this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]
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God I cannot believe that Harry Potter fanfiction is such a big part of Rationalism.
I made the mistake of reading too many comments down in a Reddit thread and a ~~ephebophile~~pedophile showed up. I looked at their profile and was just totally blindsided by Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality fanfiction and it apparently being their second favorite book ever. I think their first was Lolita but I don't remember.
I've heard that (maybe?) SBF had Harry Potter orgies, detailed on his girlfriend's cryptofascist tradwife Tumblr blog. I know I shouldn't but I kind of want to see if I can dig around the Internet Archive and find out how much of that really happened. Just making myself suffer for fun
In the period when I didn't see the LW/SSC community as negatively as I do now I also noticed there were quite a few ~~ephebophiles~~pedophiles there, even had a long discussion with one who was being very cagey about it. It was weird. A well, as a cryptoneoreactionary said: 'if you build a place free of witchhunts, don't be surprised a lot of witches show up'. Liking Lolita (which isn't a bad book per se, it is great in the 'this is what lies pedos/bad people tell themselves/others to get away with it' unreliable narrator sense) is certainly a red flag, esp when people are not aware of the parenthesis (I have reach peak reference game, I now reference my own sentence from inside the sentence).
And I think a lot of fascination of the Harry Potter from inside the LW community is just age, for a lot of these people Harry Potter was an important series in their early teens, which is an important period in growing up for these kinds of things, it is also massively popular (I guess less so now due to Rowling deciding that transphobia is cheaper than going to therapy for her abusive ex). Of course this doesn't explain HPMOR in the first place as Yud is old (or at least older than the people I'm talking about, who would now be in their 30s max while Yud is in his 40s, I myself am also one of the 'grew up before HP olds btw, noticed that younger people I knew were very into HP (and some game where you capture wild animals and have them fight cagematches for you, weird shit forgot the name)').
And well I think SBF having orgies and being into polyam stuff is fine (and I wish those on everybody who wants them as long as everybody consents), I think the theft, fascism and all that is the problem. On that note, you clearly should only make yourself suffer more if you want to do that and enjoy it. But on some level I guess you do, as everybody here is a bit masochistic by staying here and reading this stuff. Her being all cryptofasc tradwife was weird, esp when Musk was going all in on 'see the left is evil because SBF donated to the democrats', but I guess if the rich technologists of the world would spend more time actually understanding how politics works they wouldn't be rich.
Edit: Apologies for the somewhat long and rambling reply, I think the coffee was too strong and im sliding back into stream of thought reddit posting habits.
As an aside, I believe Harry Potter, while marketed as YA, was actually read a lot by a more adult audience.
I read the first book aloud to my stepkids, but as the next books arrived they lost interest while I read them all. By the last few ones it was in morbid curiosity.
Ow sure, but it doesn't seem to have a big an influence. I have read the first HP book seen most of the movies I think (can't really remember if I have seen them all or I knwo everything due to cultural osmosis) and I have read HPMOR, but it isn't something that super excites me.
It was a hype at the time, but given the size of the target audience, it's not surprising that quite a lot of people found the universe engaging enough to generate a vibrant fandom (which I believe is mostly comprised of adults).
In fact I believe a big drag on HP as a franchise is that "kids today" see it as something their parents like.