The first comment by the first commenter is "Can we suspend Godwin's Law for a moment?" followed by an explanation of the ways in which The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an accurate description of reality.
Libertarianism is never far from Nazism. The Venn diagram is a circle. The only question is which circle contains the other.
I like the way he thinks the lack of punctuation in his "joke" is the tell that it's a joke.
He's also apparently never heard the aphorism that if you have to explain the joke, it's probably not that funny.
One of the easiest ways to get downvoted on the orange site is to say anything even mildly critical of Scott Alexander Siskind. It's really amusing how much respect there is for him there.
I see him more as a dupe than a Cassandra. I heard him on a podcast a couple months ago talking about how he's been having conversations with Bay Area AI researchers who are "really scared" about what they're creating. He also spent quite a bit of time talking up Geoffrey Hinton's AI doomer tour. So while I don't think Ezra's one of the Yuddite rationalists, he's clearly been influenced by them. Given his historical ties to effective altruism, this isn't surprising to me.
I mean, of course he loves unfettered technology and capitalism. He's a fucking billionaire. He hit the demographic lottery.
EDIT: I just noticed his list of "techno-optimist" patrons. On the list? John Galt. LMAO. The whole list is pretty much an orgy of libertarians.
Roko's authoritative-toned "aktshually..." response to Annie's claims have me fuming. I don't know why. I mean I've known for years that this guy is a total boil on the ass of humanity. And yet he still manages to shock with the worst possible take on a topic -- even when the topic is sexual abuse of a child. If, like Roko, I were to play armchair psychiatrist, I'd diagnose him as a sociopath with psychopathic tendencies. But I'm not. So I won't.
Lots of fascinating links in this article. This link in particular was fascinating:
If you're searching for Scott Siskind... I am Scott Siskind from Ann Arbor, Michigan. There used to be more things on this webpage. Right now I'm using it to spread the message that there are multiple statements being falsely attributed to me on the Internet. Somebody who doesn't like me - I am not sure who, but I work in mental health and guess this is sort of a professional hazard - has been trying to systematically discredit me by posting racist and profanity-laden things under my name. Some of the comments make some effort to convince, like linking back to my website. The end result is that if you Google me to try to find out what I am like, you will probably end up seeing angry racist profanity-laden comments made under my name. These are not mine.
Does anyone know the backstory here? This reads to me like a "hackers ate my password" story -- the kind of ass-covering someone might concoct after their racist writings accidentally leaked onto the internet.
EDIT: This seems to be related to the stuff Topher Brennan revealed? Except it was written many years before Topher's revelations. It's confusing...
Some nice sneer:
I can understand Aella wanting to fund a project so she never has to brush her teeth again
Probably also heavily interested in Never Take a Shower Again research
https://nitter.net/nunyabeeswaxfed/status/1705695595413790814
I wonder if he's ever applied this advice to himself. Because one could argue that trauma was a significant factor in his obsession with transhumanism and the singularity.
When Yud's younger brother died tragically at age 19, it clearly traumatized him. In this case, X was "the death of my little brother". From this he learned Y: to be angry and fearful of death ("You do not make peace with Death!"). His fascination with the singularity can be seen in this light as a wish to cheat death, while his more recent AI doomerism is the singularity's fatalistic counterpart: an eschatological distortion and acceleration of the reality that death comes for us all.
This part of the first comment got an audible guffaw out of me:
I think that there's been a failure to inhabit the least convenient possible world°, and the general distribution over possible outcomes, and correspondingly attempt to move to the pareto-frontier of outcomes assuming that distribution.
Unintentional self-parody of the highest order.
The first comment and Yud's response.