Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid - welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Buddhist Rationalist cult MAPLE wants the Internet to know that contrary to āa recent social media postā their guru Soryu Forall is authorized to teach by āby well-known teachers of the Vipassana and Zen traditions.ā They mention a few whoopsies.
They could be responding to The High Control Dynamics at MAPLE (2026) or perhaps Emerging: Making Sense of Soryu Forall (2026) or even My experience inside Soryu Forallās AI-Centered Monastic Academy (2025)
Aella does her boundary-setting thing (those Zizians/MAPLE/Leverage/Brent Dill are bad and not us) https://xcancel.com/Aella_Girl/status/2091015022042595743#m I donāt think Ozy covered MAPLE although IIRC they had a Bay Area offshoot with offices nextdoor to Leverage. I would like to know who is funding Soryu.
I think the only cult type that Yud hasnāt spun off yet is fundamentalist Christian.
@BioMan @techtakes But singularitarians *are* fundamentalist Christians, just a heretical variety who ditched the god/jesus/bible bits but kept the rest of the eschatalogical structures intact.
I mean, true, but thatās true of most secular cults in America and Europe.
And they think that Computer Jesus will return soon and punish the wicked and reward the faithful. I wonder what Yudās parentsā rabbi thinks of all this.
@CinnasVerses @techtakes And donāt get me started on Rokoās Basilisk (the singularitarian remix of Calvinist Satan, complete with theological predeterminism and eternal damnation for the non-elect).
somewhere Blaise Pascal is shaking his fist in his grave
That slot will probably be filled by whatever moneyed post-Trump US Southern snake-fondlers Thiel manages to bilk with his Antichrist bullshit. And therefore not likely large or long-lasting
There were some breadcrumbs in that Wes streeting article about https://www.eaforchristians.org/ but I couldnāt get a sense of how fundie they may be.
tim taylor voice Oh noā¦
Has anyone researched exactly how MAPLE split off from Bay Area rationalism? Most of the writeups focus on what happened after they built a giant compound in Vermont, not why so many rats travel there.
They seem to have launched in one small Vermont township in 2014 ("3 Years of Training Awakened Leaders " as of 2017). They moved from Johnson, VT to Lowell, VT at some point.
Edit / Some history here but nothing on the LessWrong connection except something called the 1440 Foundation in California https://www.centerformindfullearning.org/history/
Edit / Local journalism delivers
Their Form 990 is here but does not have details of the donors. So it sounds like they have a single guru with wealthy patrons.
there was a public post/callout posted about aella some time ago that said she had some part in hurting MAPLEās credibility / position in the community, it still is perplexing the most rational and enlightened humans in the world donāt see their argument is basically itās cool when we do it
Yes, it sounds like Aella has called out some abusers but not acknowledged that abuse and manipulation are central to the LessWrong / EA project. Soryu sounds like a more disciplined, less horny version of Yudkowsky (he got a degree and spent years at a Buddhist temple, but still meditates and reads pop science books to understand Scary AI).
error, error, does not compute
Imagine a Victorian curate beating the village schoolboys, driving his charwoman mad, and pottering about the local antiquarian society with essays about faeries or the customs of India which he has never visited.
Never seen a gullibility filter in the form of eyebrows before:
You may be on to something with the eyebrow heuristic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Aquino
Correction: a woman who said she was raped by a MAPLE / OAK executive says that:
That sounds a lot like Yud in the 2010s.