@CinnasVerses Well, I just learned the inventor of Vyanse was the source of one of the more memorable entries in TIHKAL[1]:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert/_Oberlender
Not exactly the same crowd, but If you have read Kary Mullis’s autobiography, it sure gives out some, err, vibes…
[1] Err, my personal subtitle for PIHKAL is “Sex, Drugs and Mensa.org.” And classical music.
@Soyweiser Well, If you subscribe to the Simulation hypothesis, who’s to say the Matrix has no glitches, e.g. writing data to the wrong string, err, telepathy or clairvoyance.
Whatever, the TESCREAL crowd going even deeper into woo wouldn’t surprise me.
@cstross @CinnasVerses @techtakes I’ll give you two or three data points:
I first heard of Eliezer as a writer of Harry Potter fan fiction:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry/_Potter/_and/_the/_Methods/_of/_Rationality
(there is likely a TV Tropes page about it, but thread there on your own responsibility).
One of the church fathers of the IQ crowd, Eysenck, was also into parapsychology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans/_Eysenck#Parapsychology_and_astrology
and:
@bellinghman @cstross @Soyweiser @techtakes Well, Western thought basically boils down to footnotes for Platon[1] for some. Though Charlie mentioning our favourite pothead Blavatsky makes me go down a indology-related rabbit hole, and I’m at work, so maybe later.
[1] And maybe some branches of not so Western thought. Sanskrit prof mused about Shankara influencing Platon, given the chronology, neoplatonism influencing Shankara seems more likely. But then, buddhism influenced Greeks…