The more I hear about #EffectiveAltruism, #Rationalism, and the followers thereof, the luckier I feel that I didn't accept a Silicon Valley job when I was young.

That shit is beyond insane, and I think the person that I was when I was considering SV jobs would fall for it super hard, because I was a naive arrogant little shit.

"A couple years ago, Oliver Habryka, the CEO of Lightcone, a company affiliated with LessWrong, published an essay asking why people in the rationalism, effective altruism and AI communities “sometimes go crazy”.

Habryka was writing not long after Sam Bankman-Fried, a major funder of AI research, had begun a spectacular downfall that would end in his conviction for $10bn of fraud. Habryka speculated that when a community is defined by a specific, high-stakes goal (such as making sure humanity isn’t destroyed by AI), members feel pressure to conspicuously live up to the “demanding standard” of that goal.

Habryka used the word “crazy” in the non-clinical sense, to mean extreme or questionable behavior. Yet during the period when Ziz was making her way toward what she would call “the dark side”, the Berkeley AI scene seemed to have a lot of mental health crises.

“This community was rife with nervous breakdown,” a rationalist told me, in a sentiment others echoed, “and it wasn’t random.” People working on the alignment problem “were having these psychological breakdowns because they were in this environment”. There were even suicides, including of two people who were part of the Zizians’ circle.

Wolford, the startup founder and former rationalist, described a chicken-and-egg situation: “If you take the earnestness that defines this community, and you look at civilization-ending risks of a scale that are not particularly implausible at this point, and you are somebody with poor emotional regulation, which also happens to be pretty common among the people that we’re talking about – yeah, why wouldn’t you freak the hell out? It keeps me up at night, and I have stuff to distract me.”

A high rate of pre-existing mental illnesses or neurodevelopmental disorders was probably also a factor, she and others told me."

https://www.theguardian.com/global/ng-interactive/2025/mar/05/zizians-artificial-intelligence

@jnl
This interesting article doesn't really connect the dots from the Zizian cult to the Vermont shooting very clearly, but it's there.

Vermont Digger - a very responsible muckraking news site / has had excellent coverage.
https://vtdigger.org/2025/01/28/federal-officials-link-third-person-of-interest-to-vermont-border-patrol-agents-shooting/

Intriguing/horrifying connections to Elon musk, Peter thiel, etc. in here as well.
#rationalism #truecrime

lol of course the rationalist reporter kelsey piper supports james damore. rationalists have never met a sexist/racist/etc computer toucher they didn't like. #rationalism #lesswrong #effectivealtruism

Q: Would you say our #CurrentTimes will mark the #end of all the #ideals that came from the #Enlightenment era, including #rationalism, #empiricism, #progress, #tolerance and #fraternity, #constitutional #government, and the formal #separation of #church and state?
A:

The rationalism and dualism of Descartes… – philosophy indefinitely…

Descartes is usually considered a starting point of modern philosophy, he was a mathematician, scientist and philosopher, with a Jesuit education and training as an army engineer. He was one of the philosophers who attacked scholasticism in light of the new Copernican/Galilean science... philosophy indefinitely #rationalism #dualism #renedescartes #philosophy #historyofphilosophy #science #descartes…

https://formuchdeliberation.wordpress.com/2024/10/31/the-rationalism-and-dualism-of-descartes-philosophy-indefinitely/

Fight me! Kant was just a regular rationalist in the vein of Leibniz. His work is way overrated, and furthermore, it's wrong. #Kant #rationalism #philosophy

Cucù
#roma #rome #eur #esposizione #rationalism #architecture #architettura #razionalismo #palazzodellaciviltaitaliana #palazzodellaciviltadellavoro #quadratodellaconcordia #colosseoquadrato

The crux of the rationalist/empiricist debate lies in how we explain our possession of ideas that seemingly could not come from experience, such as the ideas of infinity or perfection... #historyofphilosophy #intellectualtraditions #johnlocke #empiricism #georgeberkeley #Idealism #rationalism #metaphysics #epistemology #philosophy #dualism #experience https://philosophyindefinitely.wordpress.com/2020/08/21/lockes-empiricism-berkeleys-idealism/

#ReneDescartes was a mathematician, scientist and philosopher, with a Jesuit education and training as an army engineer. He was one of the philosophers who attacked scholasticism in light of the new Copernican/Galilean science... #mindbody #descartes #dualism #rationalism #foundationalism #philosophy #historyofphilosophy #intellectualtraditions #Scholasticism #copernicanrevolution
https://philosophyindefinitely.wordpress.com/2020/08/14/the-rationalism-and-dualism-of-descartes/

New in our electronic #collection:

The Building Blocks of Thought. A Rationalist Account of the Origins of Concepts

https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/92579/1/9780192898838.pdf

Here's the last core concept video in a series of 5 on Karl Popper's "Towards A Rational Theory Of Tradition". This one looks at the distinction he draws between traditions and institutions and how individuals figure into them

https://youtu.be/2Vagxh7cClo
#Video #Popper #Tradition #Philosophy #Rationalism #Institutions #Science

Here's the first core concept video in the series I'm producing on Karl Popper's essay "Towards A Rational Theory Of Tradition", this one looking at his distinction between different attitudes one can adopt towards tradition(s)

https://youtu.be/SgSr1vYrhkY
#Video #Popper #Tradition #Philosophy #Rationalism

There has been an intersection of modern empiricism and rationalism of the enlightenment in the synthesis affected by Immanuel Kant, out of this grew a distinction between two methodologies that have persisted in philosophy... read more at philosophy indefinitely #historyofphilosophy #empiricism #rationalism #epistemology #FrancisBacon #johnlocke #ImmanuelKant #ReneDescartes #DavidHume #Leibniz #johnstuartmill #spinoza #BertrandRussell #Compatibilism #philosophyofscience https://philosophyindefinitely.wordpress.com/2020/07/11/19th-century-empiricism/

"For Plato, rationalists and mystics can walk the same path."

Why did such a keen proponent of reason turn to the Eleusinian Mysteries to explain his ideas about knowledge?

#Culture #Psychology #Philosophy #Plato #Rationalism #Mysticism

https://psyche.co/ideas/for-plato-rationalists-and-mystics-can-walk-the-same-path