I have noticed that the same rationalists who think Sam Altman is building Skynet are totally fearless about an ex getting access to their home address through an adtech data-broker or a friend at Google. They are sometimes paranoid about reporters getting information, but not as worried about who collects it in the first place.
Photogenic young women with quirky clothes or hair do well on TikTok. A Canadian journalist once quit TV news because among other things he was tired of the unspoken calculus between “does this journalist ask good questions?” and “are they hot enough to get camera time?”
Yes, Duncan Sabien had a child with Yudkowsky’s ex-spouse and they are in a long-term relationship. I won’t link because the ex-spouse seems harmless and unwell.
A lot of people might enjoy attending a less-risky kink event to see that its like any other nerdy event from a LARP to a music festival to a craft workshop. Someone has to rent a venue, keep drinks and snacks flowing, deal with interpersonal conflicts, and clean up afterwards, and some people are mostly there because they hope to hook up or see cute people.
Fanboy voice The Teacher wants researchers to read it so they will damage their brains and be unable to build Unfriendly AI before his breeding program ramps up!
I have read a few pages of the Project Lawful thread, but I follow the ways of my fathers and crib from TVTropes.[1]
This thread is summoning some complicated feelings from “what consenting adults do is their business” and “this is not my kind of fun” to “in theory they take some sensible precautions but these people are incompetent and/or bad.”
[1] When did not having read the book stop a Usenet warrior from posting?
Sometimes I sincerely wish I could go back
I miss when I thought these people were just Internet cranks too! I recommend either going mad from the revelation or fleeing from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
I never heard of Justine Tunney before but she has a Wikipedia page.
This does show that female rationalists can organize complicated events when they really want to. I don’t think any of the male rationalists we talk about would be able, although there are probably a few people at Lighthaven who could keep an office job that was not also their polycule.
I would be fascinated to hear from kinksters who have run similar events.
They are keen on controlling contact and fluid-borne infections, but don’t talk about airborne infection control. Rationalists have a “COVID is over and RSV sounds like a Linux distro” party line which separates them from alienated nerds I know.
Events I attend which combine alcohol and a risky physical activity have a one-drink maximum, or once you drink alcohol no more playing for you, not a subjective “Don’t drink too much.”
Who’s going to buy this profit-free stock selling for 100 times earnings?
I think its worse than a P/E ratio of 100. It is 100 times revenue. Earnings in this context mean profits, so a company which is losing money has no P/E ratio. The argument is that if $100 of stock corresponds to $10 of profit last year (P/E 10), that is probably a better buy than if $100 of stock corresponds to $5 of profit last year (P/E 20).
And yes, this looks to me like a crypto rugpull crossed with all the tricks which keep Tether prices and Tesla shares floating in midair.
There have also been Tantric workshops where participants were sexually assaulted. One reason I have been single for a while is that I learned too much about abuse in nerdy communities to feel safe and confident looking for partners. I don’t want to talk about that when people have been physically or sexually abused though.
Edit / also allegations about teachers and disciples at the MAPLE and OAK Buddhist rationalist cult
The original event page uses terms like “light bondage” and “light biting” without defining them, and does not talk about pinchy toys, buzzy toys, and suction toys. I hope that everyone at these events understands those terms the same way, and that male rats know that penetration is not the only fun thing you can do in bed.
Edit / the event manual mentions zappy toys. In my experience those are a rare taste but you do you.
The Project Lawful glowfic has a whole subplot where the forces of Evil lure the protagonist into BDSM play where surprise! their partner really truly does not consent.
In this scenario, I think its inevitable that some prey will feel neglected and others will have their consent violated. Words and body language are the most powerful tools we have to understand another person, and its hard to remember the exact preferences of dozens of other people who you don’t know very well. Responsible predators will err on the gentle side and others will make mistakes (“oh **** I thought you were Sally and Sally asked us to …”) or deliberately cross boundaries. I am glad that they make a list of incidents and policy responses but I would not recommend attending kink parties organized by Bay Area rationalists.
- We have worked to emphasize harder that choking is not on the default consent list.
- We now have reports that prey who have opted into choking are going under-choked.
- …while still having occasional reports that prey who didn’t opt into choking sometimes have people reach for their throats.
- We’re trying to resolve this with things like cheatsheets, but the process is ongoing.
I would like to hear more from experienced kinksters, but I think this shows why negotiating who will do what in advance while everyone is fully dressed and sober is a big part of kink culture (and so is demonstrating skills and building trust in less risky scenarios). If you want to be ravaged in a specific way, your pursuers can give you that if the focus of the day is on you, not on you and dozens of other people with beautiful individual desires and boundaries in a chaotic environment. It also sounds like many of the predators are not very experienced.
Ouch, “picking up a cute young thing at the bar and hot tub at the ski resort” “building a happy working relationship with a sex worker” and “romantic pair-bonding” are three different skills! No wonder he thinks looks and body language are so important if he is trying to take women straight to bed.
RMN is a pro wrestling event, but he probably means Red Means No, Aella’s consensual-nonconsent orgies.
Did you try RationalWiki or the page for Hanson himself? Read it next to Taleb’s The Black Swan patiently explaining to clever but inexperienced young men that you cannot perfectly predict the future just diversify and prepare for different scenarios.
A lot of rats give Robin Hanson credit for things which are much older (prediction markets for elections are recorded back to the 16th century, The Great Filter was huge in Cold War pop culture). Werner Antweiler at UBC ran a prediction market from 1993 to 2008.
At minute 8 of “SpaceX IPO: Nice Try Though” Patrick Boyle mentions some circular finance: some of the banks which lent SpaceX $29 billion in March will be guaranteeing the IPO by promising to buy some shares to stabilize the price. Later he also points out that the banks financing the IPO have to buy Grok services and may be its main paying customers. Musk has done this sort of thing before eg. using Tesla (shareholder-owned) money to buy SolarCity which he partially owned. I knew a serial fraudster who moved to Texas for its business-friendly laws and courts.
He liked the piss-tinged blog post by Cape Fear Advisors and estimates that the Muskrat wants to raise $50-75 billion in the IPO.
It took Kaiser Bill to break the economic power of London and Paris, but the Muskrat thinks he can speedrun that game for the New York City map.
Pope Leo and Brad DeLong are great examples of people we can make tactical alliances with on single issues
She could be raising children or organizing local events. If she is disillusioned I would have expected her to reappear somewhere else with a new cause (she explored skepticism, EA, and rationalism, and dropped out of several graduate programs when she decided that the field was not rigorous enough).
I would have hoped she would say something about so many of her friends turning out to be embezzlers and Nazis.