I went to a dozen or so Less Wrong meetups in Boston in 2016. I was
always on the periphery, and maybe Boston is on the periphery itself,
but if they’re a cult they’re hiding it well. I’ll give you weird, but I
mostly see that as a feature. Above all, there was very little of the
hostility to critical thought I generally associate with a cult. There
was one guy who was hostile to any new idea, but I think that was just
him.
Maybe you only mean the AI safety stuff. There was one guy there
committed to working on AI safety, and I did think that’s wrong-headed
on a number of levels at this point, but it didn’t look
cult-like.
>very little of the hostility to critical thought I generally associate with a cult
truly spoken like someone who has never told a lesswronger they're incorrect about something
tbt to when someone told a lesswronger that pedophilia is bad and was immediately blocked \[[link](http://leviathan-supersystem.tumblr.com/post/155769434839/arent-you-literally-a-pedophilia-apologist-you)\]
"People with that specific mental illness are inherently evil and so is anyone who advocates for providing support to them", while popular, is not actually in any way useful.
Source: I have BPD.
In this context, yes. Because if it's not a mental disorder, then what is it? I've seen people say "it's not a mental health thing, it's an actual valid orientation", but that's obviously bullshit. I've also seen people say "it's not a mental health thing, it's a choice", but I think anyone who would *choose* to be attracted to prepubescent children has severe mental health problems. (And, of course, there's also it being in the DSM as pedophilic disorder.)
Yeah, pedophilia is inherently bad, and acting on it is horrible and irredeemable. Just like how I regularly get homicidal ideation, and it's inherently bad, and acting on it would be horrible and irredeemable. I just think the solution probably involves support rather than "Anyone who has this is inherently evil and better off dead" - especially given the ridiculous amount of collateral damage that could cause to, say, people with some subtypes of OCD or child sexual abuse survivors.
the strawman of "anyone who wants to maintain social mores against pedophilia wants to literally murder people" is complete nonsense- it's entirely possible to maintain the position that lusting after children holds moral weight and isn't a morally neutral act while also taking a measured approach to how to respond. stop flattening all nuance to the oversimplified "either you think pedophilia is just fine and dandy and no one should ever face social consequence for it, or you want to fire up the murder machine and exterminate anyone suspected of attraction to children." the obvious correct solution is "create structures to cure pedophiles while also recognizing that pedophilic attraction is morally negative and continue maintaining related social mores which act as an important disincentive to pedophilia"
there's also an obvious difference between involuntary homicidal ideation and jerking off while fantasizing about raping children.
if someone were, say, to fantasize regularly about raping and murdering their neighbor, and to jerk off to these fantasies, and tell people about it, this *would* have bearing on how good a person they are, and it would be entirely justified and in fact socially healthy for them to face negative social consequences as a result of this.
> stop flattening all nuance to the oversimplified "either you think pedophilia is just fine and dandy and no one should ever face social consequence for it, or you want to fire up the murder machine and exterminate anyone suspected of attraction to children."
Well, I'd usually do that, but given that this is Tumblr "MAP" drama we're talking about, there are actually plenty of people going "fire up the murder machine etc."
Also, that "obvious correct solution" implies that the main thing preventing many people from molesting children is social stigma around pedophilic attraction. Very few people are pedophiles, and in fact, even _most child molesters_ aren't. It's usually a power thing, and they either don't see it as molestation or consider it a good way to achieve their goals.
>!For example, the people who sexually assaulted me as a child, who were some alternative medicine nutjobs, legitimately thought it was necessary and useful. But if they were, indeed, pedophiles? I'd definitely have preferred them to just jerk off to fantasies.!<
>Well, I'd usually do that, but given that this is Tumblr "MAP" drama we're talking about, there are actually plenty of people going "fire up the murder machine etc."
***I*** wasn't, and you're brazenly strawmanning me.
>Also, that "obvious correct solution" implies that the main thing preventing many people from molesting children is social stigma around pedophilic attraction.
it's certainly a factor, namely in the case of making it more difficult for pedophiles to find each other and co-ordinate, creating social environments which normalize it.
>and in fact, even *most child molesters* aren't
absolutely absurd and i don't accept that for a second. child molesters are definitionally pedophiles.
>But if they were, indeed, pedophiles? I'd definitely have preferred them to just jerk off to fantasies.
i'd prefer they neither molest children ***nor*** jerk off to fantasies of molesting children, since as should be transparently obvious jerking off to a fantasy of doing something makes it more likely that someone is going to act on that fantasy, since it causes the person to dwell on the fantasy and associate it with positive sensations.
see, you're presenting a false dichotomy where it's either they jerk off to fantasies of molesting children, or actually molest children, when A: they could do neither and B: those options you gave aren't opposites, and in fact one has a tendency to lead to the other. which is exactly why jerking off to pedophilic fantasies has negative moral weight, since while in itself it doesn't cause harm, it conditions the person so they are more likely to cause harm, recklessly creating an increased risk.
K. I guess we'll just ignore actual survivors' lived experiences and most of modern psychology in favor of "that's just obvious" vs "that's just absurd", then.
