it would take me years to learn how to articulate what was in the water. i would feel like i was going insane trying to explain how somehow hanging out with these dorks in the bay area made some part of me want to extinguish my entire soul in service of the greater good
Conversation
i have been accused of focusing too much on feelings in general and my feelings in particular, or something like that. and what i want to convey here is that my feelings are the only thing that got me out of this extremely specific trap i had found myself in
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i had to go back and relearn the most basic human capacities - the capacity to notice and say "i feel bad right now, this feels bad, i'm going to leave" - in order to fight *this*. in order to somehow tunnel out of this story into a better one that had room for more of me
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a fun fact about the rationality and effective altruism communities is that they attract a lot of ex-evangelicals. they have this whole thing about losing their faith but still retaining all of the guilt and sin machinery looking for something more... rational... to latch onto
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(that's a very irresponsible psychoanalysis of a whole bunch of people i just did there but i've asked some of them about stuff like this, enough that i think i'm not completely making this up)
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i really feel like i get it though. i too now also find that once i've had a taste of what it's like to feel cosmically significant i don't want to give it up. i don't know how to live completely outside a story. i've never had to. i just want a better one and i'm still looking
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i was really really hoping i would never have to think about AI ever again, y'know, after all this. seeing AI discourse turn up here was like running into an ex i was hoping never to see again
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leaving the rationalists was on some level one of the hardest things i've ever done. it was like breaking up with someone in a world where you'd never heard anyone even describe a romantic relationship to you before. i had so little context to understand what had happened to me
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i'm finally getting around to reading your leverage post, i was too scared to read it when it first came out. thank you for writing this 🙏 i don't think any of my experiences were near this intense but there's a family resemblance
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<3 Glad it was helpful, amigo. Your story is different but definitely has resonance.
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really thinking about that sensitivity to mental invasion bit 😬