posted on February 04, 2023 09:09 PM by
u/20323273
70
u/Waytfm86 pointsat 1675550733.000000
God, I hate this guy so much. This is mostly irrelevant to the OP,
but Qiaochun Yuan is basically my white whale, in that I hate him as
much as Ahab hated Moby Dick. For a refresher course, this is the guy
who 1) took a bunch of acid and wrote an awful overwrought thread on
twitter about how his parents giving him 100,000 dollars because he
wouldn’t find a job or do anything made him sad (don’t worry, he ended
the thread with a realization that his parents would die sooner or
later, and he’d get a bunch of money anyways), and 2) he posted a long
thread about if he should give a homeless woman money and how he didn’t
want to get scammed so he wanted her to jump through a bunch of hoops to
earn the money (don’t worry, he decided it was a scam after she refused
to jump through a bunch of hoops). God, I fucking hate this guy.
> don't worry, he ended the thread with a realization that his parents would die sooner or later, and he'd get a bunch of money anyways
Ironically, this is a great way to get disinherited.
> 1) took a bunch of acid and wrote an awful overwrought thread on twitter about how his parents giving him 100,000 dollars because he wouldn't find a job or do anything made him sad (don't worry, he ended the thread with a realization that his parents would die sooner or later, and he'd get a bunch of money anyways), and 2) he posted a long thread about if he should give a homeless woman money and how he didn't want to get scammed so he wanted her to jump through a bunch of hoops to earn the money (don't worry, he decided it was a scam after she refused to jump through a bunch of hoops)
I had a feeling this was the same guy, but didn't want to spend the time confirming it.
Everything about this guy is insufferable, especially his thoughts and how he expresses them.
It seems like there's this transitional stage where people are still attached to "At least these people are talking about how to think rigorously" and so on, and aren't quite at the point of being able to admit that the whole thing's been a scam. Which is natural.
One wonders what to do with this, i.e. whether to collude in the comforting transitional thought that there was something to all of this, even though it's false and ultimately pernicious, or just to be consistent about what is needed.
If you think of it as a full-on cult then it makes sense. Even if you acknowledge that these people are lunatics who read simultaneously too much and not enough William Gibson or secular doomsday prophets, you're still conditioned into certain models or patterns of interaction, and have even learned basically a whole language that sounds utterly insane to outsiders. Even if you break the social contacts and gain independence from the cult organization/leadership you still have to contend with those models and reactions and patterns that you've learned and it can be really hard to relearn everything, especially because most people get into cults because the cult does fill some kind of social or spiritual need that was previously unmet.
In this case the ex-rat's Twitter thread (one of them) seems to show some level of awareness of this as of last year, but I haven't seen anything on the substack or elsewhere to say how significant that is or if he still needs to touch a lotta grass before shit starts really making sense in a way other people can understand.
Can confirm definitely did that to myself, and will catch myself falling back into some of those vocal tics when posting sometimes. Usually when my depression/anxiety are getting to me again.
Funny how that works, eh?
You need to find a therapist doing ISTDP. You getting furious at them is part of the process. Or at least a Lacanian, which is more an exercise in frustration than fury, but perhaps still counts.
I wonder how many of them simply realise that they're not high up enough in the rationalist sphere to get the groupies and that, in fact, being an avowed rationalist is actually anathema to most normal people, female or otherwise, so they just drop out.
Given the number of totally sex obsessed weirdos that seem to orbit the movement...this guy's substack as exhibit A
Arguably less successful though. By this point L Ron had a boat and had his cult followers running around trying to find gold he remembered leaving in a past life. Which is at least funnier than whatever depressing shit is going on at MIRI.
Yeah, but L Ron was going in as a scammer from day one. He bragged about it to a lot of other science fiction authors for years beforehand. (Actually knew one author who knew him, James Gunn (not the director). He was the last living Golden Age science fiction author, sadly passed away a couple years ago. Had so many awesome stories about SFF authors, I was so lucky to have him as a professor.)
Yudkowsky, on the other hand, seems to have drank a lot more of his own Kool-Aid, which probably hasn't helped his success in comparison to Hubbard.
Your reading of the situation is entirely plausible. However I think MIRI was setup as a grift from day one; it looks much too much like a lot of “please don’t make me get a real job” grift non profits I’ve seen in the past. The fact that it’s targeted at other rich people rather than the common masses is more of a sign of social rank more than anything else.
I think the big difference is that he lacks the panache that L Ron had.
From my reading of it, in the Singularity Institute days a couple decades ago, El Yud was (relatively) genuinely trying to create a computer god in his basement because his family member died. That's a pretty grandiose goal for someone with no actual education in computer science, but otoh people dying = bad. So ... eh.
Then after failing to build a god from scratch (surprise), he responded to this threat to his beliefs and self-image by doubling down several times in a row. This is (I think?) where the cult mania really comes into play, where Yud drank his own Kool-Aid about being the genius messiah who knows the secret truth about AI ("~~Hey, my AI failed to take over the world.~~ I'm not wrong about AI, the world is wrong! In fact, I must save them!") and deliberately created an echo chamber for himself to 'educate people' with 'clear thinking', where 'clear thinking' meant agreeing with his conclusions. So, the Harry Potter fanfiction -> 'the end is nigh, give me your money to avert the apocalypse' cult intake funnel of ~10 years ago. In retrospect the thinking behind this is pretty scary, actually -- "People disagree with my beliefs not because I might be wrong, it's because they just *don't know how to think properly*." Yikes.
You know, up until a few days ago I never connected how similar the names "Scientology" and "Rationalism" are to each other. Both names are based on a pursuit of knowledge.
I came across a few genuine scientologists once, and I'm pretty sure that "teaching you how to think clearly" was part of their pitch.
> I'm pretty sure that "teaching you how to think clearly" was part of their pitch.
It absolutely was. One of their weirdos, a frazzled-looking older man, once came up to me crying, "Think more clearly! Think more clearly!" and tried to give me a flyer in front of the storefront they briefly ran in my home city. They made a big push in the city when I was in high school-college, and the storefront was on a major shopping street and had very creepy CRT TVs playing their videos in the window 24/7. I think the "think more clearly" angle was in their other marketing stuff there, too.
>One of their weirdos, a frazzled-looking older man, once came up to me crying, "Think more clearly! Think more clearly!" and tried to give me a flyer
Woah, you actually met Big Yud?
God, I hate this guy so much. This is mostly irrelevant to the OP, but Qiaochun Yuan is basically my white whale, in that I hate him as much as Ahab hated Moby Dick. For a refresher course, this is the guy who 1) took a bunch of acid and wrote an awful overwrought thread on twitter about how his parents giving him 100,000 dollars because he wouldn’t find a job or do anything made him sad (don’t worry, he ended the thread with a realization that his parents would die sooner or later, and he’d get a bunch of money anyways), and 2) he posted a long thread about if he should give a homeless woman money and how he didn’t want to get scammed so he wanted her to jump through a bunch of hoops to earn the money (don’t worry, he decided it was a scam after she refused to jump through a bunch of hoops). God, I fucking hate this guy.
[deleted]
kinda feel like this guy has overcorrected, but he makes a reasonable point about yud
“eliezer yudkowsky is best understood”
I disagree.
So what? A science fiction author created a religion, nothing could possibly go wrong.
yep. a common observation, but no less true
In the same vein as L. Ron Hubbard.
Its a cult. Pure and simple. Everything else is window dressing.
… and not a particularly good one at that.
you know who else wants to conquer the stars? https://youtu.be/z1QXabJvIvo
I’m sneering with you, not at you.