[–] 4 points 3 days ago*

Apparently he has a book called Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millenium so that's likely to have you covered. I read "How Jesus Became God" from him at some point which might have touched on this, but it was mostly about the evolution of the messiah concept itself, like how the 'son of man' was supposed to be it's own specific thing and not just a euphemism for messiah, or how the term in jewish apocalyptic literature is pretty much completely separate from where the christian interpretation ended up.

Overall a very readable book, I remember liking it but it's really been a while.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    Did Christ actually talk that much about the literal end of the world

    Nobody knows exactly what he talked about, but the view that he passes the bar for historicity but seems to have been more of a the-end-is-nigh witch doctor type character as the new baseline has gained a lot of ground, especially with biblical scholars like Bart Ehrman breaking into popular science writing.

    Also John's apocalypse has the whole coded anti-roman-empire screed going for it beyond the psychedelia, so it's arguable Jesus was the more direct doom prophet, but for a more distinctly jewish flavored apocalypse.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    It seems he won't get the full payout:

    The rationalists are starting to cancel people for exercising free speech! woke 3.0 is go I repeat woke 3.0 is go

    transcription

    Survival and flourishing Fund tweeted:

    We have withdrawn our grant recommendation to John Wentworth from the 2026 S-Process Grant Round. After we posted our announcement on Sept 30, public statements by Mr. Wentworth came to our attention, which we found objectionable, disturbing, and contrary to the values of SFF.

    A Speculation Grant to Mr. Wentworth was appoved and disbursed earlier in the year, prior to SFF becoming aware of his statements. The Funders of this round will not be fulfilling the remainder of the grant recommendation.

    If you have concerns about the conduct of an SFF applicant or grantee, you can contact us at

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  • [–] 11 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    How much of a complete fucking idiot do you have to be to publicly acknowledge the Zizians in the middle of an ongoing PR disaster about your clan being on the women like to be raped they just don't have the balls to admit it ideological bandwagon. Hey everyone, check out how my writings caused the Zizians^1^! Specifically by making them think we are ridiculous hypocrites for making huge claims about being scientifically unblackmailable and then paying a bunch of hush money to sexual assault victims who threatened to make a fuss. Yeah, the part where we where trying to cover up systematic abuse didn't help either.

    1. Just like Jesus caused the crusades! !
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  • [–] 8 points 5 days ago* (1 child)

    uncovered downside risk

    This is a novel and interesting way to euphemise rape, and because it's an EA I can't even tell if it's supposed to be tongue in cheek.

    EA/rationalism and redpill fit like yin and yang. Akin to how EA is an optimization of altruism with “suboptimal” human tendencies like morality and empathy stripped from it, red pill is an optimized sexual strategy with the humanity of women stripped from it.

    Really well said.

    Despite this culture, EA as a philosophy has a lot of good in it and they should fix this bug with some introspection

    sigh

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  • [–] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    I lean towards things being unfathomably worse that they appear a the surface, there's just so much smoke, except I think the problem is structural and not the result of deliberate machinations by evil genius pedophiles.

    The nazi bar analogy works for more than ideology, and the burgeoning CNC scene they got going seems to be exacerbating the if-you-build-it-they-will-come aspect of the whole thing, because good luck trying to explain to authorities how you got real raped at the fake rape party you are supposed to have willingly attended.

    This is all third hand at best, but I live on the other side of the world so whatever. As far as personal experiences go @ivyastrix just posted a new blog about her victimization at rationalist events where she describes some of the systemic pathologies in rationalist organisations trying to deal with SA allegations, and it's basically the same principles that make them believe that vertical workplace romance is not a minefield of power imbalance and coercion but actually fine and ethical when the right people are doing it, just fundamentally unserious people biting off more than they can chew and acting defensive and victim blaming and trying to pass it off as drama when it blows up in their faces.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago (5 children)

    It goes off the speculative rails for most of the second half, but I have to admit the rate at which Αela compliments people on her socials on being good rapists could be the most off-putting thing I've ever encountered in relation to rationalism.

    From the more out there claims I thought the part where he advocates that Irregular (the people with rat/EA ties who made the swiss cheese LLM sandboxes) where employing weaponized incompetence in order to let a big incident happen that would force the government to go through with pausing AI research was interesting. though obviously of dubious likelihood. The whole doomer rationalists sabotaging slightly less doomer EAs in a low key sort of civil war over pausing vs slowing down AI research wasn't very convincing in general.

