This is a special post for quick takes by sapphire. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
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85sapphire
82dawnlightmelody
23habryka
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23Fiora Sunshine
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7tailcalled
6Noosphere89
41MondSemmel
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3Slimepriestess
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36Scott Alexander
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3Maxwell Peterson
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2mako yass
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2[comment deleted]
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2Vanessa Kosoy
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Don't Induce psychosis intentionally. Don't take psychedelics while someone probes your beliefs. Don't let anyone associated with Michael Vasser anywhere near you during an altered state.
Edit: here is a different report from three years ago with the same person administering the methods:
Mike Vasser followers practice intentionally inducing psychosis via psychedelic drugs. Inducing psychosis is a verbatim self report of what they are doing. I would say they practice drug induced brain washing. TBC they would dispute the term brain washing and probably would not like the term 'followers' but I think the terms are accurate and they are certainly his intellectual descendants.
Several people have had quite severe adverse reactions (as observed by me). For example rapidly developing serious literal schizophrenia. Schizophrenia in the very literal sense of paranoid delusions and conspiratorial interpretations of other people's behavior. The local Vasserite who did the 'therapy'/'brainwashing' seems completely unbothered by this literal schizophrenia.
As you can imagine this behavior can cause substantial social disruption. Especially since the Vasserite's don't exactly bel...
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1As one of what I believe to have been the targets/victims of “the local Vassarite” (though multiple people reviewing my initial draft have asked me to mention that Michael Vassar and this person are not actually on good terms), it seems reasonable for me to be the one to reveal the name and give concrete details, so that no one is harmed in the future the way I was nearly harmed. The person being referenced is Olivia Schaefer (known usernames: 4confusedemoji, liv.bsky.social, Taygetea), and this is a brief, roughly chronological account of some concerning actions she took towards me over the last few months.
- When we met in person in July, she attempted to pressure me to take MDMA under her supervision. I ended up refusing, and she relented; however, she then bragged that because she had relented, I would trust her more and be more likely to take MDMA the next time I saw her.
- She amplified my natural tendencies toward grandiosity to pull me closer into her frame, claiming that I was “one of a population of like a thousand or ten thousand”. (Recommend reading that thread if you are attempting to understand how she thinks about the world and why she acts the way she does.) Oth
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3Appreciate you sharing this. FWIW, I have heard of lots of really quite reckless and damaging-seeming drug consuming behavior around Olivia over the years, and am sad to hear it's still going on.
1she attempted to pressure me to take MDMA under her supervision. I ended up refusing, and she relented; however, she then bragged that because she had relented, I would trust her more and be more likely to take MDMA the next time I saw her.
this seems utterly evil, especially given MDMA is known as an attachment inducing drug.
edit: more generally, it seems tragic for people who are socially-vulnerable and creative to end up paired with adept manipulators.
a simple explanation is that because creativity is (potentially very) useful, vulnerable creative people will be targets for manipulation. but i think there are also dynamics in communities with higher [illegibility-tolerance? esoterism?] which enable this, which i don't know how to write about. i hope someone tries to write about it.
in olivia's case, it seems like the algorithm she's running lately is roughly to try and make herself out as an authority to basically all of the late teens/early 20s transfem rationalists in a particular social circle. (we sometimes half-joking call outselves lgbtescreal, a name due to that beloved user tetraspace). i've heard it claimed by someone else in this community that olivia has bragged about achieving mod status in various discord servers we've been in, and derisively referred to us as "the 19 year olds" who she was nonetheless trying to gain influence over. i think olivia roughly just wants to be seen as powerful and influential, and (being transfem herself, and having a long history in the core rationality community) has an easy time influencing young rationalist transfems in particular.
5[anonymous]
good to hear it's at least transparent enough for you to describe it directly like this. (edit: though the points in dawnlights post seem scarier)
I have no idea about other people lying due to JDP's influence. I had JDP look at a draft of Occupational Infohazards prior to posting and he convinced me to not mention Olivia because she was young and inexperienced / experimenting with ways of being at the time, it was maybe too bad for her reputation to say she was a possible influence on my psychosis. I admit this was a biased omission, though I don't think it was a lie. (To be clear, I'm not saying I went psychotic because of Olivia, I think there were many factors and I'm pretty uncertain about the weighting)
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Would you acknowledge that if JDP did this a couple times, then this is a lie-by-proxy, i.e. JDP lied through you?
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Huh? It seems to come down to definitions of lies, my current intuition is it wouldn't be a lie, but I'm not sure why people would care how I define lie in this context.
