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Comment by petesergeant | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to be fucking irritated if we all die because BlueSky posters wanted to take pot-shots at the EA crowd. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is _also_ a story about how a community lost a child because of cynicism, and the people proudly declaring that they "know" every safety concern is just a marketing ploy also concerns me.

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If we all die because of AI, it will be because of the uses that people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey put it to, not because of a robot uprising.

Why not both? I honestly can’t fathom why people think — in an ultra-networked world — why LLMs can’t cause physical consequences.

I think it's more of a Chicken Little situation. Then the wolf ate us all up.

I'd rather have the world end than live in a world where EAs are listened to or respected.

I agree they’re kinda weird but are they really that bad?

Yes. Sam Bankman Fried was/is an EA/rationalist (on the short list of biggest fraudsters in American history). So are the Zizian's (a murder cult). etc. etc.

SBF maybe, but Ziz declared rationalists to be their main enemy

And? The Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks were both socialist factions who were coming from the same intellectual milieu, and they killed each other.

They also killed lots of unrelated people. Let's not take the argument far enough to claim that everyone who was ever killed by socialists must have been a socialist, too.

Perhaps the author of the article is a rationalist, too. He certainly knows too much about them, cares too much, and the fact that he criticizes them only shows that there is some infighting among them.

>Let's not take the argument far enough to claim that everyone who was ever killed by socialists must have been a socialist, too.

Well it's a good thing I only mentioned the two groups who were explicitly socialists!

Yeah, similar to like how southern baptists declared evangelicals to be their enemy too for not being fanatical enough.

Death cults are weird like that.

I don’t see why I would judge a whole group based on isolated examples?

is dying really so bad compared to admitting that you were wrong and some weirdo was right?

for many people the answer seems to be: not really.

Yes.

Their core belief system is morally abhorrent.

What about their beliefs is morally abhorrent?

If you are serious about this preference, would you also be okay with a compromise solution where only you (and anyone else who feels the same) die, rather than taking everyone else with you?

I have great news then, that absolutely isn't going to happen. And the EA crowd deserves all of the potshots and more

Wow I’m sure glad that’s settled then.

Happy to be of service

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