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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30433 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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Can you clarify what you mean here? I thought MIRI just wrote not very exciting math papers and CFAR is just another self help seminars for $5000 program.

Check this shit out (hat tip @DaseindustriesLtd). I don't know the objective truth behind the accusations, but there's more than enough grist for CFAR/MIRI to get absolutely dragged by the mainstream press if they had anywhere near the public prominence or power that FTX had.

Good god, this and the Leverage scandals have made me want to basically entirely disavow rationality as a movement. I knew they were into some weird stuff but the links I found after going down that rabbit hole, especially this blog by Ziz(?) is just beyond the pale.

Actual specifics I've identified in this story:

  1. A mentally ill person who did psychadelics thinks MIRI is like Leverage and currently has assorted vague mental illness symptoms similar to the typical tiktok "I'm mentally ill" influencer.

  2. Said mentally ill person attributes their mental problems to MIRI. "I had paranoid fantasies about a MIRI executive assassinating me...."

  3. Multiple people at CFAR had mental health issues. One person took a seminar then did some crimes.

  4. The word "corruption" is used with no specifics.

  5. "I had disagreements...and there was quite a lot of effort to convince me of their position..." :O

  6. Some anti-CFAR protesters were unruly and local cops in a rural area got really excited about trying out their SWAT gear: https://sfist.com/2019/11/19/four-people-in-guy-fawkes-masks-scare-sonoma-retreat/

  7. "I was certainly socially discouraged from revealing things that would harm the “brand” of MIRI and CFAR, by executive people." :O

  8. Leverage leverage leverage, it was like leverage. Did you hear leverage was bad? I want some of the attention that leverage girl got.

The allegations against Leverage are equally non-specific and mostly come down to "I didn't get the social status I was seeking."

https://medium.com/@zoecurzi/my-experience-with-leverage-research-17e96a8e540b

I do agree that some of these folks would be better off attending church than CFAR.

I've got to agree with @VelveteenAmbush.

Not sure how you are reading this stuff. All the discussion about social/mental engineering, and especially the Roko's basilisk 'we might destroy the world by talking about AI or writing a blog-post' stuff is just insane. Really blows me away how awful and evil these people seem.

I agree that CFAR/MIRI are weird and perhaps hold beliefs that differ from yours. But that's true of many folks. Did you know Muslims believe a powerful being is going to torture me (or perhaps a simulated me?) forever after I die because I do gay sex and didn't visit Mecca?

Yes I know Muslims believe weird and irrational things, so I don’t put much if any weight behind their thoughts and generally don’t care for their beliefs.

I used to think MIRI/CFAR and other associated groups had decent ideas - now I’m updating to put them in line with groups like Muslims. I don’t understand your point?

What I was originally responding to:

My sense is that EA does not lack for scandals

I do not generally characterize "believes things different from me" as a scandal. I guess you disagree?

The object level really doesn't matter at all here. As I said, there's plenty of fodder for the mainstream press to write one scandalous story after another, leaving CFAR/MIRI completely radioactive. The reason they haven't -- truly the only reason -- is that CFAR/MIRI doesn't matter enough to be worth their while to do it. But they would, the instant it achieved apparent success anything like FTX did.

Sorry you're right, I misinterpreted your claim as actually asserting that CFAR/MIRI were doing something scandalous as opposed to merely claiming the media might invent something.

As a claim about the media, I agree. But if the media wants to hit someone, they don't need actual material - they already did that to polite white boys who defend themselves against violent criminals or who stand around doing nothing at all (all captured on video from multiple angles).

I still haven’t seen or heard anything that can’t be explained by the fact that MIRI is a less-than 110% woke organization in Berkeley California. These are exactly the kind of fake “scandals” that I would have expected given such an arrangement.

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