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well, perhaps OP can't, but "the rightful calif" can
Was that tweet in response to something specific?
I think probably the discussion surrounding this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-morals-ai.html
Whoa, how did I miss this story? (Probably because I am not subscribed to the NYT). Thank you for the link, this is indeed relevant to my interests, especially after the pope's encyclical.
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https://archive.ph/LrX1z
Although they mention “ religious and philosophical thinkers — Catholic, Jewish, Sikh, evangelical, Ubuntu and others”.
I think here, Scott is referring to the rationalist movement and comparing it to Christianity. Eliezer is the Jewish founder and AI apocalypse doomsayer, Aella is a notable member who’s done sex work (I’m not aware of others), and “compassion for everyone” is one of their (especially Scott’s) opinions. But also, Jesus is Christianity’s Jewish founder who forewarned apocalypse, apparently some part of Christianity involves working with prostitutes, and Christianity preaches compassion for all. Pontius Pilate is the judge who ordered Jesus’ crucification.
Also Anthropic and EA more broadly which has gotten a lot of mainstream attention recently with their proximity to all of the AI stuff, including from government tweets such as this one: https://x.com/DoWCTO/status/2099536442594582922
Probably culture war subthread worthy of its own.
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What's going on with the hostile response to Scott's tweet? I thought it was a pretty anodyne joke (although well below Scott's usual quality standards). Believing Christians, is this unusually offensive?
For one, he is insisting on a non-central and offensive characterization of the religion. Christianity is to “Jewish guy’s apocalyptic cult” as “Bay Area EA” is to “Atheistic Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy”; I think Scott would realize why the latter might offend. It betrays a poor theory of mind to think a Christian would actually believe that this characterizes his religion. Labeling Jesus’ evangelism to prostitutes “consorting with prostitutes” is like calling Aella an international human trafficker of vulnerable women. Calling his critics Pontius Pilate is like a Christian calling EA a Sanhedrin of Christ-Killers.
It’s hard to see a charitable way to extract rhetorical force from his post. If the post instead said like, “ Oh, you're worried about a group of people who want to distribute money to those who need it […] you’re scandalized by a fellowship of individuals who want to help the poor […] you are offended by an absolute moral obligation to neighbor”, or something, then this would have some rhetorical force, as this similar to a central-ish characterization of Christ’s message. It would still be a little weird though, because not even saints liken themselves in importance to Christ with such chutzpah, so the Pilate part is best left out no matter what
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Comparing yourself to Jesus is generally not done.
A rat blogger making an awkward comparison of his weirdo buddies to the Jesus movement is more offensive than the President posting AI slop of himself performing a Jesus miracle. Another reminder that Twitter is fake and gay.
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Which is, of course, a retarded meme. If a group of people revere some figure highly, a perfectly valid defence of some other figure is to point out how they're similar. If someone gets offended by a comparison, it's purely a them problem.
It's not a meme, it's just straightforward blasphemy. You are not supposed to suggest that you or your friends are basically like the Son of God for the purposes of self-aggrandisement, especially when you and your friends are neither holy nor christlike in their behaviour.
Comparing people to Jesus in order to learn from his example is obviously different.
I think the comparison is an attempt to demonstrate that the arguments being used against Yudkowsky could also be used to dismiss Christianity, and thus prove too much.
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I think the delivery is obnoxious and confusing, especially for Scott. The message is OK: “You think rationalism is weird and problematic? Look, it’s very similar to Christianity.”
That's not a plus in my book, but then again, I have not seen the tweet in context.
There's no context at least on Twitter: https://xxcancel.com/slatestarcodex/status/2105786054058164627
The context is that there is kind of a civil war in Scott's general sphere of twitter over the AI saftey question. Scott, having a history of being tolerant of religious rightists during the culture wars, has a wide number of Christians within his social web. These Christians and rightists variable side with or against his positions but often remain civil. It wasn't obvious that they were going to take the anti-ai-safety position but it's starting to seem like the worm is turning that way and there are a lot of attacks on EA/Rationalists/Safetiest from the Religious right direction. The subtext is kind of clear "We know we're weird by today's standards and but were you and your people not once weird by today's standards?" He's being accused of doing the meme but scott has engaged earnestly and in good faith the christians frequently enough that I don't think you can accusing him of cynicism here. He does in fact think it's admirable that Jesus forgave prostitutes and preached against a corrupt moral order, in many ways his movement is downstream of christian enlightenment.
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I think a lot of it stems from the fact that he did the meme.
No, I'll give Scott enough benefit of the doubt on him being generous with believers that the tweet just made me go "Don't make me come over there" rather than have a full-on meltdown. I'm not going to speculate on the state of Aella's soul, she could well end up like St Mary of Egypt (are we not told "Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you"?), but Big Yud is - well, like the guy said, You're no Jack Kennedy if we're gonna talk Jewish cult leaders.
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I mean, the meme has always been very stupid and its proliferation indicative of the lack of an actual rejoinder. The people making those kinds of arguments don't think they'll be persuasive because they already know the people they're talking about don't believe the nominal tenets of their own religion. No one thinks a guy saying something like "do not commit the sin of empathy" is going to be moved by quoting the Bible. The point is to needle them about this fact and highlight their hypocrisy to onlookers.
Religious fundamentalists (particularly the extremely online variety) want to grandstand about their strict adherence to the principles of their religion, but are at least as guilty of picking and choosing as religious liberals. This creates a problem for them since, unlike churches with liberal theological stances, their legitimacy is grounded in the aforementioned rigid adherence (or rather, is claimed to).
I find the meme convincing because the times I see people piously quoting "Didn't Jesus say [X,Y,Z]?" it has been in the context of "I have nothing but contempt for Christianity and I am only cherry-picking texts to try and make it out that you don't even know your own religion and are all hypocrites".
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Which is precisely why "doing the meme" gets met with hostility and denigration. You don't care, you just want to shit on them, and it's easy to tell you just want to shit on them.
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That can sort of, maybe, sometimes work when you're citing actual principles, like questioning the compassion of a Christian, or pointing out when a progressive is being racist and sexist. And it still mostly fails because real ideologies have already grappled with those topics. The Christian will say that forgiveness requires repentence so they can fully condemn unrepentant evildoers; the progressive will say that they feel like a scrappy underdog so their hatred is righteous.
Scott's post is mostly very defensive snark on trite descriptors, except for the compassion thing which is already fatally undercut in that he's making that argument on behalf of people who are half a step away from being Nurgle worshippers.
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I think the meme is annoying precisely because the people who use it don’t really understand Christianity but instead think it’s just the hippie version.
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In Scott's specific case, yes.
He's simultaneously pissing off his atheist friends by agreeing with Christians and annoying his earnestly religious Unsong fans by seeming dismissive of their beliefs.
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