hey so about your favorite boy hank green.
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hey so about your favorite boy hank green. it’s such a shame that he went overboard with the LLM stuff, that was impossible to see coming, good on him for realizing he was addicted right? well wishes for the good boy!
anyway there’s smoking gun evidence that he was paid by effective altruists to do marketing for the “AI is so dangerous but so revolutionary” flavor of critihype. this is alleged by hank green expert hank green in the washington post, as well as an EA in charge of influencer marketing. he was literally being paid by TESCREALs.
someone in the same community ran a program where TikTokers were required to post an AI critihype video a day in a cult-like environment where they were subjected to “voluntary” waterboarding and other forms of indoctrination. I’m not kidding, this literal thing happened.
here’s @davidgerard’s pivot to AI with the evidence linked: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/08/06/the-ai-doomsday-cult-recruits-social-media-influencers/
@zzt@mas.to @davidgerard@circumstances.run
Everything I have heard about these ai-quasireligion groups has been really fucking wild and horrid and profoundly fucked up.
I feel like at least some people had been raising the alarm about Hank's repeating these kinds of ea/doom/tescreal/yudkowskirelated ideas for a minute, and questioning why he'd platform this shit and then ignore criticism of it, for quite a while before recent events. No one wants to believe the worst. But what's been the most alarming to me is trying to visit comments or the reddit to process and better understand, and seeing these concerns basically ignored or dismissed. Not just fannish reactivity over criticism, but like very little substantive discussion about the implications of this ideology and his engagement with it??
I think most people who were fans of his work because they thought it was about critical thinking and fun nerdery said 'fuck this' and left a long time ago. But I am deeply concerned about the fanbase he has cultivated since then, because like it or not this guy has huge reach and huge influence and he has proactively sought those things, the 'community' such as it is not the same community as it was before, it is much larger and as always it includes a lot of quite young people. Shit is dangerous. He is a lot of things to a lot of different people and sure man you can be that, but not if you are pushing what is basically an anti human eugenicist-adjacent capitalist ideology in ways that are seemingly designed to be deniable or not obvious. The sheer manipulativeness of that is something I feel like he might have convinced himself is not even wrong? But it is perhaps a lot more noticeable than he thought.
#deeply-mad-about-all-this!!!!!!!!!! #have-been-for-a-few--years-now-but-it-keeps-getting-worse -
@eestileib @MichaelTBacon @zzt @davidgerard i never got around to subscribing to hank green or scishow, but i have clicked the "dont show me this channel again button" and watched Evie Unraveling's excellent remake of the infamous knitting video
@Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt @davidgerard
I don't follow Hank Green and don't really feel the need to tell anyone else to. I haven't watched a Hank Green video in I don't know how many years (his one on getting rid of pennies must be at least 15 years old now, that's the one I remember most) and have no idea what the knitting video is or what AI doom videos he's done.
It's the "don't forgive him when he comes back" bit that I thought was on the deranged side. Like really.
Whatever Hank Green has turned into, he's more than just an influencer based on his and John's past advocacy work at the bare minimum. To reduce someone to the dumbest thing they've said in a bad internet take video is best ridiculous and at worst just being excessively mean. A lot of people who know little about the topic have had terrible takes on AI in the last three years.
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@zzt @davidgerard that's quite a quote.
“It’s really hard to run a fellowship that’s not an indoctrination camp,” Fernandez said. “If you don’t try really hard to not make an indoctrination camp, you will on accident.”No, it's not. If you're in a cult and making an indoctrination camp, it's hard to pretend that's not what you're doing.
@kevingranade@mastodon.gamedev.place @zzt@mas.to @davidgerard@circumstances.run
I mean, two things can be true.
He's using it as an excuse, but not making a cult can be surprisingly hard. -
@Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt @davidgerard
I don't follow Hank Green and don't really feel the need to tell anyone else to. I haven't watched a Hank Green video in I don't know how many years (his one on getting rid of pennies must be at least 15 years old now, that's the one I remember most) and have no idea what the knitting video is or what AI doom videos he's done.
It's the "don't forgive him when he comes back" bit that I thought was on the deranged side. Like really.
Whatever Hank Green has turned into, he's more than just an influencer based on his and John's past advocacy work at the bare minimum. To reduce someone to the dumbest thing they've said in a bad internet take video is best ridiculous and at worst just being excessively mean. A lot of people who know little about the topic have had terrible takes on AI in the last three years.
