Yes, the doom crowd thinking comes directly from the Rationalist community, which takes a very religious view of AGI and intelligence. That sort of merged with the Effective Altruism crowd, resulting in that whole idea that we have to reach AGI as fast as possible and contribute literally all our resources to it, because it’s the only rational way to save as much suffering and lives as possible. Sounds incredibly stupid but it’s how AI leaders justify working on something they believe will be a machine god that might doom humanity.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are from that world, where Rationalist doesn’t mean you’re a rational human being, but instead that it is rational to believe that AGI will be created, thus that they should be the ones creating it. It’s a doomsday cult.

If you start looking at the links between prominent rationalists and effective altruists you see how that whole doom prophecy came about. It’s also how they got so much capital in the early days, SBF literally invested into Anthropic as part of his Effective Altruism effort foundation, and both Amodei siblings are deeply into that whole world

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bena 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's amazing that apparently the best way to save as much suffering and future lives as possible involves giving them obscene wealth and ignoring the very real problems we are dealing with today.

Once again, I've said it elsewhere here, I think we could have nipped this thing in the bud if when the first "effective altruist" started talking about the EV of saving billions of "future lives" vs dealing with today's real problems, someone looked at him, cocked their head to the side, and said "That's fucking ****".

All of those magical future people do not get to live if we bake the Earth today. The best way to take care of future people is to take care of people today. And if they were truly serious about taking care of future people, that's what they would be doing. But it's not, they're just collecting resources. I don't know how the fuck Sam Altman owning a Koenigsegg Regera today helps save 20 quintillion lives in 40,000AD. Deeply unserious people.

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dgellow 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I think Altman is closer to a sociopath who is taking advantage of the situation, he’s the only one I cannot see as a true believer (and investors like Andreessen who are just here for the money). I believe he will just say anything to gain power and influence. But yeah, unfortunately mixing EA/rationalists + SF monoculture + infinite money + a media ecosystem that acts more as a PR department resulted in one of the worst cult-like phenomenon possible.

	▲	bena 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't believe there is a true believer. I believe Sam Altman is the rule for these people, not the exception.

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api 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah I read some of that stuff, like some of "the sequences," and I have never been impressed by it. It's very weirdly dogmatic and full of magical thinking.

I still can't believe anyone ever took Roko's Basilisk seriously, but people did... to the point of freaking out about it.

The groups themselves are a little cultish too, or a lot cultish depending on which one you're talking about. Some of them are full-on cults.

But what do I know. I'm probably low IQ.

	▲	Jtsummers 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I still can't believe anyone ever took Roko's Basilisk seriously, but people did... to the point of freaking out about it. If you've spent much time in US Christian circles you've probably encountered people suffering from apocalyptic thinking. The Roko's Basilisk folks seem like the atheist version of the same crowd. It's hard to take them seriously when they're always seeing portents of the end times, and their thinking is clearly clouded by anxiety and fear and not based in reality.