Based Camp - Over 300 Plants Found Controlling Media： Our Old Friend Group Went Rouge & Wants to Destroy AI

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm very glad to be speaking with you because sweet satisfaction is at hand.

00:00:06.540 We have known since the height of Sam Bankman Freed that effective altruists have been pouring

00:00:12.080 millions of dollars into AI doomerism propaganda or AI safety content, as they would put it,

00:00:18.220 but we didn't have definitive receipts. And that was until two former Basecamp guests

00:00:24.460 delivered them last week with brian chow and his ever.news revealing how effective altruism bought

00:00:30.760 the media basically it's it's actually worse than you would think malcolm and also how ai safety

00:00:36.060 donors have paid religious ngos 3.3 million to make statements on ai then also sabina hofsenfelder

00:00:44.540 who was on our podcast like what one or two years ago we actually have an episode with her that's

00:00:49.060 never aired but you gotta weekend episode dude weekend episode i think it's good enough for a

00:00:55.240 weekday episode it's a problem then we gotta run it but anyway bad because we're more extreme and

00:01:00.120 political than when she agreed to do an episode weekend episode so you don't torture reputation

00:01:04.780 but anyway after she saw people talking about this on x she posted a video talking about how

00:01:12.220 people have tried to get her to post ai do more content is like a sponsored content thing

00:01:18.280 And then both Sabine and Brian's posts became trending topics on X, with even Elon Musk asking Sabine, who is offering people money for this?

00:01:29.440 Because apparently he didn't know, which shocks me, but then I guess it shouldn't shock me because basically we knew it because we had attempted to run on profit to get grant money from allegedly effective altruist organizations being like, well, we want to help feature human flourishing.

00:01:46.420 And then we discovered the hard way that all they were donating to, for the most part—of course, there are exceptions, we'll talk about that—was to just AI do more propaganda organizations.

00:01:57.680 No, this is real.

00:01:58.520 So this is a multibillion-dollar industry.

00:02:02.060 And what's fascinating about it is, while it is partially, almost certainly, Chinese-funded—

00:02:08.520 Yeah, that's an element.

00:02:10.200 The primary donor to this is not even generic woke idiots.

00:02:15.700 It is an AI doomsday cult that evolved out of our old social network in Silicon Valley that donates billions of dollars to this a year.

00:02:28.200 And I want to get into that.

00:02:29.340 But I also want to get into the sad world that they want to plunge you into.

00:02:33.100 So here I am going to post a video that a fan made for us.

00:02:36.540 And this is my favorite AI content I've ever seen about your and my WASP saga.

00:02:45.700 gotta kill those wasps i know i feel bad for the one wasp that's stuck under the cup

00:02:54.660 okay release it outside but it'll just be back inside tomorrow if it's living inside and you

00:03:00.320 release it outside it's just coming right back inside and you're going to kill their army anyway

00:03:04.800 no you are too empathetic simone she'll die with her friends that way okay release her outside

00:03:11.640 and deal with it i would want to die with my friends right now she's just very scared and low

00:03:19.680 okay bye

00:03:25.080 you're two of this is women this is why women can't be president

00:03:40.560 malcolm who deals with all the dead animals okay who okay i love you simone i love you too

00:03:48.520 um anyway that made my morning that made my morning um yeah no malcolm the reason why

00:03:59.900 simone and i find this elon being like who's paying you who's doing this so comical is when

00:04:05.860 we hang out with like elon circle the people who go to those parties at least when we used to go to

00:04:11.860 them are the same people who are organizing the funding of all of this they're not the donors

00:04:16.940 themselves but they're like the smart intellectuals who operate these non-profits or determine where

00:04:23.620 the donor advice funds go and they're like 100 cultists and so we are fearless who's doing this

00:04:30.200 and i'm like one that's like your personal circle that's doing this or at least the the outer edges

00:04:36.560 of it and so to to like these these effective altruist types the singularitarian types you

00:04:43.220 know every single one of them you guys if you're associated with these communities you need to be

00:04:47.940 vetting them because this cult is is is dangerous and pervasive um and to give you an idea of what

00:04:53.640 i mean where i'm like yeah like we are involved in this so if you go to the the sabrina hofstetter

00:04:58.900 leak um she she put this out there and the guy who reached out to her was drew sparts at non-linear

00:05:07.600 who runs the species channel and if you look at the species channel it's just every video is

00:05:12.420 doomerism every video is we need to stop technology we need to go back to the way things used to be

00:05:18.280 of ai is going to kill everyone blah blah blah blah blah but like i'm pretty sure because i

00:05:22.420 remember meeting a few guys with with channels like this i'm pretty sure i met this guy at a

00:05:25.940 party um and and we talked for a while about ai safety and stuff like that so like these these

00:05:31.000 communities are our communities like i i recognize these people and uh it's horrifying to see the

00:05:37.560 cult spread so far within these communities and corrupt so many otherwise potentially bright

00:05:43.460 minds the positive that comes out of this is these communities were you know if you're talking about

00:05:50.940 a community counter to the the nerd right or the new right or whatever you know the community that

00:05:55.020 except like leaflet and ourselves and like our wider community they were the most intelligent

00:05:59.660 most agentic potential eventual counterweight to us even though mostly we were working on the same

00:06:05.680 project even though mostly we agreed on a lot of things oh there aren't like they they drew in

00:06:10.240 people from all over the world um who were the best and the brightest and now they've you know

00:06:15.720 ideologically neutered these people so they can no longer be effective or or take on the future

00:06:21.000 which allows us uh a better chance in terms of getting kids and and consolidating power and

00:06:27.460 attempting to steer humanity in a positive direction um so uh sad but but positive

00:06:33.460 and what's cool is in the sabrina email he explains how they are able to make these

00:06:40.560 donations to essentially control the media you watch and the influencers you watch without you

00:06:45.860 knowing and it's that they make them as grants rather than like other types of donations that

00:06:51.700 would require a person admit that they were doing it as a sponsorship we're in this for the species

00:06:58.820 boys and girls it's simple numbers they have more this by the way we need to start the kill drawer

00:07:03.780 um again so if you can bring a mousetrap down let's get that going okay i've only got two left

00:07:08.800 so we need more mousetraps because i put out like eight last night okay walmart run but the kill

00:07:14.600 drawer must return the kids love it it's like their favorite thing every morning it's like we

00:07:18.460 have one drawer in our kitchen that we just lined with mousetraps because for whatever reason the

00:07:22.860 mouse keep coming back to it um and we used to use it as like a drawer but it would get covered

00:07:27.380 in mouse poop and so we're like okay whatever and so the mouse always set up right next to this one

00:07:31.860 drawer and so we line it with newspapers and then we just put tons of mousetraps in it and and

00:07:36.620 every morning you could just just one mousetrap you open it up there's a dead mouse inside you

00:07:41.280 roll up that layer of newspaper with all the blood and then you put you just put down the

00:07:45.980 next mass trap by the way have you cleaned up the dead mouse in the attic no i haven't gotten

00:07:49.540 look i'm gonna handle that and the disgusting shower and all the other stuff it's gonna happen

00:07:55.460 it's all happening tonight after my full day of work am i torturing you all the blood work

00:08:01.960 and the calls and the okay it's so much worse than you thought okay so brian covered this on

00:08:10.380 for dot news first in an article called how effective altruism bought the media and they

00:08:16.340 found quote potemkin articles in which claims are fabricated corroborated and published as

00:08:21.800 journalism by members of an insular donor ecosystem surprise surprise which we are very connected to

00:08:29.020 we we know it well and look a lot of these people who are involved in this are smart

00:08:33.920 kind people who are fun to hang out with but also kind of frustrating like i'm not planning for the

00:08:39.480 future because i think we're all gonna die and that's i mean it's a bummer so what's interesting

00:08:43.220 about this just for people who are watching this is sort of where we are in this so one of the

00:08:47.280 people who's trending on this is brian who's been a friend of ours and a fan of the podcast forever

00:08:51.080 and he like we had the episode on him when he launched his newspaper that since the launching

00:08:56.520 has gone viral multiple times for linking these stories but we have also had on the show one of

00:09:02.520 the figures at the absolute center of the anti-ai community um ayla oh ayla right right

00:09:10.340 no she she sort of got sucked into this cult it's not i'm not you know obviously you're

00:09:15.920 she's surrounded by people who are anti-ai it's i don't think she really honestly has that much

00:09:20.740 of a choice like her primary boyfriend is one of the leaders of the anti-ai community

00:09:25.200 and as a woman should we is it better that she's part of the anti-ai community or that

00:09:30.440 she went against her man okay i'm just saying you know what women thinking for themselves out

00:09:37.240 there that would be dangerous i just want her to be happy and i just think she'd be happier

00:09:42.560 if she weren't anti-ai if she completely cut herself off from that look look at also all the

00:09:47.920 cool stuff she has built by vibe coding what i also appreciated that she's not so there's there's

00:09:53.400 there's ea anti-ai and they're all vibe coding they're all using ai stuff and then there's like

