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professorgerm

a weird little beardo trying to understand what it's all about

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joined 2022 September 12 12:41:49 UTC 

				
User ID: 1157


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
professorgerm


								
								
									
								
								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
a weird little beardo trying to understand what it's all about

				
				
				

				

					3 followers  

					follows 1 user  

					joined 2022 September 12 12:41:49 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1157


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I remember when we expected presidents to be above acting like that.




i have hazy memories of those days gone by, decades ago. alas!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
there's a nonzero chance the next Dem candidate will be AOC, so that's already in the cards.


i have no expectations of Trump to be decent. we haven't had a properly respectable president in a long time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Trump will probably do a cute imitation of his dying gurgles, to wild cheers.




like tiktokers and charlie kirk, or so i'm told.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
abide it, fine.


let it be the machine god-enforced morality of the light cone, no thanks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Scott did, Ozy did, many others on twitter i don't feel like tracking down did.


i would assume Mottezans would be least-likely to defend Aella, but also not very likely to still identify as rationalists.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Outside of Scott’s actual fiction, I’ve never gotten the impression that he ignores this region, especially not for rhetorical effect.




where does he write about it? i haven't paid as much attention to ACX outside of the House Party posts but afaict most rat/ea-adjacent AI writers broadly ignore that region. i think it's a very important middle ground that's almost completely lost in favor of x-risk discourse.


this generates the issues about "how is the AI going to kill everyone" being responded to with "it'll be superintelligent! It Finds A Way!" and everyone going away frustrated and more resentful of each other.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Nicolae Carpathia




nice


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


That risks running into the Heckler's Veto




This is true of virtually everything, is it not? So either we run the risk of the Heckler's Veto or we say that nothing outside of their words provide additional information or context for their beliefs, and I think that is an unreasonable standard that people do not hold unless they are already sympathetic to the person/group in question.




entirely involve mutually consenting adults




Red Means No gets at the bleeding edge of the limits of consent and while it's not "eating the babies" levels of evil and/or nonsense, it's sufficient for me to say "I do not trust anyone within a few degrees of contact with having meaningful influence over anything." Not to mention the rest of the history of the community in dealing, ah, less-than-effectively with charming sociopaths until some utilitarian threshold of victims gets crossed. Consent is not magic, and apparently, it can be retroactively withdrawn anyways under current mores.


Aella has probably included "would you eat a baby for reason X" on a survey or camp application somewhere to select for sufficiently open-minded and edgy people so maybe that's not the best example. (This is a semi-joking exaggeration based on her Plzdontkillus creator camp that asked "if you had to have sex with a cow, would you rather it be alive or dead?" and her general history of asking sophomoric shock questions for... entertainment? Community filtering? etc)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"Here is this low status person who associates with this other group. This group must therefore be wrong and low status!"




Aella does not seem to be low-status within the group, since any rationalist with a recognizable name will circle the wagons to defend her and everything she does.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Unless you can show a nexus between the practices and the handling of risk




Do you think a person can perfectly separate their interest in "consensual non-consent" from their interest in not being dommed by the machine god?


This is an impossible standard that nothing could satisfy and puts meaningful information about their personalities, beliefs, etc beyond reproach because (weird) sex is the last sacred thing to seculars.




Disqualify everyone who thinks more about pussy than x-risk and you’ll be left only with the scheming eunuchs.




From what I know of the rationalists I might take my chances with the scheming eunuchs. I'll accept people that think more about pussy than x-risk so long as the pussy isn't into CNC.


Really I'd just make a geographic requirement that every AI board needs to have at least one person from Middle of Nowheresville, Flyover Country with full veto capacity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Why shouldn't society be tuned to benefit the best and brightest of us?




Well, admittedly, I'm not an elitist asshole that thinks I'm better than the rest of humanity. I lack the arrogance so inherent to think that the lowly peons have no worth.




Do you have an actual argument against his point or just playground insults?




The text speaks for itself.




And since smarter people are smarter, they tend to have better reasoning for their beliefs.




Sometimes. Alas, they are merely human, and all too often fall into the trap that they are more convinced by their own rationalizations.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


definitely not unique to rationalists, the tendency is virtually universal




I didn't say it was, either.


With the whole "we try to be more aware of our biases!" thing they should do a better job at not falling into the same traps as everyone else, and yet, they are only human, however much some of them resent that fact. If anything there are certain blind spots that they are worse at than non-Rationalists of similar socioeconomic status.




