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SBF was a poster on the AstralCodexTen comments section? (https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/znlkv0/sbf_was_a_poster_on_the_astralcodexten_comments/)
posted on December 16, 2022 06:32 PM by u/GaiusLeviathanXV
49

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/peer-review-request-depression/comments#comment-2051613

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-families/comments#comment-3559585

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-families/comments#comment-3560006

edit: To confirm that this wasn’t someone who just changed their name to “SBF” after the FTX collapse, I checked the earliest internet archive version (May 26, 2021):

https://web.archive.org/web/20210526035503/https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/peer-review-request-depression

u/birdcontent 31 points at 1671215961.000000

lol holy shit the Emsam one

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u/PragmaticBoredom 28 points at 1671221026.000000
Emsam is actually a fine antidepressant. It’s basically an MAOI with a delivery system adapted to reduce the dietary interactions. The whole notion that it was a stimulant or a dopamine drug that made people do risky things was fabricated to fit a narrative. At the doses used in the patch form, it inhibits both MAO-A and MAO-B. It’s not commonly used, partially due to the expense. I do wonder how many Emsam users are rolling their eyes at the silly media portrayals of their rather unexciting antidepressant patch, though.
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u/pusillanimouslist 13 points at 1671234557.000000
Or worried. More than one safe drug has been withdrawn after a good moral panic.
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u/PragmaticBoredom 8 points at 1671240395.000000
The transdermal selegiline (Emsam) is quite different than the oral selegiline due to the different ROA and huge differences in first pass metabolism. It’s frustrating to watch so many journalists Google selegiline and draw wacky conclusions because they don’t understand the difference. Scott’s article was one of the worst offenders on this topic, having completely missed the fact that Emsam patch dosing was designed to inhibit both MAO-A and MAO-B considering the higher bioavailability. Nevertheless, it spread like wildfire on social media and now everyone is convinced Emsam is maybe some pro-gambling stimulant drug thing.
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u/pusillanimouslist 10 points at 1671241457.000000
Scott fucking it up is much less forgivable, given his profession.
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u/Soyweiser 5 points at 1671304590.000000
A common theme.
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u/ErsatzHaderach 11 points at 1671235547.000000
"Selegiline" is definitely in my top-5 of "psychotropic drugs that sound like a magical elven princess"
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u/practicing_vaxxer 5 points at 1671301500.000000
The opposite of Seregil, the fantasy hero who sounds like an antidepressant.
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u/GaiusLeviathanXV 26 points at 1671216214.000000
Puts "The Psychopharmacology Of The FTX Crash" in another context, doesn't it?
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u/Soyweiser 31 points at 1671217050.000000
Makes you wonder how much he really knows about it all. Lol if we end up with 'It was secretly Scott who provided all of the top of EA with the drugs'.
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u/Not_FinancialAdvice 6 points at 1671247071.000000
LOL if it turns out most of the rationalist luminaries were ~~coked~~ MAOI-ed out crazies.
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u/ErsatzHaderach 16 points at 1671216957.000000
every time I hear MAOI it sounds to me like slashfic about 1940s China
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u/breckenridgeback 3 points at 1671231010.000000
Or indigenous New Zealanders.
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u/pusillanimouslist 2 points at 1671234517.000000
Well, thanks for implanting that in my head too.
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u/maroon_sweater 3 points at 1671246861.000000
a genre i now desire not but what there weren't some deeply homoerotic mao era films, i love that shit [e.g.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Stage_Sisters) which the dude who directed farewell my concubine *totally* ripped off
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u/Rochereau-dEnfer 3 points at 1671327804.000000
Why would his "vegan" ass care about reactions to cheese? He doesn't seem to have enough awareness of other humans to think of that as a problem for others if cheese-eating wasn't a concern for him...
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u/YuleBeFineIPromise 31 points at 1671220754.000000

Not a surprise. Scott directly pleaded with his audience to donate to some no-hope congressional candidate in Oregon which SBF had already donated millions to. The guy got trounced too.

https://www.opb.org/article/2022/04/25/what-does-a-crypto-tycoon-want-with-oregons-new-congressional-district/

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-217

2: The effective altruists I know are really excited about Carrick Flynn for Congress (he’s running as a Democrat in Oregon). Carrick has fought poverty in Africa, worked on biosecurity and pandemic prevention since 2015, and is a world expert on the intersection of AI safety and public policy (see eg this paper he co-wrote with Nick Bostrom). He also supports normal Democratic priorities like the environment, abortion rights, and universal health care (see here for longer list). See also this endorsement from biosecurity grantmaker Andrew SB.

