Rationalist and Rattumb

Greetings

2019-01-01T21:47:55Z

Posted by: extropianzealot

I was never particularly active on Tumblr, in part because the dynamics of that website really bothered me.

I can't really introduce myself in terms of a previous persona, because this is at least a semi-anon blog and I'd kind of prefer most people didn't link it to other stuff I do on the Internet.

Besides my short introductory post, you should know that this blog will be primarily focused on the history & philosophy of Extropianism. Or as it is more commonly known these days, Transhumanism. (I, like many other people have significant objections to Transhumanism as a name because it conjures up a sort of supervillain-like aesthetic)

In practice that means notes on my research into the subject, editorials on different topics from the perspective of taking cosmic scale concerns and x-risk seriously, and perhaps the occasional dark ritual to help conjure up our suppressed ancestral abilities. I look forward to exchanging letters with you all.

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Hi everyone!

2019-01-01T16:30:25Z

Posted by: liskantope

Hi, this is the same Liskantope from Tumblr and Wordpress. (I want to use the gravatar that I have for those blogs, but there must be some technicality that I'm not getting because afaict it's showing up as a dark square. Is there any way just to use the gravatar associated to this email, which is the same one that I use for Tumblr and Wordpress?)

(I'm confused about some other aspects of the interface too, but hopefully I'll get the hang of it...)

For the moment, I'm mainly on here to keep up with the people I know from rat-adjacent Tumblr who are part of Rationalistdiaspora. And I figured that since I have a habit of starting new blogs on New Year's Day (btw happy 4th birthday to my tumblelog and happy 3rd birthday to my Wordpress blog!), I might as well make my first post here on the first day of 2019.

Happy New Year everyone!

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-29T19:32:00

2018-12-30T04:48:37Z

Posted by: kindnesstheorist

I believe there is work to be done in the world and rationalist culture is more inclined toward encouraging the accomplishment of that work than most of the other cultures I've encountered. My journal is for the purpose of describing the shape of the work through a new framework of study by the name of kindness theory. Informed by Yudkowskian rationalism largely through the writings of effective altruist Kelsey Piper, kindness theory seeks to explain how people can be more kind, both as an end unto itself and in hopes that it inspires people to concrete acts of kindness.

When writing essays for publication, including community posts such as this one, I edit to an abstract, academic style. I understand this can be difficult to read. If you'd like a rundown on anything I write about in a less formal register, feel free to comment or PM me.

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-21T17:23:00

2018-12-22T01:48:13Z

Posted by: sophus

Most of my online friends are rationalist-adjacent, so I suppose that makes me rationalist-adjacent-adjacent. Thus:
Hello everyone, I'm sophus! I'm from the glowfic corner of the rodent-sphere. If you know me, it's probably from Amentumblr; I'm also Sophus#7079 on Discord and sophus-b on realblr if you've met me there.

--

The tumblr function that I most miss here on Dreamwidth is the like button; it was nice to have a low spoons way to show my appreciation of someone's post. However, I've anecdotally heard that some people are using comments with only "+1" and/or "<3" as a kludgy equivalent.

I know that executive dysfunction is fairly common amongst my corner of the diaspora, at least, and I think this idea merits discussion: adopting this, or a similar social norm for the community here would be valuable. I like positive feedback in any form, and I know many others here do too, so a solution that makes it easier to give positive feedback would be extremely useful.

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-21T20:14:00

2018-12-21T20:15:25Z

Posted by: ethnianmandarin

ppl sure keep accusing me of being rationalist-adjacent, so im going to sit down at this lunch table

this is a weird fucking platform. i never used it the first time round.

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-21T00:27:00

2018-12-21T07:00:24Z

Posted by: earlgraytay

I have a lot of effective altruists on my tumblr dashboard. I also have a lot of people who have serious criticisms of effective altruism on my tumblr dashboard. This means I see them bicker a lot about how to do charity and what the right way to help people is. And there's this pattern I keep seeing over and over again where the EAs and the people who don't like EA keep getting into huge arguments-- because they're not actually talking to each other.

( TLDR: Rational debate is hard. )

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Home again

2018-12-19T02:42:46Z

Posted by: ciphergoth

LiveJournal was my first online community, so it's very nice to see us all come back to LJ's natural successor after all this time. I'm Paul Crowley, "ciphergoth" just about everywhere. *waves*

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Introduction

2018-12-16T10:23:29Z

Posted by: trivialagent

Hallo!

I'm coming from Tumblr (same username), where I mostly lurked. Will probably continue doing that, but if I'm inclined to start being active anywhere, it would be here.

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Question about norms

2018-12-14T04:32:11Z

Posted by: kleptoquark

So what are the relevant considerations re: posting to your own journal vs. posting to a "community" like this? Are there any aboriginal Dreamwideners who can help me out here?

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PSA: rattumb

2018-12-10T20:09:30Z

Posted by: s0ph1a

http://captainneverever.tumblr.com/post/180953713345/now-that-youve-downloaded-your-blog-and-are

ti;dc (trivial inconvenience; didn’t click): Archive.org is making a backup of all of tumblr. Please help!

Instructions here: https://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warrior

And it would be nice to set your nickname to “rattumb” to add to our collective score :-)

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-09T23:38:00

2018-12-10T05:01:32Z

Posted by: anthropicprincipal

Hi, all. I wandered over here from Tumblr (same username).