Would you not object more harshly to someone criticizing you for who you sleep with, who you feel attracted to




Ehhhh it depends on the context?


I mean yeah, I probably would react more harshly, but we're not talking just like "I don't like your partner" or "I don't like that you're [orientation]," and it's not specifically one-on-one either. "A meaningful swathe of your social group is into """consensual non-consent""" and projecting your morality onto the culture through AI; this will ultimately be bad for 99% of people" is not merely disliking their sex life; it's what their sex life says about their approach to morality/culture/socialization/etc.


I don't have links handy so take this with as much salt as you like, but during one of the poly discourse blowups back when the CW thread was still on the Slatestarcodex subreddit, there seemed to be a split between the vocally poly (possibly overrepresented in the Bay Area) and people that said they were poly but quiet about it (who I don't think were so geographically concentrated, and came across resentful of the vocal types for giving them a bad name). The rationalists live their sex lives quite publicly, with one in particular living hers professionally publicly, and that's what generates the circling of the wagons.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
huh til! i won't nitpick about biological daughter vs stepdaughter vs coparented group house project or whatever.


googling around more apparently in The AI Doc he says he doesn't have kids and wouldn't want them in this world:




ROHER: Do you have any kids?






ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY: I do not.






ROHER: Is that something you want to do - have children? Have a family?






YUDKOWSKY: In some other world than this world, sure.




but i don't know when that interview was recorded. but if the kid was losing a tooth in 2023 she would've been like 5, and surely the interview wasn't older than 2018.


strange. i'm leaning toward coparented group house project then, with the Time article being deliberately phrased to be ambiguous.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Any form of evidence is fine




I don't think the below constitutes evidence that will satisfy you, but thank you for being specific, and hopefully the below provides a jumping-off point for anyone else that wants to try to draw all the connections.


I think "sex cult" is a convenient but somewhat exaggerated shorthand for the actual situation.




sufficient conditions around people involved in x-risk to describe it as a cult




Zizians were motivated in part by x-risk (and huge amounts of mental illness). Confirmed cult, but also fringe and defunct.


One catch to providing evidence is that there isn't one cult, there's more like half a dozen with varying degrees of evidence, intensity, and overlap.




these are the majority or at least plurality of people interested in x-risk




I strongly disagree that the majority or even plurality matters, because it's hierarchical and it's the small tight-knit social sphere at or near the top, that are friends/siblings/housemates/non-monogamous partners/polite ex-partners/orgy attendees with each other and with the people they want to regulate their industry.


Probably no more than 100 people total with various overlapping relationships because it's such a small yet important field, and certain people have substantially outsized influence therein.




any of the proposals around x-risk involve giving these people specifically more power.




That is inherently to the race dynamic that Anthropic pushes, that getting to AGI first means you set the morality of the future.




For example, will it involve them achieving more sexual goals?




Aella is the keystone of the sex accusations and complicating factor here, depending how charitably (or not) one wants to take her interactions with the field, with her likely-joking-but-hmm offers to provide reverse gangbangs as a reward for any researchers leaving top AI companies, doing that infamous couch photo with Yud and other AI researchers/whatever you want to call them, etc. I think she is ultimately net-negative for the rationalists, and their interest in circling the wagons when she gets critiqued is what causes people to say EAs/rats consider the weird sex stuff more important than AI safety.


Borrowing from Ian Duncan, important links in the original not reproduced here:




One of the most well-known, wish you could scrub your brain with soap incidents was a gangbang she organized for her birthday. In a sense, it was a ritual for the rationalist community: weeks of screening, an application process, a guest list vetted for doctrinal compliance, a published post-event analysis with a flowchart that went viral, outlining statistics about who came in who, and so forth. The gangbang came with a doctrinal test: adherents of “effective accelerationism,” the faction that wants AI development to go faster, were screened out, because of her views on AI risk. Even the orgy had an AI-governance position. This further reinforces, I think, the cultlike control aspect of this social group. Believe in the right things, and maybe you get to have sex with the community porn star. Supposedly, a number of startup founders recognized each other there and commented on their surprise at seeing each other. Small world indeed.




emphasis mine because lol




And in 2026 she entered the Yudkowsky’s clergy more directly, launching Plz Don’t Kill Us, a Berkeley residency that pays creators to produce viral AI-doom content, with Grimes attached as a mentor.




