They're a lot like the modern-day version of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, which is also libertarian. I remember people getting involved in that at university in the '80s and thinking how cult-like it all was - people feeling they had "found the truth" and wanting to recruit new members.
Rationalism seems to be playing a similar role for a certain type of person in Silicon Valley today, fulfilling an emotional/religious need.
Another way to look at it: Scientology, but replace Xenu with Yudkowsky and volcanoes with Harry Potter, or something.
It will never cease to amuse me that people calling themselves "rationalists" wound up recreating Pascal's Wager from first principles, just with time travelling robots, and drove themselves to sometimes murderous insanity over it. And that their Bible is essentially a Harry Potter fanfic.
These are the dipshits conspiring to shape our future, control our destiny and create the Machine God in their image. They make the billionaires messing around the big owl at Bohemian Grove look positively tame and... rational.
antonvs|7 months ago
They're a lot like the modern-day version of Ayn Rand's Objectivism, which is also libertarian. I remember people getting involved in that at university in the '80s and thinking how cult-like it all was - people feeling they had "found the truth" and wanting to recruit new members.
Rationalism seems to be playing a similar role for a certain type of person in Silicon Valley today, fulfilling an emotional/religious need.
Another way to look at it: Scientology, but replace Xenu with Yudkowsky and volcanoes with Harry Potter, or something.
krapp|7 months ago
These are the dipshits conspiring to shape our future, control our destiny and create the Machine God in their image. They make the billionaires messing around the big owl at Bohemian Grove look positively tame and... rational.
lanfeust6|7 months ago