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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026

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Some have pointed out that this is Alexander doing the meme

No it isn't. Doing the meme would at minimum require that that the tweet be an argument directed at Christians. It isn't an argument but a copypasta-template joke (with the humor partly based on the incongruity of the comparison) and the target audience for the joke isn't Christians (note that only 23% of ACX survey respondants are any kind of theist). Like his Antichrist post, which (perhaps because it wasn't posted on Twitter and was longer and thus harder to misinterpret) did not attract critiques about how it was an ineffective way to convince Christians that Marc Andreessen is the Antichrist. Or Unsong, the entire webnovel he wrote based in large part on similar jokes.

If I was to attempt to extract an implicit argument from the joke, it still wouldn't be one directed at or referencing contemporary Christians, but referencing the early Christians, as discussed in his post The Early Christian Strategy. The potential point would not be that EAs and internet-rationalists are followers of Christian beliefs, but that they have some similarities as weird rising altruistic movements that have been more successful than you might expect.

Scott's argument is a contemptable language game.

It's definitely meant to be a language game of the sort Scott frequently enjoys.

Jesus did indeed associate with prostitutes; he did not partake of their services, nor did he employ them on their backs for horizontal forms of evangelism-by-the-hour.

Uh, are you under the impression that there are internet-rationalist leaders sleeping with Aella? As far as I know Aella is just a normal prostitute/internet-celebrity who happens to also be interested in LessWrong stuff and do internet surveys.

I do not accept that the Yudkowskiites or the "Effective Altruism" movement they have parasitized are offering a "message of compassion"

To be clear the context for that part of joke is the Twitter arguments about EA which critique it specifically on the grounds of directing altruism at far people in other countries, people who aren't born yet, or non-human animals, as contrasted with normal healthy morality which is directed at family/community/nation. It's not trying to assert that EA is compassionate towards everyone (though Scott believes it is) but jokingly responding to people criticizing it on that basis.

Uh, are you under the impression that there are internet-rationalist leaders sleeping with Aella?

Yes, this isn't exactly a secret. Nate Soares probably the best-known now.

Uh, are you under the impression that there are internet-rationalist leaders sleeping with Aella? As far as I know Aella is just a normal prostitute/internet-celebrity who happens to also be interested in LessWrong stuff and do internet surveys.

Yea. This is easy to do when you're not in a particular scene. Like, I imagine Dan Baltic, Dasha/Anna, Geoff Shullenberger and anyone else I can think of who lives in NYC as hanging out with each other a lot. Because I'm not there to see they don't, but I see their tweets and know where they generally reside.