iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is a book about how completely unprincipled attention hounds will always make their way to the right because they know the right will have them. The NYMag piece? I guess that’s a story about how unprincipled attention hounds deserve attention as long as they’re shitting on democrats.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 27/09/2026

reading this, it does seem as if “rationalism” is an elaborate intellectual architecture designed primarily to support the idea that if you were born white, male and clever then you are the genetic elite and entitled to rule.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 27/09/2026

as described here, rationalism sounds like a cult for people with terminal solipsism

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 27/09/2026

bsky.app/profile/fain...

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

if Eliezer Yudkowsky was born into a somewhat poorer family and missed a couple lucky breaks, he’d have ended up as an archetypal specimen of your friend’s older cousin who keeps boa constrictors and makes you listen to him talk about quantum physics in his parent’s basement in exchange for weed

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

It is no coincidence that rationalists and EAs tend to be straight white guys from well-off families, because for everybody else, the world usually conspires to knock some sense into you about your inherent god-emperor genius by the time you’re old enough to drink.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

As a former pretentious little shit who grew out of it, rationalists (et al) annoy the piss out of me because they are adults with the mentality of tweens - they are somehow still convinced they are the greatest geniuses who have ever walked the earth. It is the worldview of an arrogant baby.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

like I suspect many of you on This Website, I think a core reason why I find Eliezer Yudkowsky and his rationalist and effective altruist satellites so intensely annoying is because I had a VERY similar “being a super weird, pretentious, hyper-literate kid” experience - I just, you know, grew up.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

Here is Eliezer Yudkowsky explaining (like a very normal person who absolutely does not have some kind of acute personality disorder) why, on the basis of his childhood test scores, he is a special genius uniquely qualified to change the world: web.archive.org/web/20010309...

5.2: Do you really think you can change the world?
Well, yes. After all, if I shouldn't believe that I can do it - or at least, that I have enough of a chance to make the effort worthwhile - who should?
That, at any rate, would be the argument I'd use if I were trying to set up a socially acceptable set of emotional bindings under which "I can change the world" sounds like a modest endeavor. "You can assign a suitably humble estimate to my chances of success as an individual, but if nobody tried, we'd be out of luck, wouldn't we?i
That's not what I tell myself.
Algernon's Law says that any simple (45) major intelligence enhancement will turn out to be a net evolutionary disadvantage. (46). The flip side of Algernon's Law is that there are some levels of performance that can't be achieved without the evolutionary disadvantage. If there were any way to duplicate the performance level of a Specialist without the downside, my SAT scores would be as common as mud; those performance levels would be part of the standard human neurology, like symbolic language or three-dimensional vision. I therefore expect that in any of my areas of Specialization - causal analysis, combinatorial design, reflectivity - I will have significantly more raw processing power than anyone except another Specialist.
Just because ten thousand dedicated researchers hit a problem and bounce, it is not a licensable conclusion that a Specialist will bounce off as well. A truly "impossible" problem often takes me a while to solve; I have to slog away at it steadily, whereas my usual rule is that I can see an answer instantly if I can see it at all. Conversely, if my level of processing power is enough to make slow but steady progress on a problem, then I would expect any non-Specialist to hit the problem and bounce. Which, to some extent, explains the travails suffered by Al.

The existence of Specialists expands the range of problems that humanity can solve. And because I don't know of any other Countersphexists operating in the fields of Al, transhumanism, or Singularitarianism (47), or of any other Countersphexists at all (48), then, for an important class of problems, I expand the range of problems that can be solved. In particular, I am referring to the problem of Al.
Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm sure AI would be solved eventually. In about 2020 CRNS (49), the weight of accumulated cognitive science and available computing power would disintegrate the ideological oversimplifications and create enough of a foothold in the problem to last humanity the rest of the way. It would be absurd to claim to represent the difference between a solvable and unsolvable problem in the long run, but one genius can easily spell the difference between cracking the problem of intelligence in five years and cracking it in twenty-five - or to put it another way, the difference between a seed Al created immediately after the invention of nanotechnology, and a seed Al created by the last dozen survivors of the human race huddled in a survival station, or some military installation, after Earth's surface has been reduced to a churning mass of goo.
That's why I matter, and that's why I think my efforts could spell the difference between life and death for most of humanity, or even the difference between a Singularity and a lifeless, sterilized planet. I don't mean to say, of course, that the entire causal load should be attributed to me; if I make it, then Ed Regis or Vernor Vinge, both of whom got me into this, would equally be able to say "My efforts made the difference between Singularity and destruction." The same goes for Brian Atkins, and Eric Drexler, and so on. History is a fragile thing. So are our causal intuitions, where linear chains of dependencies are concerned. Nonetheless, I think that I can save the world, not just because I'm the one who hap…

