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Form 990 for these organizations mentions many names I am not familiar with such as Tyler Emerson. Many people in these spaces have romantic or housing partnerships with each other, and many attend meetups and cons together. A MIRI staffer claims that Peter Thiel funded them from 2005 to 2009, we now know when Jeffrey Epstein donated. Publishing such a thing is not very nice since these are living persons frequently accused of questionable behavior which never goes to court (and some may have left the movement), but does a concise list of dates, places, and known connections exist?

Maybe that social graph would be more of a dot. So many of these people date each other and serve on each other's boards and live in the SF Bay Area, Austin TX, the NYC area, or Oxford, England. On the enshittified site people talk about their Twitter and Tumblr connections.

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One thing that really shifted my perspective was realizing how many of the people and institutions in these rationalist and rationalist-adjacent social networks are funded either directly or indirectly by Peter Thiel - even people who seem to be ideologically opposed on the surface. I wasted so much of my time arguing with people on forums about their ideology only to realize that I had been hacking at the branches instead of the roots: Peter Thiel's money.

(Not that I mean to put all the blame on Thiel but he's clearly a big and highly connected node in this network)

[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 5 points 5 days ago

Pinkerite is interested in what RationalWiki calls the ThielSphere. I think its likely that the two Scotts or some of the Jane Street people have connections to Thiel which they don't talk about on the Internet.

Reason (American Libertarians) and Vox often introduce LW and EA people into US mainstream media.

[-] gerikson@awful.systems 3 points 5 days ago

Jane Street has an interesting cachet in at least my nerd circles because they require everyone they hire to learn Ocaml[1]. It would not surprise me if they are fash-adjacent, but only because I believe everyone in Wall Street is fash-adjacent.


[1] I think - maybe it's only the technical staff

[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 3 points 5 days ago

Jane Street have an 'old money' secretive culture but have employed SBF, Caroline Ellision, and Kelsey Piper's patron James McClabe. McClabe created a $37 million foundation to fund EA causes (although he spends more on campaign contributions than Vox Future Perfect and GiveWell). Given the 80,000 hours side of Effective Altruism I suspect Jane Street have other friends of Yud who post pseudonymously if at all.

this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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SneerClub

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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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