Misty

Mid-America laugh-enthusiast and part-time yogi

[Misty @OKMisty]

Shawn Ryan: What do you mean by cosmos?

Theology Guest: A cosmologist is a woman who puts hair in order.

[Misty @OKMisty]

@MattWalshBlog I just want the first 6 seconds of this clip as a stock response.

[Misty @OKMisty]

@jmasseypoet They’re mouthing in ALL CAPS though.

[Misty @OKMisty]

@OldHollowTree We have a big flock of ~30 turkeys in the neighborhood. One day they surrounded my chicken pen, and I couldn’t tell if it was curiosity or malevolence.

Anyway, my barred rocks went nose to nose with ‘em through the fence, puffed up and flappy. I was proud.

The reds let me down.

[Misty @OKMisty]

God bless @ScottAdamsSays.

[Walter Kirn @walterkirn]

The "Simulation" is for people who believe in God based on the wild synchronicities they see but who would like for some reason to leave out the worrisome divine justice part

[Misty @OKMisty]

Some say the internet isn’t real life, but when the power went out at the dealership this morning while waiting on an oil change, there was a long silence from the service managers staring at their dead screens.

1st guy to speak: “You think 100 dudes could take down a gorilla?”

[Misty @OKMisty]

@scttfrnks What’s the first thing you think of when you see this blue-haired teacher pushing gender ideology? 🤔

[Misty @OKMisty]

@scttfrnks No way to know if they’re any good otherwise. Nobody wants Lt. Bassoon on their murder case.

[Misty @OKMisty]

@DisaffectedPod Josh, I’ve got some words for you on this, but can’t DM you (and the email address I had for DisaffectedPod isn’t working). Will you please DM me when you get a sec?

[Misty @OKMisty]

@OldHollowTree He needs a firmer mattress.

[Misty @OKMisty]

Lebowski 2025.

“The Zizians pissed on my rug.”

[Eric S. Raymond @esrtweet]

Time for me to put on my explainer hat again. This time it's "post-rationalist".

But in order to do that I'm going to have to explain some history and at least three other factions.

My warrant for doing this rests on three facts. One: I am a very experienced anthropologist of internet cultures. Two: I am personally acquainted with a number of the leading figures in the cluster of subcultures I'm about to describe. Three: my past writing had some influence on how these subcultures developed - not a lot, but enough that people inside these subcultures notice the connection.

To start with, the rationalists. This is a network of people who collected around the blog "Less Wrong", and the writings of Eliezer Yudkowsky (@ESYudkowsky) beginning around 2005. Another very prominent figure in this group is Scott Alexander.

Modern rationalists are aware that the term "rationalist" has some other meanings in historical and academic philosophy that cause confusion. In particular, in the language of academic philosophy modern rationalists could more accurately be described as "skeptical empiricists" or "predictivists". This is regarded as unfortunate, but we're stuck with the term.

The rationalists have three sets of concerns. One can be described as rationality technique. This is a set of heuristics and language conventions intended to help people think more clearly and make better arguments - better in the sense of converging on truth and correctness faster.

Some rationalist language has percolated out into the wider culture: "virtue signaling" and "steelmanning" are two notable examples. Also, "updating" and "priors" as terms about belief maintenance.

Two other movements are closely connected with modern rationalism and sometimes indistinguishable from it. One is "effective altruism", a network of people who are trying to do charitable giving in the most effective way possible by paying careful and quantitative attention to outcomes.

The third set of concerns is around the destructive potential of AI. Many, though not all, people who call themselves "rationalists" deeply fear that humanity might soon be wiped out by rogue AI and are concerned with attempting to develop measures to constrain it to behave in a recognizably moral way: the shorthand for this is "the alignment problem".

I don't know of a good neutral term for these people - it could be "safetyists" but as far as I'm aware nobody actually uses that. People who disagree with them often call them "doomers".

Now for the unpleasant part. Rationalism has proven very effective at attracting bright, alienated kids - especially bright autists with poor social skills. When they congregate, most notably in the Bay Area around tech industries, they sometimes start exhibiting cult-like behavior - social isolation, sexual deviance, fanaticism.

Some of the movement's leaders have at least tacitly encouraged this. Others have failed to discourage it as much as they might have. At an extreme, it has led to manifestations like the Zizians - quite literally a transsexual murder cult. Less extremely, there has been a rash of suicides, insanity, and drug deaths associated with rationalist group houses.

There's a hostile reading of the history of the rationalist subculture that considers both rationality technique and effective altruism to have been deliberately constructed as recruitment funnels for the doomer cult.

Now I can describe post-rationalists. These are people who have consciously bailed out of the cultish and doomer aspects of the rationalist subculture while keeping a firm hold of rationality technique.

Often post-rats have friends inside the cult-like parts of rationalist subculture; the boundary between these social networks is somewhat fuzzy.

1/2

[Misty @OKMisty]

@scttfrnks @SwipeWright “The apple doesn’t fall far from the henhouse, as has been said.”

[Misty @OKMisty]

@peterboghossian Growing up as a kid already on the fringes, innately repulsed by inauthenticity & social pressure.

[Misty @OKMisty]

@walterkirn “Takes bowling seriously” is a great euphemism.

[Misty @OKMisty]

Truth be told, he never really bought it.

[Misty @OKMisty]

Before I had my son, I always said we’d do Santa until the moment he asked me outright if Santa was real. But God has a sense of humor, and he asked me when he was 4.

So Santa was real for two more years.

[Colin Wright @SwipeWright]

If you have or want kids, did/will you raise them to believe in Santa Clause? 🎅

Please explain why or why not below.

[Misty @OKMisty]

Zelensky is a head of state who walks around in camo pants. His whole schtick is putting on a costume to secure war funding. Gotta pick a number, sir.

[Misty @OKMisty]

You’re fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of Rogan’s show if you’re looking at him as UFC Barbara Walters.

[Peter Savodnik @petersavodnik]

Rogan has helped expand the discourse, making room for ideas and points of view that run afoul of the sclerotic and insular legacy media, but there's absolutely nothing legendary about this. /1

[Misty @OKMisty]

The guests are either

1) knowledgeable about a topic he finds interesting
2) high-profile people whose true character he’d like to suss out beyond the reach of teleprompters/PR teams
3) his friends in entertainment