On Twitter at least, a fair number of the cult allegations seem to be from (honestly fairly cult-ish people themselves) who don't like what LW people say about AI, at least in the threads I'm likely to follow. But I defer to your greater HN expertise!

Interesting, the only recent irl aggression (verbal, not physical) I've received from the techie crowd in SF was related to the Sam Altman firing^[1]. I've also gotten more standard leftist anger but I don't think that anger is very centrally Hacker News-y, I'd guess those people would also be angry at Hacker News.

1. ^{^}

   Oh I remember another time an ML person got mad at me for mentioning Bostrom's Superintelligence.

EAs and rationalists are extraordinarily, and to my mind, inexplicably annoying to adjacent communities (i.e. people hate rationalists on Hacker News for some reason)

Isn't the most straightforward common reason that many of us think that their jobs are evil? There are probably sophisticated, empathetic, high social-skills, nice ways to say

I think your work is contributing to the end of humanity and anybody who does this work is the scum of the Earth. Also, you regularly lie to the American people. I hope you go to jail soon.

with love and kindness and grace, but our community isn't known for unusually high social skills and tact, and honestly I'm not sure many people would take the skillful version even if they knew how to.

I think you're assuming the filters are way later than where I think it is! 

Thanks! Yeah "Wigner's puzzle isn't a puzzle after all" appears to be a common response by scientists and philosophers upon first hearing it. Hamming discusses some of them here, under "some partial explanations." Though he also ultimately concludes:

Conclusion. From all of this I am forced to conclude both that mathematics is unreasonably effective and that all of the explanations I have given when added together simply are not enough to explain what I set out to account for. I think that we - meaning you, mainly - must continue to try to explain why the logical side of science-meaning mathematics, mainly - is the proper tool for exploring the universe as we perceive it at present. I suspect that my explanations are hardly as good as those of the early Greeks, who said for the material side of the question that the nature of the universe is earth, fire, water, and air. The logical side of the nature of the universe requires further exploration.

(EDIT: Upon a skim they discuss a pretty different set of considerations here, closer to what Hamming calls "You see what you look for")

Noted! Will check out the comments later.

(I did discuss earlier versions of this argument at least a few years ago, so at least I'm confident I couldn't have been subconsciously influenced by that thread specifically!)

Didn't you listen to his friend? No one will ever blame him!

I'm in favor of humanity surviving. 

Personally I'm against AI x-risk.