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

While I am no psychologist or psychiatrist, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s account of his own life does read exactly like the writing of every other reasonably articulate person with a severe personality disorder:

4.6: What's it like to be you?
I am sufficiently intelligent to have completely avoided most or all of the pitfalls of youth, and I've cleaned enough dirt out of my mind that the thought of living in a completely open telepathic society doesn't disturb me. And yet I still fall short of moral perfection, because I have far less mental energy than an ordinary human.
The human mind is scarily, unintuitively modular, as even a casual student of brain-damage cases knows.
Consider, for example, the phenomenon of anosognosia, in which a patient's left arm or leg is paralyzed and the patient doesn't know it. The patient will deny any paralysis, rationalize vis "decision" not to move the arm, become angry if the confrontation continues, and so on. This only happens with the left side of the body, never the right!
It's horrifying to contemplate the thought that your self-awareness, your rationality, is subject to that sort of selective damage. It makes you wonder whether there are other blatantly obvious facts that we're all incapable of perceiving.
I am a neurohack, every bit as alien as any denizen of The Modular Brain or The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. But that alienness expresses itself in an unintuitive, modular, dramatically inconsistent way. I have a painter's self-awareness, a clean mind, and tricks of self-alteration; things which, if they were transferred to someone else, would probably result in nearly total "self-control"; I have beliefs which, all else being equal, would create an intense, energetic fanatic. It doesn't work that way, for me, because I have a hardware deficit creating a lack of mental energy. Nothing trumps hardware. Period. I can be a fanatic Singularitarian, reorganize my mind, and it won't ever give me as much mental energy as an ordinary human. End of story.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

Reading this makes me feel really bad for Eliezer Yudkowsky’s parents tbh

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

“Yes, I like Buffy, but not for the stupid reasons you plebeian ignoramuses do,” he says, while wearing a fedora and khaki cargo shorts (did Yud ever go through a Hawaiian shirt phase?)

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

here we find Eliezer Yudkowsky engaging in the classic 90s and 2000s genre of “insecure straight guy getting really defensive about liking Buffy the Vampire Slayer”

$3.3: What's your favorite television show? Actually, there's only one television show worth watching. This show is by far superior to every other television show I've ever seen, up to and including Babylon Five. If you've ever seen this show, you already know what my favorite show is. Not even the fraction of a doubt has crossed your mind. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 3.4: You watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer? "Eliezer watches Buffy? That's wonderful! So he is mortal, after all." I get that reaction often, always from people who have never seen the show. Anyone who has seen the show, especially the second season, knows better than to be reassured. NOTE: In recent times - the fourth season - the quality has gone far downhill, alas. The comments below should be taken as referring to the first through third seasons. But just to set a few matters straight: Buffy is an extremely intelligent and high-quality show. Magic has rules on Buffy; they're never explained, but they're very clearly there. All the people behave like real human beings. Buffy is "realistic" ", in the sense that it depicts exactly what would happen, given the show's premises. The characters are intelligent and emotionally mature. Finally, I do not watch Baywatch, and I see no reason why people should assume that I watch Buffy for the same reason they watch Baywatch. (30). That said... "I wish I could be a lot of things for you. A great student, a star athlete, remotely normal. I'm not. But there is something I do that I can do better than anybody else in the world..." - Buffy Summers, to her mother, in Graduation Day I Do you even need to ask? Well, yes, you do. It'd be a mistake to focus too much on the fact that Buffy Summers is the one girl in all the world with the strength and speed to hunt the vampires, and I'm the one Specialist working on Al. Remember, I have no emotional need to be special. I've spent my whole life being special. We all have secret little ridiculous dreams. It's a large part of who…$

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

the Eliezer Yudkowsky superhero origin story is truly so intensely dorky as to defy all attempts at parody. you could not waterboard any of this out of me web.archive.org/web/20010309...

