subcultures (e.g globe vs. rose vs sock twitter for politics) breeds constant rage (and occasional horny, don't ask).

[MacAnDàil]

Yes, especially the first point, which brings us back to my last point.

[Nachtswalbe]

Has anyone read Ligotti before?

[Travis B.]

Has anyone read Ligotti before?

And should we?

[Nortaneous]

Has anyone read Ligotti before?

And should we?

no

If being "rationalist" is anything like how you depict it, I want no part of it.

it is, unfortunately

[Nachtswalbe]

If being "rationalist" is anything like how you depict it, I want no part of it.

it is, unfortunately

Never mind Scott's freakout when topher brennan released a letter from him stating interest in neoreactionary stuff, and he felt his reputation was ruined so he
1) deleted his old blog
2) created a new one
3) quit his old psychiatrist job and made a private practice which only accepts previous patients.

That was the biggest rationalist "incident". And also dragon army, which consisted of a bunch of rationalists who wanted "discipline" so they bought/rented houses as "barracks", and pranced around yelling "Rule # X" whenever hey saw each other

What is Dragon Army [Barracks]? It’s a high­-commitment, high-­standards, high-­investment group house model with centralized leadership and an up­-or-­out participation norm, designed to a) improve its members and b) actually accomplish medium-­to-­large scale tasks requiring long­term coordination. Tongue-­in­-cheek referred to as the “fascist/authoritarian take on rationalist housing,”

[Travis B.]

If being "rationalist" is anything like how you depict it, I want no part of it.

it is, unfortunately

Never mind Scott's freakout when topher brennan released a letter from him stating interest in neoreactionary stuff, and he felt his reputation was ruined so he
1) deleted his old blog
2) created a new one
3) quit his old psychiatrist job and made a private practice which only accepts previous patients.

That was the biggest rationalist "incident". And also dragon army, which consisted of a bunch of rationalists who wanted "discipline" so they bought/rented houses as "barracks", and pranced around yelling "Rule # X" whenever hey saw each other

What is Dragon Army [Barracks]? It’s a high­-commitment, high-­standards, high-­investment group house model with centralized leadership and an up­-or-­out participation norm, designed to a) improve its members and b) actually accomplish medium-­to-­large scale tasks requiring long­term coordination. Tongue-­in­-cheek referred to as the “fascist/authoritarian take on rationalist housing,”

Everything I've seen about "rationalism" makes me not like it.

[Nachtswalbe]

Here is a list of Ligotti Quotes (nonfiction) to show everyone his relentlessly nihilist mindset: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes ... as_Ligotti

[bradrn]

If being "rationalist" is anything like how you depict it, I want no part of it.

it is, unfortunately

Never mind Scott's freakout when topher brennan released a letter from him stating interest in neoreactionary stuff, and he felt his reputation was ruined so he
1) deleted his old blog
2) created a new one
3) quit his old psychiatrist job and made a private practice which only accepts previous patients.

Who’s Topher Brennan? All I saw was that Alexander deleted his blog over the NYT article refusing to use his pseudonym. Which ordinary I would agree to reject as a ‘freakout’… except psychiatrists apparently really are this protective of their privacy; he mentioned he’s not the first psychiatrist to delete their blog on the occasion of their real name being exposed. Also, this ignores that he had a previous blog, which he also ended up deleting (well, locking): again, because people had connected it to him, and he realised that this had actively started to affect his practice.

Everything I've seen about "rationalism" makes me not like it.

I think it’s incredibly important here to distinguish between ‘rationalism’ as a mode of thought and ‘rationalism’ as a community. The former is a framework of thinking with an emphasis on coming to the correct, impartial solution to problems, especially in the presence of cognitive bias. This is, I think, a worthwhile project. Certainly the world would be a better place if we could all understand our inbuilt biases.

The latter, on the other hand, is a community, with all which that entails. Some parts of it are perfectly reasonable, and other parts are decidedly nutty. (An underexaggeration, if anything.) It has its own community-specific areas of interest, some of which are productive and helpful (e.g. effective altuism), others of which aren’t so much (e.g. ‘basilisks’). It’s certainly not homogenous: I understand that various parts of the community have intense dislike for various other parts of the community. All of which means you can’t take single worst cases as representative of the whole community. (Alexander calls this particular tactic ‘weak-manning’: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/a ... the-motte/.)

Here is a list of Ligotti Quotes (nonfiction) to show everyone his relentlessly nihilist mindset: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes ... as_Ligotti

What’s ‘relentlessly nihilist’ about that? Some of these seem clearly tongue in cheek. (‘My existence consisted purely and exclusively of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense’? Sounds like something Twain would say. Or perhaps Saki, or Wodehouse.) Others I’ve heard in similar forms from divers other places — there’s an old Jewish dispute between Hillel and Shammai coming to roughly similar conclusions, for instance. There’s numerous old philosophical traditions holding that material existence is worthless and the world is pain and so on and so forth. All I can conclude from these quotes is that Ligotti isn’t a particularly original thinker.

[Nachtswalbe]

Who’s Topher Brennan? All I saw was that Alexander deleted his blog over the NYT article refusing to use his pseudonym. Which ordinary I would agree to reject as a ‘freakout’… except psychiatrists apparently really are this protective of their privacy; he mentioned he’s not the first psychiatrist to delete their blog on the occasion of their real name being exposed. Also, this ignores that he had a previous blog, which he also ended up deleting (well, locking): again, because people had connected it to him, and he realised that this had actively started to affect his practice.

Everything I've seen about "rationalism" makes me not like it.

