Post by @davidgerard@circumstances.run

@davidgerard@circumstances.run 12 hr. ago

bluesky is horrified to discover Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, the fanfic the rationalist cult created and used as a recruitment method and that led in a straight line to the Ziz cult. Everyone at the AI bubble companies has read this thing.

https://bsky.app/profile/clairewillett.bsky.social/post/3mtpvatugsc2z
https://bsky.app/profile/panic.gay/post/3mtoakgupgk2x

(threads may require bsky login, sorry)

EDIT: https://skyview.social may let you through if you don't have a reader account

38 Replies

12 Boosts

ragman

@ragman@jawns.club 5 hr. ago

@davidgerard Man, I was a big fan of HPMOR when I was a teenager.

It really was quite a popular fanfic, and I think lots of people in the HP fandom of the time read it, without going into any of Yudkowsky's rationality brainrot on LessWrong.

I'm real glad I didn't get very sucked into it myself, and that I had a large amount of IRL people around me to keep me grounded.

For anybody who wants to learn more, the Behind The Bastards episode on the Ziz cult is well done.

DerivativeThoughts

@DerivativeThoughts@mastodon.social 6 hr. ago

@davidgerard People always think I'm exaggerating that none of the "AI Ethics" people have any formal philosophy, ethics, and in most cases CS background. They read Sci Fi and fanfic and get offended when you say stuff like "this was settled in a platonic dialogue, 3000 years ago". They actively distain anyone with any real knowledge.

lou.

@einsiedlerspiel@todon.nl 5 hr. ago

@DerivativeThoughts @davidgerard

Nick Bostrom et.al are proof that a formal Philosophy background really doesn't say much in that regard.

DerivativeThoughts

@DerivativeThoughts@mastodon.social 4 hr. ago

@einsiedlerspiel @davidgerard agreed but at least Bostrom has has done the reading and just come to myopic conclusions. Superintelligence is clearly a work of philosophy informed by the tradition in which he was educated.

The less wrong people will read nothing but their own farts, reinvent Pascal's wager and take it so seriously they start killing people to make their made up robot god happy.

David Gerard

@davidgerard@circumstances.run 4 hr. ago

@DerivativeThoughts @einsiedlerspiel Bostrom is also a serial idea thief, as documented by Emile Torres https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/p/41779538-5a1a-491d-b937-7e6d4ccd2683

Realtime Techpocalypse Newsletter

Stop doomscrolling and just read this! Click to read Realtime Techpocalypse Newsletter, by Émile P. Torres, a Substack publication with thousands of subscribers.

Möbius the Luddite

@moebius@oldbytes.space 5 hr. ago

@DerivativeThoughts @davidgerard this. Reading comprehension can be quite low too, I made a mistake introducing myself at a Humane Tech group full of "AI ethics" people and got cold reach out by some of those focusing on using AI to "research" how to govern AI... after I mentioned I think LLM is a big mistake and I'm in the anti LLM camp

Pteryx the Puzzle Secretary

@pteryx@dice.camp 4 hr. ago

@moebius @DerivativeThoughts @davidgerard
Also in "low reading comprehension" territory: apparently not being able to parse a straightforward hostile statement like "fuck off, bot-hugger".

Yes, that happened to me here in the Fediverse. I had to block the person because they refused to stop their unsolicited LLM-pushing and clearly thought I was just "not giving it a chance".

...dude, I was looking for a *rare* word. LLMs are better at common words.

Möbius the Luddite

@moebius@oldbytes.space 3 hr. ago

@pteryx @DerivativeThoughts @davidgerard the beating will continue until morale improves

1+ more replies

redsakana

@redsakana@infosec.exchange 6 hr. ago

@DerivativeThoughts Sounds like the same dynamic as the "chud vision of Roman history" that ACoUP had a post about recently: https://acoup.blog/2026/07/10/friday-friday-july-10-2026-on-the-chud-vision-of-roman-history/

To quote one of insights: "To put it in a metaphor, when it comes to a topic, a trained professional historian’s knowledge is often like a swimming pool that smoothly slopes from the shallow end to the deep end, while the autodidact enthusiast is sometimes more like a shallow puddle with really deep potholes. As a history educator, engaging with that autodidact enthusiast can be really rewarding, because they are often really excited to let you basically ‘widen’ their potholes, to overstretch the metaphor. But the chuds…it’s just a puddle. Not especially wide or deep."

@davidgerard

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Michael Busch

@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online 6 hr. ago

@DerivativeThoughts @davidgerard

Members of the LessWrong apocalyptic AI cult also tend to get angry when you point out that they do their math wrong.

(e.g. the time I tried to explain to one of them that "Bayesian prior" is not the same thing as "make up a number".)

DerivativeThoughts

@DerivativeThoughts@mastodon.social 5 hr. ago

@michael_w_busch @davidgerard but making the numbers up is their favorite thing!

Michael Busch

@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online 4 hr. ago

@DerivativeThoughts @davidgerard

That particular LessWrong affiliate also seemed to like to do long series of chained probability calculations that all canceled out; conveniently reproducing the made up number he started with.

