archive: https://archive.is/NSVXR
Oliver wrote an internal Lightcone Infrastructure memo that lists the top enemies of the Rationality movement. He saw fit to post his Enemies List to the site, because that’s a very normal thing to do.
no. 2 is a neoreactionary troll who ran a downvote bot in 2013-2014.
Emile Torres is only #3, sorry Emile some of us are just better at increasing existential risk
no. 4 is Ziz. I am officially considered worse than the literally murderous death cult.
what can i say some of us have just got it
also I trounce complete pikers like (checks notes) Peter Thiel
LessWrong used to call themselves a “phyg” in the hope that the word “cult” would not show up in Google so much as being associated with them
I’ve seen the same thing and it’s reassuring lol.
I lurk on subreddit drama and curated tumblr, and I feel like the common reaction to LW has gone from a few negative comments and “really? that’s crazy”'s five years ago to being much more aware. Years ago you’d see maybe one person familiar with them and then a couple people respond who are totally out of the loop and maybe you’d see one crazy rationalist chime in to nuh-uh them. Now, anything rationalist-related usually has a bunch of people bringing up the harry potter or acausal robot god stuff right away.
I use the tag feature a lot in RES to keep track of people who I like hearing what they have to say. Years ago I mostly saw the same names when LW stuff came up, but now there’s always a ton of people I’ve never seen before who are familiar with it.
It’s also reassuring because I really don’t want to be the person to say anything first and it’s easier to chime in on a discussion someone else has already started.
The problem with writing a Harry Potter fanfic as your cult recruitment tool is that you end up having written a Harry Potter fanfic as your cult recruitment tool.