Big Yud gives some dating advice
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https://twitter.com/esyudkowsky/status/1754324150267855266?s=46&t=ZMFbiZl6RYCPucuHaasPfw
Looking forward to the conversation:
"Honey, I've met someone who fulfills the criteria we established when we started our relationship. They are 50% better than you".
"OK, let me see.... nope, I don't agree, that person is at best 25% better than me. If you leave me for them, I am suing for breach of contract."
"If I can find a girlfriend who is 10% better every year, then in 7 years I'll have a girlfriend who is twice as good as you."
"Honey, it's time we had the conversation."
"You mean, are we getting serious?"
"No."
"The 'is this going to be exclusive' talk?"
"No."
"The 'do you ever want kids someday' talk?"
"No."
"Moving in together? Making plans to meet my parents?"
"No, I need to tell you that I would trade up if I found someone 37% better than you, and now you need to tell me your corresponding percentage."
[a deadly silence falls]
oh hello there Performative Allistic Twitter
As if it wouldn't have cost you $0 not to post this.
first an asteroid kills all the dinosaurs, now this? haven't autistic people suffered enough?
Isn't he paying for Twitter now? He has the blue check. He could actually save money by not posting.
im more amazed that he gave himself a square emoticon. It prob has some deeper meaning for him, but it makes 'he is a square' (who wants to nuke datacenters) a bit easy, and of course, it is also just a bad way of communicating things. Which is always a bit of a surprise, how bad the 'we must teach you how to think' people are bad at basic communication.
I was really puzzled by it until I realized it’s supposed to be the “stop” button. ▶️⏸️⏹️
Now I am cringing at someone who would deliberately choose being so obtuse and cryptic.
Quoted for posterity/convenience:
in a world of greater legibility, romantic partners would have the conversation about "I'd trade up if I found somebody 10%/25%/125% better than you" in advance, and make sure they have common knowledge of the numbers
(Marriage makes sense as a promise not to do that period; but if so, you want to make sure that both partners are on the same page about that. Not everyone assumes that marriage means that.)
Her: I am never, ever letting you go unless I find someone 75% better. Me: Works for me.
oh hello there Performative Allistic Twitter
Oh look, a clarification:
It didn't even occur to me that anyone would read the tweet as being about "25% more general market value" rather than "25% more value to me personally". Who thinks like that??!?
Yud is just a uwu neuro-atypical smol bean who is ignorant of generations of cultural context about people rating each other and cannot be blamed for people reading his words in the wrong way instead of the correct, equally repellent way.
Ohh, I thought he meant one thing but actually he meant the same thing I thought he did and not the even worse thing I expected he might actually think instead.
I think in this case, market value might have actually been better, in that at least it's an objective value of something specific instead of reducing your whole relationship with another human being to a fucking variable.
"Honest, babe, I'd only dump you for a ten-out-of-ten smokeshow as evaluated on my personal scale!"
in a world of greater legibility, romantic partners would have the conversation about “I’d trade up if I found somebody 10%/25%/125% better than you” in advance, and make sure they have common knowledge of the numbers
To be clear, that world is inceldom and they already have a term for exactly that sort of thing.
I have been meaning to ask is there an overlap between rationalists and incels? Or do they both overlap with neoreactionaries?
At times their idea world appears close to each other.
Absolutely, you can't keep pandering to the so called anti-woke and not end up with a lot of incel-adjacent people in your spaces, and the eugenics undercurrent feeds directly into manosphere perceptions about optimizing dating and tying your self worth to your splachnocranium/neurocranium ratio.
More specifically Scott Alexander has pandered pretty aggressively to the Dogged Good Guy demographic, and is also on the hook for being all about the 'merits' of neoreaction, and people like Moldbug and Emil Kirkegaard are semi-regulars in his comment sections.
Also worth noting that before the infamous EY editorial in TIME that called for airstrikes against foreign datacenters to prevent clippy from going rogue, the previous time they covered ea/rat was to report that they appear to have a serious sexual exploitation problem.
On a more speculative note, some staples of the movement like effective polyamory may have come about directly from early rationalist inability to get any on the regular. Apparently if you go reddit spelunking it appears they also went through a phase of trying to brainwash each other optimize into bisexuality to stave off sexual frustration.
Trawling through HN submissions shows a fascination with questions about birthrates and whether it's acceptable that women get a choice in who to date, and the comments quickly veer into viewpoints that would not be out of place in the 1930s.
(this site is run by a very weird person but is a good snapshot of what pops up on the front page and then goes away: https://orangesite.sneak.cloud/ )
I think the overlap between LW and incels comes more from the pickupartist shit which was popular there for a while. And the incels (ignoring the woman who started the movement and her intentions for it) take a lot of their ideas from the blackpill 'I tried pua but failed and I have decided it is the fault of the world' thinking. So there is overlap but not directly, more of a common ancestor.
Further down in the thread it becomes clear that someone who is dating Eliezer used to be a couples counselor which is quite honestly horrifying.
To the extent EA/rats perpetuate cult behavior, it's probably safe to say that neither EY nor any other high status individuals within the space are wanting for sex.
Unbelievably gross 🤢 I can't even begin to imagine what kind of lunatic would treat their loved one's worth as 'just a number' or commodity to be exchanged. Frightening to think these are the folks trying to influence govt officials.
Sticking numbers next to things and calling it a day is basically the whole idea behind bayesian rationalism.
“I’m sorry, I found someone with a 20000% higher PB on the original Donkey Kong cabinet, it’s over. I’m taking the kids.”
I'd never leave Donkey Kong, unless I found someone with 33.3 % (repeating of course) more funk, some sort of funky Kong if you will.
Yud "It's just a joke bro": The lack of punctuation makes it an obvious joke! Let me spend the rest of this thread defending the divine truth of this joke to the bitter end.
The saddest thing is that transparency is sort of good advice, but his twisted soul sees others as tools rather than people, I guess in his case transparency lets people know to stay clear.
If Yud did his cult sermons IRL:
yud walks out onto stage, wearing a hat with a 🚫 sign with a period under it
Crowd: “Leader is wearing the silly hat!!! It’s a silly sermon! Prepare to laugh!!!!”
Yud: “There should be a gulag for low IQ people and Swedes!”
Crowd: “Amazing joke, leader! We must now justify the humor!!!”
Remember in the old Rationalist lore from SSC (in his liverjournal days) jokes are never just jokes. (Jokes are instead a weapon used by the feminists just like the nazis).
Not really doublespeak but more them not following their own insights. (Why would they do that Soy? Glad you asked other Soy, because it isn't about the insight, the insight is a tool to bash the ideologies they dislike, and with Scott that is often feminism).
Almost 900 words to say, poorly, "It was just a joke (but not really)". The short tweets feel like they're designed for traction, but of course EY falls back on ponderous beigeness when he gets pushback.