Amoeba_Girl

Point 1 is very funny, like, what's the difference? Randoids are children.

Yeah, I wouldn't speculate either. Not only is it distasteful, the whole rationalist scene runs on chuunibyou and they would all love the public to think they're able to mind control people into carrying out their evil plans.

shame about the cook

Gender-affirming care? Why of course! I am all for forcefully affirming your assigned gender!

“Hey listen, I’ve been listening to these gender critical feminists and I think they might have a point. Check this out, what if we used psychiatry and hormone therapy to enforce traditional gender roles and normatively gendered bodies, but without creating trans people?”

Today we’re launching Claude Fable 5: a Mythos-class model that we’ve made safe for general use.

oh fuck off. going full SCP in their press releases now. insufferable.

Olay but this is good though. This is the kind of autism Lesswrong should focus more on. No bullshit, just the facts.

I think there even is a case to be made about how Frank Herbert is the anti-L. Ron Hubbard

Ah yeah they absolutely are two branches off the same tree! I've heard the tree is called Alfred Korzybski but I'm not super familiar myself. But yeah I was thinking the other day about how Dune is replete with "tech" in the Scientologist sense. I feel like "not becoming a cult leader" is a pretty low bar, but their parallel evolution is a pretty fascinating case study.

Also as far as Dune discourse is concerned, there is one thing no one talks about that is very important to me, and it is that in Children of Dune Frank Herbert implicitly acknowledges that Irulan is an acronym of "urinal".

“The fact that I remember the expression and you’ve never even heard it before should give you pause,” Ghanima said. “It was an old expression of scorn when you Bene Gesserit were young. But if that doesn’t chasten you, ask yourself what your royal parents could’ve been thinking of when they named you Irulan? Or is it Ruinal?”

In spite of her training, Irulan flushed. “You’re trying to goad me, Ghanima.”

IRULAN FLUSHED!!!!!!!! I love it. I wish Herbert had allowed himself to be this silly more often. Imagine a world where Dune had been more like Whipping Star!

The worst aspects of FH I’m aware of are that he was a shitty fucking parent and hated Iron Maiden, unambiguously evil seems stretching it, unless you were his son.

Also a speech writer for various Republicans, a Reagan fan obviously and a big boring libertarian muh freedom from ~~taxes~~ government tyranny. His main edge over Ayn Rand is the weird evopsych ecofascist stuff.

To be clear that is exactly why I find the analogy suspect lol, and at the same a tic of this particular milieu so I don’t believe it’s deliberate. Just god lesswrongers sure are weird about stuff.

No, the golden path isn't a utopia! It's the necessary breaking of eggs to make the survival of humanity omelet. It's sort of a more twisted version of Asimov's Foundation carried entirely in the mind of a being with perfect knowledge of causality. The details of the plot don't necessarily map neatly, but the aesthetics, the fantasy, the torture-versus-dust-specksness of it is what the rationalists are all about. (Another wrinkle is that in Dune I believe [haven't read beyond godemperor] ultimately the solution is to create a being that escapes prophecy, a neat little transcendent conjuration. Solving alignment doesn't quite have the same oomph but it is also essentially a magic trick you can do if your freethinking and selfreliance stats are high enough. Also remember Rat!Harry's patronus is a Human! Benevolent AI should be seen as the liberated, transcendent form of the human mind.)

Have you read the Dosadi Experiment? It's a very strange book and a good way to get a high dose of Herbert's obsessions from a new perspective.

To be clear I love Dune, and I find Herbert fascinating because his ideas always find themselves in tension and are often baffling and muddled enough to provoke entertaining discussion. But the more you scratch the more unambiguously evil he is.

the 4000 years of necessary tragedy and sacrifice, aka the golden path, is also remarkably similar to the rationalists' teleology! specifically the longtermist stuff! i.e. it's okay to sacrifice lives today to ensure humanity's survival.

i think herbert's feelings about breeding programs are ... complicated. he never presents it as ethical but he does seem fascinated by the concept and he's very very into the idea of forging supermen from extreme environmental pressure. like "comes up several times per book" levels of fascinated.

considering how much their philosophy aligns with the plot of dune, i'm afraid you may be right