In other news, I find it wild that big Yud has gone on an arc from “I will build an AI to save everyone” to “let’s do a domestic terrorism against AI researchers.” He should be careful, someone might this this is displaced rage at his own failure to make any kind of intellectual progress while academic AI researchers have passed him by.
disclaimer/framing: the 'ole yudster only came to my attention fairly recently, so the following is observation/speculation (and I’ll need some more evidence/visibility to see if the guess pans out)
a few years ago I happened to deal with someone who is a hell of a grifter - in intensity, scope, impact. it was primarily through that experience which I gained handle on a number of things that’ve served me well in spotting it in other things. some things I’ve been observing under that light:
- he’s clearly talking out of his ass almost all the time
- shell game applies
- I think 'ole yuddy is aware that he’s not as clever as he claims he is, and is very salty about that[0]
no-op line to make lemmy newline better
(1) and (2) means he has to continuously keep ahead of the marks ^W rats. the guy is fairly clearly some kind of widely read/informed, and can manage to deal with some kind of complexity[1] in concepts. but because (3) - he can never be as right as he wants to be, so he has to keep pivoting the grift to a new base before he gets egg on his face. his method for doing this is “abandon all hope” but practically it’s an attempt to retcon history, and likely if anyone tried to really engage him on it he’d get ragey and blame them on working on “outdated information” or some other shit (because lol who needs acknowledging their own past actions amirite)[2]
[0] - this is a guess from my side, but all his “imagine a world in which einstein wasn’t exceptional, because there’s many of them” shit comes through to me in this way. anyone else?
[1] - not very well, of course, this is why the multi-million word vomits exist, but “some”.
[2] - this is something I’ve seen with narcissists a lot - they can never be wrong, and “making them” be wrong (i.e. simply providing proof of past actions/statements) gets them going nuclear
Personally I imagine him as a cult leader of a flying saucer cult where suddenly an alien vehicle is actually arriving. He’s running around panicking tearing his hair out because this wasn’t actually what he planned, he just wanted money and bitches as a cult leader. And because it’s one thing to say the aliens will beam every cult member up and take them to paradise, but if you see a multi-kilometer alien vehicle getting closer to earth, whatever it’s intentions are no one is going to be taken to paradise…
My perspective is a little different (from having met him), I think he genuinely believed a lot of what he said at one point at least … but you’re pretty much spot on in all the ways that matter, he’s a really bad person of the should probably be in jail for crimes kind.
The line between “actually believes $x” and “appears to actually believe $x” can be made heeeeeella fuzzy (and people in that space take advantage of that)
Curious about the latter half of your remarks. Is that opinion, or something grounded in other knowledge that isn’t widely known yet?
Good point with the line! Some of the best liars are good at pretending to themselves they believe something.
I don’t think its widely known, but it is known, (old sneeeclub posts about it somwhere) that he used to feed the people he was dating LSD and try to convince them they “depended” on him.
First time I met him, in a professional setting, he had his (at the time) wife kneeling at his feet wearing a collar.
Do I have hard proof he’s a criminal? Probably not, at least not without digging. Do I think he is? Almost certainly.
