I think this is a sort-of dupe of this?

AI safety is mostly a sex cult - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985 - Sept 2026 (314 comments)

Hard to tell without looking closely at the articles...

(Off-topic note: the title variation makes a surprising difference)

Unfortunately I can't read the article (taken down), but I can read some of the underlying material shared by dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737985

I feel there's many interesting pieces to this -- Yudkowsky certainly has extreme views, it's clear there are a ton of poly and open people in this community, some people do have a religious veneration for Yudkowsky and "rationality" in general, and there's some smarmy folks in the mix. But I'm not sure any of that is a negative critique of the general movement. I suspect similar statements were true of the enlightenment, protestantism, and the beatniks? Marginalized views, free expression, and new ideas often go together in what I feel is an obvious pattern. I don't care if there's a bunch of sexually liberal people in this org, or some obsessive fan-devotion, so long as they're not forcing somebody into a situation they don't want. These people can live their lives however they want; I think that's quintessentially American in a way that's very positive and increasingly rare. And on the other side, there are many impacts from this movement that I'm quite happy with: I'm really happy that this movement has spawned/impacted GiveWell, the Long Now, Scott Alexander, Works in Progress, and Open Philanthropy, to name just a few. I'm also happy that it seems to have birthed the latest AI progress. Of course there are things that I find ridiculous (I didn't really like hpmor, their forum board is somewhat silly, and Roko's Basilisk[0] is just hilarious, lol).

If this piece was meant as documentation of a particular moment in time, then they've picked a really fascinating group to document! But it feels like it's really meant as criticism, that we should trust the whole group less because there are some sexually open fans of Yudkowsky. I'm not sure I can get on board with that. If sexually open fans of Yudkowsky want to build great things, I say let them!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

The article is gone now.

A post by the author: https://bsky.app/profile/segyges.bsky.social/post/3mwc2eopu6...

>> I apologize for my earlier article, which did not undergo proper legal review, and will not be able to be present on social media for a while.

It’s extremely annoying that this was taken down, because anybody who’s followed rationalism/EA/adjacent groups since their public emergence in the last decade knows that this is true, and I really, really wish this was more commonly understood.

article is gone. archive: https://archive.is/QMo1k