"In this sense its predecessors are not really the original enlightenment rationalists, but the dubious touchstones of ‘60s-hangover California--Scientology and Dianetics, Werner Erhard and est,"
There's also some historical ties between the golden age sci fi that Yudkowsky was steeped in growing up (no doubt many other Rationalists too) and these kind of culty self-improvement groups that promise almost supernatural expansion of mental abilities. Alex Nevala-Lee's book "Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction" has some good info on this, especially how Campbell, an editor who was hugely influential on the development of science fiction stories after taking over the magazine "Astounding" in 1937, went in for all sorts of "new psychological technology" schemes including the beginnings of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics (Nevala-Lee also has some posts on Campbell and Dianetics on his blog at https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/tag/dianetics-the-modern-science-of-mental-health/ ). Also see the article on "self-help supermen" in WWII era sci-fi, which talks about Campbell's influence, at https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5621/sciefictstud.41.3.0524
Yeah, I happen to know in this case that these guys were particularly influenced by Cordwainer Smith, sci-fi alias of psychological warfare professional Paul Linebarger. It's an interesting rabbit hole, as interesting as the one around the infamous Space Relations by Donald Barr, possible early Epstein recruiter.
Interesting, do you mean Yudkowsky specifically or "rationalists" more generally? I remember reading that Yudkowsky was especially influenced by a sci fi writer named A. E. van Vogt, who was himself influenced by an author named Alfred Korzybski, an independent scholar who had his own scheme for dramatically upgrading the way we think (Nevala-Lee has a post about him at https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/to-be-or-not-to-be-2/ and Andrew Pilsch's 'Self-Help Supermen' article I linked above talks about Korzybski and van Vogt starting on p. 526, with more on the connection on p. 531-535, and p. 527-528 also reference an earlier article relevant to van Vogt and the dream of 'upgrading' oneself, 'Super Men' by Brian Attebery at https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240674).
By "these guys" I meant the Zizians specifically, but I learned it as a fact about a broader, disunified post-Vassar branch of the LessWrong/Extropian movement that included them, Jess Taylor, and Ziz's mentor Alice M. (all mentioned and/or linked above in Max's piece). And yes, the Korzybski and Van Vogt influences seem very important for Yudkowsky. Thanks for the link to Nevala-Lee, that's a nice article!
Thanks, did any of that group ever write about Cordwainer Smith or what they got out of his writing, or more like something you heard about through friends-of-friends etc.? Also when you talk about the post-Vassar branch, is that all people who had been working with Vassar either at MIRI/CFAR or at Leverage, with Jessica Taylor talking about cultishness in both at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe and with Scott Alexander blaming it on the "Vassarites" in a comment?
I heard about it directly in person at events and I haven't read enough of their online stuff to know if they wrote about it or not. This wasn't all the people who had worked with Vassar, just "a" post-Vassar branch among at least a couple different ones. Another was more "magick" with strong Crowleyan influences, sort of a The Invisibles LARP. There was some overlap of branches and it would probably be hard to describe exact boundaries between them even for insiders. Leverage wasn't particularly influenced by Vassar so I'd consider them a separate thing.
Oh shit! I just read an omnibus of John W Campbell cause I'm a freak for Carpenter's The Thing.
What I couldn't get past was that EVERY. STORY. in his collection has a single, brilliant, genius man (always man) defeat an unbeatable monster/empire/alien armada/whathaveyou with the invention of some superweapon or gambit (MacReady and the blood test) or even occasionally headslappingly obvious tactics. (Bad guys are given bulletproof shields so bury them in rockslides)
I was like wowwwww this is so nakedly 1950s atomic age/A-bomb/Galt pilled but given that a lot of great stuff had happened, in some cases due to one guy or a small team (Salk, the Curies, Einstein) and WWII had been ended (in the American propaganda that totally ignored the Soviets and Japan's willingness to surrender) by the SuperWeapon of the A-bomb. So in a sense excuseable.
