Rationalists are much crazier than you might guess. I would describe Michael Vasser as a cult leader. My impression is his followers believe in all sorts of total insanity. I have recently observed Vasserite insanity going real bad.
Mike Vasser followers practice intentionally inducing psychosis via psychedelic drugs. Inducing psychosis is a verbatim self report of what they are doing. I would say they practice drug induced brain washing. TBC they would dispute the term brain washing and probably would not like the term 'followers' but I think the terms are accurate and they are certainly his intellectual descendants.
Several people have had quite severe adverse reactions (as observed by me). For example rapidly developing serious literal schizophrenia. Schizophrenia in the very literal sense of paranoid delusions and conspiratorial interpretations of other people's behavior. The local Vasserite who did the 'therapy'/'brainwashing' seems completely unbothered by this literal schizophrenia. You can imagine I am being unfair but if someone develops schizophrenia because of your methods, and you consider this a positive development, then you deserve negative language.
As you can imagine this behavior can cause substantial social disruption. Especially since the Vasserite's don't exactly believe in social harmony. Local Vasserite did a lot of yelling at people and what point described the social situation as a chess game with herself as Queen. This is not subtle brilliance at work. This has all precipitated serious mental health events in many other parties. Though they are less obviously serious than "they are clinically schizophrenic now". But that is a high bar.
I should note I am by no means a normie. I in fact think many illegal chemicals are probably underused, though far from all of them. I am most confident in Testosterone and Ketamine. I am a heavy psychedellics user though I do not know how people can benefit from them. But rationalists take these guys and go full on 'cult brainwashing is great'. At some point you aren't open minded you are suicidal.
I am not going to leak personal info. But I have observed this insanity fairly directly. Any remotely functional group would have kicked out this insane cult long ago. But maybe I give people too much credit. A different insane cult apparently was in some level of control of Japanese politics for a long time.
Does anyone have a theory on how these completely obviously terrible ideas get people to do them. Perhaps I am just as bad. But I simply do not think using testosterone or psychedelics in a relatively safe way is the same as submitting to cult brainwashing while high.
sapph
19d ago
I don't understand the people criticizing Biden for pardoning Hunter. Who would let their son go to jail? Is not a parent's truest role to protect their children?
Maybe you have to let him rot if he had committed murder or another horrible crime. But Hunter was convicted on tax crimes and lying on gun forms. Nothing mortal.
Would anyone here actually let their son go to jail for this stuff. I feel like you would have to be a sociopath to do that to your own kid.
sapph
1mo ago
You need correct insight not special insight. Many rationalists made a lot more money than I did with the simple insight of 'AI progress will be rapid, buy nvidia'. I made a little off that insight but got into the game too late and was too diversified into shitty AI companies.
sapph
1mo ago
Mostly technical details. Things like firedancer, the new solana validator client.
sapph
1mo ago
Don't use leverage. Don't make a trade unless you think you have a huge edge.
sapph
1mo ago
The crypto election markets (ie polymarket) dont have those problems. You can bet millions without changing the odds too much (assuming you spread your bets out a little). Spread and withdrawal fees are very small. You are probably thinking of the situation with predictit which did have all those issues.
Note: I specifically do mean election markets. Elections, especially presidential elections, have by far the most liquidity. But you can bet tens or low hundreds of thousands of dollars on all sorts of markets. Liquidity varies but many markets have decent liquidity.
sapph
1mo ago
I have a very good record of betting on prediciton markets and crypto. Turned an ~70K bankroll into a few million. That is not some Lebron level performance but its very good in my opinion. The motte isn't going to want to hear this but...
'Things the right wants to be true' are systematically overpriced. This has been true for years and it is probably still true this cycle. That doesn't mean Trump wont win or wont win in a landslide. But systematically the 'pro-rightwing' outcomes tend to be overpriced. I would not place a bet on any outcome where Trump wins unless you have a very good reason. I think trump is favored but the bets tend to be overpriced.
I will say there is one piece of counterevidence recently that seems important to my personal estimation. Prediction markets were way ahead of other sources in predicting that Joe Biden would step down. Places like Metaculus which are usually reasonably trustworthy (despite minimal monetary incentives) were hilariously overconfident. But I am skeptical of most 'trump wins X' bets from a financial point of view.
sapph
1mo ago
60/40 would also easily justify a big bet at 33.3%. I have a long history of uhhhh gambling/speculative investment. I try to only place bets if there is a lot of extra room for me to be wrong and still have positive EV. Harris at 33.3% just seemed like a great buy.
sapph
1mo ago
I placed a fairly large bet on Kamala Harris to win at 33.3%. Trump is maybe slightly favored but seems close to a tossup to me.
sapph
6mo ago
The uhhh 'old internet' didn't have up/down votes on forums. This kept things illegible. Once you have voting the trend toward monoculture is usually unstoppable.
A sufficiently dope person doesn't need an even playing field to be successful. They certainly don't need the deck stacked in their favor. They just need a fighting chance. There is always luck involved but you can usually get back up again.
'People like me' are already winners. At most we need help from friends should we get a bad run of variance. And of course we need to not get outcompeted by AI-enhanced God Emperor caste. But in any society similar to this one we will always be stars and have dope lives.
"Im a star, how could I not shine" was my status on a bunch of forums 10+ years ago when we had forums with statuses. And in fact despite a pretty bad starting conditions I ended up quite successful. And I did it mostly by being smarter than anyone else. I didn't simp, didn't get a normal job, didn't work hard. If you give a star a fighting chance they will shine. I don't identify with the losers who need a fair game to win.
sapph
7mo ago
I have BPD. It is definitely not easy to handle. Wish other BPD people luck. Though I dont consider it all downside. BPD is basically the condition of having 'emotions that are way too extreme in valence. And the multiplication factor randomly changes all the time'. That is obviously dangerous and hard to handle. But one does get the beautiful upside of huge positive emotions. But one definitely has to take the condition seriously and take precautions.
Im with you on the fashion and car examples. But a big house really is better in several objective ways. If I had a half acre plot I would strongly prefer a 4500 sqft house even if it didn't comfortably fit the plot. Ideally I would have a multi-story box that was 20K sqft.
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