You can do more bad things than good with technology, bc more bad things are possible than good things. We need very specific conditions to thrive. Evil people take advantage of naive views about being openminded toward technology and they build harmful technology. Needs to end.

Tbh the solution is Rationalists and EAs have to give up their culture and everything they think makes them special. It’s predicated on being separate from the mainstream, and that has made them side with the supervillains trying to take over the world in the AI industry (many of whom came from their ranks). Throw away the whole ideology. I found it personally to be necessary to renounce the entire culture and all of its benefits to be able to do the right thing and oppose AI development. I don’t think there’s any saving the rest of it. EA/rat culture sees the success of AI as a vindication of everything they believe about themselves and their own exceptionality. Whether you’re for or against matters much less than that you *believe* in an AI future. This is what they’re all about. Nursing this self-image is rooting for evil. If this group of supporters were removed from the AI industry, they would obviously have other supports, but it would cripple Anthropic at least and remove a lot of cultural buffer from OpenAI. If these people put their mind to pausing AI, they could get a lot done, as they did for the AI industry.

Nobody pushes back on me calling the AI company people evil anymore. Not even “but nobody is evil 😭” Would have been better if they had seen earlier when it was easier to intervene. But you can do your part now to withdraw your support from this evil AI takeover project: It’s really as easy as reclaiming your energy. Don’t give AI your excitement and your trust. Don’t be friends with the assholes who are trying to destroy and conquer us. (How could you want to? They aren’t your friends. They are trying to destroy your world.) Stop fantasizing about the future faking they’ve sold you about living in Heaven. Stop identifying with criminals and feeling like you’re already complicit for having enjoyed the hype— you are not a conspirator to coup the world bc of that. You were fooled, and it’s time to get mad. You were tricked into accepting their plan. Some of you were conscripted into identifying with their tribe. It’s sucks to realize you were duped, and that that led you to do harm for them, but reckoning with that is the most important work you can do to set things right. Stop being shock troops for the villains and turn on them. We can have them safely behind bars.