NB: I will not perform sleuthing, i.e. reading up on this guy or anything he wrote. I don't think it's worth it

Pretty sure if I asked ChatGPT about essay writing tips or what the best essay ever looked like, it would be more coherent than this rancid melange.

Oh, absolutely. I didn't have the time to investigate her position and whether or not it was a resignation situation. I was mainly trying to show how Scott misses the point entirely and doesn't understand how power works in as few words as I could get away with.

Thanks for the added context, though; it is an excellent point. Someone in Oxman's position is insulated from the kinds of power plays that can oust people in positions like Gay, which Scott does not recognise at all.

Let's get that thread going!

While I don’t listen to any “narrative play” podcasts (as I’ve heard them labelled as) I do listen to an amount of improv based podcasts. So on some level I understand the appeal. Also if you like comic books or blaseball or anything lore-heavy, that would be adjacent to narrative play.

Let’s plays are speedrun adjacent so I also kinda like them. That being said that’s just what I get out of them. Everything I enjoy I have in mind that it ain’t for everyone (boy I wish it were for more people though…)

There's a fine line between "no kinkshaming" and Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance

OTOH the format reminds me of having to read the pesterchum parts of homestuck, which is why I stopped reading it

Instead of aping Jeff Bezos he is aping other bald luminary Moby

(yes, tho i was more making a joke about how “nazism” is shorthand for “national socialism”)

prefacing this with IANALCUM (i am not a legit cult understanding mechanism)

I imagine it has been a cult from the start, or at least the primordial soup of factors before any of this hit the internet in earnest had all the right ingredients for a cult:

• A leader claiming to have nigh omnipotence, and some version of high charisma amongst potential followers (Yud, who despite everything, is charismatic within the confines of the ratsphere)
• A framework of lore (in this case rationalism) in which recruits are to be indoctrinated and taught how to think
• An upwards power structure in said lore that concentrates authority at the apex of the heirarchy (iq as intelligence metric, blindly doing what higher iq people say)
• Purity tests that create a positive feedback cycle that reinforces adherence to doctrine (either you believe yud about many worlds/AGI/whatever and are on the road to smartness, or you don’t and you will be cast out of the ratsphere)

I mean the list goes on. As to when it became culty? To use a trusty thought experiment, it’s the paradox of the heap.

As the originator of this comment chain I’m gonna count this as a coup.

I may have accidentally steelmanned robots building robots (pitching RBR for short) in my head picturing those robot arms they have in car factories.