I first learned of Julia Galef (co-founder of CFAR, host of Rationally Speaking, author of The Scout Mindset) from this big Manifold multi choice market on which public intellectuals would be considered overrated or underrated.

This week I've been suffering from illness that has at times involved severe headaches and tiredness that make it difficult to engage with visual media, so I've been listening to some podcasts instead while resting.

I decided to check out the Rationally Speaking podcast, and was surprised to see that it ended back in 2021. I checked her Wikipedia page to see if she's switched to working on a different project, and was surprised to see that the most recent mention is of her doing an interview (seemingly given a rather mean and sensationalist title by the interviewer) back in 2021. I checked her Xitter profile, and she hadn't posted since early 2022. I checked her personal website, again nothing for many years. The CFAR website lists her among alumni rather than current team members. Meanwhile, OpenAI's ChatGPT was publicly released and skyrocketed to fame in mid 2022.

CLEARLY the only reasonable explanation is that she was so effective at spreading the rationalism movement, and thus the heavily linked AI safety movement, that OpenAI deemed her a threat and have either killed or imprisoned her. Will we have hard proof by the end of this year though? Also I threw in the BBC thing because reasons.