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cult |kʌlt| noun 1 a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object: the cult of St Olaf. • a relatively small group

cult |kʌlt| noun 1 a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object: the cult of St Olaf. • a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. The veneration of Yudkowski and others in the LW community is more than a bit "religious". So I'd say by definition it's a cult. LW hasn't done harm to people physically, but what it's done is spawn some very questionable ideas, perpetuate pseudo-science and pseudo-mathematics. The cult leader has no formal training, zero research in peer-reviewed journals and still calls himself a "senior research fellow" in an institute he himself started. Hell, he even has an introductory religious text - The Sequences and the Methods of Rationality fan fiction (which by the way, he wanted to monetise before the broader fan fiction community stopped him. A clear violation of copyright law). For more, see: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky I'll quote the section titled "More controversial positions" Despite being viewed as the smartest two-legged being to ever walk this planet on LessWrong, Yudkowsky (and by consequence much of the LessWrong community) endorses positions as TruthTM that are actually controversial in their respective fields. Below is a partial list: Transhumanism is correct. Cryonics might someday work. The Singularity is near![citation NOT needed] Bayes' theorem and the scientific method don't always lead to the same conclusions (and therefore Bayes is better than science).[21] Bayesian probability can be applied indiscriminately.[22] Non-computable results, such as Kolmogorov complexity, are totally a reasonable basis for the entire epistemology. Solomonoff, baby! Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics is correct (a "slam dunk"), despite the lack of consensus among quantum physicists.[23] Evolutionary psychology is well-established science. Utilitarianism is a correct theory of morality. In particular, he proposes a framework by which an extremely, extremely huge number of people experiencing a speck of dust in their eyes for a moment could be worse than a man being tortured for 50 years.[24] Also, while it is not very clear what his actual position is on this, he wrote a short sci-fi story where rape was briefly mentioned as legal. TL;DR: If it's associated with LessWrong/Yudkowsky, it's probably bullshit.

sawwit 11y ago
I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit, but I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking. Regarding the rape sequence in HPMOR: It's a terribly chosen trope to convey that the fictional society has very different values from ours. Apparently it ties into various parts of the story, so that EY didn't remove it and only toned it down after it was criticized.
- manish_gill 11y ago
  > I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit. Go the link, go to references, read about them. I'll outline the gist: Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified. What he's preaching isn't science. Certainly not rigorous experimental science. He (along with Bostrom) tends to engage in extreme hypotheticals. Which, sure if you're a philosopher, is fine. But even then, wouldn't you want your work to be judged by like-minded peers? But alas, here has a convenient excuse of being "auto didactic" to fall back on, so he can sit on his armchair and critique traditional education, and his lack of peer reviewed material. Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. This sort of narcissistic, self congratulatory thinking is what puts me off more than anything. Writing long form posts on the Internet which use complicated words don't make you smart. http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html is another critique. It comes off as bit crass, but stick with it. > I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking. There are other ways to improve your thinking. Read books. Read different kind of books, that offer counter point of views. Farnham Street Blog is a good place to start for a list of resources for thinking tools/mental models btw. :)
  - sawwit 11y ago
    I will look into Farnham Street's Blog, thanks. > What he's preaching isn't science. I don't buy into the necessity that everything has to be peer-reviewed in the old fashioned way. There is peer-review happening in the comments to some extent. I don't take a fancy to dismissing any radical ideas as pseudoscience. It's just the outer fringe of hypotheses that need to be tested against reality, and as long they are approximately humanist, enlightened and don't contradict existing physics without depending on mathematics (or disclaimers), I cannot see anything wrong with it. As a naturalist, I pretty much agree with everything I've read on LW so far, except for the parts I cannot judge (like hypotheses about physics), which I allocate a weaker priors for and a few unconvincing pieces. > Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. I have not yet experienced that, but there are also a lot of people on reddit and HN that I don't like, yet I differentiate within these communities between what is valuable and what is not. > Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified. At the risk of seeming indoctrinated to you, this is what I believe with high certainty: If Moore's law continues another one or two decades, I think the singularity is a very real possibility. The human brain seems to be nothing more than a learning and prediction machine, nothing what transcends what we can understand in principle. Evolution did come up with complex organisms, but the complexity is limited by biochemical mechanisms and availability of energy. In addition, nature often approximates very simple things in overly complicated ways because evolution is based on incremental changes, not on an ultimate goal that prescribes a design of low complexity. I also think that AI will very likely be superintelligent and that poses a tremendous risk in the 10-40 years to come (on the order of atomic warfare and runaway climate change). By the time someone implements an approximately human-level intelligence, we better have a good idea about how to control such a machine.

