[eemax]

> The Rational Conclusion of Doomerism Is Violence

No it isn't. The most prominent "doomer" has a strong grasp and deep, wholehearted appreciation for the the principles of liberalism and the rule of law:

https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/2043601524815716866

Which the author of this piece of slop appears to lack.

[arduanika]

It is true that only Yudkowsky gets to say what the rational conclusion of his ideas are. Nobody else gets to speculate. Only the pope of rationalism, because he's the rational one here. See? It's right there in the name!

> this piece of slop

Citation needed. Or maybe we need to update the title of that children's book for internet arguments: Everyone Who Disagrees With Me Is Slop.

The Yud post you linked is not slop, either. It's not LLM-generated, nor is it insincere. But I do have to point out: He's the one who is slinging the tsunami of words here, not Alexander Campbell.

[handoflixue]

I think it's rather relevant that the community itself rejects the logic you're trying to impose on it. You can straw-man any sort of conclusion on to any sort of philosophy. This will not actually help you much at all if you're trying to predict what people will actually do.

If the only people that reach your conclusion are ones that don't actually subscribe to the philosophy, then it doesn't matter, because no one is actually acting on those conclusions.

And if we want to hold people responsible because others pervert their ideas, then we have to accept that Jesus Christ was a horrific, evil person for preaching "Love thy Neighbor"; just look at the crusades that were somehow the "rational conclusion" of that philosophy!

[arduanika]

> "If the only people that reach your conclusion are ones that don't actually subscribe to the philosophy, then it doesn't matter, because no one is actually acting on those conclusions."

What an odd thing to say right after young Mr. Moreno-Gama reached that conclusion and did subscribe to the philosophy, when it does matter, because he did actually act on those conclusions.

How odd to introduce a hypothetical that amounts to, "what if this philosophy didn't ever lead to violence?", right after it did.

Or are you trying to pull a No True Scotsman on me here?

[handoflixue]

Every major philosophical group has killed people. Whatever beliefs you profess to hold, people have killed for them. If the presence of one or two deranged outliers is enough to reach reasonable conclusions about a group, then we can write off absolutely every single major contribution to philosophy, and conclude that having a philosophy leads only to violence and murder.

You have to understand basic statistics: is this group actually more dangerous than average? Do rationalists kill more than non-rationalists?

Or is the rational conclusion of non-rationalists also violence?

[arduanika]

None of this is responsive to my point in the comment you're responding to.

My point is, why would you be talking about a counterfactual world where people did not attempt to kill for this philosophy? Why would you be entertaining a categorical claim like, "the only people that reach your conclusion are ones that don't actually subscribe to the philosophy", when that claim is manifestly violated by a violent act just a few short days ago? How is it inconceivable to you that someone might read the dire doomer rhetoric in the way that Moreno-Gama did?

The only way you could write something like that is if your head is in the sand. I am willing to entertain your relativism, your base rate logic, your analogy to Jesus, sure, obviously there's some merit to that line of argument... but first you need to please pull your head out of the sand.

We can only talk about base rates if you stop trying to invalidate the data.

[handoflixue]

> We can only talk about base rates if you stop trying to invalidate the data.

Exactly! You keep trying to deny the base rates by ignoring the billions of people who don't commit violence, and focusing entirely on the tiny number of outliers who do commit violence.

If "a small number of members are willing to commit violence" is taken as evidence that the whole group is violent, then every Hacker News reader is a terrorist, every Hacker News poster is DEFINITELY a terrorist, and everyone who disagrees with me is a radically violent nihilist that wants to destroy civilization.

I do not thing there is a single large group you could find that has never once had a radical carry out violence in their name - people commit violence for Christianity, for the Ethical Treatment Of Animals, for Peace.

[eemax]

> It is true that only Yudkowsky gets to say what the rational conclusion of his ideas are. Nobody else gets to speculate. Only the pope of rationalism, because he's the rational one here. See? It's right there in the name!

No, I am saying that Yudkowsky's views are straightforwardly compatible with bedrock principles of liberalism, and the author of the piece fails to acknowledge that compatibility or grapple with them himself. It's not about "rationalism" or who is "allowed" to speculate.

I called it slop because it says false things that have the hallmark of LLM style, e.g.

> The Sequences build the liturgy: a small caste of correct thinkers, epistemically and morally superior, whose rationality entitles them to govern what the rest of humanity is allowed to build. It’s not a safety movement. It’s a priesthood with an origin story written in fanfiction.

[Apocryphon]

> the hallmark of LLM style

That's just because LLMs were likely trained on a decade plus of human-generated Medium, Substack, Quora, and LinkedIn post slop.