And that was when I ended the conversation.

1 more reply

Stefan Prandl

@redezem@aus.social 7 hr. ago

@davidgerard Gun to my head, having to choose between reading out HPMOR or My Immortal to my entire family…. I’m just saying they’re about to get some extremely weird goth fanfic. I mean HP fanfic tends to be bad but I just can’t stand how much HPMOR *thinks* it’s smart.

David Gerard

@davidgerard@circumstances.run 7 hr. ago

@redezem My Immortal has greater literary value

Maj - 🇨🇦

@maj@cosocial.ca 5 hr. ago

@davidgerard @redezem brand new sentence?

Jacob Alexander Tice

@daemonspudguy@app.wafrn.net 4 hr. ago

@maj@cosocial.ca @davidgerard@circumstances.run @redezem@aus.social

Fun fact: if you manage to make it through the entirety of My Immortal without dying you win absolutely nothing.

1 more reply

David Gerard

@davidgerard@circumstances.run 4 hr. ago

@maj @redezem in times such as these

Engine of Creation 🏴‍☠️ 🦜

@goulien@mastodon.social 10 hr. ago

@davidgerard
No, thank you!
For Harry Potter Fan-fic, I‘ll just stay with „My Immortal“ and be happy with that. 😜

yomimono, still on earth

@yomimono@wandering.shop 11 hr. ago

@davidgerard the unlucky 10,000

George B

@gbargoud@masto.nyc 11 hr. ago

@davidgerard

I remember reading this forum post a long time ago which heavily influenced how I viewed Harry Potter (which were my favorite books when I was around the age of the characters in them)

https://forums.darklordpotter.net/threads/harry-potter-and-the-doctrine-of-the-calvinists.7970/

DLP

Harry Potter and the Doctrine of the Calvinists

http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-161.html Harry Potter and the Doctrine of the Calvinists by Daniel Hemmens Dan Hemmens refuses to just...

Jernej Simončič �

@jernej__s@infosec.exchange 11 hr. ago

@davidgerard Loginwall bypasses:
https://skyview.social/?url=https://bsky.app/profile/clairewillett.bsky.social/post/3mtpvatugsc2z
https://skyview.social/?url=https://bsky.app/profile/panic.gay/post/3mtoakgupgk2x

A BlueSky thread by Butt teeth! Butt teeth! Butt teeth! on Skyview

Everyone on here is filled with a fresh batch or loathing for JK Rowling, so it seems like a good time to bring up that a shockingly large number of leaders within the AI world know each other because they were all part of a niche fandom that centered around a pretentious Harry Potter fanfic.

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Rycochet

@Rycochet@furs.social 11 hr. ago

@davidgerard I can't wait to discover that the next generation of techfash grifters formed their views based on Peter Thiel's secret My Little Pony fanfiction about how selfishness is the real magic.

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen

@toriver@mas.to 10 hr. ago

@Rycochet @davidgerard «Friendship is Exploitable»

The Doctor

@drwho@masto.hackers.town 3 hr. ago

@toriver @Rycochet @davidgerard In that regard, MLP is a little too far in the past and Bronies too well established as a social group to really be subverted (c.f. Military Bronies).

I don't know what infection vector would be next.

Rycochet

@Rycochet@furs.social 3 hr. ago

@drwho @toriver @davidgerard Uh... You know that thanks to 4chan adopting it, the brony fanbase has a pretty huge nazi problem, right? It's already halfway there.

1 more reply

David Gerard

@davidgerard@circumstances.run 3 hr. ago

@drwho @toriver @Rycochet MLP:Friendship Is Optimal, the fic worse than HPMOR, which used the Singularity as an excuse for enthusiastic description of finally getting to fuck one of the ponies

The Grouchybeast

@Grouchybeast@mastodon.social 11 hr. ago

@davidgerard The wildest thing about HMoR is that Yudkowsky isn't the first person who wrote a giant Harry Potter fanfic in order to found a cult. He isn't even the first person to write a giant HP fanfic in order to found a cult that eventually led to murder. That's just what happens in HP fandom, I guess.

Major Denis Bloodnok

@denisbloodnok@mendeddrum.org 7 hr. ago

@Grouchybeast @davidgerard OK, I'll bite - who's the first one?

David Gerard

@davidgerard@circumstances.run 7 hr. ago

@denisbloodnok @Grouchybeast

Thanfiction

the Snapewives were not murderous I think

Arda Xi :flag_nonbinary:

@ardaxi@hsnl.social 10 hr. ago

@Grouchybeast @davidgerard That can easily happen in any kind of community. It's just that HP got big at exactly the right time in the early internet for it to get that big.

David Gerard

@davidgerard@circumstances.run 10 hr. ago

@ardaxi @Grouchybeast Yudkowsky also picked HP for HPMOR specifically because it was a large fandom to recruit from

Laventeot

@Laventeot@wien.rocks 11 hr. ago

@Grouchybeast @davidgerard Should I try googling to learn more about the other HP murder cult(s) because they are grimly funny or should I stay blissfully innocent because they are just grimly sad?

(for example I find the zizians hilarious)