this post was submitted on 28 Nov 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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as someone who was pretty involved in mtg as a youth it's been disappointing to see people I admired (or in some cases - not this one - knew) drift rightward or into cults. but it feels absolutely bizarre to see one of them get niche famous for culting
The last decade has like this for me on so many levels. It leaves me wondering how much of the old world died and how much of it we were just blind to, or chose to ignore, in the past.
I have a friend who stopped taking his medication and went full on schizophrenic, and that's how it feels when yet another person gets brain worms, except they're not suffering from mental illness, just ego, resentment and dumb ideas.
Watching them some of them become grifters who actively infect people with their own disease is a trip on top of all of that.
I think about this a lot. The way the far-right and other grifters have embraced the weaponisation of mental illness is truly disgusting.
@Amoeba_Girl The far right are all about beating up on the Other, and those with acute mental illness are in continuous supply. (Latest twist: if you're a grifter and antipsychotic meds have crimped your supply of Others to demonize, you can gaslight your followers on social media and convince them that everybody *else* is crazy. See also Q, Trump ...)
mtg = Magic, the Gathering ?
In this case, yes. Today I learned that there is a Magic The Gathering Hall of Fame, and this guy Zvi is in it. Another weird coincidence is that the first big crypto exchange (MTGOX) was built on a Magic The Gathering website.
I used to read this guy Liron on Twitter and interacted with him a little bit. He would sometimes seem logical, like when tearing apart crypto nonsense, but sometimes make dumb or disingenuous arguments like he does in this twitter thread.
After lurking on rationalist discord servers I discovered that the Rationalist existential-risk-themed Burning Man camp was also called "Black Lotus", which is apparently a reference to an overpowered MtG card. (side note: theming your Burning Man camp on existential risk sounds like a bad trip waiting to happen)
Anyways I think the Black Lotus camp might have been the one that Brent Dill tried to bring an underage student to, as referenced below:
https://rationality.org/resources/updates/2019/cfars-mistakes-regarding-brent
https://medium.com/@mittenscautious/warning-2-153ed9f5f1f3
"Welcome to our Burning Man camp, Bugs Crawling Under Your Skin"