iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 20m

This explains why he can't feed anyone, too afraid that eating will make them woke

Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Looking back the non-aliens/pawnstars History Channel documentaries I loved as a kid and made me a "nerd" had about as much depth as a YouTube ancient battles channel with a cartoon avatar and explosions in every thumbnail. The youths don't know how bad it was back in the day.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The real secret? Churches. They drive an internal monoculture and push anything that seems culturally right wing (even when its pretty tangential), all while not really appealing to much outside the church. Same thing happens with Christian books and movies.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Not to mention the fragmentation of music that's only expanded as the internet gets more ubiquitous means smaller numbers of listeners can achieve "top" status in the past. That so many folks (myself included) only know "Choosin Texas" from discourse shows the cultural power of the billboard is dead

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I don't even here modern top 40 in grocery stores at this point, the newest music on their speakers being 30 years old because that's about as late as you can get with something approaching a monoculture in pop music

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The most America B activity which is only made possible by America A

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I like how the whole thread is "yes the West basically did enable and push the worst aspects of post-Soviet politics, but Putin and his allies like saying that so we have to pretend its not important, and if it is important we have to blame voters not Clinton."

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

So according to Abigail Shrier, women are both being convinced by online social contagion to become men because "being woman bad" and are being convinced because of social contagion that "woman better than man". Fascists can never pick a lane can they?

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Counter point: high ease of low income groups to effectively utilize violence is historically pro-democracy while concentration of force enables more fixed hierarchy. Downside is of course higher non-political inter-personal violence levels are possible.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Sounds a bit like a "power attracts corrupt people" theory over a "power tends to corrupt people" theory. Which yes, the answer is likely some degree of both but which is more impactful matters on the relative importance of "watch out for assholes" vs "limit power in general".

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Worth noting the loss in Hong Kong is a LOT worse than the losses talked about in 2023, which were over-priced but strategically unimportant parts mostly lost because of unsystematic contractor storage. The canopy taken to China has classified tech unlike other losses. www.gao.gov/assets/gao-2...

gao.gov

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

And feel no sympathy about slowing down a driver more if you do. Fuck them, make them slow down!

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

PSA for Atlanta bike/scooter riders: if you're in downtown or Midtown you are almost always safer riding on the street than on the sidewalk. The drivers are already having to go slow, the sidewalks have bigger bumps than you think, and hitting a pedestrian is more likely than a car.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

So this is what's left of the "non-MAGA" Republican party

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This is one of the kind of responses I see that seems designed to keep people from thinking. Its not really about defending the advertisement but about encouraging people to get past bad forms of pattern matching that lead to expending time and stress over literally nothing.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

She's probably considering buying an RV

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This makes me think, there ought to be an academic field on organization structure and how decision makers are chosen. There may very well already exist but I'm unaware of it, unless maybe we count political science? Though then a hyperfocus on governments seems like a weak point of the field.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Pete Hegeseth showing off what real war fighting looks like! www.politico.com/news/2026/09...

The shipment included one of the jet’s canopies, which covers the cockpit and contains stealth technology that only the U.S. and its allies have access to, according to two of the people. An adversary could study the parts and potentially reverse-engineer the prized technology if it had one of the canopies.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Also just kind of funny that the overlap between "yes" on Q1 and "yes" on Q2 would be basically zero

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This actually brings up a pretty big legal question. What exactly is a "vote" in the US Senate and when is it finalized? And if old age confusion can switch it, what other types of confusion should count for potentially changing a vote?

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Note I still critique the term "high control group" in much the same way I critique "cult" because it still is orthogonal to abuse dynamics (plenty of healthy "high demand/control" places as long as there is voluntary exit and lots of high abuse "low control" movements), but that's a minor side note

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

OK yeah this is a series of evidences for really harmful social dynamics. Anyone liking my last thread should read this and I fully endorse the critiques.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

As what I think might be one of those people, I'd say yeah that's what you ought to lead with when describing a movement's problems, because attacking what amounts to aesthetics really encourages bad pattern matching that I object to.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

They didn't transition. They split. The part that cared about "AI risk" and "longtermism" won over company/start-up owners which meant they got more press and ultimately investment.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Which ought to invite people to not do a category error. An organization like GiveWell emerged from EA and still does verifiably good work directing charitable funds to causes that save lives primarily in malaria prevention. Longtermism sucks, AI risk is dumb, EA has good and bad subsets.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So much text is spent to try and categorize into the "bad" category while we categorize ourselves outside that rather than understanding a set of beliefs and economic incentives, and just focusing on where we have evidence those are going wrong.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Real problems are verifiable harms shown with evidence on real people and real environments. "AI alignment" doesn't have this and neither does "cult" discourse which mixes actually coercive and harmful with people we disagree with and have been unable to win over.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

At the same time that the modern US is in a period of high apocalyptic fervor across political, religious, and economic spectra, we're also in a period of moral panic about "cults". Every group we don't like is "cult-like" from MAGA to trans people and none of this helps us understand real problems.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Dr. Joseph Laycock's article "A Cult by Any Other Name: Is "High Demand Group" a Useful Category?" in the journal Nova Religio available at a local sci hub near you! A key take-away from the essay:

*highlighted text*When someone calls a group a “cult,” it is not clear whether they object to the group’s theology, have concerns about its social structure, are unimpressed by the size of its membership and the date of its founding, or if they simply do not like it.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And finally a word on "cults" in general. I advise against using it, because you can get to describing groups as a problem without it, and you're lazily relying on associations that are likely not true of a given group. For a discussion on this I recommend (see next reply) bsky.app/profile/segy...

