Yudkowsky is a kind of a crackpot but not a completely lost cause – that video you linked of him speaking to Sanders is completely reasonable, for example. I also wouldn’t count being an inspiration to nutjobs against anyone’s character. That applies to pretty much any public figure.
Also your citation for his “sexual abuse” is about a fictional story he wrote in 2009, rather than actual sexual abuse. I can’t help but get the impression that you’re trying to push some kind of a narrative here that isn’t entirely motivated by facts.
The rationalist community has hosted perhaps half a dozen small groups with very strange beliefs (including two separate groups that wound up interacting with demons). Some — which I won’t name in this article for privacy reasons — seem to have caused no harm but bad takes. But the most famous, a loose group of vegan anarchist transhumanists nicknamed the Zizians, have been linked to six violent deaths. Other groups, while less violent, have left a trail of trauma in their wake. One is Black Lotus, a Burning Man camp led by alleged rapist Brent Dill, which developed a metaphysical system based on the tabletop roleplaying game Mage the Ascension. Another is Leverage Research, an independent research organization that became sucked into the occult and wound up as Workplace Harassment With New Age Characteristics.
And he is preaching a watered-down version of his true beliefs to people like Bernie Sanders, like every other cult leader does.
He preaches that we will create AI God.
And he spread that belief through fanfic based on children’s literature.
Yudkowsky thinks that there is a very large risk that we will create God by accident, in which case He might be Evil because there are more value systems that we might build Him with that we would come to see as “evil” than value systems that we would come to see as “good”. And his reason for posting those original blog posts on Overcoming Bias, and later founding the Less Wrong website, was to get a bunch of people together to figure out how to Build God so that He would be Good instead.
He wrote Harry Potter fanfiction so that more people would help him build God.
You’re free to think whatever you like about him. However, insinuating that he’s committed sexual abuse when all he’s done is write weird fiction is just straight up a lie.
I’m not a fan either, but personally I just think he’s Reddit incarnate and quite benign as far those types go. The rationalist community naturally attracts other /r/atheism types, so it has a strong selection bias towards weirdos and crackpots, which explains the adjacency of the Zizians.
He preaches that we will create AI God. And he spread that belief through fanfic based on children’s literature.
This is such a dishonestly reductionist argument. Your judgement is clearly clouded by cynicism of the current AI industry.
Yudkowsky is not the inventor of the concept of the AI singularity. It’s a widely accepted concept among AI researchers and has been for a long time, and the way Yudkowsky speaks about it is more or less in line with the general consensus. It’s not “preaching” or a “cult” but reality.
The truth is that we don’t know what goes into intelligence, and we don’t know if our current AI technologies are capable of producing a singularity. Just like Yudkowsky (and many others) say, if the AI singularity does happen and we aren’t ready for it, it could be game over for humanity.
Yudkowsky of course has his own philosophical theories on how superhuman AI might be built responsibly. From what I’ve seen those aren’t particularly insane either, but it is a topic that for now is mostly philosophical. The problem is the risk of it going from philosophy to practice before we realise.
He wrote Harry Potter fanfiction so that more people would help him build God.
I’ve read his Harry Potter fanfiction and from what I remember it involved basically no AI themes at all. I’ve not read his other fiction (besides a short 2 page Haruhi story that a friend coincidentally linked me this week – also no AI themes there, just high school philosophy) so I can’t comment on those, but the article you’re quoting specifically mentions Methods of Rationality as an example and it simply has nothing to do with AI.
Rationalism is absolutely a cult - Yudkowsky’s. That’s why I asked you to explain how Yudkowsky positioning rape as rational in his doctrine is a good thing.
That’s why you have to contend with the fact that a rapist was one of the prominent members of his ranks.
Zizians are the logical consequence of his ideology, where it is moral to murder to prevent future possible harm.
It’s hard to keep his deranged fiction apart from his supposed nonfiction. He runs around the internet clashing with actual AI experts like Yann LeCun, telling them to read his BDSM fiction.
Yudkowsky is a kind of a crackpot but not a completely lost cause – that video you linked of him speaking to Sanders is completely reasonable, for example. I also wouldn’t count being an inspiration to nutjobs against anyone’s character. That applies to pretty much any public figure.
Also your citation for his “sexual abuse” is about a fictional story he wrote in 2009, rather than actual sexual abuse. I can’t help but get the impression that you’re trying to push some kind of a narrative here that isn’t entirely motivated by facts.
Eliezer Yudkowsky disgusts me because I learned the facts about him.
Eliezer Yudkowsky makes the rape advocate the rational one. Explain the harmlessness of that please.
Especially when sexual (and other!) abuse is rife in Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Rationalist
cultcommunity and its sects.And he is preaching a watered-down version of his true beliefs to people like Bernie Sanders, like every other cult leader does.
He preaches that we will create AI God.
And he spread that belief through fanfic based on children’s literature.
You’re free to think whatever you like about him. However, insinuating that he’s committed sexual abuse when all he’s done is write weird fiction is just straight up a lie.
I’m not a fan either, but personally I just think he’s Reddit incarnate and quite benign as far those types go. The rationalist community naturally attracts other /r/atheism types, so it has a strong selection bias towards weirdos and crackpots, which explains the adjacency of the Zizians.
This is such a dishonestly reductionist argument. Your judgement is clearly clouded by cynicism of the current AI industry.
Yudkowsky is not the inventor of the concept of the AI singularity. It’s a widely accepted concept among AI researchers and has been for a long time, and the way Yudkowsky speaks about it is more or less in line with the general consensus. It’s not “preaching” or a “cult” but reality.
The truth is that we don’t know what goes into intelligence, and we don’t know if our current AI technologies are capable of producing a singularity. Just like Yudkowsky (and many others) say, if the AI singularity does happen and we aren’t ready for it, it could be game over for humanity.
Yudkowsky of course has his own philosophical theories on how superhuman AI might be built responsibly. From what I’ve seen those aren’t particularly insane either, but it is a topic that for now is mostly philosophical. The problem is the risk of it going from philosophy to practice before we realise.
I’ve read his Harry Potter fanfiction and from what I remember it involved basically no AI themes at all. I’ve not read his other fiction (besides a short 2 page Haruhi story that a friend coincidentally linked me this week – also no AI themes there, just high school philosophy) so I can’t comment on those, but the article you’re quoting specifically mentions Methods of Rationality as an example and it simply has nothing to do with AI.
Rationalism is absolutely a cult - Yudkowsky’s. That’s why I asked you to explain how Yudkowsky positioning rape as rational in his doctrine is a good thing.
That’s why you have to contend with the fact that a rapist was one of the prominent members of his ranks.
Zizians are the logical consequence of his ideology, where it is moral to murder to prevent future possible harm.
Yudkowsky’s AI doomerism is eugenecist. Are you happy? There’s a review of his AI book.
It’s hard to keep his deranged fiction apart from his supposed nonfiction. He runs around the internet clashing with actual AI experts like Yann LeCun, telling them to read his BDSM fiction.