Will trade math and code for cat pictures and trolley memes.

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Feo here

2018-12-09T23:54:13Z

Posted by: feotakahari

I love this community, and my only regret is that more people aren't using it.

My plan is to fully switch communities if and when Xenoqueer ever leaves or gets banned from Tumblr. When they're gone, I think that'll be a sufficient sea change that Tumblr will no longer be worth my time.

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Introduction?

2018-12-09T05:21:09Z

Posted by: contrarianarchon

Well, I hope to use this medium to talk more. It seems pretty cool (but I don't really know how to find new people to watch). I'm not really *on* tumblr, but all the interesting places to lurk are getting shook up, so away we go.

(Shame Cafe Chesscourt died. I liked it)

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-08T15:23:00

2018-12-08T23:29:18Z

Posted by: purrtrandrussell

As obnoxious and harmful Tumblr's puritan shift is, I'm quite excited by this development. I strongly value casual asynchronous written interaction, but the primary platforms for that are fundamentally value-unaligned with me. The re-blog-style interaction in Tumblr facilitates a culture of pile-ons and aggression, and Facebook is actively out to get its users.

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-07T08:19:00

2018-12-07T14:24:57Z

Posted by: wingedcatgirl

Hello yes this is wingedcatgirl/alivechihiro/cleveresttitle from tumblr. I never really felt like "part of" the rationalist community (rationalist-adjacent-adjacent at most) but I hung around enough that I recognize some of you fondly and some of you might recognize me fondly.

I'm not sure what I plan to use DW for but I do plan to stick around here because I was fond of this format back when it was mainstream. Before LJ shot itself in the foot and tumblr was able to easily oust it by just not being like that. Which I guess is exactly what's happening again now. Because learning from history is for chumps apparently.

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-07T12:57:00

2018-12-06T23:58:11Z

Posted by: luxagenic

Currently made-of-luxagens on tumblr, formerly its-okae-carly-rae and even more formerly shuffling-blogs. Was never super active and probably won't be here either, but hi anyway.

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-06T17:27:00

2018-12-06T23:41:52Z

Posted by: unknought

I'm unknought on Tumblr.

I'm still planning to mostly just be on Tumblr for the immediate future, but I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that as a platform Dreamwidth is probably better suited for what I want from social media than Tumblr is, clunky interface notwithstanding. So the community here might not need to get especially large and active to be enough to motivate me to make the switch.

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-06T18:11:00

2018-12-06T23:11:57Z

Posted by: evolutionisjustatheorem

I'm evolution-is-just-a-theorem. Obviously. I don't think Dreamwidth is a viable tumblr replacement and we should avoid moving here until all other options have been exhausted.

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Subscribing to community

2018-12-06T23:01:19Z

Posted by: pseudonym_loving_magpie

I just discovered joining the community doesn't make it show up in my reading list. Okay, subscribing as well now.

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Welcome and a question

2018-12-06T22:59:45Z

Posted by: mindstalk

Welcome to Dreamwidth y'all. I hope you can figure it out. I know different paradigms can be hard; Tumblr's website never kept me for very long, apparently it was meant to be used by app? Whereas DW is pretty much exactly opposite. Apparently there are mobile-friendly themes (Practicality / Neutral Good?) which maybe the community could use? I dunno, I've used LJ/DW for years, but never dived into themes.

Question: what does 'rationalist' mean to you? I joined because it sounded promising when a friend mentioned it, but I haven't been plugged in.

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Hello!

2018-12-06T18:03:52Z

Posted by: twocubes

I'm twocubes on tumblr.

People seem to think I'm one of this community! I'm trying to spread myself out on various networks. Anyways.

May or may not use this? But, if I don't, then you've lost nothing...

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rationalistdiaspora @ 2018-12-06T09:40:00

2018-12-06T17:40:54Z

Posted by: spiralingintocontrol

hey folks I'm spiralingintocontrol on Tumblr. do not know if I will actually leave the Tumbles. most likely not at least for a while.

I'm willing to try basically anything but tbh the interface for Dreamwidth is so bad that I'm not super optimistic? for example -- afaik there is no way for me to do things on mobile?

buuuuut I'm here, so, we'll see what happens

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-waves-

2018-12-06T13:25:56Z

Posted by: lielac

I'm logicalabsurdity on Tumblr and I've never explicitly called myself rationalist(-adjacent) on that platform, but I have on Discord (same username as here) and I've decided to be more open about being in the ratsphere on this new platform. Well, new-ish; I moved from LJ to here and then in 2012 to Tumblr, but I didn't post from 2014 to this Monday and hid all my old posts so it's sort of new.

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Hi all

2018-12-06T09:02:11Z

Posted by: sniffnoy

Hi all. Been here since I moved over from LJ about 2 years back. That said, I haven't really been posting much for the past, like, decade... well, maybe I'll start again, IDK. In any case figured I'd announced my presence like others are doing.

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Assertion

2018-12-06T06:53:50Z

Posted by: fibonacci_reminder

I go by woodenactor on tumblr, though I didn't really post much of anything that really, like, interfaced with rationalist ideas there. I'm hoping that I use this moment of communal change as an opportunity to make myself be more active.

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