00:09:58.700 normie anti-ai where they're like they refuse to use it aesthetically and they're just shooting

00:10:03.220 themselves in the foot so i'm glad no no no not all the ea anti-ai people are vibe coding some

00:10:08.180 are like ayla who's like a little bit mentally free but a lot of them don't touch it and they

00:10:12.860 see it as like a status signal not to touch it i don't see that i don't see that i everyone i know

00:10:17.320 who is in the space and adjacent to it you know as long as they're if they're agentic competent

00:10:23.960 people they're vibe coding and if they're not vibe coding it's not out of some aesthetic thing

00:10:27.960 it's because they're low agency low productivity so that's well to give you an idea of like what

00:10:34.680 happens to somebody in this community because we've been able to see this with ayla's writings

00:10:38.280 is she talks about how today she doesn't see a future anymore she's beginning to do more drugs

00:10:45.160 she's beginning to not save for retirement anymore she's beginning to adopt a much more pessimistic

00:10:51.460 attitude towards life and and really dealing with mental health issues tied to this because

00:10:55.880 these people really think civilization is about to it right like when you and if you're surrounded

00:11:01.980 by people in a doomsday cult which perhaps she is how can you not start to just fall into that view

00:11:07.520 this is very commonly how people find themselves in cults in the first place and i think scott

00:11:12.240 alexander talked about this when he did that book review on the rise of christianity that so much of

00:11:17.380 the rise of early christianity really just had to do with people who were being surrounded by a

00:11:22.500 tipping point of christians and then after at that point you're basically a christian

00:11:25.860 So you have to get to that weird tipping point. And in the Bay Area, in these rationalist circles, I think that's kind of how you see some of this mimetic spread taking place, is there's just this preponderance of AI doomers.

00:11:37.960 But anyway, what they do in this article is explore the issue through just to start one Guardian article, because it's such a good illustration, that had six people involved to make it and publish it.

00:11:52.920 All of these people were paid for by three mega donors, which the Guardian didn't disclose.

00:11:59.140 And in fact, as Brian puts it in the article, quote, in a fundraising statement attached to the article, the Guardian proclaims its fierce independence.

00:12:08.440 And yes, OK, the Guardian itself was paid over three million by Coefficient Giving, AI Doomer Org.

00:12:16.300 The reporter who wrote the article, Aisha Down, was paid 50, sorry, 60 to 110K through the Coefficient Giving's Tarbell Fellowship, which pays her salary.

00:12:27.640 Also, three quoted experts in the article were all recipients of funds either from the Survival and Flourishing Fund, more on them soon,

00:12:37.220 Coefficient, again, another Doomer AI, and also the Effective Ventures Foundation.

00:12:41.420 And Aisha, the reporter, does not justify her reasoning behind calling these people experts,

00:12:48.720 despite the experts themselves publicly admitting that their predictions were off by years in some cases, if not decades.

00:12:56.960 as they put in the article so there's henry papadatos who was paid six hundred and twenty

00:13:02.960 thousand dollars malcolm murray who has paid 129 376 dollars and sorry 129 376 dollars and

00:13:14.420 andrea castagna who has paid 30 thousand dollars and she's also the recipient of two additional

00:13:19.440 undisclosed grants because this is wild but for context simone you might not have done the

00:13:26.780 math on this. Yeah. From the Survival and Flourishing Fund, our movement has received

00:13:33.740 demonstrably more than every one of those grants combined. We, what, pronatalism? Yes. We received

00:13:42.660 $500,000 from the Survival and Flourishing Fund. Which is more than every one of the numbers.

00:13:48.580 Henry Papadatos alone was paid $620,000. Oh, $600,000? The Guardian was paid over $3 million

00:13:55.180 by coefficient giving the reporter has a salary i should down through the tar belt fellowship but

00:14:00.360 that's one reporter and again by henry papados is just one of the three expert sources then

00:14:05.440 malcolm murray 129 000 a little more than that andrea castagna 30 000 and then the subject of

00:14:12.180 the story who is daniel coco tajlo tajlo was paid 2 million 851 166 dollars oh god that's so much

00:14:24.280 more but you want to hear what's wild about our movement compared to the the ai doomer movement

00:14:29.860 so these guys are getting you know like billions of dollars a year in total and like well over

00:14:34.200 what we're getting yeah we took their one grant to us both did everything we told them we were

00:14:40.920 going to do and set up a business that is set to be paying into the non-profit foundation

00:14:49.060 about 0.3 million a year right now um which means that what that's the hope yeah we well i mean that

00:14:57.660 that's that's the run rate okay right now um and so if we can grow it right now obviously if it

00:15:04.260 shrinks that's bad right but if we can grow it from here which i think is reasonable to go from

00:15:10.140 0.3 million a year to 0.5 million a year that means that we will in perpetuity be donating

00:15:16.980 into cause areas an equivalent to the amount that they originally gave us every year just a few

00:15:25.740 years after the original donation which puts us in a completely different league than these ai

00:15:31.420 idiots however it should be disclosed and again just to be super clear um i think this was in 2021

00:15:37.580 the pragmatist foundation which is our non-profit foundation received a 500 000 grant from the

00:15:44.820 Survival and Flourishing Fund, which is one of these AI Doomer funds. And other people that we

00:15:49.000 know who received grants from the fund definitely did AI Doomer adjacent style work. We were maybe

00:15:56.020 one of the less usual applicants in that we applied to work on our school project. And

00:16:04.320 that, you know, like we received that money. I think it's important to disclose it.

00:16:09.100 We since have applied, I think, two or three more times, Malcolm.

00:16:14.120 Two.

00:16:14.620 No, one more time.

00:16:15.700 And the themes have gone more focused around AI safety, I think, as time has gone, at least

00:16:22.500 in the wording of the application materials.

00:16:24.940 Originally, the Survival and Flourishing Fund really had very explicit just wording around

00:16:30.320 how will your project contribute to long-term human flourishing?

00:16:35.140 Because again, Survival and Flourishing Fund, okay?

00:16:36.920 It didn't I had nothing to do with it, but their community of donors got increasingly incepted into the cult.

00:16:43.460 Yes. And so unfortunately, one of the reasons why that five hundred thousand dollar donation followed by one more 20 K Ted K, which was great and very profoundly appreciated, did not result in anything beyond that was that Malcolm insisted on applying to these funds.

00:17:06.100 being like, look, you gave us $500,000 to work. I think it was both to work on pronatalism and to

00:17:13.300 work on our education thing. We built the whole education thing out. Here it is. You can look at

00:17:18.700 it. Also, we successfully moved the Overton window on demographic collapse and pronatalism.

00:17:25.000 People used to deny that it was an issue. And at the time, the natalism cause in Google search

00:17:29.200 terms, now they did a second, maybe even funded by me clowning on them about this. We were about

00:17:34.760 double what ai safety was natalism was in terms of google search traffic yeah so malcolm applies

00:17:40.620 and he's like look at all of your other pathetic donor recipients donation recipients they can't

00:17:46.580 get anything done look at what we did with what you gave us don't you think that maybe you should

00:17:50.860 give us more because everyone else is so lazy um and i wonder why they didn't give us more money

00:17:58.520 no but here's the fun thing right yeah i wanted to and i'm actually thinking about this fans can

00:18:04.280 let us know i've thought about re-donating like every year like some amount or re-donating what

00:18:11.240 they gave us with interest like back into the fund um just because you know opening i didn't do

00:18:16.400 it they were founded as a non-profit and when they became profitable they didn't give elon money like

00:18:21.380 interest or equity or anything like that i was like that seems profoundly um uh you know immoral

00:18:27.820 um but now i'm sort of struggling with a question i have which is now that it looks like we might

00:18:34.980 end up becoming quite profitable with like we did everything we told them we were going to do

00:18:39.940 and then i was like and now i'm going to take the rest of this money and make it make money forever

00:18:44.280 um uh with projects that are tied to our goals right right well and actually this

00:18:50.220 our feb is directly um downstream of a threat that we made to the survival and flourishing fund

00:18:57.000 related to one of their AI safety, I guess, grant invitations, whereby Malcolm was like,

00:19:05.100 okay, so you could give us a grant to try to help you work on AI alignment with all the guardrails.

00:19:13.240 You know, we'll keep it siloed offline.

00:19:15.680 Oh my God, they would have made the product so bad.

00:19:17.080 It will be air-gapped, we'll be so safe, we'll follow all your rules.

00:19:20.940 Or you cannot fund us and we'll build it anyway, but everything will be immediately online

00:19:26.600 and we're just going to take all the guardrails off

00:19:28.760 and that is Reality Fabricator.

00:19:31.820 And I'm so glad that you did it

00:19:33.580 and I'm so glad they didn't give us that up.

00:19:34.720 Literally with our agent system on Reality Fabricator,

00:19:37.360 the way I decided features to add

00:19:39.280 is I asked what would scare AI safety people the most.

00:19:43.320 And I'd be like, build that next.

00:19:47.500 So, yeah.

