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Anonymous Aardvark's avatar

A long time ago, (an in-person chapter of) Less Wrong was my "tribe" of weirdo geeks who would do things like use neurodes and electromagnets (personally attached) and then try to see if that resulted in improving short-term memory performance. We'd meet and talk about astronomy, health foods (including one incident where a friend brought huge bags of dried kale to a coffee shop that looked like a drug-deal in progress), D&D, and life in general. They were some of the first groups I met who were openly accepting of gay and trans people. And when I was in high school / early college, they were my first exposure to a lot of new ideas about philosophy and AI.

All that to say, I hope you don't condemn weird nerds for being weird nerds. We're doing our best, and LW was simply the online community we grew up in, like others did from SA. I don't consider LW or Slate Star Codex or Robin Hanson to be something I "do" anymore, but they were parts of my growing up. It hurts my feelings a little when you make fun of crypto scammer nerds for being nerds rather than for being crypto scammers.

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Nathan4333's avatar

I love this entire saga. It's perfect distillation of how nobody, not even outcast nerds, should be given large amounts of power and money.

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