Thinking about how the arsing fuck to explain the rationalists to normal people - especially as they are now a loud public problem along multiple dimensions.
The problem is that it’s all deep in the weeds. Every part of it is “it can’t be that stupid, you must be explaining it wrong.”
With bitcoin, I have, over the years, simplified it to being a story of crooks and con men. The correct answer to “what is a blockchain and how does it work” is “it’s a way to move money around out of the sight of regulators” and maybe “so it’s for crooks and con men, and a small number of sincere libertarians” and don’t even talk about cryptography or technology.
I dunno what the one sentence explanation is of this shit.
“The purpose of LessWrong rationality is for Yudkowsky to live forever as an emulation running on the mind of the AI God” is completely true, is the purpose of the whole thing, and is also WTF.
Maybe that and “so he started what turned into a cult and a series of cults”? At this point I’m piling up the absurdities again.
The Behind The Bastards approach to all these guys has been “wow these guys are all so wacky haha and also they’re evil.”
How would you first approach explaining this shit past “it can’t be that stupid, you must be explaining it wrong”?
[also posted in sneer classic]
I think starting with Sam Bankman Fried is a solid idea. Relatively informed members of the general public a) know who that guy is, and b) know that he made some really poor decisions. He does not have the silicon valley mystique that attaches itself to some other adherents, I think fewer people will think “well that guy is really smart, why would he be in a cult”. Then you can go back and explain EA and LessWrong and Yudkowsky’s role in all of this.