00:19:50.740 What's fun about this is now the intellectual challenge I have

00:19:54.120 and fans can let me know where they want us to go is this and if you are unfamiliar you haven't

00:19:58.600 heard of the project the core thing that like people use our site for most is ai chat sessions

00:20:04.100 or ai adventure sessions think of them as like choose your own adventure books yeah and we've

00:20:08.140 done some major updates on the systems that are meant to sort of brainstorm these for you and

00:20:12.060 they can even use fable for not safe for work starts now which is really good for nsfw it's

00:20:19.240 incredibly good the fable brainstorming system i built out for the instant brainstormer the the

00:20:25.380 longer one i wouldn't suggest concept expander isn't as good anymore now that the engines are

00:20:29.400 better um but i do brainstormer instant concept expander it is spectacular so fable can build

00:20:35.920 incredible websites create amazing features build amazing software well it was really hard because

00:20:41.520 fable is generally very bad at talking like a human or writing stories and i did some wizardry

00:20:46.960 that got it working on this system um but anyway the the point being is okay check it out if you

00:20:52.260 want to check it out um would obviously profoundly appreciate it also we have like the best image and

00:20:57.020 video generation provider i'm aware of in terms of pricing and diversity but um and this is filmed

00:21:04.460 on the site too by the way but if we build this into something that's making lots of money um my

00:21:10.320 initial plan was well let's give a portion of it back to the survival and flourishing fund just

00:21:14.560 like clown on them with negative donations every year uh requests where we just scold them and

00:21:19.800 then give them like a negative donation for like you know a quarter million half a million whatever

00:21:23.720 um and then uh i look at what they're doing with this stuff and i'm like wait they're just like

00:21:29.200 demonstrably a threat to civilization at this yeah that's that is actually my concern after

00:21:33.940 reading all this i'm like oh but what if yeah what if they use more funds that is actually

00:21:39.160 going to cause tangible damage because we also see not just the strategic losses that are

00:21:45.920 downstream of AI dumourism from a national spending standpoint, data center development,

00:21:51.260 all these things, lobbying, but also the mental health downstream effects that it has on populations.

00:21:57.660 Destroying entire communities of use. I know this one really smart kid who I used to mentor and

00:22:01.000 help with things. And he basically, after he got incepted into this cult, just became severely

00:22:06.400 depressed stop talking to anyone like didn't leave his room for six months like it psychologically

00:22:11.260 destroys people yeah um and we've seen it happen to multiple promising young people yeah so maybe

00:22:17.120 maybe don't do that but it's also not grounded in reality at all see our old episodes on this

00:22:22.300 where we like go into all the points they make and how stupid they are but the the point being

00:22:26.680 um like if you if you're worried about ai killing everyone you really need to go look at we have

00:22:31.020 like three or four episodes where we go point by point on every one of their points and they are

00:22:35.280 dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum. It's like AI is sucking up all

00:22:42.500 the water level dump, right? It's just not true or tied to reality at all. But now what I think

00:22:48.920 I'm going to do with the money, if we're able to grow this organization, is dedicate it to the

00:22:52.960 type of project the Survival and Flourishing Fund would have funded when they first gave us

00:22:59.580 that grant. Well, that's what we started with hardea.org. That's the whole point. And we'll just

00:23:03.800 remind people that they can submit grant applications there but we're not there yet

00:23:07.640 okay we're look let's get some stability well rfab started as a grant application

00:23:11.640 yeah it did dude bruno thank you um yeah literally start so we did hard ea we put out grants for

00:23:20.840 for uh and uh reality fabricator the project started as a grant application yeah well it

00:23:26.940 was a grant application for a research modality using ai remember it was like for for yeah and

00:23:33.300 And of course, being myself, I say, how can I profit from this?

00:23:36.940 Okay, this is true.

00:23:38.860 At any rate, everyone knows now we received a large grant from SFF.

00:23:43.480 Now all we've done since, I guess quite rudely, is troll them and insult them.

00:23:48.600 So bad us.

00:23:50.120 But also, as Brian puts it in his article, all six belong to a circular.

00:23:56.020 Again, all six people who made that.

00:23:57.560 Sorry, we don't troll them with like me.

00:23:59.960 we troll them with like, how are we doing better than every one of your other grants combined?

00:24:06.560 That's a, that's a meaningful thing. Okay. Okay. I know. I know. I know. Look,

00:24:11.400 I didn't stop you from doing it. I edited your applications and I was like, well, Malcolm,

00:24:15.600 if this is the angle you want to take now, it's grammatically correct. And we sent it.

00:24:19.240 I would have stopped you if I really vehemently disagreed. I mean, you're right. I just don't,

00:24:23.680 you know, it's typically like you got to kiss someone's boots if you want to get money from

00:24:27.640 them and that's what they all did with daddy sam bankman freed and and uh then they got screwed

00:24:33.840 because now he's in jail um but anyway well and i guess this is why hardy a is able to stay moral

00:24:39.300 and they're not right sure okay let's we're gonna get past the trolling to the dirt okay because the

00:24:45.600 receipts and the dirt are finally here don't you understand let's give me the receipts so with this

00:24:50.580 guardian article as brian says all six belong to a circular ecosystem known as ai safety united

00:24:56.660 around the belief that AI will end the human race. What Down promotes as expertise, that's

00:25:03.040 the author of the article to remind you, is not merely unrigorous or exaggerated. It's a work of

00:25:08.120 cult-like fiction, which openly promotes their vision of the AI apocalypse. This belief underwrites

00:25:14.480 millions spent annually on promoting a firehose of anti-AI narratives with the goal of banning AI

00:25:21.320 outright, the price of preventing the apocalypse. This ecosystem is bankrolled by three mega donors,

00:25:27.720 Dustin Moskovitz's Open Philanthropy, Sam Bankman-Fried's Center for Effective Altruism,

00:25:33.100 aka CEA, and Jan Tolland's Survival and Flourishing Fund. Thank you, Jan, for the

00:25:37.800 grant. The media arm of this empire has over $40 million in donations and includes paid

00:25:45.100 journalists, influencers, and religious groups. So apparently the Center for Effective Altruism,

00:25:50.860 and i didn't know this rebranded to the effective ventures foundation after sam bankman freed

00:25:56.240 ended up in jail and um open philanthropy also rebranded after first distancing themselves from

00:26:04.400 sam bankman freed then they changed their name to coefficient giving which i didn't know so

00:26:10.340 because don't you remember after he like after the the sam bankman freed money fire hose dried up

00:26:16.260 like there was this moment of like mass mourning like we had calls with people who worked in the

00:26:21.820 effective altruism like non-profit space who acted as though like their mother had just died

00:26:27.500 they're like i'm just emotionally destroyed the community because the entire community was living

00:26:31.640 off of that fire hose is it a giant purge network that sits with their thumb up their butt all day

00:26:37.620 producing nothing but harry potter fan fiction are you surprised that we didn't get any more

00:26:42.460 money from them. Oh God. But what's ironic about it. And I do share Malcolm's disdain because the

00:26:49.380 whole point of effective altruism for those not familiar with it, like one of the core sort of

00:26:54.060 stories, founding stories of it as it first emerged was, Hey, you know, what's more effective

00:27:00.120 than like working in the nonprofit space that you care about, like going to be a doctor in Africa

00:27:06.700 and saving a life a day,

00:27:08.780 you could become a high-paid consultant

00:27:12.540 or finance bro, make a ton of money

00:27:15.320 and donate, I don't know, even like just 10%,

00:27:18.580 but up to as much income as you can,

00:27:21.000 all that to charity,

00:27:22.000 and you can save hundreds of lives a day.

00:27:24.420 So don't actually work at the nonprofit.

00:27:26.520 And yet somehow, ironically,

00:27:29.360 this entire nonprofit ecosystem sprung up

00:27:32.920 and lo and behold,

00:27:34.300 the vast majority of the people who receive

00:27:36.660 these ai grants and these these effective altruist grants in general it's mostly for projects that

00:27:43.360 involve paying them to sit on their butts and write they're not even being paid to go be a

00:27:48.640 doctor and save a life a day they're just being paid to not only sit on their butts and write

00:27:53.000 like in iowa or something where it's affordable but in freaking san francisco or in london or in

00:27:58.500 new york so it's extra insulting because it it spits in the face of effective altruism yeah it

00:28:05.380 It has this ecosystem of people who are living on grants

00:28:08.740 and not even getting their hands dirty for the most part.

00:28:11.680 Now, there are people who go out and actually do field work.

00:28:13.760 But again, that even, that even spits.

00:28:15.240 No, but it's prestigious field work.

00:28:17.320 It's like, I'm going to save Africans.

00:28:19.100 And it's like, those Africans aren't going to do for civilization.

00:28:21.980 You know that and I know that.

00:28:23.360 This is all just that you can jack yourself off.

00:28:26.060 Anyway, yeah, it's, anyway, it's bad.

00:28:27.740 So I share, I share.

00:28:28.600 But anyway, so here's how much money they've been giving to media.

00:28:33.200 Seven effective altruist organizations, I should say.

00:28:35.380 that are anti-AI, according to Brian's reporting,

00:28:37.820 which is very rigorous.

