Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse
8 hours ago
- The rationalist subculture, rooted in Eliezer Yudkowsky's LessWrong and Harry Potter fanfic, incubates extreme beliefs about AI doom, heroic responsibility, and intellectual superiority.
- Community features include cult-like practices (e.g., CFAR workshops, Leverage Research, Zizian violence), polyamory, and racial pseudoscience, with alumni dominating AI safety labs and policy.
- Financial backing from Peter Thiel and others links rationalism to neoreactionary politics (Curtis Yarvin), anti-democratic ideologies, and influence on JD Vance's administration, while internal factions clash over AI regulation.
- The resignation of Jacob Coxon from Anthropic highlights deep entanglement between AI safety advocates and the labs they oversee, raising conflicts of interest and questions about regulatory capture.
- The subculture's history includes abusive experiments, sex work integration (Aella), and violent extremism (Zizians), undermining claims of superior rationality and trustworthiness in AI governance.