I did NOT know that he grabbed the levers of power and made sure to mint out more dreck like he created. I guess he wasn't like, the most obvious practitioner of that style of scifi, hes a writer with a distinctively bad and hackneyed personal who *forced it* into a genre.
But yea. All problems are soluble by a single smart genius acting in concert with no one else or directing a faceless mob whose deaths don't count. Does that sound like you? Good news, it sounds like themselves to literally anyone!
Hah, yea they nail literally every point I mentioned. Guess this wasn't a new revelation but to be fair I'm not a big scifi guy.
I kinda fell off once I got through adolescence and realized how much of the genre is a special little boy no one believes in (harry potter, ender, Luke Skywalker) from nowhere special who has a magical destiny that makes him so much better than everyone else... you get it.
It's wish fulfillment for sad lonely kids (Which, hey I used to be an SF fan, not gonna act like I wasn't a sad lonely kid). Anyway, is there a taxonomy?
Where's the line between an unathletic nerdlinger imagining being discovered for having great hidden talent and going on adventures and a mundane adult with no particular skills imagining being a super competent worldbeating genius?
Also, one niggle, I'm not talking Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court type stuff which seems to be the focus of the piece you linked, but specifically a guy of that context and milieu who is just smarter and better than everyone sround him. Usually set in the future, but in Who Goes There it's just an extra smart 1950s scientist in a base full of 1950s scientists.
Scientology is a fascinating history! It was in the news a few years ago when its current iteration imploded, now somewhat forgotten again. I love how they call all their ideas and practices "tech."
"In this sense its predecessors are not really the original enlightenment rationalists, but the dubious touchstones of ‘60s-hangover California--Scientology and Dianetics, Werner Erhard and est,"
There's also some historical ties between the golden age sci fi that Yudkowsky was steeped in growing up (no doubt many other Rationalists too) and these kind of culty self-improvement groups that promise almost supernatural expansion of mental abilities. Alex Nevala-Lee's book "Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction" has some good info on this, especially how Campbell, an editor who was hugely influential on the development of science fiction stories after taking over the magazine "Astounding" in 1937, went in for all sorts of "new psychological technology" schemes including the beginnings of L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics (Nevala-Lee also has some posts on Campbell and Dianetics on his blog at https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/tag/dianetics-the-modern-science-of-mental-health/ ). Also see the article on "self-help supermen" in WWII era sci-fi, which talks about Campbell's influence, at https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5621/sciefictstud.41.3.0524
Yeah, I happen to know in this case that these guys were particularly influenced by Cordwainer Smith, sci-fi alias of psychological warfare professional Paul Linebarger. It's an interesting rabbit hole, as interesting as the one around the infamous Space Relations by Donald Barr, possible early Epstein recruiter.
Interesting, do you mean Yudkowsky specifically or "rationalists" more generally? I remember reading that Yudkowsky was especially influenced by a sci fi writer named A. E. van Vogt, who was himself influenced by an author named Alfred Korzybski, an independent scholar who had his own scheme for dramatically upgrading the way we think (Nevala-Lee has a post about him at https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/to-be-or-not-to-be-2/ and Andrew Pilsch's 'Self-Help Supermen' article I linked above talks about Korzybski and van Vogt starting on p. 526, with more on the connection on p. 531-535, and p. 527-528 also reference an earlier article relevant to van Vogt and the dream of 'upgrading' oneself, 'Super Men' by Brian Attebery at https://www.jstor.org/stable/4240674).
Searching lesswrong.com for mentions of van Vogt I see Yudkowsky talks about his influence at length in the post at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/q79vYjHAE9KHcAjSs/rationalist-fiction and there's also a more recent Yudkowsky post at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YicoiQurNBxSp7a65/is-clickbait-destroying-our-general-intelligence where he name checks him and a few others, saying "I was pretty much raised and socialized by my parents' collection of science fiction. My parents' collection of old science fiction. Isaac Asimov. H. Beam Piper. A. E. van Vogt. Early Heinlein, because my parents didn't want me reading the later books."
