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I've been following the "rationalist movement" for a long time, and there has always been so many early cult warning signs among the various sub groups. I'm sad

I've been following the "rationalist movement" for a long time, and there has always been so many early cult warning signs among the various sub groups. I'm sad that it's gone so far as to result in deaths and murder attempts with some of them. I expect it to get worse as some of the "rationalists" continue to embrace bizarre groupthink irrationality.

pr337h4m 2y ago
Utilitarianism can be used to justify literally anything, especially when paired with large scale drug use. FTX was just the beginning.
- Trasmatta 2y ago
  Yeah, Yudkowsky saying many years ago that it would be better for one person to be tortured for 50 years than for 3^^^3 people to get a dust speck in their eye was pretty much everything I needed to know to realize this group was going to be a problem. And things just get worse from there.
  - iterateoften 2y ago
    > saying many years ago that it would be better for one person to be tortured for 50 years than 3^^^3 people getting a dust speck in their eye I just looked this up on lw and it is pretty slimy text. These weasels always leave it ambiguous to leave room to deny if their perfect rational view somehow goes wrong. Notice instead of actually having a backbone or taking the stance he just says > I think the answer is obvious. How about you? I’m not a christian but this sharply contrast the story of christ in which he sacrificed himself to in his mind spare billions from torture and the worst anguish in the universe. Here we see Yudkowsky casually implying that it is better for someone to get tortured to save the inconvenience of a speck of dust, but notice he doesn’t volunteer himself. Its fundamental to these rationalist and effective altruists that they are the right ones and others must sacrifice to fulfill the rationalist elitist intelligent world view. Look at FTX and this group. Their point of view it is OK for others to suffer financially and it is morally justified for the “intelligent” to steal and kill because they are the right ones and the ends justify the means.
    - Trasmatta 2y ago
      Yeah, he leaves the original post ambiguous, but if you dig into the comments, he clarifies that his stance is that torture is the right option. I'm going to try to find the link. EDIT: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs-dust-specks?commentId=XkDoPE3wCtwByTjLh https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs... > I'll go ahead and reveal my answer now: Robin Hanson was correct, I do think that TORTURE is the obvious option, and I think the main instinct behind SPECKS is scope insensitivity. When you find yourself writing "torture is the obvious option", you should realize that something has gone deeply wrong with the way you view the world. It's no wonder that death cults have sprung out of this philosophy.
      - fc417fc802 2y ago
        I feel like this is missing the point. Trolley problems are absurd hypotheticals with no direct bearing on reality. Their usefulness is as thought experiments. If you don't pull the lever the trolley kills one person. If you pull it N people lose a single limb. At what value of N does your ethical framework place the crossover point and why?
        anigbrowl 2y ago
        I don't agree that they're absurd. They have widespread popularity because they capture the kind of cost dilemmas that crop up all the time, eg 'if we build this refinery we can predict that an additional 20 people will get cancer over the next decade, but otoh we might achieve a 2% reduction in the cost of gasoline for everyone in our state over the same period.' The main intellectual error of utilitarianism is the assumption of perfect foreknowledge, and the justification of conclusions as if those predictions were facts. But just because trolley problems are stark oversimplifications does not make them useless as ethical reasoning tools; studying them helps you recognize messy ethical dilemmas as such rather than being seduced by the alleged upsides of a policy proposal.
        atombender 2y ago
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    It's way worse than that. It can be 3^^^3 people getting a dust speck in their eye that only exist in some counterfactual world that's a mere figment of your imagination. Nevertheless this can have real-world consequences because "counterfactual mugging" is a valid concern given Rationalist logic. Very confusing.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    Most utilitarian dilemmas boil down to Omelas in disguise.
hollerith 2y ago
The Zizians have only a very tangential relationship with the rationalist community. Once the leaders of the rationalist community understood what the Zizians were about, they banned them from their gatherings and published warnings about them. According to one source (which I can dig up on request) all 4 of the Zizian engaged in murder are trans. Do you also expect crimes from trans young people to get worse? The Zizians are mainly vegan, and the intellectual leader of the group (Ziz) advocated the murder of meat eaters. Do you consequently expect crimes done by vegans to get worse? The Zizians are anarchist leftists, ... In sum, you don't give much of an justification ("embrace bizarre groupthink irrationality" is not much) for pinning this on the rationalists and not on these other groups.

pr337h4m 2y ago

Utilitarianism can be used to justify literally anything, especially when paired with large scale drug use. FTX was just the beginning.

