4 ms·

My favorite event in their utterly credulous certainty in the inevitability of a friendly AI was the response to 'Roko's Basilisk.' http://rationalwiki.org/wik

by nemo 12y ago

My favorite event in their utterly credulous certainty in the inevitability of a friendly AI was the response to 'Roko's Basilisk.' http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk No rational person could describe that groupthink madness as a cult. :)

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Funny there's always this one little thing one can bring up to point that a non-mainstream group is definitely a cult and thus are a bunch of loons :). I used to be involved with a religious group many outsiders consider to be a cult. There was always this event that everyone outside kept bringing up - that one little prediction 40 years ago that some people took too seriously and ended up making stupid life decisions. (I'm not close to that group anymore, but I still value those people as the most honest and consistent in their thinking folks I ever met) Yes, people who extrapolate things from their beliefs to guide their life decisions can and do make mistakes. They will reach stupid conclusions and believe them until they figure out that those conclusions are stupid and rethink things again. I still respect them more than the usual crowd (both in religious and non-religious groups) who claim to believe (or believe that they believe) one thing and actually believe something else. I value consistency in thinking. EDIT: Disclaimer, before I get labelled as a cult priest for replying in the cult thread for the fourth time: I have my pet peeve with cult accusations, because I've been close with many groups accused of cultishness - both religious and secular, and I know how this is an impossible accusation to defend from. If you try to tell "hey, it's not a cult, because X" then it's definitely a cult, because that's obviously what a cult member would say. Also, you want to see real cults? Try political parties ;).
- swombat 12y ago
  There's some pretty salient characteristics of an actual cult that make it different from just a group of very devoted followers. Namely: - Cults usually employ a number of heavy-handed psychological manipulation techniques, often together (e.g. 12-hour conference sessions; speakers that drone on at at about 50 beats per minute; loud, lengthy chanting that exhausts your brain's oxygen and makes you less critical; preying on people who are desperate for some reason) - It's not enough for a cult to have you as a member - they also have to remove the influence of other movements from your life, lest you might realise who stupid it all is and break off. So part of a cult's mode of control will involve breaking off your relationships with other groups important in your life: family, religion, work... and replacing them with social ties within the cult. - Cults generally require escalating levels of contribution. At first maybe you just need to donate a bit of money, but by the end your entire life is at the service of the cult. If the accused cult doesn't fit any of these criteria, it's probably not a cult, just a bunch of very devoted zealots. If it fits even one of these criteria, start to worry. If it fits more than one, it's almost certainly a "bad" cult. Source: my dad's a psychologist and studied cults, but this is just from memory.
- nemo 12y ago
  I don't think they are a cult in the strict sense. They are a lot like Objectivists, a group who got into an autodidact offering grand claims based on a lot of jargon and handwaving, throwing out invented jargon and redefining terms creatively, and with a bad habit of narcissistically dismissing anything that doesn't fit the model. Since their intellectual, EY, is an autodidact who isn't trained/involved in the fields he claims to have expertise in, there's no body of peers there who will put him in line as he wanders in error, and naturally he's naively dismissive of the academics/experts who bother to offer critiques, or hand-waves away critiques with impenetrable jargon. They are more frustratingly ignorant, over-certain of thing that are far from knowable, than a cult. People really want to be certain, they want answers, and they will latch onto all kinds of things to get it, even believing in an 'friendly AI' as an ersatz God, with an inevitable singularity as an ersatz rapture, and quantum mechanics substituting for metaphysics.
snowwrestler 12y ago
Which was recently discussed in a HN thread, which is why HPMOR is on the HN homepage again. The circle of life!
swombat 12y ago
Worth mentioning: "Silly over-extrapolations of local memes, jargon and concepts are posted to LessWrong quite a lot; almost all are just downvoted and ignored. But for this one, Eliezer Yudkowsky, the site's founder and patriarch, reacted to it hugely. The basilisk is completely banned from discussion on LessWrong, where almost any mention of it is deleted.[4]"
- kbenson 12y ago
  Looking into this, the supposed reasoning[1] is interesting. [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20140618083128/http://www.reddit.com/r/LessWrong/comments/17y819/lw_uncensored_thread/c8blnyz?context=1 http://web.archive.org/web/20140618083128/http://www.reddit....