By "these guys" I meant the Zizians specifically, but I learned it as a fact about a broader, disunified post-Vassar branch of the LessWrong/Extropian movement that included them, Jess Taylor, and Ziz's mentor Alice M. (all mentioned and/or linked above in Max's piece). And yes, the Korzybski and Van Vogt influences seem very important for Yudkowsky. Thanks for the link to Nevala-Lee, that's a nice article!
Thanks, did any of that group ever write about Cordwainer Smith or what they got out of his writing, or more like something you heard about through friends-of-friends etc.? Also when you talk about the post-Vassar branch, is that all people who had been working with Vassar either at MIRI/CFAR or at Leverage, with Jessica Taylor talking about cultishness in both at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MnFqyPLqbiKL8nSR7/my-experience-at-and-around-miri-and-cfar-inspired-by-zoe and with Scott Alexander blaming it on the "Vassarites" in a comment?
I heard about it directly in person at events and I haven't read enough of their online stuff to know if they wrote about it or not. This wasn't all the people who had worked with Vassar, just "a" post-Vassar branch among at least a couple different ones. Another was more "magick" with strong Crowleyan influences, sort of a The Invisibles LARP. There was some overlap of branches and it would probably be hard to describe exact boundaries between them even for insiders. Leverage wasn't particularly influenced by Vassar so I'd consider them a separate thing.
Thanks for this recommendation, very interested to read it!
Oh shit! I just read an omnibus of John W Campbell cause I'm a freak for Carpenter's The Thing.
What I couldn't get past was that EVERY. STORY. in his collection has a single, brilliant, genius man (always man) defeat an unbeatable monster/empire/alien armada/whathaveyou with the invention of some superweapon or gambit (MacReady and the blood test) or even occasionally headslappingly obvious tactics. (Bad guys are given bulletproof shields so bury them in rockslides)
I was like wowwwww this is so nakedly 1950s atomic age/A-bomb/Galt pilled but given that a lot of great stuff had happened, in some cases due to one guy or a small team (Salk, the Curies, Einstein) and WWII had been ended (in the American propaganda that totally ignored the Soviets and Japan's willingness to surrender) by the SuperWeapon of the A-bomb. So in a sense excuseable.
I did NOT know that he grabbed the levers of power and made sure to mint out more dreck like he created. I guess he wasn't like, the most obvious practitioner of that style of scifi, hes a writer with a distinctively bad and hackneyed personal who *forced it* into a genre.
But yea. All problems are soluble by a single smart genius acting in concert with no one else or directing a faceless mob whose deaths don't count. Does that sound like you? Good news, it sounds like themselves to literally anyone!
Yeah, Nevala-Lee talks about this theme in sci-fi of that era, calling it the myth of the “competent man”: https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2016/04/12/the-myth-of-the-competent-man/
Hah, yea they nail literally every point I mentioned. Guess this wasn't a new revelation but to be fair I'm not a big scifi guy.
I kinda fell off once I got through adolescence and realized how much of the genre is a special little boy no one believes in (harry potter, ender, Luke Skywalker) from nowhere special who has a magical destiny that makes him so much better than everyone else... you get it.
It's wish fulfillment for sad lonely kids (Which, hey I used to be an SF fan, not gonna act like I wasn't a sad lonely kid). Anyway, is there a taxonomy?
Where's the line between an unathletic nerdlinger imagining being discovered for having great hidden talent and going on adventures and a mundane adult with no particular skills imagining being a super competent worldbeating genius?
Also, one niggle, I'm not talking Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court type stuff which seems to be the focus of the piece you linked, but specifically a guy of that context and milieu who is just smarter and better than everyone sround him. Usually set in the future, but in Who Goes There it's just an extra smart 1950s scientist in a base full of 1950s scientists.
The trope isn't particular to SFF.
Scientology is a fascinating history! It was in the news a few years ago when its current iteration imploded, now somewhat forgotten again. I love how they call all their ideas and practices "tech."