sawwit 11y ago

I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit, but I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking. Regarding the rape sequence in HPMOR: It's a terribly chosen trope to convey that the fictional society has very different values from ours. Apparently it ties into various parts of the story, so that EY didn't remove it and only toned it down after it was criticized.

manish_gill 11y ago
> I cannot judge to which degree these theses are bullshit. Go the link, go to references, read about them. I'll outline the gist: Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified. What he's preaching isn't science. Certainly not rigorous experimental science. He (along with Bostrom) tends to engage in extreme hypotheticals. Which, sure if you're a philosopher, is fine. But even then, wouldn't you want your work to be judged by like-minded peers? But alas, here has a convenient excuse of being "auto didactic" to fall back on, so he can sit on his armchair and critique traditional education, and his lack of peer reviewed material. Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. This sort of narcissistic, self congratulatory thinking is what puts me off more than anything. Writing long form posts on the Internet which use complicated words don't make you smart. http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/cultofbayes.html is another critique. It comes off as bit crass, but stick with it. > I've found LW a tremendously rich source of thinking tools and I'm convinced that reading or skimming a lot of the sequences have improved my thinking. There are other ways to improve your thinking. Read books. Read different kind of books, that offer counter point of views. Farnham Street Blog is a good place to start for a list of resources for thinking tools/mental models btw. :)
- sawwit 11y ago
  I will look into Farnham Street's Blog, thanks. > What he's preaching isn't science. I don't buy into the necessity that everything has to be peer-reviewed in the old fashioned way. There is peer-review happening in the comments to some extent. I don't take a fancy to dismissing any radical ideas as pseudoscience. It's just the outer fringe of hypotheses that need to be tested against reality, and as long they are approximately humanist, enlightened and don't contradict existing physics without depending on mathematics (or disclaimers), I cannot see anything wrong with it. As a naturalist, I pretty much agree with everything I've read on LW so far, except for the parts I cannot judge (like hypotheses about physics), which I allocate a weaker priors for and a few unconvincing pieces. > Not to mention, and this is a bit of a pet peeve, I find that most LW people are too self-absorbed, I've literally seen a blog where the person who runs it "warns" the readers that what he writes is too complicated for people to follow. I have not yet experienced that, but there are also a lot of people on reddit and HN that I don't like, yet I differentiate within these communities between what is valuable and what is not. > Most of what Yudkowsky says is extremely sci-fi, no real basis in scientific fact, but stretching the current technological progress to the point where his opinions on things (stuff like transhumanism, singularity) can be justified. At the risk of seeming indoctrinated to you, this is what I believe with high certainty: If Moore's law continues another one or two decades, I think the singularity is a very real possibility. The human brain seems to be nothing more than a learning and prediction machine, nothing what transcends what we can understand in principle. Evolution did come up with complex organisms, but the complexity is limited by biochemical mechanisms and availability of energy. In addition, nature often approximates very simple things in overly complicated ways because evolution is based on incremental changes, not on an ultimate goal that prescribes a design of low complexity. I also think that AI will very likely be superintelligent and that poses a tremendous risk in the 10-40 years to come (on the order of atomic warfare and runaway climate change). By the time someone implements an approximately human-level intelligence, we better have a good idea about how to control such a machine.