An opposition between altruism and selfishness seems important to Yud. 23-year-old Yud said “I was pretty much entirely altruistic in terms of raw motivations” and his Pathfinder fic has a whole theology of selfishness. His protagonists have a deep longing to be world-historical figures and be admired by the world. Dreams of controlling and manipulating people to get what you want are woven into his community like mould spores in a condemned building.
Has anyone unpicked this? Is talking about selfishness and altrusm common in LessWrong like pretending to use Bayesian statistics?
Just this week Scott Alexander wrote a long ‘joke’ about how the fe-males just want to attach themselves to a high-status man like (guess who) Curtis Yarvin (bonus self-own: the joke implies that Curtis Yarvin is not inviting the narrator to parties any more) https://archive.is/akSnc
Yud has distanced himself from some of the things he posted before LessWrong, but he keeps citing the Pathfinder fic on twitter (here in 2022) (here in 2025)