Saving that link if I come across someone who has bought the “it may be a small risk, but what if?”

What if the moon got mad at us?

And steer their careers into positions of influence.

Among the comments is an obvious rationaliser who claims that because [list of people in positions of influence] thinks AI Doom is real, this can’t be a cult. Guess one has to be a rationaliser not to figure out how a cult that tries to place its followers into positions of influence can have many people in positions of influence.

Penis enlargement and breast implants can be understood as gender affirming surgery for cis people, it is just an affirmation of the gender assigned at birth. Rather than go to primates I would point to ancient Greece and it’s statues to make the point that ideals of gender and bodies shift over time. Greek statues shows as I understand it often an ideal body, which by the norms of its time included a rather small penis. So maybe some male ancient Greeks wished there were treatments to shrink their package?

With gorillas, my understanding is that primates that have very unequal sizes between the sexes has small penises, while its among the primates with roughly equal body size you find larger penises. So akin to plummage, the males showing off of that their bodies can afford to waste resources, and thus presumably is very fit. I am no biologist, but I think this means that if you try to win a domination fight with a gorilla, it may show who is the boss by showing off its physical strength. So not recommended.

Reading this extract I was surprised, figuring the desperate search for investment money must mean that Kickstarter wasn’t turning a profit despite a seemingly sound business model.

Reading the article I found out it was even stupider. Kickstarter wasn’t lacking a path to profit, it was lacking a path to growth. And being a profitable company with a clear market nisch isn’t cool enough. Everything has to grow, grow, grow. So Kickstarter created a bunch of problems for itself, destroying much of its brand. It’s that stupid.

We can not allow a spam bot gap to develop!

700 million Effective Altruists? That’s one big cult!

Oh it’s the other EA! You had me there for a minute.

And to add, admitting that Tumblr had an admin who charged for banning trans women: Important.

Explaining wtf that was all about: Not important.

He probably should be in rehab.

Banning trans women on Tumblr who are mad at him for them being harassed through the platform: Important.

Feuding with said trans women on Twitter: Important.

Explaining their decision to sell the users data: Not important.

You don’t even need to be a utility monster.

Applying standard EA logic with utilions (approximately 1 utilion = 1 dollar) shows that when SBF was free he caused billions negative utilions. He says he did nothing wrong, and presumably he would continue to do nothing wrong. After updating our priors on the consequences of SBF doing nothing wrong, we can conclude that the risk is above 99% that SBF doing nothing wrong will cause billions in negative utilions. So the only utilitarian thing to do is hand out a life sentence.

Fortunately for SBF the judge is probably not in the business of creating philosophical justice.

What benefits did the Longtermist stuff on pandemics do in the actual pandemic?

If, as I suspect, it was of no benefit, it belongs in the same pile as hindering the acasualrobotgod.

I did jiu-jitsu In middle school. We had two guys who were perhaps about 20 years old as assistant coaches. Pretty impressive belt colours and to us kids really cool and good at jiu-jitsu. I don’t remember their names, lets call them Jim and Peter.

So nearing the end of a class Jim and Peter gathers us for a bit of pep talk. Jim: Good work everybody! Peter: We will soon end class, but first one thing… Jim: No? No, that was the last thing? Peter: Everyone, get Jim! Jim: What? No!

And I can tell you Jim was no match for two dozen ten year olds with white belts.

Also, if you think either of these are true:

Lab Leaks Common: There is a 33% chance of a lab-leak-caused pandemic per decade. Lab Leaks Rare: There is a 10% chance of a lab-leak-caused pandemic per decade.

You should probably be campaigning to increase safety or shut down the labs you think would be responsible. 10% risk of pandemic per decade due to lab leaks (so in addition to viruses mutating on their own) isn’t rare or an acceptable risk.

I have next to no idea how ETFs work. I just assumed it wouldn’t send people into a deflating bubble.

Care to share how it’s actually deflating the bubble faster?

It looks like they combine the hubris of an anarchist or a communist group that talks about being the vanguard of the proletariat while being like five people (and Steve only comes for the snacks, and Mike is probably a fed) with the methods of an upper class philanthropy association that has gala dinners and discuss the problems of poverty (Upper class twit voice: is it that the poor are stupid, of bad stock or just lazy? Maybe all three!)

Somehow it’s not beneficial to their mental health, or anything else really.

I hesitate to ask, but information hazards be damned.

In that worldview, what are cis gay persons? Also intersex or something else?

I am late to sneer culture. I read HPMOR back in the day and even visited LW and then forgot about it. EA (mosquito) was on my radar but since philanthropy is anyway a bandaid on societal problems I hadn’t bothered. Until FTX crashed. I already knew crypto was a scam, but a scam that wraps itself in bad philosophy is more interesting.

After a lot of old Twitter threads and Tumblr posts it finally clicked: They made the Harry Potter fanfic guy their prophet!

Which is so stupid that it fits perfectly into our timeline.

Stop jaywalking!

You have 15 seconds to comply!

10 seconds!

5 seconds!

Sidewalk turned into a smoking crater

And poorly at that. Intelligence is a mugs game, if you put your genetic points towards longevity you can keep your initial crowd of scientist/explorers as research leaders longer, which gives a bigger boost to research and more advantages.

At least until the robot god restarts the simulation and/or Paradox releases a new patch.

Intended as abbreviation, but fair point. And no slight to any actual rattus rattus, if any are acasually lurking from the civilization they will build long after humans wipe themselves out. Impressive animals.

Reasonable explanation of why they write this kind of stuff, thanks. And of course such a culture attracts those who like to write such.

How bad can it be?

Search. Read a few paragraphs. Close tab in disgust.

Yikes. These people. Did they become rats because they couldn’t understand other people existing and valuing their bodily autonomy or did becoming rats do this to them?