Most modern psychology tells us that not molesting children is better than molesting children, that conversion therapy doesn't work for any kind of sexuality including paraphilias, that it's healthier to use fictional materials and fantasies as a coping mechanism than to commit a crime, and that telling people with a disorder that makes them more likely to hurt people that they're evil and don't deserve support leads to them not seeking support and hurting people. If you want studies on specifically "jerking off to pedophilic fantasies", there's actually not much in the way of published studies either way right now, though people are working on that, notably in Germany from what I've heard.
>that conversion therapy doesn't work for any kind of sexuality including paraphilias
but wait, earlier you were saying it's a mental illness!
>that it's healthier to use fictional materials and fantasies as a coping mechanism than to commit a crime,
***what about doing neither of those things***
oh and not only did you avoid directly addressing my point, you're still not bothering to link any sources to your increasingly ridiculous claims.
> but wait, earlier you were saying it's a mental illness!
Yes? It's literally both.
>what about doing neither of those things
And I'm sure you've got some miracle solution that instantly either cures attraction to children or completely removes someone's sex drive.
>oh and not only did you avoid directly addressing my point, you're still not bothering to link any sources to your increasingly ridiculous claims.
I mean, _you_ didn't bother to link any.
>Yes? It's literally both.
mental illnesses are, generally, treatable.
>And I'm sure you've got some miracle solution that instantly either cures attraction to children or completely removes someone's sex drive.
ah, so if we don't "instantly either cure attraction to children or completely removes someone's sex drive," clearly the only option is to render it perfectly socially acceptable for someone to openly jerk off to loli porn. no other options!
here's the thing though. chemical castration actually does exist. it's a real thing. already. right now.
but i'd like to think there are options to help people suppress or eliminate entirely those types of intrusive thoughts. and i know absolutely 100% that isn't compatible with making it socially permissable for them to stoke the fires of their illness by dwelling on fantasies.
>I mean, *you* didn't bother to link any.
i'm not the one trying to shift the overton window here. the onus is on ***you*** to support your claim that we should render pedophilia socially acceptable.
> mental illnesses are, generally, treatable.
Nope. Most of them are lifelong, _manageable_ but not treatable. In the case of things like these, either actual pedophilia, severe OCD or trauma from childhood sexual abuse, that usually means CBT and coping mechanisms that don't hurt people. It would be great if there were actually the options you'd "like to think" there are, because they would also almost certainly help with many other things like OCD, personality disorders, etc.
And I think you're confused here. I'm not saying "make pedophilia socially acceptable". I'm saying "make pedophilia something someone can get help for without being told they're inherently evil". Social stigma has _never once worked_ for solving mental health crises.
ETA: Anyway, I'm gonna drop out of this discussion unless something really stupid follows. I've got better things to do, like... Well, at the moment, going to bed, but also, later, providing support to mentally ill people and abuse survivors. Which I kinda suck at, but it will always be better than you'll ever manage. If you want to know what the people you're trying to help think of your opinions, you might want to check [this place](https://kintsugi.seebs.net/) out - it's actually got a sneering-at-rationalists thread that's recently gotten active again. Anyway, bye!
i challenge you to think of big yud and his math pets and the bay area rationalist group houses and not consider that there's something a _smidge_ cult-like about the whole thang
I tend to see something a smidge cult-like in all organizations. Less Wrong definitely has a peculiar culture.
The benchmark, for me, is whether people are being harmed, or manipulated into unwittingly abdicating personal autonomy. Wherever that's happening, something does need to change. The harm and manipulation that have been discussed here may reflect broader cultural tendencies, though, not the overt peculiarities of Less Wrong's culture. "Math pets" sounds like traditional gender power dynamics, and moral assessments of people in terms of wealth and intelligence sound like traditional snobbery. I'd say it's a problem that Less Wrong doesn't reflect on how those traditional values are playing out on its territory, but I wouldn't say that makes it more of a cult than the broader culture.
The relevant part of that is "Bay Area," though. The further you get from the center, the more rat's are just some people with a niche interest who met on the internet. Weird, sure, but no worse than Bronies or Trekkies.
Probably because the True Faithful tend to migrate toward the center, making it much worse and keeping the periphery more normal.
this is actually pretty common for cults- a lot of new age cults in particular have both a dogmatic core living on a compound somewhere, but also a bunch of people on the periphery who are just signed up to the newsletter or read one of their books or something
That’s great, because my immediate reaction to “Cults are weird” was “But *Christianity* is weird.” Seriously, couldn’t the writer use a metric that isn’t so painfully subjective?
Remember when Scott wrote about how everything is a
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/r/LessWrong: Raising the sanity waterline
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I went to a dozen or so Less Wrong meetups in Boston in 2016. I was always on the periphery, and maybe Boston is on the periphery itself, but if they’re a cult they’re hiding it well. I’ll give you weird, but I mostly see that as a feature. Above all, there was very little of the hostility to critical thought I generally associate with a cult. There was one guy who was hostile to any new idea, but I think that was just him.
Maybe you only mean the AI safety stuff. There was one guy there committed to working on AI safety, and I did think that’s wrong-headed on a number of levels at this point, but it didn’t look cult-like.
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