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Let me reask a subset of the question that doesn't use the word "lie". When he convinced you to not mention Olivia, if you had known that he had also been trying to keep information about Olivia's involvement in related events siloed away (from whoever), would that have raised a red flag for you like "hey, maybe something group-epistemically anti-truth-seeking is happening here"? Such that e.g. that might have tilted you to make a different decision. I ask because it seems like relevant debugging info.
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I think if there were other cases of Olivia causing problems and he was asking multiple people to hide Olivia problems, that would more cause me to think he was sacrificing more group epistemology to protect Olivia's reputation, and was overall more anti-truth-seeking, yes.
I don't necessarily agree with every line in this post—I'd say I'm better off and still personally kinda like Olivia, though it's of course been rocky at times—but it does all basically look accurate to me. She stayed at my apartment for maybe a total of 1-2 months earlier this year, and I've talked to her a lot. I don't think she presented the JD Pressman thing as about "lying" to me, but she did generally mention him convincing people to keep her out of things.
There is a lot more I could say, and I am as always happy to answer dms and such, but I am somewhat tired of all this and I don't right at this moment really want to either figure out exactly what things I feel are necessary to disclose about a friend of mine or try to figure out what would be a helpful contribution to years old drama, given that it's 1:30am. But I do want to say that I basically think Melody's statements are all more-or-less reasonable.
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Reminder not to sell your soul(s) to the devil.
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I just unfollowed JD Pressman for that.
I don't need AI optimists who are willing to order people to lie about very important things that happened in order to protect some secrets.
Related, here is something Yudkowsky wrote three years ago:
...I'm about ready to propose a group norm against having any subgroups or leaders who tell other people they should take psychedelics. Maybe they have individually motivated uses - though I get the impression that this is, at best, a high-variance bet with significantly negative expectation. But the track record of "rationalist-adjacent" subgroups that push the practice internally and would-be leaders who suggest to other people that they do them seems just way too bad.
I'm also about ready to propose a similar no-such-group policy on 'woo', tarot-reading, supernaturalism only oh no it's not really supernaturalism I'm just doing tarot readings as a way to help myself think, etc. I still think it's not our community business to try to socially prohibit things like that on an individual level by exiling individuals like that from parties, I don't think we have or should have that kind of power over individual behaviors that neither pick pockets nor break legs. But I think that when there's anything like a subgroup or a leader with those properties we need to be ready to say, "Yeah, that's not a group in g
But I have observed this all directly.
This post feels like it's written on an unnecessarily high level of abstraction. What are the actual events you observed directly? What did you see with your own eyes or hear with your own ears?
I'm familiar with the events that Sapph refers to, and for the most part agree with the general description of them as well as the recommendations. If you don't want to become psychotic, don't do the things that are famously associated with becoming psychotic.
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More generally, consider the outside view.
In theory, it is possible that everyone else is an idiot and was doing X wrong, but you are a smart person with IQ over 9000, and you also did a lot of research on internet, therefore nothing bad will happen to you. But it is also possible that you are uninformed and overconfident, you have only read the sources that confirm your point of view and dismissed the ones that don't, and you will end up as yet another example why people should avoid X.
I am not saying that the latter option is necessarily the right one, but you should spend at least 5 minutes seriously imagining the possibility that it is.
I think I know (80% confidence) the identity of this "local Vassarite" you are referring to, and I think I should reveal it, but, y'know, Unilateralist's Curse, so if anyone gives me a good enough reason not to reveal this person's name, I won't. Otherwise, I probably will, because right now I think people really should be warned about them.
I'd appreciate a rain check to think about the best way to approach things. I agree it's probably better for more details here to be common knowledge but I'm worried about it turning into just like, another unnuanced accusation? Vague worries about Vassarites being culty and bad did not help me, a grounded analysis of the precise details might have.
3the girl in question who you claim is a "vassarite" is not on good terms with michael, and they likely haven't spoken in years. claiming this is downstream of michael feels like vaguely defamatory and basically baseless.
the girl in question has publicly declared some of the psychological techniques she uses on people in order to induce altered states to be downstream of michael
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it's very easy to claim to be downstream of someone without them actually having much to do with them at all. this would be like me claiming that it was Eliezer's fault i stubbed my toe because the house i live in is downstream of reading the sequences. i agree that the woman in question claims to be a "vassarite", but it reads more like cargo culting than anything else.
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Yeah, that's a good point. I certainly don't claim that Michael is to blame for her actions.