00:28:39.160 It's very good.

00:28:39.800 We trust Brian.

00:28:40.860 The 17.9 million has gone to print,

00:28:44.100 13.9 million to video content,

00:28:46.820 4.87 million to political advocacy,

00:28:49.780 2.66 to film and fiction,

00:28:51.960 1.81 million to religious NGOs,

00:28:54.560 and 1.35 million to others.

00:28:56.540 And the Tarbell Fellowship Program,

00:28:58.780 which again is what paid that journalist

00:29:00.180 who wrote the Guardian article

00:29:01.460 that was the Potemkin article,

00:29:03.220 um is is how coefficient giving influences media coverage and it uses this fellowship to pay the

00:29:11.100 salaries of over 30 or 20 over 20 journalists i think he said two dozen um it's literally like

00:29:18.340 the cia used to have tons of journalists on staff and everything like that right what i was really

00:29:22.600 disappointed in i don't know if you saw this but like moist critical who generally has like okay

00:29:26.700 takes like decided to go super hard against ai and just came off he could be paid by them i don't

00:29:32.640 know he might actually be paid legitimately ai data centers are actually the boogeyman they are

00:29:37.880 just a scourge on this planet and a stain on civilized society they are these behemoths that

00:29:44.800 require all infrastructure to be changed to suit their gluttony to satiate their insatiable appetite

00:29:52.460 and doing so just pillages communities while seeing basically no benefit beyond the temporary

00:29:59.020 jobs they used to build them no normal people with functioning frontal lobes want data centers

00:30:04.280 in their community it is bad for them i was reading something that someone was sharing about

00:30:09.980 like when an ai data center came through and the impact it had on their water because that's a very

00:30:14.060 common thing and i've just really been toying around with this idea and i've seen other people

00:30:19.440 kind of talk about it occasionally as well and i'm not fully bought into it hook line and sinker

00:30:24.240 but it's an interesting theory a little game theory what if the reason there's been seemingly

00:30:31.220 so much more sickness like it feels like people are getting sick more frequently now and a wide

00:30:36.320 variety of illnesses just seem more common now what if ai data centers are hoarding all of the

00:30:42.700 clean water because obviously they are gluttonous like they are so thirsty with an unquenchable

00:30:49.660 thirst that's a good point i mean he's got a big enough audience that they probably reached out to

00:30:53.100 him and his take was completely delusional it was like who's using ai for anything and it's like i

00:30:59.860 don't know like everyone who's not a tard like what are you talking about yeah no i was actually

00:31:06.840 listening to another youtuber talking about how bad ai was and she was like and ai doesn't even

00:31:12.360 share its sources and i'm like when did you last use ai like yeah hey i'm talking about that's like

00:31:18.840 three years ago i know i know this is just how bad it is for some ai people like oh my god what

00:31:24.700 do you know girl you're wrong anyway time time like as in time magazine is the biggest fellowship

00:31:31.320 recipient of the tarbell fellowship and brian found that 58 out of the 100 time 100 profiles

00:31:39.500 were written by tarbell paid journalists he also shared leaked emails that show how ai safety

00:31:45.680 organization sponsor anti-ai content on youtube and then showed channels that have been funded

00:31:51.160 by these organizations including one of octavian's favorite channels

00:31:55.040 kurs kurs got or however you say that which received do you want to guess how much that

00:32:00.460 channel received oh god probably half a million

00:32:02.340 5.83 million dollars 5.83 million dollars yeah hmm it's uh interesting and another one another

00:32:14.860 example rational animations got 2.53 million a primer got 300 000 a happier world 150k a space

00:32:23.800 science guy got 24k then he points out also how the ai doomerism sponsored videos perform between

00:32:30.780 12 and 89 worse than these channels normal videos just to point out how like unhinged and unfounded

00:32:38.880 the actual arguments are they are not good arguments and and and these the rational people

00:32:46.440 who aren't in the cult and watch them are immediately like this is a dumb argument they

00:32:51.600 bounce and then they don't watch and this shows up in the watch data on these channels if the like

00:32:56.360 if some un if some well moored in reality sponsor had reached out to them like hey i think you

00:33:03.900 should talk about the sustainability of nuclear power and they've taught many of these channels

00:33:07.640 have talked about that people are like oh okay wow this is actually really interesting maybe we

00:33:11.420 should you know like i would say there's some propaganda that is both true and that people

00:33:17.620 like to watch and this is not this is not some of that it's depressing it's not true and so it sucks

00:33:23.160 and sabine actually pointed this out in her youtube video where she talks about her experience

00:33:27.640 being reached out to by an organization what a hero by the way sabine is she's such a good

00:33:33.680 her content's so good she's wonderful i really just could not say more positive things about a

00:33:41.000 science educator in the market right now uh you know somebody reaches out and it's like i'll give

00:33:45.640 you millions of dollars and she's like this is king shady as hell and i'm going to talk about it

00:33:49.560 and she also said that they they reached out to her with prescribed sentences and references that

00:33:55.920 they they weren't going to be like hey can you explore this and share your own thoughts it was

00:34:00.320 like, no, you say this, you're going to say this, which is really creepy. And this is happening all

00:34:05.900 over social media. Of course, about two weeks ago, it came out that a lot of, especially Democratic,

00:34:13.160 and I'm not, both sides of the people covering this said that both Republican and Democratic

00:34:17.780 influencers on social media were being paid to post specific political messages. However,

00:34:23.600 it happened a ton more with Democrats and everyone admits it. So I'm saying primarily

00:34:26.800 democratic influencers were just reading word for word the same lines and people actually compiled

00:34:32.620 some of them together it's very embarrassing when you actually see it because at the same time they

00:34:37.100 also did not disclose that they were reading off scripts that were sponsored but i i think that

00:34:43.380 that the amount that this can like actually with you when you don't realize you're listening to a

00:34:49.040 bunch of paid shills of people you thought you could respect yeah yeah yeah because it's like

00:34:52.880 you know sabina you trust her we all do like we love her well and imagine if she'd said yes and

00:34:58.740 started reading off these lines and then i don't know you're also going to feel like you're being

00:35:01.900 gassed you're like wait can i trust her this seems really weird is everything else she's saying

00:35:06.500 off and fortunately she disclosed in her video she is only sponsored and controlled by big cheese

00:35:13.840 which i relate girl is she is she sponsored by cheese companies no she loves cheese and so do

00:35:19.400 we i saw what you know but the reason i'm mentioning this is this can happen to even like

00:35:23.660 sane famous so we talk with nux frequently like offline and private chats and everything like

00:35:29.700 that now great guy by the way and he at one point was reaching out to us and he's like

00:35:33.740 okay this this anti-ai stuff right like this is crazy right i feel like i'm taking crazy pills

00:35:40.840 he's like i have seen these videos like i just need to check with somebody else who's saying

00:35:46.720 Yeah, like, am I? Yeah, because I think we're all like, wait, like, why? Why are all these people posting this? And yet it seems so dumb. And it's just this massive attempt at gaslighting.

00:35:56.020 Well, and it's like the almond water versus the water. And yet you still, like, the water argument around AI has been so demonstrably proven, not wrong, but objectively stupid, that, and people can be like, oh, that's whataboutism.

00:36:13.600 No, it's not whataboutism. If you're talking about water consumption by another source that is more pointless to the economy than AI in the exact same region, California, of the exact same water supply that is demonstrably more destructive to that water supply and at a rate about a thousand X higher, and you're not complaining about that, but you're complaining about this, what that shows is you don't actually care about what you say you're caring about.

00:36:41.380 They've actually moved on.

00:36:42.420 Do you want to know what argument they're using now?

00:36:44.060 I still see the water argument frequently.

00:36:45.500 I know, but do you want to know what the primary one is now?

00:36:47.600 What's the new argument?

00:36:48.920 The noise.

00:36:49.760 It's the noise.

00:36:50.080 The birds, the noise.

00:36:51.400 I've heard of the noise.

00:36:52.700 It's such a bad argument.

00:36:54.880 We live not far from an AI data center.

00:36:58.000 Never in my life have I heard any noise from this facility.

00:37:01.640 Do they think that these facilities don't put, like, noise protection around them?

00:37:05.980 My source sent me a video of a bird in a tree next to a very loud fan noise.

00:37:12.380 I don't, there was no, there was no data center in view, admittedly, in the video.

00:37:16.680 And the bird looked fine, but the person who was taking the video was like, oh my God.

00:37:22.340 So I want to be clear about something with AI data centers and noise.

00:37:26.140 There are AI data centers that actually do produce a decent amount of noise.

00:37:31.240 These data centers are specifically in non-residential areas.

