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AI safety is mostly a sex cult

344 points · 330 comments · Tomte

  1. iand675 · · focus · HN ↗
    I too wrote about this, although _much_ longer, if you want a bit of a deeper dive on the subject <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iankduncan.com&#x2F;personal&#x2F;2026-09-16-sex-ai-and-the-apocalypse" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.iankduncan.com&#x2F;personal&#x2F;2026-09-16-sex-ai-and-th...
    1. HDThoreaun · · focus · HN ↗
      As far as manifestos go HPMOR is a pretty good one. I think that’s what a lot of the critiques about it miss. Yudkowsky is actually a pretty decent writer, especially in the fan fic scene. Not only is his prose actually acceptable which is pretty rare in fanfic it’s clear that he actually thought through a lot of the plot points ahead of time. Harry Potter universe fits very well for his story not only because it’s popular with the target audience, but because there’s a ton of unexplored authority figures in the original and the main goal of the manifesto largely boils down to rejecting blind belief in authority and blazing your own trail. I think it’s hard to separate the number of people who read it because it’s legitimately the best Harry Potter fanfic from the people who read it for the manifesto stuff which again points to the ingenuity of choosing it as a setting.
      1. glaslong · · focus · HN ↗
        I suppose there is worse sci-fi you could launch a cult from (Dianetics)
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