Despite Yudkowsky's obvious leanings, the Sequences are ... first and foremost about how to not end up an idiot

My basic thesis is that even if that was not the intent, the result has been the production of idiots. Specifically, a type of idiotic madness that causes otherwise good people, self-proclaimed humanitarians to disparage the only sort of progress which has the potential to alleviate all human suffering, forever, on accelerated timescales. And they do so for reasons that are not grounded in empirical evidence, because they were taught though demonstration modes of non-empirical thinking from the sequences, and conditioned to think this was okay through social engagement on LW.

When you find yourself digging a hole, the sensible and correct thing to do is stop digging. I think we can do better, but I'm burned out on trying to reform from the inside. Or perhaps I'm no longer convinced that reform can work given the nature of the medium (social pressures of blog posts and forums work counter to the type of rationality that should be advocated for).

I don't care about Many Worlds, FAI, Fun theory and Jeffreyssai stuff, but LW was the thing that stopped me from being a complete and utter idiot.

I don't want to take that away. But for me LW was not just a baptismal fount for discovering rationality, it was also an effort to get people to work on humanitarian relief and existential risk reduction. I hope you don't think me crazy for saying that LW has had a subject matter bias in these directions. But on at least some of these accounts the effect had by LW and/or MIRI and/or Yudkowsky's specific focus on these issues may be not just suboptimal, but actually negative. To be precise: it may actually be causing more suffering than would otherwise exist.

We are finally coming out of a prolonged AI winter. And although funding is finally available to move the state of the art in automation forward, to accelerate progress in life sciences and molecular manufacturing that will bring great humanitarian change, we have created a band of Luddites that fear the solution more than the problem. And in a strange twist of double-think, consider themselves humanitarians for fighting progress.

If you had your own forum with lots of people, who share similar criticism of LW, hey, I'd go there and leave LW. But you don't have such forum, so by leaving LW you just leave people like me alone. What's the point of that? Do you really believe leaving LW like that is more utility, than trying to create an island within it?

I am myself working on various projects in my life which I expect to have positive effects on the world. Outside of work, LW has at times occupied a significant fraction of my leisure time. This must be seen as an activity of higher utility than working more hours on my startup, making progress on my molecular nanotech and AI side projects, or enriching myself personally in other ways (family time, reading, etc.). I saw the Rationality reading group as a chance to do something which would conceivably grow that community by a measurable amount, thereby justifying a time expenditure. However if all I am doing is bringing more people into a community that is actively working against developments in artificial intelligence that have a chance of relieving human suffering within a single generation… the Hippocratic corpus comes to mind: “first, do no harm.”

I am not sure yet what I will fill the time with. Maybe I'll get off my butt and start making more concrete progress on some of the nanotech and AI stuff that I have been letting slide in recent years.

I recognize also that I am making broad generalizations which do not always apply to everyone. You seem to be an exception, and I wish I had engaged with you more. I also will miss TheAncientGeek's contrarian posts, as well as many others who deserve credit for not following a herd mentality.