Yeah the charting “therapy” thing in particular has a creepy resemblance to auditing. Maybe we need some kind of wide spread cultural taboo against people practicing therapy under the guise of science and psychology with out really thoroughly vetted qualifications. It’s just so easy to use it as a way to exploit vulnerable people and build unhealthy attachments. I could easily see my self in a not so different world thinking it’s really cool and worth trying to do experimental therapy technique someone I respected and trusts recommends only to become so much more vulnerable to them. Those poor people :(
Psychology is one of those subjects that people tend to feel qualified to weigh in on, regardless of background. Von Mises praxeology, L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, and any number of people on the internet doing bad Sherlock LARP. Good old Yud himself, what with all of his oh-so-skilled work under his own hood, is another prime example. It's the sort of shit that, as a cognitive scientist and psychologist, *almost* makes me sympathize with NdGT's pedantic tweets where he goes after movies for bad physics.
> and any number of people on the internet doing bad Sherlock LARP
Also Reddit, where every even remotely nasty person is a toxic psychopath narcissist who gaslights and raises more red flags than a communist parade.
"Members who were on payroll were expected to undergo charting/debugging sessions with a supervisory "trainer", and to "train" other members. The role of trainer is something like "manager + therapist": that is, both "is evaluating your job performance" and "is doing therapy on you"."
Yep.
Geoff, as the leader of the organization, dated
employees/subordinates. I’m aware of 3 women he had a sexual or
non-platonic relationship with. Geoff was about 40 by the end of the
project, and new recruits were often 19-23. […] I include this item
because it is perhaps the most legible of the poor leadership decisions,
but I do not feel it is the high-order bit of what was going
on.
“The high-order bit”?
I just felt something inside of me die.
Showing off your … questionable judgment about what the significantly
bad aspects of the situation are, did you have to talk about it like
it’s fucking microcontroller assembly language?
Geoff developed a therapy technique, “charting”. He says he developed
it based on his novel and complete theory of psychology, called
“Connection Theory”.
It’s not a complete theory of psychology without a Wheatstone
bridge.
Re high order bit, if it makes this any better, usually its just larping - most of them can barely program.
A very few very pilled professionals work 2 jobs and dont post much at all and donate everything to saving the world from AIpocalypse, of course.
And it is usually called [the most significant bit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_numbering#Most_significant_bit). Of course, saying "most significant bit" wouldn't work for larping because it'd just sound like you're saying "this little piece is the most significant", like some peon.
Probably not welcome in this subreddit, but Scott actually has a good post on that: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/04/style-guide-not-sounding-like-an-evil-robot/
It's not really rationalist-specific but rather general computer industry jargon (referring to the use as a metaphor for "\[lexicographically\] most important thing", not just the technical meaning). I don't know where it originated, but it was apparently common at Microsoft going back to the 80s at least - in [this historical account by Steven Sinofsky](https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/018-microsofts-two-bountiful-gardens) he calls it a "BillG expression" - and [Steve Jobs seems to have used it a lot](https://twitter.com/nlra/status/1381463225888243714) ([here's a public example](https://allthingsd.com/20070531/d5-gates-jobs-transcript))
The fact that they start with such a matter-of-fact tone:
You might conclude that I’m trying to discredit people who were
involved, but that’s not my aim here. My friends who were involved in
Leverage 1.0 are people who I respect greatly.
and then lead into shit like
The stated purpose of the group was to discover more theories of
human behavior and civilization by “theorizing”, while building power,
and then literally take over US and/or global governance
it's very funny to me that even people within their own community know they have to be extremely non-confrontational and use all the right jargon when criticising the in-group
because that's what rationality is, right? not being able to say that the very obvious cult is in fact a cult, because people might get mad at you
So much signalling going on in that post and in the comments.
> I vouch that this person is both a LW user who has written IMO some good posts and a member of in-person rationalist/longtermist/EA communities who is in good standing.
>I vouch that this person is both a LW user who has written IMO some good posts
should be obvious just by observing their inability to say what they mean or get anywhere near the point
exactly! they're not actually getting people to be more rational, just to exhibit the *aesthetic* of rationality as exemplified in a bunch of boring, long blog posts written 10+ years ago
Re: taking over countries. Did they think about how the armed forces of the world’s major nations would respond to such an Incident?
Do they understand they have few allies besides Thiel
I think the plan was more like . . . get elected legitimately into positions of power but secretly be in league behind the scenes or whatever
you know, shit I joked about with my friends when i was like 14
Given all the other obvious scientology parallels, they probably heard about scientology successfully infiltrating governments and thought that they could do the same thing, but far more successfully via the super power of rationality.
I notice that I would feel very positively about Leverage as it’s
portrayed here if there weren’t relationships with multiple younger
subordinates (e.g. if the leader had been monogamously married), and as
it is I feel mildly negative about it on net.
when can we have a trad cult. this is the wrong kind of
trad.
> why after all that work and money spent, after all the grandiose secret plans, there is still no tangible output.
Doesn't that just sum up "rationalism" as a whole though? Or are we counting long and pointless blog posts as "tangible output" now?
That is because we are wrong, Rationalism isnt a cult, it is a cult generator. Just as silicon valley is set up to (or morphed into) a culture/place where a specific type of tech company (already a bit cultlike) pops up, LW creates or pushed people into cults. (Or at least, that is a random thought I just got)
I’ve also heard people who did lots of charting [new therapy method
developed by the cult leader] within Leverage report that it led to
dissociation and fragmentation, that they have found difficult to
reverse.
It’s obvious that a core tenet of rationalism that if you’re a
middle-aged dude, it’s an imperative to use your rational powers to bang
20-year-old chicks. That’s just science Bayes.
Sooooo… Almost exactly Scientology. Like, seriously, the description is practically identical.
“The high-order bit”?
I just felt something inside of me die.
Showing off your … questionable judgment about what the significantly bad aspects of the situation are, did you have to talk about it like it’s fucking microcontroller assembly language?
It’s not a complete theory of psychology without a Wheatstone bridge.
The fact that they start with such a matter-of-fact tone:
and then lead into shit like
when can we have a trad cult. this is the wrong kind of trad.
[deleted]
Surprised the Bay Area rationalists are willing to tolerate competing cults, like, those are recruits thay could be joining CFAR/MIRI
Fun fact, gullible doesnt have a wikipedia page.
wtf
hat are we going to do tonight?
At least, compared to scientology it doesn’t try to destroy its critics. Yet.
Haha of course.
Also, why do Rationalists sound like middle managers?
It’s obvious that a core tenet of rationalism that if you’re a middle-aged dude, it’s an imperative to use your rational powers to bang 20-year-old chicks. That’s just
scienceBayes.Jesus motherfucking Christ on a pogo stick
This is less Noah Wyle content than I was hoping for