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To what extent is rationalism fueled by the desire to avoid working a normie 9-5 job or at least to escape its office politics with esoteric online drama?

Some of the inner circle seem to be trying to get their hands on some of those sweet Thielbux, starting with Yud’s “institute” and peaking in absurdity with MetaMed.

Like most cult leaders, Yud himself is probably unemployable in a traditional sense. At least Scooter has/had a life outside of the scene.

For the lesser lights - who don’t live in poly compounds in the Bay - it’s probably more of an escape from grinding post-collegiate late-capitalist futility and social isolation, not unlike a dorkier Barstool Sports.

[deleted]
Also technical jobs require both technical ability and an ability to take technical feedback. Neither of which he's been able to demonstrate.
It’s incredibly common to see talented engineers, which Yud is not, completely burn out and quit because they just can’t do people. People skills matter.
As in nonCS engineers?
absolutely
>a dorkier Barstool Sports

I mean, I desire to avoid working a normal 9-5 job (not that said desire actually has led anywhere so far) and I’m not trying to get people to join my cult. Unless you consider anarchism a cult, in which case let’s not lump anarchists in with Less Wrongers, please.

About the same as any website?

For many others it’s a source of intentional drama (debate club and/or trolling). Again, same as any website with user generated content.

I'd say maybe slightly more, given how many of their fears are just capitalism in a robot mask so they're allowed to acknowledge them.

If you’re asking “to what extent is rationalism sympathetic?”, I’d say: very little, but somewhat.

Aren’t most of them in some kind of computer-related job? Those are typically officebound 9-5s.

[deleted]

There’s been a lot of this sort of armchair psychoanalysis around here lately, and I’ve been too swamped with my own issues to really crack down on it, but please for the love of God don’t do this stuff about online strangers It just defeats the entire point of sneering at people who do the exact same thing in the opposite direction There’s all sorts of things you can say or sneer about the rationalist cult without resorting to this sort of crass mind-reading.
Sure, happy to abide by the rules! I deleted it. I also don't like it when people armchair psycho-analyze, in this case I didn't think I was doing that because like, Rationalists constantly state how important intelligence is in personal terms. They tell stories about how their intelligence or Yud's will save us from metal Satan. So I thought I was just saying "here is a rewording of what they will tell you about themselves" not "here's my read on them". It all looks textual to me.
Some do, some don’t The rationalist thing - whatever it is - is a broad church which unfortunately includes some rather successful people both within and without the 9-5 grind I remain uncomfortable about the “they”, unless used judiciously, to describe people within that church. Just as SneerClub is not a coherent “we” (albeit on a much smaller scale), the movement (putting it nicely) is not a coherent blob. Imputing motives to a group as a whole is generally not a good thing to do when you cast your net that widely.

Humans love gossip. I just choose to project that instinct into meaningless online drama flamefests.

That’s true of a lot of grifters, to be fair.

I think they like him.

…sounds great to me?