The latter, on the other hand, is a community, with all which that entails. Some parts of it are perfectly reasonable, and other parts are decidedly nutty. (An underexaggeration, if anything.) It has its own community-specific areas of interest, some of which are productive and helpful (e.g. effective altuism), others of which aren’t so much (e.g. ‘basilisks’). It’s certainly not homogenous: I understand that various parts of the community have intense dislike for various other parts of the community. All of which means you can’t take single worst cases as representative of the whole community. (Alexander calls this particular tactic ‘weak-manning’: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/a ... the-motte/.)

Here is a list of Ligotti Quotes (nonfiction) to show everyone his relentlessly nihilist mindset: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes ... as_Ligotti

What’s ‘relentlessly nihilist’ about that? Some of these seem clearly tongue in cheek. (‘My existence consisted purely and exclusively of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense’? Sounds like something Twain would say. Or perhaps Saki, or Wodehouse.) Others I’ve heard in similar forms from divers other places — there’s an old Jewish dispute between Hillel and Shammai coming to roughly similar conclusions, for instance. There’s numerous old philosophical traditions holding that material existence is worthless and the world is pain and so on and so forth. All I can conclude from these quotes is that Ligotti isn’t a particularly original thinker.

Well, yes half of his quotes sound like a godless cross between Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes and whatever.
"Better yet still is he who has not been born, for he does not know (is not conscious = a major cause of suffering in ligotti's writings) the meaniingless suffering under the sun"
Topher: https://twitter.com/TopherTBrennan?ref_ ... r%5Eauthor

[Nortaneous]

Never mind Scott's freakout when topher brennan released a letter from him stating interest in neoreactionary stuff, and he felt his reputation was ruined so he
1) deleted his old blog
2) created a new one
3) quit his old psychiatrist job and made a private practice which only accepts previous patients.

That was the biggest rationalist "incident".

Topher Brennan is a repulsive idiot and always has been. I'm not sure why Scott would trust a guy who made a sincere attempt to break into electoral politics, to name the biggest of many red flags. But he didn't have anything to do with SSC getting shut down - that was all the New York Times.

You can't have a public profile and draw an unrelated salary - you have to pick one or the other. It's not great, but it shouldn't be surprising that working for someone else is antithetical to freedom.

And also dragon army, which consisted of a bunch of rationalists who wanted "discipline" so they bought/rented houses as "barracks", and pranced around yelling "Rule # X" whenever hey saw each other

Duncan is a weird dude but doesn't break the top 20 for California, and his failed group house doesn't even make the list. The MIRI/CFAR circles are bad news and it's generally advisable to stay far away from them.

Aleister Crowley said (to paraphrase extensively) that you shouldn't fuck with weird shit until you've mastered normal shit. He was right.

[zompist]

Aleister Crowley said (to paraphrase extensively) that you shouldn't fuck with weird shit until you've mastered normal shit. He was right.

That's probably good advice, but seems like the sort of thing anyone interested in weird shit will ignore. I mean, my impression is that people go for weird shit (in several senses) because they can't master normal shit.

[bradrn]

The MIRI/CFAR circles are bad news and it's generally advisable to stay far away from them.

I haven’t heard this before. What’s bad about them?

[Nachtswalbe]

The MIRI/CFAR circles are bad news and it's generally advisable to stay far away from them.

I haven’t heard this before. What’s bad about them?

financial and sexual abuse, among other things. Also abuse in the group homes

[Nortaneous]

Aleister Crowley said (to paraphrase extensively) that you shouldn't fuck with weird shit until you've mastered normal shit. He was right.

That's probably good advice, but seems like the sort of thing anyone interested in weird shit will ignore. I mean, my impression is that people go for weird shit (in several senses) because they can't master normal shit.

Right, and they'd rather search for magic bullets that don't exist than accept that sometimes gaining competence is hard.

The MIRI/CFAR circles are bad news and it's generally advisable to stay far away from them.

I haven’t heard this before. What’s bad about them?

I probably can't explain this well, but their ideas (their general cultural vibe, really, more than specific ideas that they make arguments for) make people worse and less effective and dramatically increase their risk of, like, a psychotic break. And the problems are more foundational than they'd like to admit - the Zizians aren't, like, not orthodox rationalists, for example.

They don't seem capable of seriously reckoning with any of this - now that they can't just deny there's a pattern, the community consensus AFAICT is shaping up to be "blame one guy for it" (e.g. the comments here), on the argument that well-connected guys are well-connected.

Yudkowsky issued a fatwa against advising other people to take psychedelics, which is pretty reasonable, but you can get halfway to whatever mental disorder Ziz developed by just, like, reading foundational rationalist texts and taking them seriously.

financial and sexual abuse, among other things. Also abuse in the group homes

The word "abuse" is too vague to be meaningful. I don't think this adds value.

[Nachtswalbe]

The word "abuse" is too vague to be meaningful. I don't think this adds value.

In terms of sexual/emotional abuse:

• Roko of the basilisk touched the thigh of Kathy Forth nonconsensually and Adam Saffron at Leverage Research kissed Kathy Forth after she told him she had a bf. Kathy claimed that the number of perpetrators in LW was 5-8

• This thread detailing abuses from Vassar et. al.

• Belittling et. al from Kaj Sotala

Besides abuse, the Leverage thing and its bizarre plans.
Whatever the hell you call this: https://twitter.com/etjossem/status/1169047566954065921
Why Ray doirasamy thinks the Kaj sotala abuse is funny: https://twitter.com/forshaper/status/13 ... 4322002944

[Travis B.]

On one hand, the whole "rationalist community" to me seems like a bunch of cultists. On the other hand, the whole abuse thing would have to be shown to be substantially greater than that found in many other communities (e.g. look at the Catholic Church, Scouting, or even college sports) to be an indictment of "rationalism".

[Travis B.]

I must say, though, that Twitter is a horrible corner of the Interwebs...