Buried in a mountain of polite disclaimers and faux intellectual humility, we have this absolutely damning information which could have been the whole article:

Alice was polyamorous, and she and Drew entered into a casual romantic relationship. Kat previously had a polyamorous marriage that ended in divorce, and is now monogamously partnered with Emerson. Kat reportedly told Alice that she didn’t mind polyamory "on the other side of the world”, but couldn’t stand it right next to her, and probably either Alice would need to become monogamous or Alice should leave the organization.

This Drew character was fucking the intern? No mention of any sort of ethical entanglement regarding having casual sex with your live-in employee. Think of the utilitons you save by hiring a maid/grocery getter to have sex with instead of wasting your valuable genius-minutes actually dating.

The lack of commentary regarding it (there’s one sitting at -15 that points out the obvious) makes me wonder if this sort of thing is the norm in EA circles.

During the interview, Kat openly admitted to not being productive but shared that she still appeared to be productive because she gets others to do work for her. She relies on volunteers who are willing to do free work for her, which is her top productivity advice.

Productivity pro tip: you can get a lot more done if you can just convince other people to do your work for you for free

I think of myself as playing the role of a wise old mentor who has had lots of experience, telling stories to the young adventurers, trying to toughen them up, somewhat similar to how Prof Quirrell[8] toughens up the students in HPMOR through teaching them Defense Against the Dark Arts

[8] Note that during our conversation, Emerson brought up HPMOR and the Quirrell similarity, not me.

epistemic status: jesus fucking christ, what is your major malfunction?!

Was it just me or did OG’s post use the epistemic status not as an epistemic status but as a way to frame how you should feel about the things?+more non epistemic things?

E: What “she was being paid the equivalent of $75k[1] per year (only $1k/month, the rest via room and board)” 62k for room and board? “The staff they hire are either remote, or live in the house with them.” for living with your boss? Wtf is wrong with those people. While also making romantic references to their employees. There were doing indentured servitude ffs. They should get lawyers.

I did not expect a ‘we tried to get our indentured sex servants to smuggle drugs for us’ story to drop.

It’s only “due diligence” in the lesswrong region of the internet, otherwise it’s just sparkling willful ignorance

Ok, I got a chunk of the way through it, they’re running it less like a nonprofit and more like the fucking mansion family, what a horror show.

Alice and Chloe report that they were advised not to spend time with ‘low value people’, including their families, romantic partners, and anyone local to where they were staying, with the exception of guests/visitors that Nonlinear invited. Alice and Chloe report this made them very socially dependent on Kat/Emerson/Drew and otherwise very isolated.

Like if this was a journalist piece the first paragraph would contain ‘cult’ and it would relate this example, not make me wade through an entire section about his sit down interview with a Member Of The Family.

what are these fucking clowns even supposed to be doing that’s so important? what the fuck are these numbnuts even producing that’s supposed to be any good for the world whatsoever? they’re traipsing around the world taking drugs and fucking with an entourage of poorly paid non-employees? and producing what? why are those people so invested in any way in them (and don’t look now, I’m coming back with the same questions about everybody else in those threads)?

Note that near the end of the original post the writer claims to have unilaterally decided to pay his sources a whistleblower fee of $5K each, which will probably muddy the waters a lot if this ever were to get traction outside ea/lw circles.

I’m very grateful to the two staff members involved for coming forward and eventually spending dozens of hours clarifying and explaining their experiences to me and others who were interested. To compensate them for their courage, the time and effort spent to talk with me and explain their experiences at some length, and their permission to allow me to publish a lot of this information, I (using personal funds) am going to pay them each $5,000 after publishing this post.

oh god there’s another 400 comments here on the EA forum version. I particularly liked* the rationalists incorrecting each other from first principles on US defamation law.

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My attention span is not what it used to be, and I couldn’t force myself to get to the end of this. A summary or TLDR (on the part of the original author) would have been helpful.

What is it with rationalists and their inability to write with concision? Is there a gene for bloviation that also predisposes them to the cult? Or are they all just mimicking Yud’s irritating style?

oh Nonlinear got FTX money too lol

shot: Cult Participation Badges for dedication and effort for Just Thinking Really Hard About Things (supposedly)

chaser: but how can we be suuuuuuure. it’s, like, so hard, man. also I had a beer with $name once and they seemed great! are you sure you didn’t piss them off somehow?

also “195 comments” what the fuck find some real hobbies you weirdoes

Jesus Christ trying to read this is like climbing K2 except instead of snow it’s neologisms. Is there anything interesting buried in there?

The rationalist house style definitely has a way of making these guys act like this is the Tractatus they’re banging out, even when it’s pure office gossip.