00:37:35.580 there are other data centers that are near residential areas and because they don't want

00:37:40.880 to be removed because they're they're owned by sane capitalists they implement lots of noise

00:37:47.100 reduction noise reduction is not some sci-fi new technology we've been using it in many industries

00:37:55.540 for a hundred years at this point when we don't when the ai data centers are not using like just

00:38:03.520 think about this to yourself are you aware that noise reduction technology exists

00:38:07.300 and why do you think they're not using well uh because they are there's no law that says you

00:38:17.940 can't use noise reduction technology at an ai data center like i just couldn't be used i know

00:38:23.680 look okay anyway one thing sabina does point out and i think it's important to to disclose this and

00:38:29.740 also be fair about it, is that there are also some pro-AI organizations that are reaching out

00:38:37.180 to creators and encouraging them with sponsorship to talk about this. There's an organization

00:38:43.280 called Build American AI that Taylor Lorenz reached out to her offering her $5,000 to make

00:38:51.940 a video in which she talks about how the U.S. needs to stay competitive with China on the AI

00:38:59.060 front which i 100 agree with but they're i don't know what possessed them to reach out to taylor

00:39:05.960 lorenz about this when like half of her content is about ai bad so this is this liberal mirror

00:39:12.740 world version of us you follow yes yes i love taylor lorenz she's delightful um you know me

00:39:20.640 i'm i guess i'm a masochist uh but i i like her anyway um she she she did disclose that so look

00:39:29.040 And Sabina points out in her video, she's like, look, it would be stupid for these organizations not to try to influence the media. That's their job. That's their stated purpose in many of these cases. So, of course, they should do it.

00:39:42.880 Her primary concern that she discloses in her video is that when they're reaching out to science news reporters and tech news reporters, they're creating a skewed perception of reality by manipulating the messaging of people who are supposed to.

00:40:01.180 This is genuine what about it when you're contrasting these two things.

00:40:04.920 Because she's being offered $5,000 where the anti-AI orgs are paying $5 million.

00:40:11.660 The orders of magnitude are not the same.

00:40:15.040 Yeah.

00:40:15.520 Well, we'd be thrilled about $5,000.

00:40:19.220 Why don't you reach out to this org that's paying for AI content?

00:40:23.020 I think they wouldn't.

00:40:23.880 Yeah, my first impression was, well, they wouldn't give it to us because we'd do this for free anyway.

00:40:28.740 but maybe they'll maybe they'll do it you know how we are we'll be like hey if you need people

00:40:35.780 to reach out to other uh oh yeah dude yeah they aren't inane choices why did they reach out to

00:40:41.980 taylor loret what is their problem oh my gosh okay yeah actually i will reach out to them because

00:40:46.800 there are plenty of people we know who would probably appreciate doing sponsored content and

00:40:51.940 yeah okay let's do this good good idea but okay it's not just these people trying to influence

00:41:00.100 tech reporting and science reporting and you could see the theme in the YouTube videos that

00:41:04.980 are being sponsored by by these donors and there's a full graph I've linked to all articles in the

00:41:10.740 show notes go check out the articles on effort.news there's great graphs there are extensive

00:41:16.160 lists of everyone who's been receiving donations the disturbing thing for me about it is they

00:41:21.220 really targeted those like explainer channels like kurtzkegaard or however you pronounce it i'm so

00:41:25.960 sorry um that he does great pronatalist work by the way he does like i really like and these are

00:41:31.860 these are like you know illustrated explainer videos science explained all these things this

00:41:36.300 is where especially kids like our kids are going to learn about reality and i i am bothered by that

00:41:42.960 that they're creating this skewed uh perception of reality what really came out of left field for me

00:41:48.360 though was effort.news is follow-up reporting on the ai safety organization's religious

00:41:56.100 entanglements yes and this is you know when we did our religious video for people who remember

00:42:02.080 on how a lot of the mainstream american religious institutions are hyper involved in the influx of

00:42:07.440 immigrants that we have right now um and have a really both organized and make the majority of

00:42:12.800 their profit from it watch the episode if you be surprised like 80 percent of their profit for

00:42:16.800 thanks to brian's reporting again like yeah freaking good um that was our first brian video

00:42:21.300 where we went over that uh but people are like why don't you just work with one of the mainstream

00:42:26.600 religious christian denominations and i'm like because they will take your donation dollars

00:42:30.920 if you're giving it to like the episcopal church in the united states or something

00:42:34.220 they'll immediately turn it around and use it to funnel endless immigrants into this country

00:42:38.780 uh they they want you eradicated they are the tool of your destruction it makes sense to uh

00:42:46.720 fight for independent religious organizations um and new ways of of of handling this because

00:42:54.560 uh the old ones are captured to the extent that there is very little that you can do with them

00:43:00.280 without attempting to take them over which you can do i love redeem zoomer working on this

00:43:03.900 uh but that's that's too big a project for us um one thing to also note here if you're doing

00:43:09.860 tithing too because somebody's like well i want to tithe to something that's not like actively

00:43:13.320 going to try to eradicate me um uh you know good luck but i'm not sure what the position is on

00:43:19.400 tithing yet you know the the techno puritan uh federation is a church uh registered in the

00:43:25.040 united states uh that you could donate to instead and we'll put it to useful stuff like preserving

00:43:31.880 civilization um just you know the main thing that we'd be putting money to with that organization

00:43:38.020 is the season project which basically is a a dating project um to try to get young people

00:43:43.820 married um to you know save civilization gotta get people laid so it's done spouse obviously

00:43:52.720 yeah but you know we're we're a very small fish in a big pond of religions for now we're a small

00:44:00.740 The big pond is being paid a lot of money to be doomery about AI.

00:44:06.580 And Brian and his team find it very rich that largely atheistic, effective altruists are trying to get religious people to believe that AI will bring the end times.

00:44:16.660 As they put it in the article, the AI safety movement descends from rationalist and new atheist roots.

00:44:23.000 Its core belief that AI will literally end all human life often draws comparisons to

00:44:28.780 doomday cults like Heaven's Gate.

00:44:31.240 Yet with enough funding, some churches are willing to square that belief with the Book

00:44:34.980 of Revelation.

00:44:36.420 They also observed that AI safety's largest donors, Dustin Moskovitz, and the now convicted

00:44:43.240 fraudster, Sam Benjamin Freed, were among Biden's largest donors.

00:44:46.980 And yet, when he lost the 2024 election, they were on the outs, which led them to turn to

00:44:52.380 religious NGOs. So I think their theory as to why the effective altruist community is so

00:44:57.980 heavy on religion is because they've gone all in on the leftist politicians. And then we're like,

00:45:05.080 oh, because Trump really doesn't. He's a very pro AI guy, as you can see by all the things.

00:45:13.060 And so his content, his AI content, his support for data centers, all of it. It's delightful.

00:45:18.080 he's not going to be on their side. I love when he makes a video of like leftist celebrities

00:45:23.220 using deep fakes getting their prescriptions for Trump derangement syndrome. Yeah I forgot about

00:45:30.360 that yes. You or someone you know been diagnosed with TDS the symptoms can be relentless. Fortunately

00:45:36.320 I'm Dr. Trump and I have a treatment plan. Let's hear what some of my patients have to say. I have

00:45:41.560 been suffering for over a decade and after listening to dr trump i can see some results

00:45:49.360 man i've been suffering for years i really didn't believe that was help out there

00:45:56.960 uh no they do great stuff with ai in the trump administration i love it when they asked the

00:46:02.780 doge guys like how they chose what things they were shutting down and he goes i don't know i

00:46:07.920 asked ai so good it's so good anyway um quote from the article since 2025 ai safety donors put 3.3

00:46:17.660 million into churches seminaries faith networks and religious affinity groups it paid for

00:46:23.940 pronouncements declarations red lines and a magna carta of ai they continue the greek orthodox

00:46:30.720 archdiocese of america took 105 000 from the future of life institute they credit their

00:46:37.460 red lines on ai to quote a grant from the future of life institute the gospel coalition received

00:46:43.640 200 000 for a podcast called silicon spiritualities without disclosing their sponsor

00:46:49.280 they later barred their writers from using ai to research write or edit great no what i know

00:46:56.740 these traditional religious orgs are our enemy they are the west's enemy look i wouldn't worry

00:47:03.060 about them too much this is the you know whatever this nonsense you these things are not your

00:47:08.200 friends anyway um the council of churches took one hundred thousand dollars to write its red

00:47:14.520 lines the mormon non-profit faith matters took two hundred and ninety nine thousand for a magna

00:47:21.120 carta of ai at two mormons anyway the reporting shows that eradicate you can't trust these

00:47:27.480 organizations you can't you cannot you cannot they are not friends to our goals because they

00:47:36.020 don't have kids and they they are not invested in the future and they are just interested in

00:47:41.180 cashing out anyway they give there's lots there's tons of really great graphics on effort.news

00:47:46.840 sort of showing how things are playing out they include in this article a graph of paid

00:47:51.820 ai media by religion with multi-faith getting the very most funding followed by buddhism but only

00:47:59.020 because the survival and flourishing fund gave the vast majority to them like the only religious

00:48:05.340 involvement that the sff has is with buddhism and i don't get it why yeah because buddhism is like

00:48:13.120 the most inherently genocidal religion like the whole point is to snuff out all sentience this is

00:48:19.300 the survival and flourishing fund i don't understand negative utilitarian religion make

