also explicitly meant as rationalist esoterica.

Always a bad sign when people can’t just let a thing be a thing just for enjoyment, but see everything as the ‘hustle’ (for lack of a better word). I’m reminded of that dating profile we looked at which showed that 99% what he did was related to AI and AI doomerism, even the parties.

Yeah, but he used to have forums, and then a blog, and then no blog and then a blog again, and then a hidden blog etc. Think Howard has only a few minor credits on some games, he always came off as a bit of a weirdly combative nerd who thought he was right and the smartest in the room and didn’t get that people didn’t agree with his definitions/assumptions. He is a big idea guy for example. One of his comics was also called ‘the atheist, the agnostic and the asshole’ so yeah. The 00’s online comic world was something.

the hucksters attempt to inflate next.

Quantum, it has already started: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/07/cheating-on-quantum-computing-benchmarks.html

I never read 8bit. I read A Modest Destiny. Wonder how that guy is doing, he always was a bit weird and combative, but when he deleted his blog it was getting very early signs of right wing culture warrior bits (which was ironic considering he burned a us flag).

Yes but basic dnd does have a lot of racism build in, esp with Gygax not being great on that end (nits make lice he said about how it lawful for paladins to kill orc babies). They did drop the sexism pretty quickly, but no big suprise his daughters were not into it. It certainly helps with the whole hierarchical mindset. My int/level is higher than yours so im better than you stuff. And sadly a lot of people do have trouble keeping both seperate (and even that isn’t always ideal, esp in larps).

But yes this, considering the context ks def a bit of a case of some of their ideologies, or ideological fantasies bleeding through. (Esp considering, Yud has been corrected on his faulty understanding of genetics before).

Well if the bubble pops he will have to pivot to people who pivot. (That is what is going to suck when to bubble pops, so many people are going to lose their jobs, and I fear a lot of people holding the bags are not the ones who really should be punished the mosts (really hope not a lot of pension funds bought in). The stock market was a mistake).

Not sure if anybody noticed the last time, but so they get isekayed into a DND world, which famously runs on some weird form of fantasy feudalism and they expect a random high int person to rule the country somehow? What in the primogenitor is this stuff, you can’t just think yourself into being a king, that is one of the issues with monarchies.

E: ah no they are in a totalitarian state ruled by the literal forces of hell, places that totally praise merit based upwards mobility.

slaps moon You can make so much computronium from these atoms.

E: shit no that is wrong, I used the term computronium correctly, if it was Altman he would have called it unobtanium

Found a solution to the Fermi paradox, and solved the problem of all the ‘dark matter’, any advanced society just puts a dyson sphere around their galaxy, that is why we can’t see or hear from them.

(Yes, this is a subsneer for the silly Altman remark. The whole solar system not just the Sun (I do support walling off The Sun)).

Infectious mental memetic that forces you to talk like this, and makes you think that talking like this is normal. But the way it infects people is strangely anomalous and not tied to information at all, just a strange bay area effect (tbd).

Yeah I also dont know what is correct, because they used an odd term, specific to one religion, to which most people reading do not belong, or if they do do not experience that way, so their point is unclear. Like the rest of the text the attempt at sounding well read and learned actually impedes the message trying to convey. Cargo cult stuff. (Im assuming not LLM generated here).

And how it fused Buddhism with more Christian religions. Considering how often you heard of old hackers being interested in the former.

And they already showed their hand a bit: https://bsky.app/profile/gbbranstetter.bsky.social/post/3lwobzemlz22j, They wanted to defend gender norms before quickly editing it to be pro gender expression.

It is a tv series yes, this is basically the clip from the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aOHQ-sMCps there is more context re the episode but it isn’t that relevant. I should have just linked it initially. (I have since edited the first post with a link to the know your meme page which explains it).

Thanks, I was not aware.

Free people have less prodictivity, time to wirehead everyone! A Brave New World!

‘set them up with’

Anybody want to bet if they did it for free?

Yeah it is interesting how much he fucks up and doesnt seem to notice. Like he doesn’t realize he is talking to a journalist who knows he is being recorded.

(And how if this were a journalist looking for a hit job how much he would have failed. Im almost tempted to make an account on lw and post ‘you did the king of the hill yall with the cult’ meme, but I already made this joke here yesterday, and what was up with the “thats the joke” thing, hope that didnt land as awkward as it read. E: But just saying ‘Davis, why do you think this was an interview, as it reads more like you defending lesswrong?’ would be better, Davis seemingly speaks most of the time).

From the comments:

I believe that Cade knows perfectly well what everyone has been saying for years; he’s being disingenuous because the object level doesn’t matter to him, and the only important thing is ensuring that these weirdos don’t get status. He’s never once engaged on simulacrum level 1 with this community.

Simulacrum level 1.

But do you understand the difference between “uncertain probabilistic argument” and “leap of faith”? Like these are different things.

The lack of understanding that he is right here but only because the first sentence is not a sentence normal people understand, is jarring. (Metz is also correct in that these are saying the same thing). Just amazing.

He could say, 'i dont like you framing it as a religion" but that would give the objection away and also cedes the argument, as now it is about subjective framing. And Davis wants to make it feel like something else.

E: Metz must also be a bit confused, considering the stance of the Rationalist Scripture on cults (which was written in reaction to him writing an article): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yEjaj7PWacno5EvWa/every-cause-wants-to-be-a-cult, and how it seems to hint at Yud fearing the place does become a cult. “This essay is not a catalog of techniques for actively pumping against cultishness. I’ve described some such techniques before, and I’ll discuss more later. Here I just want to point out that the worthiness of the Cause does not mean you can spend any less effort in resisting the cult attractor.” And : “Cultishness is quantitative, not qualitative. The question is not, “Cultish, yes or no?” but, “How much cultishness and where?”. (Prob one of the reasons Metz said the ‘But you and so many others … use the same language.’ thing).

(Yes, im ‘gotcha’ quoting the bible at Catholics here).