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Comments
What sort of new stuff does it have to offer?
I assume a synthesis of Yudkowskite and Moldbuggian thought.
Myrmidon, step away from the giant mound of bullshit. You know that you'll catch something if you play in it.
May I get an IJBMer's summary of what Moldbuggianism is? I mean, I guess I can google it, but it'd be funnier this way.
http://itjustbugsme.com/forums/discussion/11403/who-is-moldbug-and-why-do-douchebags-care-what-he-has-to-say
Thanks. I guess I should have seen it coming.
"By now, you have probably stumbled upon some meta-douchebag culture crowding around this person, who is probably some sort of underground douchebag monarch." It's funny how this turned out to be completely right.
So I clicked the link and took a look at the LessWrong comment the tweet linked to.
After only a single comment I can safely conclude that this whole thing is over my head.
After some poking around I'm not convinced there's much to get, really. Yudkowskites gonna...yudkow. Or something.
Didn't everyone like, love, Yudkowsky at one point? What happened?
Hype died. I'm inclined to say it was TVT's underage nerds finding the guy as a rallying banner, allowing them to feel better and smarter than everyone else, and things getting back to mostly normal when, like I said, the hype died. But I'm probably biased.
You're definitely biased. The vocal Yudowski fans in TVTtropes were all, as far as I remember, of age.
I mean, the most vocal, yes. I was mostly thinking of an underlying group of less vocal supporters. But, well, we already made a point I have issues. Personally, I too would like to see an objective discussion of this phenomenon.
Mostly the TVT Yudkowskites just realized it wasn't taking for anyone else and/or quietly got uncomfortable with the borderline cultish behavior on lesswrong, and the loudest neophyte got banned a couple times. You'll still see a LW link every once in a while if they feel it's especially pertinent, but for the most part the obsession has shifted to freethoughtblogs.
So basically PZ Meyers is the new Yudkowsky. Joy.
so... what the hell is "reactionary rationalist" and who the hell is "Yudkowsky"?
The second one is some sort of computer scientist known for blogging extensively. Has a quite specific personal branch of rationalist philosophy, that for some reason appealed a lot to certain kinds of TVT folks. The first one I'll leave to Myrmidon.
Yudkowsky is basically what happens when an AI scientist gets a little too close to his work. He and his blog community are devoted to a form of Vulcanesque super-rationalism that in practice often divorces itself from practicality because, among other reasons, human beings can't exactly see the entire fucking world in terms of this
in real time.
It also led to the incredibly amusing Roko's Basilisk incident, where people started getting paranoid about AI's in the future sending you to transhumanist hell for not donating everything you have right now to the research that eventually produces them. It was kinda Scientology-ish and resulted in a whole lot of frantic Orwellian editing on their forums to burn the evidence.
There was an interesting moment back at TVT when his approach was discussed by an actual academic mathematician. Apparently, Yudkowsky oversimplifies probability, because he's used to thinking of it in terms of its application in programming, as opposed to the rigours of mathematical understanding.
I remember that. Fun times.
And while abusing neural networks to run massive Bayes nets is pretty awesome, his following also runs into the problem that that's not how our own brains work at all and you're not going to get far trying to shoehorn that process into your everyday life because we're not equipped for that.
... huh.
Interesting. and actually kinda lame.
So, a number of people agreed with that first part. To be honest the dude has demonstrated he has some decent writing skills.
Now, let me repeat yet another time I'm biased. So. Personal opinion of mine, people who were into it, made an impression on me like most of them were young, nerdy folks secretly looking for meaning in their life while also subconsciously harbouring a feeling of superiority towards the general public, thus naturally gravitated to a philosophy of atheistic, hedonistic ultra-rationalism.
They're a community with some positive traits the rest of the Internet could learn from (generally being willing to change their minds when presented with evidence, for instance) offset by what tends to be an extremely strict literalist and utilitarian philosophy that results in some bizarre wonks, very silly conclusions, and occasional oblivious disregard for social protocol (discussing the utilitarian benefits of racism comes to mind).
So...much like the rest of the Internet, basically.
I thought the reason why Yudkowsky was popular among the TVT crowd was because he wrote a Harry Potter fanfic about his philosophy?
I am not sure, but I think his popularity started shortly before he took to writing it. Plus, I'd wager plenty of people just enjoyed the fic, as it was quite decently written. The disciples were at the forefront of shilling, but I wouldn't say that it was the fic that opened them to the philosophy, rather they saw it as the perfect mix of it and entertainment. Or sort of. I know what I want to say, but I don't know if these are best words for it.
You know what BTW? It's kinda telling about the modern times, sort of. A hyperrationalist back in the day - Ayn Rand, who Yudkowsky was compared to - wrote bookstoppers of original fiction. Nowadays, it's a Harry Potter fanfic.
My stepdad actually recently got into Yudkowsky. This isn't terribly surprising.
I'll refrain from making any real judgments on transhumanism. I really only know it from Dresden Codak.
^^ There's also the rather big difference that unlike Ayn "FUCK ALL Y'ALL" Rand, Yudkowsky's ilk tend to be refreshingly involved in charity and such. Or at least they were when I was still paying attention. Like I said, very mixed bag.
Don't worry, I'm not saying they're the same thing. It's that both behave like any philosophy but their own is illogical and anyone who can think rationally should come to the same conclusions as them. AFAIK Rand believed it literally, of Yudkowsky I don't know enough but he makes that sort of impression.
Yudkowsky has a lot of shades of condescension, and his fans are generally worse.
Eh. Most of us of any philosophy do that to a degree (Exhibit A).
Huh. I expected to find one of my posts under that link.
A reactionary rationalist is one who believes that the Victorians were right about everything, culturally and socially while believing the cyber-rapture will save them from their mundane lives of quiet desperation one day.