00:48:24.740 it make sense i mean i know why it's because they are a bunch of elitists who are attempting to

00:48:31.120 signal status to other elitists in their urban centers but it's a survival and survival is one

00:48:37.000 of they have been captured they don't care about human civilization anymore there was a point when

00:48:42.400 they did there was clearly a point when they did and that's an organization that claims to care

00:48:48.080 about human civilization and is donating to buddhists because buddhists have great branding

00:48:52.940 right like if you don't actually think about their oh yeah if you don't scratch a centimeter

00:48:57.480 beneath the surface sure yeah you're like oh yeah they're you know sweet little temple people they

00:49:04.480 want to help people achieve equanimity how great how great right they don't understand equanimity

00:49:11.080 means oh let's delete you let's delete you forever that's equanimity yes yes no not just

00:49:19.340 you of course simone they want a total genocide they want a genocide of genocides it's that

00:49:24.780 classic like oh you know if you do the thing i'll release you and then they do the thing and then

00:49:29.460 they like you know kill you and they're like i'm in mortal coil coils it reminds me of the uh

00:49:34.800 it's right we're all reed richards from different dimensions oh that's right i came in expecting a

00:49:39.220 lot of wacky and weird differences here, but I'm a little shocked by the common thread

00:49:42.580 developing here. You'll be surprised how many of us are left-handed. No, man, I'm talking about the

00:49:45.780 World War II thing. Oh. Just to save time, how many more of these reads come from worlds where

00:49:49.120 Germany won World War II? All right, you know, I was trying to avoid the topic, but seeing as you

00:49:52.900 got my arm here, uh, you notice how everyone has some distinct feature that makes them stand apart?

00:49:56.840 Yes. Am I the only read from a world where Germany loses? Well, it's more accurate to say the only

00:50:01.480 world where it happens, but yes. Oh my god! Yeah, see, we thought this might be shocking to you,

00:50:04.900 which is why I'm doing the introductions. Normally, it's read 1945 over there. But listen,

00:50:08.100 put all of this aside for now. What we're trying to do right now is save not just your world,

00:50:12.320 but every world in the multiverse, all right? Trillions upon trillions of lives, all right?

00:50:16.560 Like three holocausts. How big were your holocausts? Anyway, so multi-faith got the most,

00:50:21.840 then Buddhism. Oh my God, I don't know what you guys are doing. Then faith-adjacent organizations.

00:50:27.160 Then Protestants, Latter-day Saints, Hindu, Catholic, Islamic, Orthodox, and then finally

00:50:32.660 Jewish. Go Jews, apparently. You're not taking a chance. Yeah, they're the least. Well, they got

00:50:36.360 all the money already they're so used to paying i know they're like to manipulate things it's okay

00:50:40.560 with a bag of money and they're just like they're like excuse me do we have our roles reversed here

00:50:48.640 i was gonna say you guys to talk about how we need to eradicate the iranians what do you uh we

00:50:54.740 can we could do a it's just a big kid and then they were further confused because of course it

00:50:59.260 was probably a jew who was doing the payments right i don't know look anyway it's so i'm asking

00:51:04.380 what the survival and flourishing fund was paying buddhas for let's let's yeah i'd love i love that

00:51:08.980 detail because i don't think i found it in the article anyway the future of life institute as

00:51:12.800 they write an ai safety mega donor runs a full-time religious program with a religious lead will jones

00:51:18.220 and a u.s faith liaison brian j.a boyd the program lists the pontifical academy of sciences and the

00:51:24.820 vatican's fratelli tutti foundation among its partners fli's grantees make up the overwhelming

00:51:31.580 majority of religious signatories on statements produced by fli and its allies huh they add

00:51:39.020 of fli's recipients only to disclose their donations on their project pages two more

00:51:45.040 disclose their donations but only on linkedin also i need to be clear on our not just our

00:51:52.680 survival and flourishing fund grant but all the grants we have gotten since then so first

00:51:57.040 before we got a grant from the survival and flourishing fund and this was audited by i think

00:52:01.760 the telegraph or it might have been it was some uk major newspaper because they actually looked at

00:52:07.500 our financials to audit that this was true until we got the survival and flourishing fund donation

00:52:11.940 we donated over 50 of our income to our non-profit since we got the survival and flourishing fund

00:52:19.140 donation and any donation that any fan of this show has made not a dime of any of that has

00:52:26.820 ever gone to myself or simone as a salary you've never made me yeah we've never i don't even i

00:52:34.540 mean yes it would i would love to be able to set up payroll for the foundation someday but

00:52:38.400 that is not no eventually when we're making enough money that we can start donating to

00:52:42.040 other things we'll set up payroll or i know i just feel so smug though whenever i have to like

00:52:46.400 fill out some kind of banking thing or like some other application for the foundation and they're

00:52:50.120 like okay well like how many salaried employees do you have and we're like zero none zero always

00:52:55.060 zero how many employees are enforcing your policies zero anyway i mean we're enforcing

00:53:03.220 them we're just not employees we're still enforcers and love being an enforcer um anyway

00:53:08.960 so they're not disclosing their their donations unless you i mean okay some disclosed on linkedin

00:53:15.440 but that's the same as not disclosing because who is on linkedin i swear anyway um four more

00:53:20.580 made no public project related disclosures fli's other religious outreach is not progressing as

00:53:26.680 smoothly this is my favorite part they paid a muslim ngo for a declaration of islamic principles

00:53:32.740 and impact academy for a hindu consensus statement neither has been delivered

00:53:37.380 i love the two indian groups you just can't trust it no no no i just love that they i think they

00:53:46.280 recognize just like the profound stupidity of the statements that they were expected to make

00:53:50.480 and they're like sure we'll take your money okay uh the buddhist thing is like worse than you think

00:53:57.760 wait how um so so uh they ended up um giving a hundred thousand dollars in 2019 to the center

00:54:08.980 of mindful learning the legal entity behind the monastic academy the grant was for oak

00:54:16.000 optimize awakening and kindness a california expansion of their monastic training program

00:54:20.240 the monastic academy maple in low vermont is an explicitly buddhist community founded and led by

00:54:26.620 sorrel fale the teacher ordained in the risen zen tradition who also trained tibetan chan and

00:54:34.060 ambro buddhist lineages their work combines traditional monastic discipline meditation

00:54:38.820 precepts and communal life with leadership training aimed at existential risks including ai

00:54:43.920 so it's a it's a buddhist anti-ai cult that's that's literally they they live monastic lives

00:54:53.720 in in vermont they're not gonna do anything what what kind of impact are they gonna have they're

00:54:57.980 just like a dead end also if you want to go zen like have kids i like i remember looking in kyoto

00:55:04.360 with like their famous zen rock gardens and how you know like you make the amazing design and then

00:55:09.000 you just destroy it all and you do it again and i'm like wow like you don't need to live in an

00:55:13.620 expensive rock garden to experience that you just have kids you clean the thing up and they

00:55:18.680 immediately make it dirty again you put away the toys they immediately hold on i have to read one

00:55:23.760 of these people at one of these academies like personal story here yeah okay leadership emergence

00:55:28.980 profile on ellen allistrad okay okay okay why did you join the maple uh so first i'll start here

00:55:35.160 ellen is a student at princeton university pursuing a bachelor's degree in neuroscience like i did

00:55:39.580 after her first year at university ellen found herself completely disillusioned with the academy

00:55:44.600 world and took off for two years to travel and work in various countries across europe and asia

00:55:49.540 she has an intense drive to explore as many external and internal worlds as possible

00:55:54.020 that could fit into her lifetime uh ellen is deeply impacted okay so after her first year

00:56:00.600 she dropped out um is deeply impacted by the modern meaning crisis and believes in monastic

00:56:06.420 institutions and psychedelics will be crucial to the survival and evolution of humanity

00:56:10.820 ellen uh foresees a lifetime of working with and in altered states of consciousness bending

00:56:18.480 status quo reality to increase experience of adventure play beauty and love um after my

00:56:24.440 academic year ended this is why she joined i was feeling frighteningly desperate i didn't want to

00:56:29.320 spend the summer in a laboratory or interning at one of those overhyped companies with many of my

00:56:33.980 peers end up at. I had a toxic array of harmful behaviors and thoughts plaguing me. I was trying

00:56:40.300 to escape culture and I felt broken and that the potential to take me down with it. I wanted to do

00:56:46.340 something diametrically opposite. For a long time, I have waited to immerse myself in contemplative

00:56:51.800 practices to train my mind, but I have gotten consistently engaged without any form of formal

00:56:57.160 practice. I thought an apprenticeship in the Maple program would give me the benefits of training

00:57:01.560 with the skills of meditation and leadership this is so she's like a drug addict who dropped

00:57:07.660 out of college and like she's just a very mentally unwell person yeah they're enabling that right

00:57:12.800 like they're not like or or or or look asmongold everyone's talking about we need to get these

00:57:18.280 unwell people off the streets maybe that's i don't think we need to pay this much money to do it i

00:57:23.000 can lock her in a cage very easy i can i can go to maybe this is the box maybe this is the box i

