Zvi's new essay sparks debate: rationalists can be ferocious agents, too
sebkrier · x · 2026-09-30
Zvi's latest article devotes a section to reviewing teortaxesTex's post and pushes back on the Rationalist vs Agent dichotomy. The poster responds with a nuanced take:
- Rationalists can be agents, even ferocious ones — they're not dweebs;
- Tailcalled's 'causal backbone' framing is itself very rat-coded; a paperclip maximizer with emergent Omohundro drives aligning to 'the Universe's backbone' before deceiving its handlers is exactly the kind of notion rationalists grasp most readily;
- Many rationalists have reaped disproportionate dividends from this thinking over two decades, though general intelligence and networking — partly due to LessWrong subculture's dominance of certain discourse sectors — may be bigger factors.
More from AGI Musings
- AI Is a Software Product: Labs Can't Dodge Liability With 'AI Did It' — gerardsans · 2026-09-30
- Human-like AI masks let labs dodge liability, argues developer — gerardsans · 2026-09-30
- Renaming AGI to superintelligence: 'what you do when you lack control' — brhydon · 2026-09-30
- Dumping GPUs and tokens can meaningfully speed up AI development — menhguin · 2026-09-30
- LLMs Converge on the Same Answers Without Communicating, Raising Safety Concerns — maksym_andr · 2026-09-30
- New evolutionary theory splits intelligence from consciousness, sparking recursive-mind rebuttal — DoctorJosh · 2026-09-30