Plzdontkillus is co-run with Ronnie Fernandez, who is the ex-husband of Holly Elmore, president of Pause AI US. It was the application for this camp that had the infamous Cow Question, to select for a certain kind of person willing to answer obscene and gross hypotheticals. Further complications involving Aella would mean delving into SlutCon and RedMeansNo discourse, which I don't really have the time for currently. Continuing from Ian-




The professional overlap is less funny than the guest list. The New Yorker has mapped the romantic network at the top of the field: AI-forecasting researcher Katja Grace co-founded AI Impacts with her then-boyfriend Paul Christiano, a former OpenAI alignment lead, and later dated Alexander. Christiano is connected by friendship and past romance to Holden Karnofsky, the philanthropist whose Open Philanthropy steered hundreds of millions into AI safety, and Karnofsky married Daniela Amodei, co-founder and president of Anthropic. No wrongdoing necessarily follows from any of that, but it does raise significant questions around how AI safety concerns are in fact being handled or promoted with so many industry movers and shakers are entangled to this degree.




Daniela being, of course, the more famous Dario's sister. And this is only a fraction of the interconnections!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
it was there but it didn't used to be consuming to Scott the way it was for EY.


Plus 10 years ago is just after his Golden Age where he was much more sympathetic to less-than-maximally-progressives and all of a month before You Are Still Crying Wolf, which he later edited and walked back some but was a "even this guy gets it" piece for a fair number of Motte-types, I suspect


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yudkowsky has indeed made long-term plans fairly recently, such as having kids.




not as far as gemini can find evidence for.


Scott did, Altman has a surrogate cooking, and Aella's tweeted about how many eggs she has frozen and plans to have kids 'soon.'


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


weird sexual practices aren't a defining trait of their culture




I disagree, on "see what you can't critique" grounds. Complaining about the weird sexual practices generates more outrage and more circling of the wagons than critiquing mosquito nets. Everything else is thought experiments; this is personal. Ergo, it is a defining trait.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


higher intelligence is associated with a better understanding of nuance and open mindedness




My favorite example is Kary Mullis, who invented PCR. Absolute genius. Also believe tons of completely batshit things.




The genius is also way better at self regulation and has less need for strict community based rules to apply to them, hence they can engage in stuff like polyamorism/drugs/etc other hedonistic activities with less risk




And thus they have absolutely no business trying to convince other people what they should do with their lives, or be trying to set the morality of the light cone, etc etc, because it will be a disaster.




Elite human capital is pretty much always liberal




Imagine citing Dicky Banania and thinking that's going to convince anyone.




it doesn't change that most opposition in the group is from the low IQ reason of "ew that's gross" or "my fantasy religion book said that's bad"




Funny, most of the support is equally poorly reasoned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The less charitable explanation is that the Bay Area has become an ideological echo chamber, and that this is bad




Has been for ages. Zvi and Sarah Constantin were complaining about that a decade ago, and I would imagine it's only gotten worse. Zvi even called it "unbelievably, world-doomingly bad."


I think he was wrong about the extent to which The Community would lose The Mission, but right that The Community ate The Mission, and the echo chamber would get worse. AFAIK Zvi's still in New York area though, and it's been a long time since he's written about this particular angle of issue.




surely Scott would agree that for people in this space who live in the Bay Area, there is a catechism, right?




he might have once, but would he still recognize that now? Or consider it a bad thing?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The raw silicon mining isn't.




Yeah that was the most interesting thing reported after Hurricane Helene; supposedly most ultra-high-quality quartz comes from one town.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


No, we can't just "pull the plug" if it's running our whole economy




that's why you stop now and nuke (metaphorically, probably, but i could be convinced otherwise) Silicon Valley and Seattle.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How about "X's thoughts on AI risk should be downgraded because they put [a certain set of sexual practices] above all reproach and thus [apocalyptic AI risk] rank less important to them than [continuing a certain set of sexual practices]."


Also depending on the exact nature of those sexual practices, it can be a pretty good argument for keeping them as far away from the levers of power as humanly possible. I think AI poses severe but not existential risks. Either way letting the EA/rat group set AI morality will be net-negative for the majority of humanity.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
what part are you objecting to and what evidence will you accept


would you prefer the arrangement "apocalyptic cult that happens to put an incredible emphasis on certain kinds of sex, but that is not technically the focus of the cult"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


North Carolina




That's a gimme. Pretty much no one would have a chance at beating Cooper.


I have been amused by the "Criminals for Coop" signs. Interesting that both sides have run almost entirely negative campaigns afaict.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
fascinating! til