Rationality: From AI to Zombies - The Podcast

March 5, 2022

Programming Note: The End

Dear Rationalists! As some of you will already have guessed, we have decided to end this podcast project. There has been a trend in the community we have been observing with increasing worry, and it has reached a tipping point. We realised from the beginming that the politics of the rationality-sphere leaned heavily American libertarian. But back when we started, we felt that the community was genuinely interested in better outcomes for everyone and that if we would just sit down together, we could surely come to a sensible agreement. But recently, the disdain and the antagonism against movements such as feminism and BLM and communities such as transgender and nonbinary people has taken over. Even with people we once looked up to and collaborated with. This has reached a degree that makes us feel not just deeply uncomfortable but also unwelcome. We have friends and family in these and adjacent movements and communities that we love dearly. We ourselves are part of these movements and communities. There is no us without them. So we strongly oppose the recasting of them as authoritarian religions and some sort of reverse oppressors, a perspective so antithetical to what we thought the idea of 'rationality™' represented that we can no longer watch in silence. We expected more from a community that we joined under the impression that it centered honest thought and compassion for all. Our own interactions with listeners have been nothing but kind and mutually respectful. For that, we thank you. But we cannot, in good conscience, remain a part of a pipeline towards the rationality-sphere if that is the place it has become. Do better! Walter and James