hesperidia comments on A forum for researchers to publicly discuss safety issues in advanced AI - Less Wrong

12 Post author: RobbBB 13 December 2014 12:33AM

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Comment author: ctintera 16 December 2014 11:05:29AM *  2 points [-]

Many people (specifically, people over at RationalWiki, and probably elsewhere as well) see the community as being insular, or as being a Yudkowsky Personality Cult, or think that some of the weirder-sounding ideas widely espoused here (cryonics, FAI, etc) "might benefit from a better grounding in reality".

Still others reflexively write LW off based on the use of fanfiction (a word of dread and derision in many circles) to recruit members.

Even the jargon derived from the Sequences may put some people off. Despite the staunch avoidance of hot-button politics, they still import a few lesser controversies. For example, there still exist people who outright reject Bayesian probability, and there are many more who see Bayes' theorem as a tool that is valid only in a very narrow domain. Brazenly disregarding their opinion can be seen as haughty, even if the maths are on your side.

Comment author: hesperidia 22 December 2014 08:06:28AM *  0 points [-]

Out on my parts of the internet, a major reason to reject LWisms is because they are perceived as coming from a "Silicon Valley tribe" that does not share values with the majority of people (i.e. similar to the attitude of the newsblog (?) Pando, which regularly skewers tech startups). The libertarians claiming to be "apolitical", and the neoreactionaries, do not help this perception at all. (Although discussing more of this is probably unwise because politics SPIDERS.)

Comment author: Lumifer 22 December 2014 07:57:09PM -1 points [-]

that does not share values with the majority of people

Mutant and proud!

:-)