Although he’s getting support from some big funders, campaign finance privileges small-to-medium-sized donations from ordinary people. If you want to support him, you can see a list of possible options here - including donations. You can donate max 900 for the primary, plus another 900 for the general that will be refunded if he doesn’t make it. If you do donate, it would be extra helpful if the money came in before a key reporting deadline March 31.

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u/Thanlis 28 points at 1671236801.000000

Jesus god the comment two down:

This is going to sound crazy but there were many eugenics research programs in the USA before that Nazis made it uncool.

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u/blakestaceyprime 16 points at 1671248408.000000
Gosh darn those Nazis, making things totally unhip.
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u/wholetyouinhere 17 points at 1671229027.000000

The real surprise would have been if he wasn’t a commenter.

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u/Soyweiser 21 points at 1671216811.000000

Lol, how does this keep getting worse for them? Drugs, eugenics it keeps getting better (better for the lols, it isn’t great at all that all these rich tech people are into this). Forget knowing this guys psych, Scott had direct interactions.

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u/GaiusLeviathanXV 37 points at 1671217149.000000
Don't fool yourself, the rationalist community has been hiding skeletons in their closet the whole time. FTX is just the first skeleton that got out, because (unlike their other scandals) the victims are people outside of their community who they can't control.
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u/Soyweiser 22 points at 1671218147.000000
Nah, this isn't even the first skeleton (lets not forget all the sexual abuse the bits we know off at least for example), but it is the biggest.
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u/GaiusLeviathanXV 35 points at 1671219484.000000
The sexual abuse has not received mainstream media attention the way that SBF's involvement with Effective Altruism has. Yes, people like us know about it, but by comparison [EA has become well-known enough to be the butt of The Onion's jokes.](https://www.theonion.com/what-to-know-about-the-collapse-of-ftx-1849786911)
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u/NoahTheDuke 23 points at 1671233770.000000
> Q: What is the “effective altruism” philosophy Bankman-Fried practices? > A: A movement to allocate one’s money to where it can do the most benefit for oneself. This is vicious.
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u/foxaru 10 points at 1671234608.000000
effectively bodied
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u/Soyweiser 9 points at 1671219767.000000
Ow yeah totally fair. I wasn't thinking about all the jocks in mainstream media.
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u/saucerwizard 5 points at 1671226181.000000
I absolutely hope the sexual abuse shit gets journalist eyes on it.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 7 points at 1671234751.000000
Plenty journalists have had eyes on it, having it out there is a very different matter
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u/saucerwizard 4 points at 1671234795.000000
No shit!? I’m doing my best to keep it out there fwiw
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u/pusillanimouslist 7 points at 1671234629.000000
I was going to say, wasn’t there a rape or statutory rape issue with one of the EA groups?
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u/saucerwizard 10 points at 1671235107.000000
Yeah - big yud himself. https://fredwynne.medium.com/an-open-letter-to-vitalik-buterin-ce4681a7dbe https://twitter.com/techdominatrix/status/1593515557332348928?s=46&t=dg9BL5FF_hHXOf-3twGcUA also the pedo stuff in general seems to be a recurring thing…
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u/nacholicious 18 points at 1671238116.000000
I mean if their philosophy is that neither climate change or nuclear war is a big deal, then that doesn't bode well for their moral stance on pedophilia
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u/Soyweiser 11 points at 1671240735.000000
Look clearly billionaires like to be courted in castles, now we just need some people to court them with. Lets be effective and see if there are any billionaire courters in the past who already figured this out. [Ah perfect.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein) (this is obv a joke post, Rationalists would come at this position from first principles, no previous exp needed). E: Btw one of the regular sources in that article is Ziz and not sure how reliable they are. Never looked into this story myself, but half of it being Ziz fills me with doubt. (Important note to this, that even if people are not mentally stable or something like that, doesn't mean they are not discriminated against or abused (in fact iirc it makes it more likely) so make of that what you will. I firmly are in the I don't know camp on the pedo stuff (the transpobic stuff seems more clear to me)).
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u/saucerwizard 5 points at 1671254206.000000
