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.

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.

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

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.