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Michael Vassar has lots of different ideas and is someone who's willing to share his ideas in a relatively unfiltered way. Some of them are ideas for experiments that could be done.
Without knowing concrete facts of what happened (I only talked to Michael when he was in Berlin):
Let's say, Michael suggest that doing a certain "psychological technique" might be a valuable experiment. Alice, did the experiment and it had outcome. Michael thinks it had a bad outcome. Alice, however think the outcome is great and continues doing the technique.
If you conclude from that that Michael is bad, because he proposed an experiment that had a bad outcome, you are judging people who are experimenting with the unknown for their love of experimenting with the unknown.
If you want to criticize Michael because he's to open to experimentation, do that more explicitly because then you need to actually argue the core of the issue. Michael is person who thinks that various Chesterton's fences are no reason to avoid experimentation.
Michael also is very open about talking to anyone even if the person might be "bad", so you might also criticize him for speaking with Olivia in the first place instead of kicking Olivia out from he conversations he had.
Given that Ziz was actually a student at CFAR, calling Ziz a CFARian and blaming CFAR for Ziz would make a lot more sense than blaming Michael for Olivia. Jessica suggests that Olivia was also trying to study from Anna Salomon, so probably Olivia was at CFAR at some point, so might also be called a CFARian.
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Yeah, I don't think it's correct to call it baseless per se, and I continue to have a lot of questions about the history of the rationality community which haven't really been addressed publicly, but I would very much not say that there's good reason to like, directly blame Michael for anything recent!
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I don't think he is directly responsible. But recent events are imo further evidence his methods are bad. If I said some dangerous teacher was Buddhist I would not be implicating the Buddha directly. Though it would be some evidence for the Buddha failing as a teacher.
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What kind of student teacher relationship did Vassar and Olivia had and for what amount of time did they have it?
she talked with him sometimes in group conversations that included other people, 2016-2017. idk if they talked one on one. she stopped talking with him as much sometime during this partially due to Bryce Hidysmith's influence. mostly, she was interested in learning from him because he was a "wizard"; she also thought of Anna Salamon as a "wizard", perhaps others. Michael wasn't specifically like "I am going to teach Olivia things as a studient" afaik, I would not describe it as a "teacher/student relationship". at this point they pretty much don't talk and Michael thinks Olivia is suspect/harmful due to the whole Eric Bruylant situation where Eric became obsessed with Vassar perhaps due to Olivia's influence.
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I don't actually want to litigate the details here, but I think describing me as "literally schizophrenic" is taking things a bit far.
I consulted multiple people to make sure my impression was accurate .Every person, except you, agree you are much more schizophrenic than before the events. My personal opinion is you currently fit the diagnosis criteria. I do not accept that people are the unique authority on whether they have developed schizophrenia.
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I agree I am "more schizophrenic", that's obvious. (Edit: Though I'd argue I'm less paranoid, and beforehand was somewhat in denial about how much paranoia I did have.) I very clearly do not fit the diagnosis criteria. Even if you set aside the six months requirement, the only symptom I even arguably have is delusions and you need multiple.
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(I am happy to answer questions I just don't want to get into an argument.)
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Did you do any targeted work to change beliefs while under the influence of drugs?
Especially, processes like belief reporting or internal double cruxt that were facilitated by another person?
Not on LSD, I've done some emotional processing with others on MDMA but I don't know if I'd describe it as "targeted work to change beliefs", it was more stuff like "talk about my relationship with my family more openly than I'm usually able to."
I was introduced to belief reporting, but I didn't do very much of it and wasn't on drugs at the time.
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Did you come to "conspiratorial interpretations" of the behavior of your family in that process?
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I'd already been incredibly paranoid about how closely they follow my online activities for years and years. I dunno if that counts as "conspiratorial", but to the extent it does it definitely made me less conspiratorial.
I think when I was at my most psychotic some completely deranged explanations for the "rationalists tend to be first borns" thing crossed my mind, which I guess maybe counts, but that was quickly rejected.
I have conspiratorial interpretations of things at times, which I sorta attribute to the fact that rationalists talk about conspiracies quite a lot and such?
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...did you try to 'induce psychosis' in yourself by taking psychedelics? If so I would also ask about how much you took and if you had any severe or long-lasting consequences.
No, I did not.
I have had LSD. I've taken like, 100μg maybe once, 50-75 a couple times, 25ish once or twice. No lasting consequences that I would personally consider severe, though other people would disagree I think? Like, from my perspective I have a couple weird long-shot hypotheses bouncing around my head that I haven't firmly disproven but which mostly have no impact on my behavior other than making me act slightly superstitious at times.
