1. https://aiascendant.substack.com/p/extropias-children-chapte...
I’m pro-American because I believe in its stated values. Moreover, I believe that despite original and continuing failures to perfectly reflect those values, there is large and concrete progress in aggregate.
I feel the same way about EA: I aspire to their ideals (including the continued discussion and reconsideration of those ideals) and believe the weight of thousands of people quietly moving concretely in the right direction far exceeds the damage of bad actors (who would have twisted any ideology they were immersed in).
So the bad actors should be punished. The parts of the community system which failed should be changed. AND the many others who are earnestly trying to live according to these values should be judged according to their _own_ impact.
I disagree and think both the US and institutions like EA are too tainted. The US hasn’t done anything about slavery except make things worse still. That’s not on the founding fathers any more only. It’s on the US since the civil war. EA will take money from future multimillionaire and billionaires. Much like the US, they are both completely controlled by capitalism. I am in the US but not pro US.
> The full post goes into more depth and nuance, but it's worth stressing how heavily Leverage relied on “debugging,” based on Anders's “Connection Theory.” Debugging consisted of — to paraphrase and oversimplify — opening up one's psyche, history, self, and emotional core to maximum vulnerability, generally to one's hierarchical superior, and then doing all you could to follow their suggestions to “fix” your mind.
Any hoo - this stuff is the tip of the iceberg.
Edit: more context on Ziz, http://zizians.info/
Edit: found this https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/
As someone said over there, it's about time to start putting lithium in the Bay Area water.