I’m in a pile of excellent people opposed to the TESCREALists at this trying time in history. We need a name.

We have a list of possibles, but it’s actually hard to pick a nice name that doesn’t sound like an EA front group!

An initialism for S.N.E.E.R. probably won’t be the sort of thing we’re after lol.

What’s a name that’s (a) nice and polite sounding (b) says at least a bit what it actually is (c) doesn’t sound like an EA front group?

  • Mitchell_Porter@awful.systems
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    1 day ago

    I have a question about the nature of this “anti-TESCREALism”. “TESCREALism” has an intellectual content that includes things like life extension, philanthropic utilitarianism, and concern with the long-term future and the rise of superhuman AI. Then there’s a host of things that have no inherent connection to that intellectual content, like the sex parties, belief in racial IQ differences, consorting with tech billionaires, etc. Where would this nonprofit’s opposition be focused?

    • swlabr@awful.systems
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      21 hours ago

      Dawg most of their core beliefs and supported causes really just boil down to eugenics or ableism, including the “intellectual content” that you are positioning as harmless/benign

    • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
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      1 day ago

      @Mitchell_Porter The point here is that TESCREAL is a nascent syncretistic religion, like early Christianity during the first centuries CE (before the first Council of Nicaea). In modern terms, it’s a cult or exhibits cult-like traits. And cults generally attract narcissistic psychopaths and grifters who use them for self-enrichment and sex at the expense of the more normal (gullible) followers.

      The purpose of a system is what it does. Watch what TESCREAL does. And what its boosters do with it.

      • Mitchell_Porter@awful.systems
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        1 day ago

        Do you have any experience of seeing vulnerable idealists destroyed, not by manipulative gurus, but by the indifference and incomprehension of ordinary society? The latter is closer to what I’ve seen happen to “TESCREAL believers”. But as I always say, I have been remote from the center of things, if the center is identified by money and media attention. Perhaps at that center it’s more as you say.