What does he think all the suddenly unemployed and angry masses are gonna do in this scenario? Twiddle their thumbs? Or does he think there’s gonna be some sort of mass killing of the surplus labour?

They’re tarnishing the Alpha course’s¹ hard-won cult branding.

¹ They might not seem too culty based on that Wikipedia page but if I remember correctly Private Eye printed some very critical stuff about the courses and people associated with them in recent years. Details not forthcoming until I flick through my big stack of old magazines…

If someone is scared that if they criticize someone they will be “retaliated against”, that seems like a sign that something is really bad. I’ve had to deal with some situations like this myself while organizing events (and I haven’t always done a good job) but surely you should at least ask some more questions and err on the side of caution.

Having said all that, this guy has done some research and has exposed an awful EA workplace, which is a good thing.

From that post about Nonlinear:

I reached out to some references Kat listed, which were positive to strongly positive. However I also got a strongly negative reference — someone else who I informed about the decision told me they knew former employees who felt taken advantage of around things like salary. However the former employees reportedly didn’t want to come forward due to fear of retaliation and generally wanting to get away from the whole thing, and the reports felt very vague and hard for me to concretely visualize, but nonetheless the person strongly recommended against inviting Kat and Drew.

I didn’t feel like this was a strong enough reason to bar someone from a space — or rather, I did, but vague anonymous descriptions of very bad behavior being sufficient to ban someone is a system that can be straightforwardly abused, so I don’t want to use such a system.

This pretty much explains how and why the workplace culture in so many TESCREAL orgs is so, so bad.

Edit: OH MY GOD, Emerson is the Emerson from Mugglenet dot com??? I used to read that site when I was a little Harry Potter fan. Jesus. He should have stuck to correcting people’s punctuation in the Hall of Shame.

I dunno, I didn’t get much out of it because I found all the connections hard to follow. That article might actually need a diagram showing all the connections between the people featured, but that probably wouldn’t help with the claims that TESCREAL critics are conspiracy theorists…

Remove one or two of those reward circuits, especially if they’re poorly adapted to the modern environment, and the human becomes more generally capable. I suspect that my own inability to feel love is one example, the amygdalectomy is another, and the general pattern of high-IQ people being somewhat autistic is a third.

I managed not to click on the linked blog post about the author’s inability to feel love.

I’m sure there’s someone out there!

I will admit I was imagining a grumbling LessWronger reading this and going “oh, so it’s wrong to care about malaria?!?!” I probably need to take some time off social media.

Thank you, that’s very interesting. To be clear I am not pro-malaria, but sometimes groups are against bad things for weird reasons. Like Scientologists campaigning against abusive psychiatric practices because L. Ron Hubbard was mad at psychologists for not taking him seriously.

Watching this online economic lecture thing for college and it just got mentioned that repeated bouts of malaria in children can cause mental disability (wikipedia says “brain damage” and “increased risk of neurological and cognitive deficits”). I have to admit I did not know this. …is the only reason EAs we’re ever into “malaria nets” because of their obsession with g and their conviction that increasing it is a panacea?

Sorry, I guess I phrased my reply badly, I get what you mean about the weird blend (and the article you linked is actually well written), but having seen that dog fucking article I felt the need to inflict the horror on others so I wouldn’t be alone.

What about the article where she claims that based on their art, a contemporary artist “wants to fuck their dog” and the primary reason art galleries aren’t making this more clear is…because under woke you’re not allowed to sexualize disabled artists???

I promise this is my last donkeypost but I think this thread needs some donkey pictures. All pics from the Irish Donkey Sanctuary

The fucking Collisons again! I guess they’ve given up on building their own city in Northern California now they realise they can just awe politicians into giving them money and doing what they want.

The BT Young Scientist Competition was a mistake

the donkey people may not have picked their cause because it was the most rational, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped them from coming up with good ideas. it’s almost as if people can be more effective when they’re working for causes they’re emotionally connected to…

I got so much use out of xcancel. I feel bad now that I never donated €5 or something

I have now clicked around some donkey sanctuary websites and am starting to feel emotional. I am sure this is what rationalists are afraid of but God the donkeys…

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I’m getting the urge to give some cash to a donkey sanctuary. Does anyone know a good one

One of the members of a “wizard rock” band later went on to be in an actually good band. But as far as I am aware, this has only happened once.

I’m not necessarily an animal lib person, but I think an animal rights/animal liberation/ethical vegan framework for looking after and respecting animals is probably better than an EA one. If only because they’re more experienced in creating social change. Apparently only about 1 to 3% of Americans are vegans. So they have the numbers over the EAs, and they could probably beat them in a fight too.