Trasmatta 2y ago
Yeah, Yudkowsky saying many years ago that it would be better for one person to be tortured for 50 years than for 3^^^3 people to get a dust speck in their eye was pretty much everything I needed to know to realize this group was going to be a problem. And things just get worse from there.
- iterateoften 2y ago
  > saying many years ago that it would be better for one person to be tortured for 50 years than 3^^^3 people getting a dust speck in their eye I just looked this up on lw and it is pretty slimy text. These weasels always leave it ambiguous to leave room to deny if their perfect rational view somehow goes wrong. Notice instead of actually having a backbone or taking the stance he just says > I think the answer is obvious. How about you? I’m not a christian but this sharply contrast the story of christ in which he sacrificed himself to in his mind spare billions from torture and the worst anguish in the universe. Here we see Yudkowsky casually implying that it is better for someone to get tortured to save the inconvenience of a speck of dust, but notice he doesn’t volunteer himself. Its fundamental to these rationalist and effective altruists that they are the right ones and others must sacrifice to fulfill the rationalist elitist intelligent world view. Look at FTX and this group. Their point of view it is OK for others to suffer financially and it is morally justified for the “intelligent” to steal and kill because they are the right ones and the ends justify the means.
  - Trasmatta 2y ago
    Yeah, he leaves the original post ambiguous, but if you dig into the comments, he clarifies that his stance is that torture is the right option. I'm going to try to find the link. EDIT: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs-dust-specks?commentId=XkDoPE3wCtwByTjLh https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs... > I'll go ahead and reveal my answer now: Robin Hanson was correct, I do think that TORTURE is the obvious option, and I think the main instinct behind SPECKS is scope insensitivity. When you find yourself writing "torture is the obvious option", you should realize that something has gone deeply wrong with the way you view the world. It's no wonder that death cults have sprung out of this philosophy.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      I feel like this is missing the point. Trolley problems are absurd hypotheticals with no direct bearing on reality. Their usefulness is as thought experiments. If you don't pull the lever the trolley kills one person. If you pull it N people lose a single limb. At what value of N does your ethical framework place the crossover point and why?
      - anigbrowl 2y ago
        I don't agree that they're absurd. They have widespread popularity because they capture the kind of cost dilemmas that crop up all the time, eg 'if we build this refinery we can predict that an additional 20 people will get cancer over the next decade, but otoh we might achieve a 2% reduction in the cost of gasoline for everyone in our state over the same period.' The main intellectual error of utilitarianism is the assumption of perfect foreknowledge, and the justification of conclusions as if those predictions were facts. But just because trolley problems are stark oversimplifications does not make them useless as ethical reasoning tools; studying them helps you recognize messy ethical dilemmas as such rather than being seduced by the alleged upsides of a policy proposal.
        atombender 2y ago
- zozbot234 2y ago
  It's way worse than that. It can be 3^^^3 people getting a dust speck in their eye that only exist in some counterfactual world that's a mere figment of your imagination. Nevertheless this can have real-world consequences because "counterfactual mugging" is a valid concern given Rationalist logic. Very confusing.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  Most utilitarian dilemmas boil down to Omelas in disguise.

hollerith 2y ago

The Zizians have only a very tangential relationship with the rationalist community. Once the leaders of the rationalist community understood what the Zizians were about, they banned them from their gatherings and published warnings about them. According to one source (which I can dig up on request) all 4 of the Zizian engaged in murder are trans. Do you also expect crimes from trans young people to get worse? The Zizians are mainly vegan, and the intellectual leader of the group (Ziz) advocated the murder of meat eaters. Do you consequently expect crimes done by vegans to get worse? The Zizians are anarchist leftists, ... In sum, you don't give much of an justification ("embrace bizarre groupthink irrationality" is not much) for pinning this on the rationalists and not on these other groups.