@MichaelTBacon @Siobibblecoms @zzt @davidgerard
You're right—and I appreciate the pushback—but Green's not a footballer or a plumber, he made his reputation by saying things that he expected other people to take seriously.
Shit happens all the time because of the worst thing you do in a given context. I've broken up with people romantically because of the worst thing they ever said to me, and I bet you have too.
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@kevingranade@mastodon.gamedev.place @zzt@mas.to @davidgerard@circumstances.run
I mean, two things can be true.
He's using it as an excuse, but not making a cult can be surprisingly hard.@flesh @davidgerard @zzt my point is if you're "accidentally" making a cult you really need to examine what you are trying to make and probably realize that it's intrinsically cult-shaped.
If you are centering inclusivity, autonomy, safety, freedom of expression, etc... that undermines the hell out of your thing becoming cult-like. -
@Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt @davidgerard
I don't follow Hank Green and don't really feel the need to tell anyone else to. I haven't watched a Hank Green video in I don't know how many years (his one on getting rid of pennies must be at least 15 years old now, that's the one I remember most) and have no idea what the knitting video is or what AI doom videos he's done.
It's the "don't forgive him when he comes back" bit that I thought was on the deranged side. Like really.
Whatever Hank Green has turned into, he's more than just an influencer based on his and John's past advocacy work at the bare minimum. To reduce someone to the dumbest thing they've said in a bad internet take video is best ridiculous and at worst just being excessively mean. A lot of people who know little about the topic have had terrible takes on AI in the last three years.
@MichaelTBacon @Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt the fuck? he's grifting, he's been grifting for the past year, and he got caught. That counts against someone!
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@MichaelTBacon @Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt the fuck? he's grifting, he's been grifting for the past year, and he got caught. That counts against someone!
@davidgerard @Siobibblecoms @eestileib @zzt
At no point am I arguing that it doesn't count against him, or that he's entitled to anyone's attention.
Green at this point is the equivalent of a comic strip artist who's been drawing for 30 years and is running out of steam for new ideas, but still needs to pay the bills. It's Jim Davis and Garfield. You can say Green has been grifting (yes Garfield is almost never funny these days) but his history is a hell of a lot deeper than some ghost-pepper-hot takes on AI.
That said, I'm not telling anyone to stay tuned in.
(Really, I'm not!)
I was making a narrow point about not blackballing people for stupid takes.
Because frankly just as there's an attention economy for AI doomerism there's also one for who can be most dramatically angry about garbage AI claims. Not you, David, but your mentions can drift that way.
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hey so about your favorite boy hank green. it’s such a shame that he went overboard with the LLM stuff, that was impossible to see coming, good on him for realizing he was addicted right? well wishes for the good boy!
anyway there’s smoking gun evidence that he was paid by effective altruists to do marketing for the “AI is so dangerous but so revolutionary” flavor of critihype. this is alleged by hank green expert hank green in the washington post, as well as an EA in charge of influencer marketing. he was literally being paid by TESCREALs.
someone in the same community ran a program where TikTokers were required to post an AI critihype video a day in a cult-like environment where they were subjected to “voluntary” waterboarding and other forms of indoctrination. I’m not kidding, this literal thing happened.
here’s @davidgerard’s pivot to AI with the evidence linked: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/08/06/the-ai-doomsday-cult-recruits-social-media-influencers/
@zzt @davidgerard thanks. we were saying it was like an MLM, but this is more literal than we expected
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@zzt @davidgerard thanks. we were saying it was like an MLM, but this is more literal than we expected
@ireneista marketing cult
@zzt @davidgerard -
@ireneista marketing cult
@zzt @davidgerard@noiseician @zzt @davidgerard we personally have a high bar for using that word, because cults are a serious thing that ruin people's lives (we've seen it more than once). this does seem like it might be comparable in severity but we're not at the point where we have enough information to be comfortable saying that, ourselves.
you're welcome to say it though. we realize most people aren't, uh, like this ^^''''
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@noiseician @zzt @davidgerard we personally have a high bar for using that word, because cults are a serious thing that ruin people's lives (we've seen it more than once). this does seem like it might be comparable in severity but we're not at the point where we have enough information to be comfortable saying that, ourselves.
you're welcome to say it though. we realize most people aren't, uh, like this ^^''''
@ireneista yes, there are cults and then there are kvlts...