MIRI did take Epstein money post-conviction fwiw. Ziz apparently died in a mysterious boating accident a few weeks back. :/ Even if the Ziz stuff is cut out - theres still the matter of the facebook screencaps.
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u/Soyweiser 6 points at 1671284152.000000
Well, I do know there are at least pedos commenting in the slatestarcodex reddit (or there were at least) so I'm not ruling it out. A place like LW attracts certain types of 'out of the ordinary' people after all. (See the pua people, and the other sexual abuse). I just didn't see a smoking gun. And the descriptions of the screencaps don't seem to match the content of the screencaps, and a lot of the evidence is hinted at but not linked. (linking to a wikipedia definition and not an actual admittance of the crimes was a bit of a dubious move. So the longer I spend on this the less im convinced (I also don't really want to dig deeper in this, because looking for hard proof somebody fucked an underage people is creeping me out (there is imho an important thing to say about this and hardcore pedohunters but lets not go there. These kinds of people is also why im a bit weary to jump on the 'they are pedos' accusations)). But what is clear (which already was clear in the past) is that the important people in MIRI are using their positions of power to sleep with other people in MIRI which is a big no imho (so, if it did happen it would not have been a big surprise). E: That the wishes of the survivors are not considered, or they don't even get a voice (as far as I could tell) in this document is also a bit dubious for me. Esp as im a non-neutral outsider to all this. (but even without the sexual abuse, they should all be kept away from minors, with their quasireligious cult creation tactics).
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u/saucerwizard 2 points at 1671284564.000000
Good points. I want to note I didn’t go looking for this shit.
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u/Soyweiser 1 points at 1671285125.000000
Yeah, I just followed the links in the linked article. (I also included an edit, a thing I wanted to talk about but while musing about it I forgot to include it. The survivors angle. Anyway, I was supposed to do things irl argh).
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u/GorillasAreForEating 2 points at 1671262242.000000
>Ziz apparently died in a mysterious boating accident a few weeks back. Yikes, where did you hear that?
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u/saucerwizard 2 points at 1671262670.000000
https://twitter.com/jessi_cata/status/1581009760991662081?s=46&t=lSGuteeYtqE664l6mCVmbA https://casetext.com/case/danielson-v-cnty-of-sonoma the legal case
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u/saucerwizard 4 points at 1671263265.000000
https://twitter.com/jessi_cata/status/1593783526859603970?s=46&t=lSGuteeYtqE664l6mCVmbA Ok scratch the above, shit got real weird.
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u/Soyweiser 1 points at 1671282814.000000
Like wtf weird indeed.
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u/AlienneLeigh 1 points at 1671767361.000000
She \*what\*? Holy shit.
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u/saucerwizard 2 points at 1671795410.000000
Apparently got arrested at the scene of a murder. I’m not sure wtf is going on.
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u/DELETED 0 points at 1671240754.000000
[removed]
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u/Soyweiser 1 points at 1671241650.000000
You are the worst. Time to opt out.
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u/saucerwizard 7 points at 1671238767.000000
They uh flock around the postrat tradwives. Its fucking disturbing to notice once you’ve caught on.
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u/N0_B1g_De4l 3 points at 1671225660.000000
I think it is fair to say this is the first one that "got out" in terms of receiving mainstream attention. Certainly this is the first one I've seen significant discussion of outside of SneerClub.
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u/finfinfin 9 points at 1671223209.000000
"yes, we have noticed the skulls"
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u/ErsatzHaderach 19 points at 1671217719.000000
as a jenny-come-lately on this sub: whence objection to the drug use? is it the supercilious rat/EA "unlike the *plebs*, my noggin is *optimized*" attitude? pressuring people to use things and/or use them dangerously?
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u/DELETED 20 points at 1671218925.000000
Offtopic: that username is rad
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u/ErsatzHaderach 11 points at 1671219352.000000
aw, thanks :)
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u/Soyweiser 28 points at 1671218352.000000
I'm not opposed to drug use, I just frown at 'we need to do drugs to become more effective drones in the capitalist red queen rat race'. So sorry yeah, I was way to flippant talking about drug use there. (E: and well, if I was managing billions of dollars, I don't think people would really like it if I was on mind altering drugs while working(\*). Doing meth to clean out your sock drawer is fine). Anyway, there are basically two sort of transhumanist camps, the one is 'optimize your body to code javascript faster' and the other is 'Hot hot-swappable non-euclidean sex organs!'. (The 'moah javascript' people often are really scared of blue hair). \*: Of course, I dont want one person to be responsible for dealing with such high amounts of money at all but that is a whole different point.
