The story goes that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the second draft of "Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde" in less than a week while buzzing on cocaine. The Rationalists just write obnoxious blog posts.

Every time I read the words "Dimes Square" a red mist descends

Yeah, but there was a lot of blood under the bridge before they could make a truce. But I'd never heard of the truce, that's beautiful. ETA: sadly it seems the truce didn't hold more than 10 years, which is still pretty good. The original Israel-Egypt treaty it was based on seems to have held for about 4 years

This is literally the same conversation therapy approach they use against gay people lol* the idea is that people believe they're gay because they are insecure about not being traditionally masculine or feminine enough (usually due to a bad relationship with their parents) and if they just learn how to be masc enough/fem enough then they'll be able to be heterosexual.

*kill me now

I'm really sorry. During 2018 Irish feminists were really looking to Poland, there was even an Irish "Strike for Repeal" modelled on the Polish women's strike. Horrific stories are leaking out from America too. I really think Irish abortion activists need to do more to show solidarity with countries where abortion is threatened or banned.

Eurgh!

LessWrong and EA can help people to understand logical fallacies, but they can't help people to actually understand their emotions. In fact, the culture around them encourages adherents to feel contempt for their "irrational" emotions and for people who are led by emotion.

Of course it is extremely unpleasant to repress all your emotions, and it is ultimately impossible to do so all the time. How did the LessWrong community solve this problem? Its users limited their emotional expression to acceptable forms and acceptable targets, and expressed their emotions through cult accepted techniques like taking drugs, having sex, cyberbullying leftists and writing really long blogposts.

Like most subcultures, it's the powerful and respected people in EA who determine the dominant norms. With pretty much every leading EAist a middle-class dominant-culture American man who works in tech and wishes feminists would quit whining, it should be no surprise that the norms they created are stereotypically, nay, toxically white and masculine.

A sleazy, woman-harassing psychiatrist who gives out dodgy prescriptions is the real face of EA. Just all the negative stereotypes associated with the 60s counterculture/New Left, with none of the redeeming features.

I spent ages writing a comment that I accidentally deleted (>_>) so apologies if this is a bit too long:

I've read that a lot of violent urban crime in the US takes place in poor, majority-minority or majority-black neighbourhoods. Those neighbourhoods are "overpoliced and underprotected" areas where cops rarely respond to crime reports & rarely go unless they are conducting a raid in SWAT gear, & people rarely make crime reports either because they don't expect the police to do anything or expect them to make things worse if they do turn up.

Increase police funding, decrease police funding, it doesn't change the approach the police take to those neighbourhoods & it doesn't change the social, political or historic factors that determine the relationship between neighbourhoods and the police.

& re: defunding, surely a libertarian should understand that government money is not a bottomless bucket....Some (not all) cities facing budget issues have increased police funding while cutting mental healthcare, social services or other parts of the safety net. this has 2 effects

• 1. more people fall through the safety net, resulting in more crime. Poverty/adverse childhood experiences/untreated (mental) health problems => drug addiction & crime => traumatized, impoverished, addicted, parents who have to fight just to stay out of jail & keep custody of their kids => adverse childhood experiences as their kids grow up with absent, neglectful or bad parents &/or are farmed out to relatives, foster homes, shelters for homeless youth or juvenile detention with all the potential for abuse, trauma and induction into crime that those environments offer => the cycle continues. People talk about "virtuous spirals" in economics and sociology - well, this is the opposite.
• 2. Police become first responders to every social problem as funding for emergency services and social services are cut - some crisis lines also automatically call the police. Police appear at scenes of poverty, homelessness, overdose or illness where their training is basically useless & where all they can really do is put someone in a jail cell or give them a fine. Worse than that, because of the "thin blue line" mentality (& "killology" style training), police turn up heavily armed at scenes where someone is suicidal, in severe distress or just behaving strangely, believing that it is better for them to kill that person than to be injured themselves. In "overpoliced and underprotected" areas, cops come in heavily armed, wearing kevlar or swat gear, & act more like an occupying military than police. Disabled & mentally ill people - particularly disabled or mentally ill black people - have been brutalized and killed by the police in these areas because their difference is seen as a sign of danger by trigger-happy police. And people who are the subject of repeated callouts due to mental health issues, addiction or minor crimes are treated with contempt by cops. All coppers aren't bastards to everyone, all the time, but the people who see the most of them see the worst of them.

San Marino pre-date the EU and most of the nations in it - they claim to be the oldest republic in the world. The techbros don't have history on their side. Actually, moving en masse to a micronation like San Marino then taking control of the government and the media wouldn't be a bad way to get their libertarian/fascist paradise - it's what the Scientologists tried to do in Clearwater, Florida. The downside to creating your libertarian/fascist state is that you then have to live in it, though, and it sucks.

Yeah it is the classic cult characteristic. Synanon members putting a snake in someone's letterbox is another example. Also Hare Krishnas, MOVE, etc etc.

...no?!? ETA: you could get the "learning small skills" benefit this LessWrongie claims to have gotten by, I dunno, learning how to play chess. Without having to enter a Scientology org. And they wanted to do more courses with the Scientology public speaking course???

It's not a cult folks, it's definitely not a cult....