A lot of the people designing America’s technology and close to the center of American power believe some deeply weird shit. We already talked to journalist Gil Duran about the Nerd Reich, the rise of the destructive anti-democratic ideology. In this episode, we dive into another weird section of Silicon Valley: the cult of Rationalism.

Max Read, the journalist behind the Read Max Substack, is here to help us through it. Rationalism is responsible for a lot more than you might think and Read lays out how it’s influenced the world we live in today and how it created the environment for a cult that’s got a body count.

• Defining rationalism: “Something between a movement, a community, and a self-help program.”
• Eliezer Yudkowsky and the dangers of AI
• What the hell is AGI?
• The Singleton Guide to Global Governance
• The danger of thought experiments
• As always, follow the money
• Vulgar bayesianism
• What’s a Zizian?
• Sith Vegans
• Anselm: Ontological Argument for God’s Existence
• SBF and Effective Altruism

READ MAX!

The Zizians and the Rationalist death cults

Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down - Eliezer Yudkowsky’s TIME Magazine piece

Explaining Roko’s Basilisk, the Thought Experiment That Brought Elon Musk and Grimes Together

The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians

The Government Knows AGI is Coming | The Ezra Klein Show

The archived ‘Is Trump Racist’ rational post

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