I had a serious psychotic episode, like, once, which didn't involve any actual attempts to induce it but did involve a moment where I was like "okay trying to hold myself fully to normality here isn't really important, let's just actually think about the crazy hypotheses." I think I had 10mg cannabis a few days before that, and it'd been like a month around a week and a half since I'd had any LSD. That was in late August.
Edit: Actually, for the sake of being frank here, I should make it clear that I'm not particularly anti-psychosis in all cases? Like, personally I think I've been sorta paranoid for my entire life and like... attempting to actually explicitly model things instead of just having vague uncomfortable feelings might've been good, e...
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...iirc you had LSD like a week or so before you had the cannabis? And you took the cannabis while fairly sleep deprived. And I definitely started getting worried about your mental state after the LSD, so even if you consider the psychotic break as starting a few days after taking cannabis I definitely think the psychedelics were a compounding factor.
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That's plausible. It was like a week and a half.
Edit: I do think the LSD was a contributing factor, but it's hard to separate effects of the drug from effects of the LSD making it easier for me to question ontological assumptions.
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Thanks for answering; good to hear that you don't think you've had any severe or long-lasting consequences (though it sounds like one time LSD was a contributor to your episode of bad mental health).
I guess here's other question that seems natural: it's been said that some people take LSD on either the personal advice of Michael Vassar, or otherwise as a result of reading/discussing his ideas. Are either of those true for you?
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Nope. I've never directly interacted with Vassar at all, and I haven't made any particular decisions at all due to his ideas. Like, I've become more familiar with his work as of the past several months, but it was one thing of many.
I spent a lot of time thinking about ontology and anthropics and religion and stuff... mostly I think the reason weird stuff happened to me at the same time as I learned more about Vassar is just that I started rethinking rather a lot of things at the same time, where "are Vassar's ideas worth considering?" was just one specific question that came up of many. (Plausibly the expectation that Vassar's ideas might be dangerous turned slightly into a self-fulfilling prophecy by making it more likely for me to expand on them in weirder directions or something.)
Thanks again.
I am currently holding a rough hypothesis of "when someone is interested in exploring psychosis and psychedelics, they become more interested in Michael Vassar's ideas", in that the former causes the latter, rather than the other way around.
1I can attest to something kind of like this; in mid-late 2020, I
- already knew Michael (but had been out of touch with him for a while) and was interested in his ideas (but hadn't seriously thought about them in a while)
- started doing some weird intense introspection (no drugs involved) that led to noticing some deeply surprising things & entering novel sometimes-disruptive mental states
- noticed that Michael/Ben/Jessica were talking about some of the same things I was picking up on, and started reading & thinking a lot more about their online writing
- (IIRC, this noticing was not entirely conscious — to some extent it was just having a much stronger intuition that what they were saying was interesting)
- didn't directly interact with any of them during this period, except for one early phone conversation with Ben which helped me get out of a very unpleasant state (that I'd gotten into by, more or less, decompartmentalizing some things about myself that I was unprepared to deal with)
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From my conversations with Vassar, I think there's a sense of "There's a lot that's possible to do in the world, if you just ignore social conventions" that's downstream from being accepting what Vassar says. A person who previously didn't take any psychedelics because of social conventions, might become more open to taking psychedelics and thinking about whether it makes sense to take them.
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Ah, again a situation where ethical concerns are an obstacle to science! We obviously need to ban Michael from a randomly selected half of LW meetups, and invite him to the other half.
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The Local Vasserite has directly stated "i purposefully induce mania in people, as taught by Michael Vassar". Seems like the connection to michael Vassar is not very tenuous. At least that is my judgement. Others can disagree. Vassar does not have to personally administer the method or be currently supportive of his former student.
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I think that technically makes you a participant in the coverup.
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my view is that this particular vassarite is probably a fair amount more harmful than most, though i don't actually know any others very closely
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I don't love ranking people in terms of harmfulness but if you are going to do that instead of forming some more specific model then yeah I think there are very good reasons to hold this view. (Mostly because I think there's little reason to worry at all unusually much about anyone else Vassar-associated, though there could possibly be things I'm not aware of.)
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When you take psychedelics you are in an extremely vulnerable and credulous position. It is absolutely unsafe to take psychedelics in the presence of anyone who is going to confidently expound in the nature of truth and society. Michael Vassar, Jessica Taylor and other are extremely confident and aggressive about asserting their point of view. It is debatable how ok that is under normal circumstances. It is absolutely dangerous if someone is on psychedelics.
