CinnasVerses @ CinnasVerses @awful.systems

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2 mo. ago

When it started in ’06, this blog was near the center of the origin of a “rationalist” movement, wherein idealistic youths tried to adapt rational styles and methods. While these habits did often impress, and bond this community together, they alas came to trust that their leaders had in fact achieved unusual rationality, and on that basis embraced many contrarian but not especially rational conclusions of those leaders. - Robin Hanson, 2025

I hear that even though Yud started blogging on his site, and even though George Mason University type economics is trendy with EA and LessWrong, Hanson never identified himself with EA or LessWrong as movements. So this is like Gabriele D'Annunzio insisting he is a nationalist not a fascist, not Nicholas Taleb denouncing phrenology.

Seems like it only makes sense if you played CRPGS but not TTRPGS, LARP, or participatory fiction online? Yud is in to sex games but maybe he does not see it as playing a role?

HPMOR chapter 88 from 2010 has the line

Harry’s brain flagged this as I’m talking to NPCs again and he spun on his heel and dashed back for the broomstick.

Someone who thinks like that will lose in the long run, but they can do a hell of a lot of damage in the short run.

On the enshittified site someone posted this take on Alexander's take on the kabbalah and Jewish thought https://ishayirashashem.substack.com/p/unsong-a-study-in-misrepresentation

I think Hallquist had a short-lived blog with criticisms of LessWrong and EA between his time on FreethoughtBlogs/Pantheos and his run for office and Medium blog. Possibly https://topherhallquist.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/reply-to-scott-alexander/ In the original Twitter post, Hallquist described Alexander as "a vague internet acquaintance at the time (when he sent the emails)" and it sounds like after 2014 Hallquist explored LW and EA and decided they were messed up. (Hallquist's post also suggests that if you want to sound like a bold contrarian, see what a median expert at a university think about a topic rather than reading blogs).

I like to remind myself that I see what happens online, but the offers of money and the sexual propositions probably mostly happen in person or between people who have met in person. So I don't know as much about the LessWrong or EA communities as I think.

Making general statements about the risks and benefits of medication is different from proscribing them. The George K. Lerner, MD who was FTX's resident pill-pusher seems to be based in San Francisco and wants potential patients to know that inter alia "Dr. Lerner specializes in the treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD) in adults. He has extensive experience in treating adults who have been successful in their professional endeavors but have found attention deficit symptoms to be an impediment to achieving their full potential." (nudge nudge)

His website does not mention a connection with the hospital in Michigan which is the only one where I know Alexander worked. I would like to know more about possible connections other than their mutual connections to the FTX gang. I have not done shoe-leather reporting in SoCal and almost all of the things we know about Alexander are things he posted voluntarily under his main handle.

Lerner's site shows what Alexander's site might look like if he were focused on psychiatry rather than writing and peddling racist lies.

That is very possible although I would guess that was earlier in his career given that he does not advertise as treating ADHD or similar. He has two small children, a writing job, and side projects like writing end-of-the-world stories for AI 2027. His practice has a name drawn from Lord of the Rings like other things in the Thielsphere.

Yes, Scott Alexander is an unusual rationalist blogger who had a credentialed professional career as a psychiatrist. After Substack became his patron, he opened his own medical practice, but the website has said "not accepting new patients at this time" since 2022. So he seems to live off gifts from fellow travelers with a side hustle in psychiatry.

In his early blog posts, Scott Alexander talked about how he was not leaping through higher education in a single bound (he went overseas for medical school, and failed to get medical residency on his first try, ending up in a small Midwestern city). So I wonder why he is sure that in a world with fewer university degrees, he would have gotten as far as he did (medical schools in the USA used to limit admissions from people of his ethnicity).

Likewise with immigration restrictions: he knows that they often blocked Jews, many Europeans. and East Asians not just brown people right?

I know that on the American right, every accusation is a confession, but I never thought I would read a scheming cartoon villain accusing his enemies of being the Antichrist! He is even queer-coded, would do great on TV in the 1990s.

Hossenfelder seemed like a normal science blogger and critic of string theory until some recent videos, and most people don't update their blogroll every year. And Woit links her sensible (but defunct) blog, not her out-there videos.

A lot of people in this world have connections going back 15 or 30 years but ended up on opposite sides (eg. Charlie Stross and Curtis Yarvin, or Laurie Penny and Scott Aaronson)

The owner of Birdsite tweeted the same idea "make chatbots write a universal encyclopedia to free us from human experts" a year or so ago.

incel

Some guys had to learn that most sex and dating advice on the Internet should be ignored, but many women have to learn that magazines like Cosmo are not written to help them. I wish we did not live in a world where so much culture tries to hurt so many people in an important area of life, but introverted men are not the only victims.

Bringing up his individual struggles when two million people are being starved to death, shot, and forced into the desert is gross.

The Independent has yet another profile of the Collinses which finally starts to map their network (a brother is in DOGE). Just who is their PR person would be good to know. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-musk-ai-pronatalists-collins-b2777577.html

There’s a Collins Rotunda at Harvard, a physical testament to the amount of money Malcolm’s family has donated over the years. His uncle was the former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas. In fact, pretty much every relative has been to an elite Ivy League institution and runs a successful startup or works in government.

Larry Niven had a fixed idea about cetacean intelligence, and it showed up in mass-audience SF like Star Trek IV.

The story below is another example of really creepy things being done in the name of science in the postwar era.

I wonder if Matthew Yglesias, author of One Billion Americans, has figured out that some of his co-authors think the USA has too many useless eaters already? I can't tell you which they are, but when an organization has Effective Altruism money and a lead author who is close friends with Scott Alexander and Yud, it will have people ready to sterilize and deport poor brown people.

Brunig's argument that Piper is ignorant of the founding arguments for the welfare state and just knows a neoliberal argument for something kind of like a welfare state reminds me of an exchange with someone of her class where I tried a basic Green argument and they fell into it like I was the first guy trying a Judo throw on an American in 1940something. They flailed wildly as if they had never encountered that move and did not have a response ready.

Yud once debated Massimo Pigliucci and did poorly. He tried and failed to publish academic research in a journal not controlled by his groupies (desk reject? failed to pass peer review?).

Have there been any other times when he engaged with someone with actual education and experience who was not his fan? It sounds like he was on twitter.

Wish the microblogger had archived the old text for verification but I can believe that Piper believes that marrying a femme and having many children while working a full-time, high-prestige job counts as a traditional gender role.

It shows great confidence in their ability to find paying readers that aside from Substack's VC money they also borrowed $4 million to pay themselves. They don't need an office, printing and distribution, or a sales team and Substack provides and maintains all the IT infrastructure (maybe one admin assistant / bookkeeper).