The rise of the rationalist movement has led to multiple strange and dark offshoots - demons, cults, hells, suicides. How and why could dedication to rational thought result in such fantastically weird and grim outcomes?
Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?
There’s a lot to like about the Rationalist community, but they do have a certain tendency to spawn — shall we say — high demand groups. We sent a card-carrying Rat to investigate what’s really going on.
Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?
There’s a lot to like about the Rationalist community, but they do have a certain tendency to spawn — shall we say — high demand groups. We sent a card-carrying Rat to investigate what’s really going on.
The Zizians and the Rationalist death cults
What is the deal with Rationalism and cults?
The Zizians and the Rationalist death cults
What is the deal with Rationalism and cults?
The Zizians and the Rationalist death cults
What is the deal with Rationalism and cults?
The X-Files and the Demon-Haunted World
Ari N. Schulman on why we want to believe
Extropia's Children, Chapter 1: The Wunderkind
Back in the nineties, a teenage supergenius joined a mailing list. That odd seed led, via Harry Potter, to today's Effective Altruism and AI Risk movements; bizarre cults; and the birth of Bitcoin. This is the surreal saga of Extropia's Children.
The thinking style that makes people vulnerable to extremism | Psyche Ideas
The people most drawn to ideological thinking and authoritarianism aren’t aware of what makes them so susceptible
Prolegomena to Any Dark-Age Psychohistory
When I think about history, the picture in my head is that of a roiling canvas of many choppy, intertwingled narrative streams, enveloped by many-hued nebulous…
The sad decline of effective altruism
A once wholesome and inspiring movement has become entangled with cults and has lost years chasing dead-end ideas
An Explanation (Which I Would Be Very Grateful If You Took The Time To Read)
What follows is a minor modern horror story.
Extropia's Children, Chapter 5: Irrationalism
The driving force behind rationalism, and founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, seems to think it's already too late for humanity; we are already doomed to a catastrophic AI apocalypse. How worried should we be?
Believing what we do not believe: Acquiescence to superstitious beliefs and other powerful intuitions.
A Year of Magical Thinking
Elite impunity has fueled the fantasy that catastrophes are for other people.
“What we’ve got to understand is that this epistemic chaos, this collective psychosis, has risen as a result of the shareholder-driven model of global capitalism. What we’ve got to do is look at the mechanisms of that wealth pump itself & start to change that.” theecologist.org/2026/sep/09/soft-body-turtle
The soft body of the turtle
theecologist.org