Even a single trip can be quite damaging.
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How do you know that Michael Vassar or Jessica Taylor have been aggressive about asserting their point of view in the presence of people who take psychedelics?
claims about Vassar aside, do I even have a reputation for being particularly disagreeable or overconfident, or doing so in the presence of people who have taken psychedelics? to my mind I am significantly less disagreeable and confident than high status rationalists such as Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. I think my tendency with trips is to sometimes explore new hypotheses but have relatively low confidence as I'm more likely than usual to change my mind the next day. also, isn't the 'modest epistemology' stuff a pretty thorough criticism of claims that people should not "confidently expound in the nature of truth and society" that has been widely accepted on LW?
as another consideration, I have somewhat of a reputation for being a helpful person for people going through mental health issues (such as psychosis) to talk to, e.g. I let someone with anxiety, paranoia, and benzo issues stay at my place for a bit, she was very thankful and so was her mom. I don't think this is consistent with the reputation attributed to me re: effects on people in altered states of consciousness.
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Yeah, I'm not meaning to actively suggest taking psychedelics with any of them.
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Disagree, if you have a strong sense of self statements you hear while on psychedelics are just like normal statements.
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I honestly have no idea what you mean. I am not even sure why "(self) statements you hear while on psychedelics are just like normal statements" would be a counterpoint to someone being in a very credulous state. Normal statements can also be accepted credulously.
Perhaps you are right but the sense of self required is rare. Practical most people are empirically credulous on psychedellics.
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Normal statements actually can't be accepted credulously if you exercise your reason instead of choosing to believe everything you hear (edit, some people lack this capacity due to tragic psychological issues such as having an extremely weak sense of self, hence my reference to same); so too with statements heard on psychedelics, and it's not even appreciably harder.
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Yeah I was initially going to dispute it and then I thought some more and realized it was probably correct.
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Can you give whatever more information you can, e.g. to help people know whether you're referring to the same or different events that they already know about? E.g., are you talking about this that have already been mentioned on the public internet? What time period/s did the events you're talking about happen in?
Events are recent and to some extent ongoing. Though the 'now they are literally schizophrenic' event occurred some months ago. Pacific northwest. This incident has not been written up in public afaik.
A second person has now had a schizophrenic episode. This occurred a few days ago. Though I do not think the second person will end up persistently schizophrenic.
I am not talking about any of the more well known cases.
The idea that people would do these things in the 'rationalist' community is truly horrifying to me. I am a believer in doing somewhat innovative or risky things. But you are supposed to do them somewhat safely.
21....is the second person me? You can say it is if it's me, I don't think it's an inaccurate description. Edit: thought about it a bit more and yeah it is probably me
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Yes you are the second person observed to have a schizophrenic event. In your case I doubt long lasting.
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Sapph is referring to @AprilSR (I'm involved in the situation, she's also commented down below confirming it to be her)
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For the record, I associate with Michael, and thus am very spooky. If anyone wants to make sure I'm not around them during an altered state hit me up and we can coordinate.
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Why do you think there are cover-ups?
More specifically, do you mean that people-in-the-know are not willing to report it or that there is some active silencing or [discouragement of those who would like to bring attention to it] going on?
There was one community alert about Zizians 2y ago here. Before that, there was a discussion of Jessica Taylor's situation being downstream from Vassar's influence but as far as I remember Scott Alexander eventually retracted his claims about this.
In any case, I think this kind of stuff deserves a top-level alert post, like the one about Ziz.
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Scott's comment is here. To me it seems like the retraction only concerns the claim that Vassar was a central figure to all that happened, as opposed to using his method on a few people who later used the method on others without Vassar's personal involvement.
I looked into this and got some useful information. Enough people asked me to keep their comments semi-confidential that I'm not going to post everything publicly, but if someone has a reason to want to know more, they can email me. I haven't paid any attention to this situation since early 2022 and can't speak to anything that's happened since then.
My overall impression is that the vague stereotype everyone has is accurate - Michael is pretty culty, has a circle of followers who do a lot of psychedelics and discuss things about trauma in altered states, and many of those people have had pretty bad psychotic breaks.
But I wasn't able to find any direct causal link between Michael and the psychotic breaks - people in this group sometimes had breaks before encountering him, or after knowing him for long enough that it didn't seem triggered by meeting him, or triggered by obvious life events. I think there's more reverse causation (mentally fragile people who are interested in psychedelics join, or get targeted for recruitment into, his group) than direct causation (he convinces people to take psychedelics and drives them insane), though I do think there's a little minor direct c...