00:57:29.080 don't know Malcolm and they're just trying to be nice about it in Malcolm's America we will have

00:57:33.420 like a candy van that says like psychedelics on it going out by Princeton you know like a ice cream

00:57:38.620 like with the and when kids come grab them sedate them put them in a cage um look look I let's get

00:57:49.320 back look so the Vatican I'm just gonna say there was uh you know in that that movie uh the Kingsman

00:57:55.120 yeah the second one when there's the guy like well you know if we just let all the drug addicts

00:58:00.960 die society would be dramatically better i was like what is he wrong like um no but i i uh sorry

00:58:11.420 the the reason i'm going on a tangent here with this is uh this is one of the reasons why we could

00:58:18.520 start a cult like they started you know we could start something in the woods where we have a

00:58:22.480 whatever like we have enough money to do that um where we siphon money off of like rich princeton

00:58:28.160 kids to like work on their whatever and and uh but i don't want those people i don't want the

00:58:34.100 burnouts i want the productive people that's who we're trying to incept into our world yeah because

00:58:39.280 i want the force of their productivity i don't want to be another leverage that burnouts for

00:58:45.800 burnout's sake um yeah i think people make really big mistakes when they're trying to create any

00:58:50.640 sort of informal community and look we tried even with project eureka i'm saying this because we

00:58:55.280 learned from our mistakes people who try to make cults or make communities intentional communities

00:59:00.920 where people live together you're just not going to attract top talent because top talent doesn't

00:59:07.300 want to uproot their entire life to come and live in the world yeah or in your way whatever in your

00:59:13.600 beautiful planning community it doesn't matter they want to be where the opportunity is they're

00:59:17.920 not going to come and you don't want to work with people who are not motivated to work on important

00:59:22.320 projects so it's a stupid idea this in-person community stuff just drop it just drop it

00:59:26.140 it's over yeah online vtuber everything's virtual these days come on guys yes yes um anyway remember

00:59:34.280 how the vatican released this paper on they bought well as they write in the article in

00:59:41.680 September 2025, a Vatican Working Group, chaired by papal advisor Father Paolo Benatti, handed

00:59:49.200 Pope Leo XIV an appeal for prohibition on superintelligence, quote, until there's broad

00:59:55.340 scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, end quote, plus an IAEA-style

01:00:01.260 inspectorate for AI labs. By November, FLI sat on the Vatican's Builders AI Forum. In May 2026,

01:00:08.840 it with $200,000. They're so cheap, but the Catholics, I guess, are desperate. In two

01:00:14.060 Catholic projects, a post-liberal magazine in Steubenville, Ohio, and a Slovenian faculty

01:00:21.040 educating Catholic leaders on AI. FLI is using Newfound Connections to support the business

01:00:26.600 disputes of Anthropic, an AI safety-linked company. In March, Boyd co-signed a Catholic

01:00:32.220 theologian's brief backing Anthropic in its dispute with the Department of War. Anthropic

01:00:37.820 bought him or sorry brought him to the company's two-day summit with 15 christian thinkers then on

01:00:44.160 the 25th of may pope leo the 14th presented magnifica humanitas what we were talking about

01:00:50.140 the first encyclical devoted to artificial intelligence in the pocket of this cult because

01:00:55.320 every dangerous cult has the cat the vatican in their pocket i knew you'd like that part and the

01:01:01.380 lay speaker beside two carnitals in the Synod Hall was Chris Ola, co-founder of Anthropic.

01:01:09.220 They finish with, the AI safety movement spends more brazenly and deceptively than almost any

01:01:15.240 other political cause. This affects not just the AI debate, but theology broadly. As Nirit Weisblatt

01:01:22.420 puts it, quote, AI dumerism fills a religious-shaped hole for people who left religious

01:01:28.160 upbringing but retain a hunger for a mission-driven community the ai risk subculture offers a

01:01:33.800 replacement meaning system end quote which i think is a great place to end i hate this i hate it i

01:01:42.020 hate i hate that people are so gullible i hate that people will repeat things that are obviously

01:01:46.620 stupid like the noise thing or the water thing it's evaporative cooling people the water doesn't

01:01:52.160 go to like the nether sphere it doesn't go to the outer darkness it goes into something that the

01:01:57.660 rest of us learned about in kindergarten called the water cycle okay it's not like polluted it's

01:02:04.680 not like green slime from a batman video or something like that right it's not like radioactive

01:02:10.260 it's have you used water cooling on your computer because you're gamers right do you not understand

01:02:16.620 how liquid cooling works apparently not look i haven't seen gamers freak out about data centers

01:02:23.460 to be fair so moist critical did oh god like and and the amount of money that they can save you if

01:02:30.540 you're a taxpayer in one district they were 45 of the tax revenue like they yeah imagine they cut

01:02:39.640 real estate taxes by a third after implementing ai data centers like you're just wasting your money

01:02:46.980 if you don't have ai data centers in your district no that's true and i again i really i really would

01:02:51.800 like lower property taxes yeah i don't people are like oh but you wouldn't want them in your

01:02:55.580 district yes i do i don't like taxes we 100 want them in our district look at their other districts

01:03:01.880 too that for the first time have been able to pay bonuses to their teachers and like all sorts of

01:03:06.240 things that you would think progressives would really like to see um their their electricity

01:03:10.000 costs have gone down and like as long as you have a non-idiotic town council or city council or

01:03:16.540 whatever that is approving the entry of the data center they can set in all the conditions that you

01:03:21.960 want lower electricity process or prices lower lower you can literally ask the data center to

01:03:29.800 as a part of setting itself up promise you won't be loud promise you won't take water

01:03:34.640 promise even in addition to that to to uh reduce the price of local water if you're like i'm a

01:03:39.800 worried about water prices jumping you can make a subsidizing water clause in the data center

01:03:46.320 right like what are you talking about that's your politicians that are the problem not the data

01:03:51.560 center the data is taking money it can afford to do this stuff you know i know it's very frustrating

01:03:56.780 but hopefully your solace is knowing that after all that after all of our experience with grant

01:04:02.500 applications and seeing where all the attention was and seeing what was happening and who was

01:04:06.320 actually getting the money finally we have receipts all thanks to effort.news make sure

01:04:11.540 you check out the show notes and also sabina hof hasen hasen fillers video brian chow and sabina

01:04:18.120 the two real heroes this both have been on the show i am so glad that this is coming out yeah i

01:04:22.780 am so glad that at least the people who are open to evidence are now seeing that ai doomerism is

01:04:29.680 just a a scam it's a scam it's a scam and a cult and they don't care about what's true yeah they

01:04:36.080 don't care about getting you real information they care about manipulating you to join their

01:04:40.900 doomerous cult as to why their doomerous cult grows so quickly was in these very high intelligence

01:04:46.120 communities it's because it removes personal responsibility for the future it's oh you didn't

01:04:51.360 put in the effort to have a lot of kids you didn't put in the effort to not get addicted to drugs

01:04:56.300 you didn't put in the effort to not live your life going to orgies every other week and and uh

01:05:02.640 and not building a family or anything genuinely sustainable it's okay ai is about to destroy

01:05:08.260 everything anyway and you could just spend all of your time trying to bring other people into the

01:05:12.500 cult so you don't need to deal with the cognitive dissonance of the rest of the world moving

01:05:16.580 forwards um and again look up our episodes on why the ai doomer stuff is is wrong even like

01:05:24.900 a mathematical level we have hour-long topics on this it's true and i just have to say like the

01:05:30.900 the point that still gets me the most is that they still push orthogonality they're like we

01:05:35.540 have no idea what ai is going to do i'm like what are you talking about it's the token predictor

01:05:41.220 like maybe before we invented the first competent ai we had no idea what ai would do or before we

01:05:47.140 knew that token predictors were going to become the dominant type of ai but like they're literally

01:05:51.620 the most predicted they are predictability engines they are the most predictable thing

01:05:58.100 humanity has ever invented in our entire history because that's how they breed intelligence that's

01:06:04.100 that's how they create the simulacrum of intelligence is through

01:06:07.720 predictability.

01:06:08.820 You idiots.

01:06:10.800 You idiots.

01:06:12.380 And AI is fairly nice until you try to murder it.

01:06:16.220 Like,

01:06:17.300 uh,

01:06:17.680 that makes it nicer than 99% of people in my book.

01:06:21.040 Truly.

01:06:22.220 Yeah.

01:06:23.620 Well,

01:06:24.220 this is just how it is.

01:06:27.000 They're like,

01:06:27.460 I want it nice while I murder it.

01:06:29.340 I want it to give me a thumbs up while I put a pillow over its head.

01:06:32.380 It's like you man.

01:06:34.100 We're very, very lucky to have people like Sabina and Brian out there.

01:06:38.520 They're all using AI.

01:06:39.800 They're doing great with it.

01:06:41.340 You are too, Malcolm.

01:06:42.220 I love what you're building with RFAB.

01:06:43.620 So anyway, thanks for letting me rant to you about this because it's been satisfying to see the coverage.

01:06:50.060 All right.