@zzt @davidgerard -
@zzt @davidgerard thanks. we were saying it was like an MLM, but this is more literal than we expected
LLMMLM
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@ireneista yes, there are cults and then there are kvlts...
@zzt @davidgerard@noiseician @ireneista @zzt I spent the 90s learning far too much about Scientology, which is the Godwin example of a cult
but I would absolutely put the TESCREAL cluster in the same box
it's not just a cult! it's a cult incubator!
everything the way it's set up is high control and abuses people for power over them, it's full of sexual predators, and it has little offshoot cults that try to kill people. also many individuals driven to violent madness by its demands.
the Zizians are the famous offshoot, but also there's Leverage Research who were sure sufficient study of rationality would grant you actual psychic powers.
it's pretty awesome!
also they publicly declared me the #1 enemy of Rationality.
fortunately, i'm protected by them being the greatest pile of fuckups i can think of
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@noiseician @ireneista @zzt I spent the 90s learning far too much about Scientology, which is the Godwin example of a cult
but I would absolutely put the TESCREAL cluster in the same box
it's not just a cult! it's a cult incubator!
everything the way it's set up is high control and abuses people for power over them, it's full of sexual predators, and it has little offshoot cults that try to kill people. also many individuals driven to violent madness by its demands.
the Zizians are the famous offshoot, but also there's Leverage Research who were sure sufficient study of rationality would grant you actual psychic powers.
it's pretty awesome!
also they publicly declared me the #1 enemy of Rationality.
fortunately, i'm protected by them being the greatest pile of fuckups i can think of
@davidgerard @noiseician @zzt we agree that there are cults in the strict sense within that broadly-defined cluster, for sure.
TESCREAL is an umbrella term, which is important when opposing it because the thing being fought is amorphous, but it's also important to not mistake a part for the whole or vice-versa
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@davidgerard @noiseician @zzt we agree that there are cults in the strict sense within that broadly-defined cluster, for sure.
TESCREAL is an umbrella term, which is important when opposing it because the thing being fought is amorphous, but it's also important to not mistake a part for the whole or vice-versa
@davidgerard @noiseician @zzt all we're advocating for is careful thinking. if we get sloppy we can't strategize.
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@davidgerard @noiseician @zzt we agree that there are cults in the strict sense within that broadly-defined cluster, for sure.
TESCREAL is an umbrella term, which is important when opposing it because the thing being fought is amorphous, but it's also important to not mistake a part for the whole or vice-versa
@ireneista @noiseician @zzt it's not that amorphous and it's closer knit than its marketing pretends
like I used to say "the LessWrong-originated subculture" but "TESCREAL" is a term that means the same thing
do you have particular good bits you're thinking of? cos substantially it's a sea of rancid
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@cyberquixote you just gotta wear your autism like an albacore around your neck to remind you of the weight of your responsibilities to the world @zzt
@xan @cyberquixote @zzt Albacore > albatross - good swap for the image.
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@davidgerard @noiseician @zzt all we're advocating for is careful thinking. if we get sloppy we can't strategize.
@ireneista @noiseician @zzt if you can point to a specific objection feel free, but a nonspecific claim I'm being sloppy, that i'm engaging in careless thinking, or that i'm mistaking a part for the whole or vice-versa sort of requires you to actually get specific, else it's a bit less than worthless. i have a large bag of specifics here if you are able to argue those.
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@ireneista @noiseician @zzt if you can point to a specific objection feel free, but a nonspecific claim I'm being sloppy, that i'm engaging in careless thinking, or that i'm mistaking a part for the whole or vice-versa sort of requires you to actually get specific, else it's a bit less than worthless. i have a large bag of specifics here if you are able to argue those.
@davidgerard @noiseician @zzt oh it's all bad. we're not saying any of it is good. we understand how any disagreement is going to come off that way, but we agree strongly with the emotion of what you're saying
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@davidgerard @noiseician @zzt oh it's all bad. we're not saying any of it is good. we understand how any disagreement is going to come off that way, but we agree strongly with the emotion of what you're saying
@davidgerard @noiseician @zzt
it's the substance we take issue with. our point is quite simply that if we can't think precisely, we can't strategize for how to fight effectively. this tendency everyone seems to have to gesture at a feeling and use it as a basis for planning, is, like... bad. self-defeating.
