Published on March 31, 2025 7:26 PM GMT
By A. Nobody
When I first posted on LessWrong, I expected some pushback. That’s normal. If you’re arguing that AGI will lead to human extinction and that capitalism makes this outcome inevitable, you’re going to meet resistance. But what I didn’t expect -and what ultimately led me to write this - is the way that resistance has manifested.
From the very beginning, my essays were met with immediate hostility, not on the basis of their logic or premises, but because of vague accusations of them being “political.” This came directly from site admins. And crucially, this wasn’t after reading the content. It was before. The mere idea that someone might be drawing a line from capitalism to extinction was enough to trigger rejection - not intellectual rebuttal, just rejection.
My main essay - arguably the core of the entire argument I’m developing - has been heavily downvoted. Not because it was proven wrong, or because someone pointed out a fatal flaw. But because people didn’t like that the argument existed. There has still not been a single substantive refutation of any of my key premises. Not one. The votes tell you it’s nonsense, but no one is able to explain why.
This isn’t a community failing to find holes in the logic. It’s a community refusing to engage with it at all.
And this mirrors what I’ve seen more broadly. The resistance I’ve received from academia and the AI safety community has been no better. I’ve had emails ignored, responses that amount to “this didn’t come from the right person,” and the occasional reply like this one, from a very prominent member of AI safety:
“Without reading the paper, and just going on your brief description…”
That’s the level of seriousness these ideas are treated with.
Imagine for a moment that an amateur astronomer spots an asteroid on a trajectory to wipe out humanity. He doesn’t have a PhD. He’s not affiliated with NASA. But the evidence is there. And when he contacts the people whose job it is to monitor the skies, they say: “Who are you to discover this?” And then refuse to even look in the direction he’s pointing.
That’s what this is. And it’s not an exaggeration.
I understand institutional resistance. I get that organisations - whether they’re companies, universities, or online communities - don’t like outsiders coming in and telling them they’ve missed something. But this is supposed to be a place that values rational thought. Where ideas live or die based on their reasoning, not on who said them.
Instead, it’s felt like posting to Reddit. The same knee-jerk downvotes. The same smug hand-waving. The same discomfort that someone has written something you don’t like but can’t quite refute.
LessWrong has long had a reputation for being unwelcoming to people who aren’t “in.” I now understand exactly what that means. I came here with ideas. Not dogma, not politics. Just ideas. You don’t have to agree with them. But the way they’ve been received proves something important - not about me, but about the site.
So this will be my last post. I’ll leave the essays up for anyone who wants to read them in the future. I’m not deleting anything. I stand by all of it. And if you’ve made it this far, and actually read what I’ve written rather than reacting to the premise of it, thank you. That’s all I ever wanted - good faith engagement.
The rest of you can go back to not looking up.
- A. Nobody
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