A while back I saw LessWrong recommended on HN in a list of similar communities that included lobsters.rs, etc. I thought the design of the site looked really nice so browsed with a open mind (I didn't make the rationalism/LW/Eliezer connection).

At the time, one of the recommended posts that was soft-stickied at the top for 1 week + was:

"How to Make Superbabies"

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DfrSZaf3JC8vJdbZL/how-to-mak...

Which, when I finally ended up clicking, was pretty much exactly what if sounds like from the title:

A long, meandering, manifesto full of selectively chosen charts and research findings with 38 mentions of "IQ", from a guy who has been unsuccessfully pitching investors on genetically modifying a grab bag of (dubiously) intelligence-associated genes in human babies.

Apart from the overall unhingedness, the part I found most striking while reading it was the off-the-chart level of self-confidence that flipping a bunch of genes on/off with CRISPR would have more or less zero risk of complications or unpredictable interactions. In his view, all that was holding back humanity's inevitable next step up the evolutionary ladder were the narrow-minded gatekeepers in the scientific establishment clinging to their so-called "ethics" and regressive "precautionary principle".

Without anything resembling experimentation to test his plan in animal models, yet alone early stage clinical trials for safety, he was willing to roll the dice on some unlucky baby dying in childbirth or living a life of agony from chronic disease based on some cherry picked papers he found on PubMed.

Because of the baffling hubris and my overall low impression of his intellectual honesty/rigor in the write up (clearly coming from a place of seeking to justify his own pre-existing beliefs), I opened the comments section expecting/hoping this was just some local nut who would be torn apart in the comment section.

But lo and behold, the very first comment at the top:

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  One of the most important projects in the world.  Somebody should fund it.

... and thus ended my brief time trying out LW.

▲ Gangway0829 a day ago | parent | next [-]

My extremely uncharitable view of of these kinds of people, who now infest the American AI scene, is that they got cyber bullied by domain experts for saying the most ridiculous crap on repeat, and have therefore decided to spend their life on eliminating domain expertise.

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pvab3 a day ago | parent | next [-]

I wouldn't go that far. But as we've seen repeatedly, people who have enough qualms with how these labs operate just leave. And the people who stay behind and rise through the ranks are the ones with either very little conscience or some bizarre world view that rationalizes everything.

	▲	BeetleB a day ago \| parent [-]
		You do realize that Anthropic was founded by OpenAI employees because they had ethical concerns about OpenAI, right?

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eloisius a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Or IRL bullying failed to bully the asocial tendencies out of them when they were young enough. But it looks like the day of the swirly may be upon us soon.

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qlte 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, that has the opposite effect: it's very, very common to see LWers write about having a bad time in school in late adolescence and how later finding like minded people online was powerful community bonding.

Eliezer himself first blogged at 17 about how miserable school was for him which led to him dropping out/home schooling after 8th grade and discovering the Extropians listserv. Ziz of the Zizians is another (infamous) example.

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ChickeNES 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Never thought I'd see the day that someone on HN would be celebrating bullying people, thanks for going mask off.

	▲	Gangway0829 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We're talking about people that unironically think eugenics based on IQ is a good thing. I think it's very effective altruism to socially ostracize such individuals.

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Gangway0829 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

My view - there are a few outcomes 1. AI is never fully realized, but domain expertise is derated and society stagnates (bad ending for everyone, I think unlikely) 2. AI is never fully realized, but empowers people with domain expertise (Google wins, weird rationalist nerds go back to their LW cave and leave us alone, goodish ending) 3. AI becomes real and kills everyone (bad ending, but at least I don't have to read people claiming that the Harry Potter fanfic isn't niche) 4. AI becomes real and we live in the Culture universe (people like scam Altman get slap droned, most domain experts have the time of their life working with Minds on really interesting problems. Best ending)

The only outcome where we get swirlies is the first one, and we can take solace in the fact that all of humanity is getting swirlied with us.

▲ dumberquestions a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The connection is that by making humans smarter, we could sidestep the need for powerful AI or be better equipped at dealing with AI that's smarter than us.

I find the proposal in the post ridiculous too and human gene editing given current technology is a bad idea, but I think human augmentation in general is an interesting path and something that will very likely be taken more seriously in the future.

	▲	qlte 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you, but I didn't actually need that spelled out. I simply accepted that a community with a thought leader who failed to recognize what to me was a self-evident lack of scientific rigor just wasn't for me.