by nemo 12y ago

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Funny there's always this one little thing one can bring up to point that a non-mainstream group is definitely a cult and thus are a bunch of loons :). I used to be involved with a religious group many outsiders consider to be a cult. There was always this event that everyone outside kept bringing up - that one little prediction 40 years ago that some people took too seriously and ended up making stupid life decisions. (I'm not close to that group anymore, but I still value those people as the most honest and consistent in their thinking folks I ever met) Yes, people who extrapolate things from their beliefs to guide their life decisions can and do make mistakes. They will reach stupid conclusions and believe them until they figure out that those conclusions are stupid and rethink things again. I still respect them more than the usual crowd (both in religious and non-religious groups) who claim to believe (or believe that they believe) one thing and actually believe something else. I value consistency in thinking. EDIT: Disclaimer, before I get labelled as a cult priest for replying in the cult thread for the fourth time: I have my pet peeve with cult accusations, because I've been close with many groups accused of cultishness - both religious and secular, and I know how this is an impossible accusation to defend from. If you try to tell "hey, it's not a cult, because X" then it's definitely a cult, because that's obviously what a cult member would say. Also, you want to see real cults? Try political parties ;).

swombat 12y ago
There's some pretty salient characteristics of an actual cult that make it different from just a group of very devoted followers. Namely: - Cults usually employ a number of heavy-handed psychological manipulation techniques, often together (e.g. 12-hour conference sessions; speakers that drone on at at about 50 beats per minute; loud, lengthy chanting that exhausts your brain's oxygen and makes you less critical; preying on people who are desperate for some reason) - It's not enough for a cult to have you as a member - they also have to remove the influence of other movements from your life, lest you might realise who stupid it all is and break off. So part of a cult's mode of control will involve breaking off your relationships with other groups important in your life: family, religion, work... and replacing them with social ties within the cult. - Cults generally require escalating levels of contribution. At first maybe you just need to donate a bit of money, but by the end your entire life is at the service of the cult. If the accused cult doesn't fit any of these criteria, it's probably not a cult, just a bunch of very devoted zealots. If it fits even one of these criteria, start to worry. If it fits more than one, it's almost certainly a "bad" cult. Source: my dad's a psychologist and studied cults, but this is just from memory.
nemo 12y ago
I don't think they are a cult in the strict sense. They are a lot like Objectivists, a group who got into an autodidact offering grand claims based on a lot of jargon and handwaving, throwing out invented jargon and redefining terms creatively, and with a bad habit of narcissistically dismissing anything that doesn't fit the model. Since their intellectual, EY, is an autodidact who isn't trained/involved in the fields he claims to have expertise in, there's no body of peers there who will put him in line as he wanders in error, and naturally he's naively dismissive of the academics/experts who bother to offer critiques, or hand-waves away critiques with impenetrable jargon. They are more frustratingly ignorant, over-certain of thing that are far from knowable, than a cult. People really want to be certain, they want answers, and they will latch onto all kinds of things to get it, even believing in an 'friendly AI' as an ersatz God, with an inevitable singularity as an ersatz rapture, and quantum mechanics substituting for metaphysics.

snowwrestler 12y ago

Which was recently discussed in a HN thread, which is why HPMOR is on the HN homepage again. The circle of life!

swombat 12y ago

Worth mentioning: "Silly over-extrapolations of local memes, jargon and concepts are posted to LessWrong quite a lot; almost all are just downvoted and ignored. But for this one, Eliezer Yudkowsky, the site's founder and patriarch, reacted to it hugely. The basilisk is completely banned from discussion on LessWrong, where almost any mention of it is deleted.[4]"

kbenson 12y ago
Looking into this, the supposed reasoning[1] is interesting. [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20140618083128/http://www.reddit.com/r/LessWrong/comments/17y819/lw_uncensored_thread/c8blnyz?context=1 http://web.archive.org/web/20140618083128/http://www.reddit....