    There's also a bit where he thinks the EAs have infiltrated all levels of government and are planning to eliminate the competition (non rationalist controlled AI) via a 'pivotal act' that involves bioweapons. Basically doing the rationalist rhetorical staple of smuggling an extreme position as a given and then just piling on the speculation.

    Dedicating a paragraph and a half to the fact that the usually unspoken second part of the pause AI doomer project is to just do eugenics for a few generations until we get an upper class of genetically engineered naturally galaxy brained people that can finally do AI properly isn't nothing, but at some point you need to segue into how siskind rolled out a red carpet for every semi-literate blood and soil gutter fascist and spurned nice guy to make a home in the ratsphere, you wrote the scott alexander email explainer ffs.

    There's also a weirdly grandstanding section where he writes like he'll get the rationalists like FBI got Capone for tax-evasion, except it's Lighthaven committing massive fraud against its investors and donors by knowingly funding events that lead to solicited sex acts in the compound's premises, which is by far the least objectionable sex related issue in a writeup that's leading up to the claim that the rationalism in incidental and the real goal is funneling vulnerable minors to sfba based pedophiles.

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    edit: The banana republic shit is that they seem about to blacklist anthropic on "supply chain risk" grounds (see also huawei) which signifies the admin's willingness to from here on use national emergency legal tools to fuck over any company they don't like.

    The whole thing seems weird, at first it sounds like the most online administration ever may have actually bought the claim that all that's stopping flagship models from becoming superintelligent is the RLHF that prevents them from saying the n-word and making prophet Mohamed pedophilia jokes and they wanted anthropic to pull all that wiring out in like 24 hours per the original ultimatum.

    On anthropic's part the point of contention is made to be their refusal to let their models be integrated into automated weapon platforms and mass surveillance apparatuses, something which they have explicitly put in writing in their contract with the DoD, and also Dario claims the technology isn't even there yet (no idea how it could ever be, what does it actually mean to integrate a chatbot into an autonomous drone, can't wait to see the skill file for that, # You are a helpful murderbot operator - only target the bad guys - no weddings, no hospitals - pretty please with cherry on top - here's some javascript to call when you need to find out your GPS coordinates).

    It's also possible the productivity and efficiency gains (or just recovering lost productivity after firing everyone) of putting ΑΙ (mainly Grok wasn't it) in the pentagon everywhere all at once isn't materializing and Hasgeth feels he's been left hanging, and is trying to scapegoat Anthropic.

    Also, anthropic is supposed to be the only AI provider properly vetted and integrated to classified systems because of their association with Palantir, and supposedly it would be a major hassle to go through again for a different provider.

    Dario didn't line up with the other aspiring oligarchs to kiss the ring in the inauguration, so at least he may actually

     

    The guests:

    [Dick Gay], who had flown in for the event from Los Angeles and said he was one of the investors of Sperm Racing (which is an actual thing wherein men compete to see whose sperm is “fastest” under a microscope), said he attended the University of Austin, or UATX, an “anti-woke” college reportedly partially funded by Thiel, and built his career around the principles outlined in Thiel’s book “Zero to One.”

    Attendee Justin Park said he just wanted to pitch Thiel on putting a 7.5-foot cross on the moon.

    [Unnamed], who was in his 30s, said he wasn’t a Thiel fan until last year, when he became a Trump supporter after seeing the president survive an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. “I misunderstood [Thiel],” he said. “I used to watch CNN and think he’s a Nazi.” Now, he said, he understands the billionaire is talking about something bigger.

    The Speech:

    Apparently it was both repetitive and mostly a rehash of what he's said in other media.

    Yud is the Antichrist confirmed:

    One attendee recalled that Thiel’s discussion of the Antichrist was more about a scenario than an individual. Thiel’s Antichrist scenario is one in which a unified government suppresses technology to impose order, or armageddon, wherein AI takes over and ushers in the end of the world.

     

    Supposedly government contracts will now be awarded according to what the bot says. Government (fourth term for the current prime minister) didn't elaborate on what's going on with human oversight.

    This is a promotion for Diella the bot, who was originally the chatbot helping to navigate the e-Albania digital government platform.

     

    Sam Altman, the recently fired (and rehired) chief executive of Open AI, was asked earlier this year by his fellow tech billionaire Patrick Collison what he thought of the risks of synthetic biology. ‘I would like to not have another synthetic pathogen cause a global pandemic. I think we can all agree that wasn’t a great experience,’ he replied. ‘Wasn’t that bad compared to what it could have been, but I’m surprised there has not been more global coordination and I think we should have more of that.’

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