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u/finfinfin 22 points at 1671223090.000000
>Trans transhumanists: omg what if hot-swappable body parts? Real functioning tails and cat ears? Permanently purple hair? >Cis transhumanists: with this nootropic stack and optimized nutrient slurry my tragic meat machine is 8% more efficient at converting calories into javascript https://twitter.com/unknownmetric/status/957995279092875264
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u/Soyweiser 4 points at 1671225155.000000
Yes, I might have stolen that idea from somebody else. The 'afraid of bluehair' thing is via a tweet of Roko (Yes that one) expressed some weird hate regarding blue haired people. But as his account was suspended I can't find proof of that. (wonder if his weird move [to tweeting conspiracy theory like anti vax shit](https://archive.vn/yVD7N) (scroll down) and great reset bs was a part of it).
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u/finfinfin 7 points at 1671225392.000000
it's a damn good tweet and the tragic meat machine bit lives rent free in my head the whole "danger hair" thing is incredibly pathetic. oh no! dye!!!
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u/Soyweiser 7 points at 1671226356.000000
nine inch nails - tragic meat machine
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u/Not_FinancialAdvice 4 points at 1671247500.000000
>managing billions of dollars > Real functioning tails and cat ears? LOL some people would be stoked for a catgirl ETF. Ticker symbol: NYAA
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u/ErsatzHaderach 13 points at 1671218820.000000
ah OK gotcha, that makes sense.
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u/Soyweiser 17 points at 1671219080.000000
You were right to call me out on my conservative stance on drug use btw. So yeah, I suck and let me desire to sneer overwhelm my desire to push for good.
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u/birdcontent 6 points at 1671231099.000000
for me it's a mix of "nightmare blunt rotation" and the two tendencies you describe; I don't object to drugs per se
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u/DELETED 3 points at 1671369632.000000
1) Experiment with whatever you like, but don't do it while also taking on huge amounts of responsibility and be shocked when it fails. It's one things for the r/strongerbyscience guys to try out all kinds of weird shit to see if it works, that's how you find new stuff! Maybe the self-selected guinea pigs get injured, maybe they get jacked, after they do we will know, we will have advanced human knowledge on the topic. If an NFL team trainer tries to put everyone on a new weird experimental program, and everyone gets injured and it tanks the season, that was a bad application of the same idea, a failure to understand where to try things. This relates to the general idea of risk-neutrality and the attempt to get on the avant-garde edge of everything. Rationalist/EA types don't really understand the difference, everyone is both experimenter and experiment and all prior knowledge/wisdom is thrown out the window. SBF is the most prominent public figure to come out of the movement, and he failed in the massive responsibilities he took on, part of which was arguably the drug use. He was experimenting with his brain while also betting billions of dollars of other people's money on the function of his brain. 2) Believing that humanity is just desperate to be optimized, that things like your normal emotions can be ironed out by the right chemicals, is anti-human in the extreme. It's taking human experience in all its technicolor glory and believing that you can selectively remove parts of it while keeping others without betraying the beauty of the whole.
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u/ErsatzHaderach 2 points at 1671389115.000000
I don't think "success" in terms of SBF's motives would have turned out much better for anyone. Emotions are inextricable from how we as humans operate; on that I very much agree. Pharmaceuticals are best used not to stifle emotion but to refine the way we express and respond to it.
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u/GaiusLeviathanXV 5 points at 1671234066.000000
I made another post about his interactions with Caroline Ellison, turns out she responded to a post of his asking about overleveraging in finance: https://speakertoyesterday.tumblr.com/post/700814996538523648/worldoptimization-slatestarscratchpad-all
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u/Soyweiser 6 points at 1671234802.000000
More about her than him but: > I’m not an expert on traditional finance oof. And: > ... or something and they really don’t want to lose all of their money. (Of course those people are lame and not EAs; this blog endorses double-or-nothing coin flips and high leverage.)
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