His autobiography even opens with a parable: as a small child he threw his favorite squirtgun off a third-floor balcony rather than accept that his mother could lend out what was his, and felt complete when he heard it hit the pavement. He goes on to describes himself as a specialist in the technological transformation of the human species, one of the few people alive with the standing to steer it. He identifies with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the one person who sees the danger clearly and has to act while everyone else gets on with ordinary life.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

bless your hearts

BERKELEY (RNS) - Raymond Arnold sat in the dark on the edge of a Berkeley stage in early December, his voice breaking as he addressed the nearly 500 people gathered for Secular Solstice.
"Guys..." he whispered into the microphone. "I don't think we're gonna make itẠại
Arnold, a web developer and founder of the now 15-year-old Rationalist holiday, admitted he thought this could, potentially, be "the last Solstice."
Winter solstice traditions around the world and across religions mark the shortest day of the year and offer observers a meaningful way to stare down the dark or, as Arnold puts it, "challenge the Abyss to a staring contest and win." At this year's Bay Area Secular Solstice, that meant grappling with the possibility of superintelligent Al wiping out humanity - a future some Rationalists, including Arnold, believe may be near.

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

This is another great, approachable explainer on “the rationalist wackos who have managed to take over much of the AI industry, and who now have tons of money and political power.” www.iankduncan.com/personal/202...

iankduncan.com

Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse - Ian Duncan

How a community devoted to thinking clearly incubated salvation stories, abusive experiments, race science, and an affection for autocracy, and why that history matters now that its alumni are asking ...

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Bill @bill-of-lefts.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I actually think the movie suffers From taking itself overly morally seriously. the confrontations with the pedophiles are portrayed as these highly dramatic, morally charged events. But if you watch episodes of Predator, they were often these weird, goofy, banal encounters

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Bill @bill-of-lefts.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Primetime was surprisingly not very harsh on Chris Hansen. Like yeah, he comes off as an obsessed narcissist, but the movie also portrays him as genuinely believing he is doing battle with metaphysical evil

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KEW @kidadaewilliams.com · 27/09/2026

“Strong Men & Women in Virginia History,” a traveling exhibit highlighting the contributions of pioneering African Americans in VA, is making its way across VA, allowing communities to learn about individuals whose work reached far beyond the pages of history books. www.nvdaily.com/nvdaily/exhi...

nvdaily.com

Exhibit highlights African Americans who shaped Virginia communities

A traveling exhibit highlighting the contributions of pioneering African Americans in Virginia is making its way to libraries and historical institutions across the Commonwealth, allowing communities ...

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Mike Locksey vs a Head of Lettuce @convolutedname.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"Low-propensity voters coming out to save Trump" has historically never been in a midterm and yet it gets treated increasingly as a given, while historically he always has been an incredibly disliked incumbent.

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Reconstructionist @unavaleable.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

people keep confusing Trump (and the GOP) having a relatively high floor with him being an electoral superstar

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Mike Locksey vs a Head of Lettuce @convolutedname.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"Donald Trump, Electoral Juggernaut" has never existed and is basically a mirage created by perception of polling and how votes are counted.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I like that in becoming a nazi, you get glowing coverage as a brave iconoclast, and then when you stop being a nazi, you’re get glowing coverage as a brave dissident. Money coming and going. Only way you lose is having normal opinions like “racism bad” bsky.app/profile/trac...

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Rob Tracinski @tracinski.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

OK, Washington Post, enlighten me. What is the bright side of being a Nazi?

Washington Post headline and subhead: "She helped lead a far-right internet movement. Then it turned on her. Inspired by female conservative influencers, Amy Dangerfield worked to become one of Nick Fuentes’s model 'groypettes.' A vicious fight left her grappling with the dark side of far-right fame."

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 27/09/2026

got my kids watching darkwing duck and i had forgotten that this show had a straight up new jack swing theme song

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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 28/09/2026

Maybe this one will dissuade them of the next? Uhhhhhh.

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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 28/09/2026

It's totally insane. Iraq did absolutely nothing to dent the delusions of our policymaking elite on the idea of a war with Iran. Just crazy lol.

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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 28/09/2026

Half of Obama's own party threw a tantrum over his novel "don't do stupid shit" doctrine in relation to Iran. Trump then immediately tore the JCPOA up to little resistance. The next president did next to nothing to try and revive it and instead spent 3 years begging Saudi to be friends with Israel.

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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 28/09/2026

Every single DC based think tank to the right of CAP, which is not really that left wing to begin with on MENA, begged and begged and begged and begged and begged to do anything but a diplomatic solution on this issue for decades. The FDD spent tens of millions begging for this exact war since 2002.

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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 28/09/2026

Mike Rogers wrote a House Intelligence Committee report which had false information in it about Iranian nuclear power *in 2006*. He was condemned by the IAEA twice. He is now the Republican nominee. Brett McGurk, Biden's top MENA aide, fought against reviving the JCPOA and supports the current war.

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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 28/09/2026

Abjectly insane that this just gets so consistently glossed over.

