LessWrong 2.0 Reader

I have been very critical of cover ups in lesswrong. I'm not going to name names and maybe you don't trust me. But I have observed this all directly

Can you give whatever more information you can, e.g. to help people know whether you're referring to the same or different events that they already know about? E.g., are you talking about this that have already been mentioned on the public internet? What time period/s did the events you're talking about happen in?

Don't Induce psychosis intentionally. Don't take psychedelics while someone probes your beliefs. Don't let anyone associated with Michael Vasser anywhere near you during an altered state.

Mike Vasser followers practice intentionally inducing psychosis via psychedelic drugs. Inducing psychosis is a verbatim self report of what they are doing. I would say they practice drug induced brain washing. TBC they would dispute the term brain washing and probably would not like the term 'followers' but I think the terms are accurate and they are certainly his intellectual descendants. 

Several people have had quite severe adverse reactions (as observed by me). For example rapidly developing serious literal schizophrenia. Schizophrenia in the very literal sense of paranoid delusions and conspiratorial interpretations of other people's behavior. The local Vasserite who did the 'therapy'/'brainwashing' seems completely unbothered by this literal schizophrenia. 

As you can imagine this behavior can cause substantial social disruption. Especially since the Vasserite's don't exactly believe in social harmony.  This has all precipitated serious mental health events in many other parties. Though they are less obviously serious than "they are clinically schizophrenic now".But that is a high bar.

I have been very critical of cover ups in lesswrong. I'm not going to name names and maybe you don't trust me. But I have observed this all directly. If you are let people toy with your brain while you are under the influence of psychedelics you should expect high odds of severe consequences. And your friends mental health might suffer as well.

I think about this post several times a year when evaluating plans.

(Or actually, I think about a nearby concept that Nate voiced in person to me, about doing things that you actually believe in, in your heart. But this is the public handle for that.)

I was at an ARIA meeting with a bunch of category theorists working on safeguarded AI and many of them didn't know what the work had to do with AI.

epistemic status: short version of post because I never got around to doing the proper effort post I wanted to make.

But a supermajority of the population ought to be capable of learning to do what Hermione and Holocaust resisters did.

I think this is a key point. The Milgram experiments illustrate more about average person's obedience than their inclination towards evil. If the experimenters had pressured the subjects to do something heroic and personally risky they would have gotten similar results with a supermajority choosing to do the heroic thing. Most humans can pursue a wide-range of goals under pressure and.only a minority have the willpower to stick to a narrow range of goals. 

I've been lurking for not years. I also have ADHD and I deeply relate to your sentiment about the jargon here and it doesn't help that when I manage to concentrate enough to get through a post and read the 5 substack articles it links to and skim the 5 substack articles they link to, it's... pretty hit or miss. I remember reading one saying something about moral relativism not being obviously true and it felt like all the jargon and all the philosophical concepts mentioned only served to sufficiently confuse the reader (and I guess the writer too) so that it's not. I will say though that I don't get that feeling reading the sequences. Or stuff written by other rationalist GOATs. The obscure terms there don't serve as signals of the author's sophistication or ways to make their ideas less accesible. They're there because there are actually useful bundles of meaning that are used often enough to warrant a shortcut.

Sounds fun!

Thank you for your comment. I get what you mean. I predict with the increasingly intelligence and adoption of AI, that technical skills will become lower valued, whereas the creativity/generativity/coordination skills you refer to will take their place. I draw a comparison to how being able to "code a website" infers downtrending levels of skill today compared to 10 years ago, 20 years ... etc. 

This is important work, keep it up!

Things I am interested in:

• what have you learned since then? Have you changed your mind or your ontology?
• What would you change about the post? (Consider actually changing it)
• What do you most want people to know about this post, for deciding whether to read or review-vote on it?
• How concretely have you (or others you know of) used or built on the post? How has it contributed to a larger conversation