in retrospect maybe a memetic advantage i don't talk or think much about having is that i was AGI-pilled for long enough that i know what having a totalizing narrative about the most important thing feels like from the inside and i know what it feels like to step out of it
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the esoteric meaning of "postrationalist" is a person who is recovering from the totalizing memes in the rationalist ecosystem. it is a trip. especially because you can't just refute them by saying AGI is impossible
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the refutation has to be shaped more like "i get to live my life anyway. my life and my happiness matters anyway. this does not have to be my thing"
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oh i have written about this but obliquely
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being taken over by an ideology for the first time is a lot like being in love for the first time. you don't know what it's like for it to end. you can't imagine being obsessed by anything else. and you don't have a frame of reference for what abusive behavior looks like
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so, less obliquely: i was involved with lesswrong / CFAR / the rationalists from ~2012 to ~2018, briefly worked for both MIRI and CFAR, got to talk to a lot of the higher-ups in the ecosystem, learned a lot from the experience, and have a lot of dirt on unhealthy dynamics
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it turns out sincerely believing the world is going to end really fucks people up and it really fucks group dynamics up. there is a reason end-of-the-world narratives are an attractor for unhealthy cults (a phrasing i want to explicitly push over just "cults")
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a lot of stuff you wouldn't do if you were calmer becomes justifiable. it becomes easy to justify exerting force in various ways on other people and there were (and are) people in the ecosystem much better at doing that than other people in the ecosystem could (and can) handle
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the rationalist and EA ecosystems select massively for recruiting people (~nerds with poor social skills) who are confused in specific highly correlated ways about e.g. feelings, the body, etc., and these people are, to put it bluntly, very vulnerable to abuse
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I’ve been concerned about this for many years, but have been distant enough and busy enough to feel it’s not really my problem, but also somehow something I should try to help with. Have nearly written about it a few times. Maybe writing isn’t what’s needed though
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your writing has been tremendously helpful to me and others already and if you wanted to tack a little more towards this in your writing i'm sure i and others would appreciate it a lot!