Back in the nineties, a teenage supergenius joined a mailing list. That odd seed led, via Harry Potter, to today's Effective Altruism and AI Risk movements; bizarre cults; and the birth of Bitcoin. This is the surreal saga of Extropia's Children.
… “Coming of Age” also, oddly, describes another form of novel cognitive dissonance; encountering people who did not think Eliezer was the most intelligent person they had ever met, and then, more shocking yet, personally encountering people who seemed possibly more intelligent than himself.
I’ve met Jurvetson a few times. After the first I texted a friend: “Every other time I’ve met a VC I walked away thinking ‘Wow, I and all my friends are smarter than you.’ This time it was ‘Wow, you are smarter than me and all my friends.’“
On November 13, 2017, Jurvetson stepped down from his role at DFJ Venture Capital in addition to taking leave from the boards of SpaceX and Tesla following an internal DFJ investigation into allegations of sexual harassment.
Not smart enough to keep his dick in his pants, apparently.
Then, from 2006 to 2009, in what can be interpreted as an attempt to discover how his younger self made such a terrible mistake, and to avoid doing so again, Eliezer writes the 600,000 words of his Sequences, by blogging “almost daily, on the subjects of epistemology, language, cognitive biases, decision-making, quantum mechanics, metaethics, and artificial intelligence”
Between his Sequences and his Harry Potter fanfic, come 2015, Eliezer had promulgated his personal framework of rational thought — which was, as he put it, “about forming true beliefs and making decisions that help you win” — with extraordinary success. All the pieces seemed in place to foster a cohort of bright people who would overcome their unconscious biases, adjust their mindsets to consistently distinguish truth from falseness, and become effective thinkers who could build a better world … and maybe save it from the scourge of runaway AI.
Which is why what happened next, explored in tomorrow’s chapter — the demons, the cults, the hells, the suicides — was, and is, so shocking.
Reading about the hubris of young Yud is a bit sad, a proper Tragedy. Then I have to remind myself that he remains a manipulator, and that he should be old enough to stop believe—and promote—in magical thinking.
The latter link is to “Competent Elities”, a.k.a., “Yud fails to recognize that cocaine is a helluva drug”.
Uh-huh.
Quick, to the Bat-Wikipedia:
Not smart enough to keep his dick in his pants, apparently.
Or, in short, cult shit.
Or not. See above, RE: cult shit.
Reading about the hubris of young Yud is a bit sad, a proper Tragedy. Then I have to remind myself that he remains a manipulator, and that he should be old enough to stop believe—and promote—in magical thinking.