4 ms·

EY is still just as involved as he was before, no? Vassar having left probably helps with the crackpot perception (I do not personally have an opinion on the m

by endtime 13y ago

EY is still just as involved as he was before, no? Vassar having left probably helps with the crackpot perception (I do not personally have an opinion on the matter, I just know that that's the impression he gives many folks). But given that you used the plural "crackpots", I'm wondering if perhaps there were other folks you think MIRI is better off without? No need to name names, just curious. (I agree about Luke, he's a great public face.)

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Generally, I would say they crossed the line from Crackpot to Legitimate when they switched from: "We are the only people on this planet who have ANY understanding of THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM EVER and the only way you puny humans can catch up is to indoctrinate yourselves by archive-diving our blog, and the only way to SAVE THE WORLD is to send us all your money before the monster can eat you." to the new message, which is: "This is a serious problem which could have dire consequences. We believe we have a plan for dealing with it, but have stopped claiming to be the only people on the planet who can deal with it. We are going to be publishing various portions of our plan as peer-reviewed papers and broad discussions with the informed public of mathematicians, which means we are admitting to being mere mortals who in fact have peers. We are also collaborating with this other organization, who are part of one of the world's premier universities. While we still take donations, we're going to stop demanding you send us all your money." Overall, I am still waiting for them to get even less cultish before I'm willing to donate any more than the price of a Harry Potter novel, but I still find LessWrongians to be one of the most downright fun bunches of nerds to hang with on the entire internet.
- endtime 13y ago
  Yeah, I used to hang out at the NYC LW meetup a lot, it was a lot of fun. I agree that the second message is better in pretty much every way, but I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive in that I think they fall on different parts of the "what we say publicly <--> what we believe" spectrum. Though I'd agree that they seem to have moderated a bit.

by endtime 13y ago

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

Generally, I would say they crossed the line from Crackpot to Legitimate when they switched from: "We are the only people on this planet who have ANY understanding of THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM EVER and the only way you puny humans can catch up is to indoctrinate yourselves by archive-diving our blog, and the only way to SAVE THE WORLD is to send us all your money before the monster can eat you." to the new message, which is: "This is a serious problem which could have dire consequences. We believe we have a plan for dealing with it, but have stopped claiming to be the only people on the planet who can deal with it. We are going to be publishing various portions of our plan as peer-reviewed papers and broad discussions with the informed public of mathematicians, which means we are admitting to being mere mortals who in fact have peers. We are also collaborating with this other organization, who are part of one of the world's premier universities. While we still take donations, we're going to stop demanding you send us all your money." Overall, I am still waiting for them to get even less cultish before I'm willing to donate any more than the price of a Harry Potter novel, but I still find LessWrongians to be one of the most downright fun bunches of nerds to hang with on the entire internet.

endtime 13y ago
Yeah, I used to hang out at the NYC LW meetup a lot, it was a lot of fun. I agree that the second message is better in pretty much every way, but I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive in that I think they fall on different parts of the "what we say publicly <--> what we believe" spectrum. Though I'd agree that they seem to have moderated a bit.