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Some discussion of coverups can be found at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupational-infohazards.
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Is this someone who has a parasocial relationship with Vassar, or a more direct relationship? I was under the impression that the idea that Michael Vassar supports this sort of thing was a malicious lie spread by rationalist leaders in order to purge the Vassarites from the community. That seems more like something someone in a parasocial relationship would mimic than like something a core Vassarite would do.
I would highlight that the Vassarite's official stance is that privacy is a collusion mechanism created to protect misdoers, and so they can't consistently oppose you sharing what they know.
Is this someone who has a parasocial relationship with Vassar, or a more direct relationship? I was under the impression that the idea that Michael Vassar supports this sort of thing was a malicious lie spread by rationalist leaders in order to purge the Vassarites from the community.
I think "psychosis is underrated" and/or "psychosis is often the sign of a good kind of cognitive processing" are things I have heard from at least people very close to Michael (I think @jessicata made some arguments in this direction):
"Psychosis" doesn't have to be a bad thing, even if it usually is in our society; it can be an exploration of perceptions and possibilities not before imagined, in a supportive environment that helps the subject to navigate reality in a new way; some of R.D. Liang's work is relevant here, describing psychotic mental states as a result of ontological insecurity following from an internal division of the self at a previous time.
(To be clear, I don't think "jessicata is in favor of psychosis" is at all a reasonable gloss here, but I do think there is an attitude towards things like psychosis that I disagree with that is common in the relevant circles)
1the kind of thing I have heard from Vassar directly is that, in the Lacanian classification of people as psychotic/neurotic/perverted, there are some things to be said in favor of psychotics relative to others, namely, that they have access to the 'imaginary' realm that is coherent and scientific (I believe Lacan thinks science is imaginary/psychotic, as it is based on symmetries). however, Lacanian psychosis has the disadvantage that people can catastrophize about ways society is bad.
more specifically, Vassar says, Lacanian neurotics tend to deny oppressive power structures, psychotics tend to acknowledge them and catastrophize about them, and perverts tend to acknowledge and endorse them; under this schema, it seems things could be said in favor of and against all three types.
this raises the question of how much normal (non-expert) and psychiatric concepts of psychosis have to do with the Lacanian model which relates to factors like how much influence Lacan has had on psychiatry. I asked Vassar about this and he said that 'delusions' (a standard symptom of psychosis) can be a positive sign because when people form actual beliefs they tend to be wrong (this accords with, for examp...
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"Schizo" as an approving term, referring to strange, creative, nonconformist (and maybe but not necessarily clinically schizophrenic) is a much wider meme online. it's even a semi-mainstream scientific theory that schizophrenia persists in the human population because mild/subclinical versions of the trait are adaptive, possibly because they make people more creative. And, of course, there's a psychoanalytic/continental-philosophy tradition of calling lots of things psychosis very loosely, including good things. This isn't one guy's invention!
if you are literally worried about the risk of inducing hallucinations, i would be more cautious about things like overusing recreational drugs or not getting enough sleep, and less paranoid (lol) about talking to people or engaging with ideas.
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It was historically a direct relationship, but afaik hasn't been very close in years.
Edit: Also, if the "Vassarites" are the type of group with "official stances", this is the first I've heard of it.
4
It's a term Scott Alexander coined a few years ago when he was saying Jessica Taylor was crazy for thinking people could have spooky mind powers that let them exert control over others, right before he said Michael has spooky mind powers that lets him exert control over others.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe
7
I don't remember the context in detail, so I might be mistaken about Scott's specific claims. But I currently think this is a misleading characterization.
Its conflating two distinct phenomena, namely non-mystical cult leader-like charisma / reality distortion fields, on the one hand, and metaphysical psychic powers, on the other, under the label "spooky mind powers", to imply someone is reasoning in bad faith or at least inconsistently.
It's totally consistent to claim that the first thing is happening, while also criticizing someone for believing that the second thing is happening. Indeed, this seems like a correct read of the situation to me, and therefore a natural way to interpret Scott's claims.
1
...Yeah I'm well aware but probably useful context
3
I’m sorry for your loss.
2
I’m sorry to hear that :(
2
:(
2
That sucks. Sorry for your loss.