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#StupidSuez @diplomatofnight.com · 28/09/2026

Any analysis of the Iran War that doesn't start and end with the fact that an entire cottage industry of think tankers and lobbyists and their friends in Congress were frothing at the mouth for literal decades for this got exactly what they wanted and it failed immediately and totally is wrong.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 28/09/2026

“i woke up every morning and name searched myself on twitter. i am normal by the way”

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The Washpost Opinion section is mostly useless these days, outside of a couple of columnists from the old regime, and the absolute gangbuster AI summaries of reader comments.

* Conversation Summary Automatically generated from recent comments The conversation explores a wide range of opinions on the themes of "wokeness," cancel culture, and the political climate addressed in Megan McArdle's opinion piece. Participants express skepticism and criticism towards McArdle's views, with many questioning her understanding and portrayal of "woke" culture. Some comments highlight perceived hypocrisy in her arguments, while others criticize the focus on cancel culture as a distraction from more pressing issues. There is also a discussion about the broader implications of political and cultural divisions, with some commenters pointing out the ongoing nature of these societal debates and the potential for future conflicts. Overall, the comments reflect a mix of disagreement, satire, and frustration with the topics discussed in the piece. Show less

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

The lede is like something a soldier might have written decades after storming Omaha Beach, and having lived long enough to tell his grandchildren about how he somehow survived that fateful day.

For years, the first thing I did upon awakening was check Twitter to see if I had been canceled. After a quick name search to ensure that there was only the usual amount of frothing denunciation, I could get on with my day.

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I wonder what it would be like to write the same column, over and over again, endlessly. Seems like it’d be boring. But maybe it brings one comfort, like having your parents read you the same story every night before you go to bed.

Opinion
Opinion by Megan McArdle
The Great Awokening is over.
This lesbian bar shows why.
A meltdown over masking shows where cancel culture is now.
Today at 07:00 ET

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Judah Grunstein @judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Megan McArdle's WaPo column celebrating the end of the woke left's ability to "cancel" right-wing voices over their social media posts, while making no mention of @karenattiah.bsky.social's legally enforced reinstatement to the WaPo after being fired for her social media posts, is chef's kiss.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 28/09/2026

yeah i am reasonably sure that i have a better chance of winning the democratic primary for president than rahm emmanuel

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m @keptsimple.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I noticed last year that sweetgreen pivoted to MAHA when it started advertising seed oil-free french fries. Going MAHA is what a failing restaurant chain does now to get free advertising.

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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026

“well at least we ended the woke threat that forced me to search my name everyday” is as much a coping mechanism as “obviously I never meant it that way”

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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026

It’s been darkly amusing watching people deal with the fact that Trump actually had not imposed a permanent change to our culture and politics that would allow them to be their worst selves without friction. Some are doubling down, hence the neighborhood bar fascination, and others are pivoting hard

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BeshearStan @beshearstan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

God I love Angie Nixon. I hope she wins

Now @AshleyMoodyFL. Why would I want to abolish the police when I want you arrested and in jail for stealing $10 million from sick kids? BFFR

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Lots of talk about defending "Western civilization" these days, so here's Richard Wright on what it means to be Western:

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Lindsey Boylan @lindseyboylan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This man is a monster. He seeks out women survivors because he hates them. And he hates them because he hates himself. He has harassed me and other women survivors many times over the years. It must end. He should never have a job anywhere.

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Samantha Burns @cheesecakechik.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If he’s successful, would that not be intimidation of a witness? Like it’s not a first amendment issue, it would literally interfere with the trial itself

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The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) @theserfstv.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Michael Tracey is actively attempting to dox Jane Doe in the Cornell 7 rape case

Michael Tracey : If you happen to know who this Cornell "Jane Doe" is, get in touch and I would be happy to publish her name and identifying information. And yes -- this is 100% permitted under the First Amendment, whatever threats or emotional blackmail people might want to deploy

"Report" me for what, exactly? Save your breath, scumbag. Sorry you hate the First Amendment so much. Her identity is obviously newsworthy at this point, and I will take extreme pleasure in reporting it. (Not "doxing" -- that's a total canard)

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Yu-Ming Liou @yumingliou.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I’d restate the vibecession puzzle slightly: not just the gap btw macroeconomic conditions and perceptions of the economy, it’s a gap btw (sociotropic) perceptions of the economy and perceptions of one’s own economic conditions. Americans are much more sanguine about their personal conditions!

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Mikhail Gorbaechev @mikhailgorbaechev.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is the strongest piece of evidence for my thesis imo. People perceive "the economy," i.e., the generalized state of the world, as very bad. Their own personal material conditions, which they can evaluate more normally, are different.

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