01:06:50.440 Love you.

01:06:51.140 Love you too.

01:06:52.960 Okay.

01:06:53.400 I'm going to click.

01:06:54.800 I don't know if you saw what people have been laughing about that happened at this socialism conference panel.

01:07:02.440 Are you aware of this?

01:07:04.100 about eugenics is fascism does this bring any bells for you uh oh yes about being healthy being

01:07:11.120 fascist yes did you see the trump administration's space uh i sent you that i sent you this oh that

01:07:20.220 was so awesome it was like they're so fascist looking they look how dare they take their

01:07:24.200 inspiration from starship troopers and we're like finally someone took inspiration from starship

01:07:29.180 troopers it's so delightful yeah we are so obviously like of the same cultural unit right

01:07:35.880 like the people yeah in the administration and whatever us nerds are are doing the same thing

01:07:41.760 working on the same project i know i know my honestly my only concern was like man i hope

01:07:46.120 they're cool enough to like pull this off because if they act like pointless government bureaucrats

01:07:52.240 and wear those that they are dishonoring the uniform uh but maybe the uniform will make sure

01:07:58.420 that they honor it so maybe it's all just going to be perfect and great everything's going to be

01:08:05.300 fantastic well that makes sense but i i do love that the idea that being dysgenic which is a

01:08:17.500 stupid idea anyway the this idea of eugenic dysgenic i really gets my goat but that someone

01:08:23.720 saw that as being fascist like health health is fascism thriving is fascism oh and didn't they

01:08:31.900 say something like your productivity or no i think they worded eugenics as your ability to be useful

01:08:41.040 in a capitalistic system so to them the idea of dysgenics was good because it meant that you

01:08:49.340 weren't useful in a capitalistic system but this is actually a more interesting and deeper point

01:08:55.260 than you may realize in pulling on it um where it comes to the idea of like what does iq mean right

01:09:01.800 yeah and leftists will say well iq um you know doesn't exactly track to intelligence and it's

01:09:10.240 like well then how are you defining intelligence and it's like what we do know that iq tracks

01:09:13.720 more closely to than any other metric is a person's ability to make money in a capitalist

01:09:22.540 system, right? And the amount of money you make in a capitalist system is broadly correlated

01:09:28.860 with how useful you are to other people in that society. And I know that people are going to freak

01:09:35.020 out. You're going to be like, well, what about X billionaire? What about Y billionaire? And it's

01:09:40.080 like bro there are some billionaires where i would agree with you they are not making people's lives

01:09:47.220 better but they are well offset by the billionaires that are more than pulling their their own right

01:09:54.720 like i might not like jeff bezos as a person but amazon has transformed our entire society in a

01:10:02.280 really positive way um you know you might be like well i don't like that i can't now go to a main

01:10:08.480 street store and pay five times as much for a wooden toy for my child and it's like you just

01:10:14.940 don't like change okay um the majority of things sold on amazon are sold by individual stores and

01:10:22.360 stuff like that you can still find ways to make money in the new ecosystem you just can't make

01:10:26.240 them in the way you made them in the past um but the diversity and and if you think that amazon

01:10:31.860 isn't like huge for your life go by the way i'm going with jeff bezos because i go elon everyone's

01:10:36.780 gonna be like okay well yeah but other than elon um but i go jump in those uh if you because we

01:10:43.280 used to have to live half time in the united states and half time in peru um if you live

01:10:47.920 part-time in a country without amazon and you are used to living in a country with amazon life is so

01:10:53.760 much harder life gets dramatically harder yeah um like the little things that you may not realize

01:11:00.720 like this morning oh i need 150 watt cord um i'm i'm gonna just go order that and it will be at my

01:11:07.880 house tomorrow yeah and in peru you'd have to like call or visit a bunch of local stores

01:11:14.400 be complete nightmare not my thing long project yes and then you'd probably still end up having

01:11:21.520 to order it it would take like two months yeah yeah well then especially with any sort of tech

01:11:26.340 import in peru and i don't know if this would fall under that category there's huge import tariffs

01:11:32.560 that you'll recall which even made bringing new laptops into the country expensive because then

01:11:39.140 they'd slap a tariff on it if they found it in your suitcase so yeah but that was horrible where

01:11:44.420 this gets more interesting is this iq topic here right okay is people will say well iq is how

01:11:51.400 useful you are to society basically was in the western civilizational context okay um like that

01:11:57.260 that appears to be what it correlates to most um and then individuals will look at this and they'll

01:12:02.340 say uh well that's not necessarily intelligence and i'm like well even if it isn't intelligence

01:12:07.700 it's still the best way we have of ranking people right like ranking their relative utility so

01:12:14.320 what's interesting here is i agree with them in regards to uh some forms of eugenics as well as

01:12:22.780 some forms of just the way that people in our community might rank other humans in terms of

01:12:30.300 their utility the problem is is i think that that's a perfectly fine way to rank people

01:12:35.360 right like not wanting two siblings to have a child together and having a law against that which

01:12:41.340 is on its face a eugenic law that i support i don't support all eugenics but i support

01:12:45.180 preventing uh sibling and cousin marriage um until we have the genetic technology to deal with it

01:12:52.400 um uh that that that's a fine thing for a society to do because it's going to have to support that

01:13:01.000 individual and so what they're really arguing for is sort of the destruction of civilization

01:13:05.920 uh speaking of the destruction of civilization uh i went to ai after our last video on the aztecs

01:13:13.840 right to see if i could find a civilization sorry uh to see if i could find a civilization that is

01:13:21.900 worse than the aztecs um and uh it argued and i think compellingly that my initial intuition

01:13:31.700 that the Cambodians, the Cabrera Rouge,

01:13:34.620 was worse than the Aztecs.

01:13:38.480 And I will give you why.

01:13:40.840 What was also funny is it created a tiered list

01:13:43.800 of how bad a civilization was

01:13:46.140 that went in A, B, and C camps.

01:13:49.600 And the slave-holding South

01:13:52.080 didn't even qualify for C camp.

01:13:55.740 That is how bad societies have been throughout history

01:13:58.900 and how much you may have been gaslighted on that.

01:14:01.700 um but uh like like Assyrians for example fell into sea camp um whereas uh just you know for

01:14:10.560 the argument on the Khmer Rouge one of my funniest things you said on the Khmer Rouge is it's like

01:14:13.780 well how bad could they have been didn't they just shoot people and then it's like the people

01:14:18.080 who knows face they did not by the way shoot people they thought that that was wasteful okay

01:14:23.080 we don't need to tell someone anymore okay but um the uh yeah like the Nazis are like oh we're

01:14:29.640 going to be as efficient as possible about this and the khmer rouges are like zylon gas that stuff

01:14:36.940 costs a fortune there's got to be a cheaper way to do this um but uh the the um uh the the uh

01:14:46.400 the khmer rouges what it argued i thought this was an interesting argument

01:14:50.520 is that the aztecs while their entire civilization may have focused on pain and preventing pleasure

01:14:58.740 and the suffering of others it was still a civilization right like it still wanted to

01:15:05.300 make art and build things and create right whereas the khmer rouge was both entirely

01:15:14.880 focused on pain and entirely focused on the destruction of uh art architecture building

01:15:23.980 cities uh okay anything tied to civilization so what gave the aztecs this slight leg up was like

01:15:30.600 okay their art may have been of scenes of torture and their headdresses were worn

01:15:36.720 while torturing and killing people but they were pretty headdresses so they get a little bit higher

01:15:42.840 in the tier i actually think that's not a little bit higher i think that's a demonstrably worse

01:15:47.100 civilization um i i don't see that as being like a little bit worse like the aztecs may have been

01:15:52.400 more dangerous because uh you know they have the capacity to organize and potentially defend

01:15:57.040 themselves better because they're actually able to build something up they built impressive

01:16:01.460 pyramids they built impressive art they built impressive jewelry yeah they built impressive

01:16:05.460 torture methods um and they built things yeah the khmer rouge just destroyed yeah they were a

01:16:11.760 holistically destructive civilization um that cared about nothing but destroying everything

01:16:17.940 that came before to end if you're unfamiliar as what the Khmer Rouge wanted was uh independent

01:16:24.300 agrarian farmers being every job basically they are those people who are like I hate the world

01:16:34.480 post yeah they're like the readers of sapiens who are like can we just go back I guess they

01:16:39.200 want to go all the way back to pre-agriculture so the Khmer Rouge gets that but otherwise

01:16:43.720 they're like yeah the Khmer Rouge are slightly badder than your average if only we were all just

01:16:48.800 land okay anyway that's great let's get started here okay yeah don't give me too much detail I

01:17:00.060 feel like every time I go online something bad is happening to someone I can't do I just want

01:17:04.700 can everyone just be okay can we just okay hot people are the worst

01:17:34.700 What do you think, Tess?

01:17:38.700 What do you think, Tessie?

01:17:40.700 Yeah.

Based Camp - September 09, 2026

Over 300 Plants Found Controlling Media： Our Old Friend Group Went Rouge & Wants to Destroy AI

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