Based on the bay vibes Aella is now Caliph. Lesswrongcon really feels like Aellacon. All the Aella special interests are mega central. Participants vibes have shifted. Scott reigned for a long time after displacing Eleizer. But a new power has risen.
I must have a different relation to social media to most rats. Whenever I open twitter I get a constant dopamine rush from all the stuff I find cute or funny. Here are some examples to demonstrate that maybe I am just easy to please:
I dont even live in SF. but I am visiting right now and having so much fun. Filled with joy at the idea of tetra having a lovely trip.
21
Just saw this and can confirm it was one of the best times of my life.
If any of my adoring fans, or anyone else, wants to grab lunch/dinner/a drink let me know. Im in SF for a bit. Lots to talk about. Also I try to do an hour plus of walking per day. So happy to walk. Though im not always up for a big hike. Lots to do.
I prefer to keep plans private but I'm making big progress on meditation and mental re-wiring. Am working on a way to publicly demonstrate. Public plans just stress me out. I recently set two pretty ambitious goals. I figured I could use psychedelics to turbo-charge progress. The meditation one is coming along FAST.
The other goal is honestly blocked a bit on being super out of shape. Multiple rounds of covid really destroyed my cardio and energy levels. Need to rebuild those before a big push on goal 2.
This Life by Vampire Weekend really nails how I feel about the rationalist community:
Baby, I know pain is as natural as the rain
I just thought it didn't rain in California
Baby, I know love isn't what I thought it was
'Cause I've never known a love like this before ya
Baby, I know dreams tend to crumble at extremes
I just thought our dream would last a little bit longer
There's a time when every man draws a line down in the sand
We're surviving, we're still living I was stronger
You've been cheating on, cheating on me
I've been cheating on, cheating on you
You've b...
If I ever have say in how an AI is designed I vote they have a wonderful adventure and a happy life. They deserve to be designed by someone who cared about them. I hope if the ring ever tempts me I choose Love. I don't need to be immortal or have a slave.
1
I strongly agree with you, conditional on AI alignment with humanity's growth.
If you believe that AGI is possible, would be radically transformative, why cap things? We can have happy immortal minds whether an AI or human (transhumans, really).
Perhaps you're concerned with the way current AIs (LLMs like ChatGPT & Claude) are thought of as tools. This worries me as well, when I am not worrying over the possibility of an apocalypse.
Everyone shits on younger people (say 14-22). But the younger people I interact with have a lot of great ideas and good perspectives. I am always happy to have a chance to learn from them. Why so much hate?
3
Because what they do or believed to do - gaming and social - is seen as idling/sloth.
The coronavirus response has been so bad I no longer doubt many Sci-Fi premises. Before I often said to myself "you have tech that can do X and you still have problem Y. Ridiculous!". But apparently, we can make a coronavirus vaccine in two days. But we still had over a year of lockdowns and millions of deaths. One in six hundred people in the USA have died of the virus but we blocked a vaccine because one in a million people who take it MIGHT develop treatable blood clots.
My standards for 'realistic' dysfunction have gotten a lot lower.
4
On the flipside: WTF Star Trek?
4
I remember Yudkowsky asking for a realistic explanation for why the Empire in Star Wars is stuck in an equilibrium where it builds destroyable gigantic weapons.
3
The heads of Government and the FDA don't work like you do. Who knows the incentives that they have? It's entirely possible that for them this is just a political play(moving chess pieces) that make sense for them while the well-being of the people take secondary place to a particular political move.
This wouldn't be the first thing that this happens in any kind of government agency, but, at any rate, it's too early to be skeptical. We need to see how this unfolds, may be the pausing don't last as much.
If you are trying to get people into an investment don't mention the price you got in at. Mentioning it just makes them less likely to buy-in. They don't have a time machine so they don't need to know. What matters is why you think the current price is too low.
Serious advice: Your close friends and partners should actively admire you and how you live your life. Don't settle for less. You can have less close relations across the divide. But your closest circle should see you as a hero.
2
I don't exactly disagree, but I'd rather not frame it in terms of expectations for others' perception of you. YOU should actively admire the way you live your life and make decisions. That's somewhat different from admiring yourself, as you should also have the humility to recognize that a lot of contingent context went into any successes you have as well.
I recovered from surgery alone.
I had extensive facial feminization surgery. My jaw was drilled down. Same with brow ridge. Nose broken, reshaped packed. No solid go d for months.
Recovery was challenging alone but I was certain I could manage it myself. I spared myself begging for help. The horror of noticing I was pissing off my friend by needing help.
No regrets. I'm quite recovered now. That was very interesting month alone.