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Worry about if the machine might be too smart and convert everyone into chips, but don't ask use to watermark AI results to consistently identify deepfakes or cheating in schools. The issue is the real issues we see need to be ignored in favor of a hypothetical issue that allows market concentration

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The issue with AI doomerism is an incentive one, but its primarily a profit-based incentive not a sex based one! AI model makers want controls on other companies making "super intelligences" (aka remove open source competition), but no slow down in data center construction. bsky.app/profile/segy...

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And AI companies attempting to avoid responsibility for their products is a threat. Deep fakes generated by AI, AI that was too encouraging of delusion, cyber security risks because AI companies are sloppy with sandboxes, these are all issues that should be regulated or subject companies to lawsuits

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

AI as currently being rolled out has a lot of risks we're currently seeing. First, the mass creation of data centers prior to de-carbonizing the grid is a meaningful threat to reversing climate change. That's a huge issue guys like Yud, Altman, and Amodei don't really care about because of doomerism

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So what is correct here? Well I do agree that "AI safety" in media and large company discourse has been heavily influenced by Yudkowsky's ideas and that those ideas focus on stuff like the "paperclip maximizer" issue. This is the crux of the problem. bsky.app/profile/segy...

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Let's be real, neither of these points justify or excuse the "these people are weird for being very open about their high amounts of consensual group sex". The non-profit may originate these ideas, but its the now all for profit companies independently doing the problems bsky.app/profile/segy...

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

But do all rationalists and EAs hold the same types of AI doomerist beliefs? Not really, because if they did, GiveWell, an organization that is built on Effective Altruist principles, would be giving to AI alignment work and instead they do malaria nets in the DRC. www.givewell.org/charities/to...

givewell.org

Our Top Charities

Donate to high-impact, cost-effective programs—backed by evidence and analysis Last updated: September 2025

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Viewing humanity as in danger and needing saviors is compelling across belief systems. Some of these beliefs lead to good and useful work being done. Some lead to destructive actions. A lot of beliefs lead to both happening! And non-apolcalyptic beliefs can do the same things. Harm is what matters.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Of course there are religious apocalytic people, doomers about the climate, doomers about AI, QAnon-style doomers, investment doomers, political apocalypticists, etc. And right now likely MOST Americans fit into at least one of these categories! And some have stronger evidence than others.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I definitely dispute the "every rationalist is poly", but those who are good on them. And they've got a community together, cool. With "very worried about AI doom", yep apocalypticism is a broadly held cultural trait of modern America that takes on many different forms. bsky.app/profile/segy...

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

In Atlanta I knew some rationalists who lived together, mostly because they were dating or friends. And lots who didn't (like myself). I've had roommates most of my adult life and we tend to have some similar cultural and political alignments. And I know non-rationalists who live in group houses.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And this about the group houses is dumb. Of course people live in group houses in Berkeley; Bay Area housing costs are famously insane! Group houses are all over there. Many involve people who share some kind of group membership, many are polycules, rationalists did both. bsky.app/profile/segy...

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So one point I'd say, if this explanation is "very long" I don't know what to call a 52 post thread. That complaint (even descriptor) is dumb. Nor do I agree with the idea this defense was "funny or insulting" but of course actually read it and come to your own conclusions. bsky.app/profile/segy...

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And no, I never did cuddle puddles or had sex with any rationalist. I didn't join that scene and was never pressured to. Nor was I ever pressured to agree with Yudkowsky and yes, there was disagreement with him frequently without group expulsion or even major personal animosity.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And I fully admit, part of why I dislike much of this thread is the people I met in person and online were kind, caring, and yes weird folks. Which are descriptors I strive to embody in my own life! And yes some of them quite enjoy group sex and polyamory, neither of which are lifestyles I enjoy.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I've never been to any Bay Area events and never met Yudkowsky, but spent 2012-2016 reading the sequences (some of HPMOR but didn't like it and stopped maybe 1/5th of the way in), and going to local rationalist events in Atlanta. And I still use GiveWell for part of my charitable giving decisions.

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

So I'm going to go through this and say what I agree with and could be expanded on, and the points I think this thread is trying to be emotionally manipulative. Cards on the table: I'm an ex-rationalist going on ~10 years since I hung around these circles and it has been WILD seeing their influence

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This thread uses the word "cult" to try to have a moral panic, while effectively under emphasizing the real problems of "rationalists" and "effective altruists". If one says "cult" and at no point even alleges coercion or abuse, they're just attacking folks for weird lifestyles or disagreement. 🧵

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Surplus Cornbread @surpluscornbread.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Atlantans just a heads up, this is what you can get with a DSA mayor and city council!

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