You mention having “an ambition, even a prayer for [the AI developers]” (~12 min). You might mean this figuratively, but many viewers of that channel will probably take it literally. When you admit elsewhere that you don’t believe in god and don’t practice any religion, they likely see this as a contradiction and suspect you’re not being genuine once you become more popular.
My guess is that it’s better to be upfront about not being a Christian in order to retain authenticity. You’ll probably always be regarded as an outsider by the conservative right (just for another example: your twitter handle includes ‘poly’, and you’ve spoken at length online about being polyamorous), but you could hope to be perceived as ‘the outsider who gets us’. This kinda worked for a while for Sam Harris or Milo Yiannopoulos.
Just as they say ‘There are no atheists in foxholes’ [when facing risk of imminent death during combat], I feel that it’s OK to pray (literally and/or figuratively) when facing AI extinction risk—even if one’s an atheist or agnostic. (I’d currently identify as an ‘agnostic’, insofar as the Simulation Hypothesis might be true).
My X handle ‘primalpoly’ is polysemic, and refers partly to polyamory, but partly to polygenic traits (which I’ve studied extensively), and partly to some of the hundreds of other words that start with ‘poly’.
I think that given most of my posts on X over the last several years, and the people who follow me, I’m credibly an insider to the conservative right.
You mention having “an ambition, even a prayer for [the AI developers]” (~12 min). You might mean this figuratively, but many viewers of that channel will probably take it literally. When you admit elsewhere that you don’t believe in god and don’t practice any religion, they likely see this as a contradiction and suspect you’re not being genuine once you become more popular.
My guess is that it’s better to be upfront about not being a Christian in order to retain authenticity. You’ll probably always be regarded as an outsider by the conservative right (just for another example: your twitter handle includes ‘poly’, and you’ve spoken at length online about being polyamorous), but you could hope to be perceived as ‘the outsider who gets us’. This kinda worked for a while for Sam Harris or Milo Yiannopoulos.
Tobias—I take your point. Sort of.
Just as they say ‘There are no atheists in foxholes’ [when facing risk of imminent death during combat], I feel that it’s OK to pray (literally and/or figuratively) when facing AI extinction risk—even if one’s an atheist or agnostic. (I’d currently identify as an ‘agnostic’, insofar as the Simulation Hypothesis might be true).
My X handle ‘primalpoly’ is polysemic, and refers partly to polyamory, but partly to polygenic traits (which I’ve studied extensively), and partly to some of the hundreds of other words that start with ‘poly’.
I think that given most of my posts on X over the last several years, and the people who follow me, I’m credibly an insider to the conservative right.