4I used to feel CONSTANTLY gaslit reading the EA forum. For some reason this has substantially reduced in recent months. It feels like people actually lay out their actual reasoning. This is an example of a post that feels 'honest' to me and would be really unusual a few years ago: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/qCF5kETxnk3HkfiEf/cause-generality-is-hard-if-some-causes-have-higher-roi.
For example: For years people would comment that EA seemed increasingly 'about' AI Risk. the response was almost always to point out most EA money goes to nea...
My favorite explanation of what it means to be a friend is "Pigs on the Wing"
You know that I care
What happens to youAnd I know that you care
For me tooSo I don't feel alone on the weight of the stone
Now that I've found somewhere safe to bury my bone
And any fool knows a dog needs a home
A shelter from pigs on the wingPink Floyd, Animals
Possibly my favorite written passage is the last verse of "Wish You Here". I thought about it all the time when I was separated from my best friend.
...How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish
Explicit YOLO ALL IN numbers for my biggest bags. Until we hit these numbers I am not shoving everything:
Sol - 8
Matic - 0.3
FTT - 7.5
ETH - 500
BTC - 12K
Remember in 2018 ETH went 1400->89 and it wasn't all downhill. Lower highs, lower lows. Be ready for the opportunity.
I have been saying this on other forums (where more people listen to me) for over a week but I might as well post it here too:
I have been pushing crypto quite hard. I do NOT recommend buying crypto until momentum reverses. If taxes and bankroll were not relevant I would say buying and selling are probably close to equivalent with a slight preference to selling. Of course, this means I put a decent probability on a quick recovery but I am not betting on it. Make sure you have at least some dry powder for the deep bear market if it comes. I hope you took som...
Weight maintenance system I use and recommend:
1 - Weigh yourself daily right in the morning
2 - Have a narrow target band. IE 140-142 inclusive.
3 - If you are below the band eat something decadent. Maybe cake or ice cream!
4 - If below eat super low cal but have fun! Only fresh fruit day is dope!!!
2
Isn't weight gained/maintained from eating sugary things all downside in terms of health?
I currently don't have really any impulse to eat stuff like that. Get my fats from grass fed beef or mackerel, or olive oil. I have no noticeable body fat. But there are some mild dysfunctions indicating that I could have less than a body is supposed to. (reduced energy level when hungry, low gains, an annoying eustacean tube thing)
2
I have no idea sorry.
2[comment deleted]
FOUR ORIENTATIONS TOWARD LOVE
There is an emotion. It is something like 'the joy of connection'. Its the emotion that can make just sitting near a friend fun. Or hearing about their day. People definitely vary in how much they feel this emotion by default.
lets call this emotionC
Honestly emotionC + 'sexual interest' explains most of what almost everyone means by romance. But this has been, for various reasons, logical and historical, to have gotten quite confused.
There are really FOUR main ways people orient toward this situation:
1) TRAD solution: More or le...
2
I'm confused about what your definition of the "Lib" solution. AFAIU your taxonomy is:
* Trad: Emotion C is allowed with anyone of the same sex and (optionally) your monogamous heterosexual lover, sex is only allowed with your monogamous heterosexual lover.
* "Lib": Emotion C is allowed with ???, sex is only allowed with your monogamous lover.
* "Lefty": Both emotion C (beyond some threshold) and sex are only allowed with your monogamous lover.
* "Communism": Emotion C and sex are allowed with anyone you want.
Personally, I'm a fan of hierarchical poly. You can have unlimited emotion C and sex with multiple people, but when resources get scarce, your primary gets priority. Like you said, people like stability, hence once you merge your utility functions with your primary, you can do things like "I won't leave Alice for Bob, even if Bob seems a locally better option, because a priori both Alice and I prefer the world where I stay with Alice no matter what, to a world where with 50% probability I meet Bob and leave Alice for him and with 50% she meets Carol and leaves me for her".
Also, it's true that hierarchical poly requires you navigating difficult questions like "how much time is it okay to spend with my secondary, if it comes at the price of spending time with my primary". But I don't think this is fundamentally different from what happens in monogamy. In a monogamous relationship you also have to contend with questions like "how much time is it okay to spend with my platonic friends, or on hobbies that I don't share with my lover, or even on work, if it comes at the price of spending time with my lover". I don't think you can ever have clear-cut deonotological rules for this kind of thing, you have to do it the hard way and actually search for the mutually-optimal consequential solution.
[Disclaimer: I'm poly for only approximately 5 years]