the rationality community is so weird. i was just reading some blogs and liked them, and started going to a meetup full of nerds. It was just a bunch of ppl in their early 20's being earnest and trying really hard, and we had a potluck every week and debated each other, and eventually some of us were founding companies and noticing crypto and talking about/investing in ai (very early) and writing books and everyone was dating or had dated each other, and was founding goup houses, and eventually i see more and more names of people i've known for a long time (or knew of through friends) in the news, and reporters start coming to our internal events, and some of us buy a big campus as a community center, and that old friend you played goofy bonding exercises with at that meetup in 2015 now happens to run the grant process you just applied to, etc
we were just interested in some blogs, man! But I think being interested in those bloggers correlated with a certain type of unusual-thinking agenticness and - dare I say, attempts towards rationality - that had a lot of downstream returns. I was totally oblivious to how special it was in the early days. I didn't know we were so unusual.
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Aella reflecting on the rise of the rationalist community from casual blog-reading meetups to founding companies, investing early in AI/crypto, and eventually running grant processes and community campuses (evokes Lighthaven). Sociological color on the EA/rationalist ecosystem Nathan is embedded in professionally (MATS, AI safety research).
rationalist-communityeffective-altruismtwitteraellacommunity-history
.@PeterWildeford wins the 2025 ACX forecasting competition!
That means he's placed 20th, 12th, 12th, 1st in the last 4 years. I am not joking when I say he's a spectacular forecaster. Scott agrees:
[Quoted/embedded block, apparently from Scott Alexander's ACX post]
1: Congratulations to the winners of last year's ACX/Metaculus Forecasting Contest, especially:
- Peter Wildeford, who placed 1st out of all 650 participants. Peter is a forecasting celebrity, a leader at EA organizations Rethink Priorities and Institute For AI Policy and Strategy, and a blogger at The Power Law. He regularly makes the top 20 or so, but this year he was able to close the distance and take the top spot. I often rely on his blogging for my geopolitical opinions, and these contest results suggest that you should too. Peter is also the first ACX Forecasting Contest winner to have been featured on the Daily Show:
[Embedded YouTube video thumbnail: "Ronny Chieng Investigates the Promises of AI, the Most Expensive ..." — Daily Show clip "RONNY TAKES ON AI" with Oracle/Cloud Computing and OpenAI/ChatGPT logos]
7:20 AM · Feb 2, 2026 · 5,758 Views
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
A tweet celebrating Peter Wildeford's win of the 2025 ACX/Metaculus forecasting contest, quoting Scott Alexander's congratulatory post. Adjacent to AI policy/forecasting circles Nathan follows (EA, Rethink Priorities, IAPS) but not directly about AI safety/consciousness themes.
forecastingeffective-altruismai-policytwitteracx
```
1. At a high level, I strive for a long, peaceful life where I spend time with my loved ones, read, play games, have novel experiences, and learn. Eighty years is a tragically short life, and I am not okay with it. 2. Some important values to me are seeking truth, self honor, independence, connection with others, leadership, decisive action, energy and assertion, as well as showmanship, novelty and whimsy. 3. Culturally, I have absorbed a lot of Hispanic culture and literature, university math, sci-fi/fantasy/videogames/nerd culture, LW-type rationality, and Effective Altruism do-ism. They do not define me, but they go a long way towards explaining who I am and how I got here. 4. Some characters whom I aspire to be like include Miles Vorkosigan from the Vorkosigan saga, Dalinar Kholin from the Stormlight Archive, and Borges. 5. Many aspects of my character I developed on my own, including polyamory and transhumanism. Over time I feel I've become less distinct from my peers, though I feel this is mostly because I have drifted
towards...
```
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
A self-description/values thread by Jaime Sevilla (@Jsevillamol), covering life goals, values, cultural influences, literary role models, and self-developed traits (polyamory, transhumanism). Likely saved as an example of explicit personal-values articulation, relevant to the project's interest in identity and self-model construction. Same values thread as the previous screenshot, now showing the author: Jaime Sevilla (@Jsevillamol, a known AI forecasting/Epoch AI researcher), posting a personal identity/values reflection. Likely saved for its explicit self-model articulation, of interest given the project's focus on identity construction, though this is a human's self-description rather than an AI's.
twittervaluesself-descriptiontranshumanismrationalityeffective-altruismidentityjaime-sevilla