LessWrong promotes lifestyle changes believed by its community to lead to increased rationality and self-improvement. Posts often focus on avoiding biases related to decision-making and the evaluation of evidence. One suggestion is the use of Bayes' theorem as a decision-making tool. There is also a focus on psychological barriers that prevent good decision-making, including fear conditioning and cognitive biases that have been studied by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman. LessWrong is also concerned with transhumanism, existential threat and singularity. Observer noted that "Despite describing itself as a forum on 'the art of human rationality,' the New York Less Wrong group... is fixated on a branch of futurism that would seem more at home in a 3D multiplex than a graduate seminar: the dire existential threat—or, with any luck, utopian promise—known as the technological Singularity... Branding themselves as 'rationalists,' as the Less Wrong crew has done, makes it a lot harder to dismiss them as a 'doomsday cult'."
History
LessWrong developed from Overcoming Bias, an earlier group blog focused on human rationality, which began in November 2006, with artificial intelligence theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky and economist Robin Hanson as the principal contributors. In February 2009, Yudkowsky's posts were used as the seed material to create the community blog LessWrong, and Overcoming Bias became Hanson's personal blog. LessWrong and its surrounding movement are the subjects of the 2019 bookThe AI Does Not Hate You, written by former BuzzFeed science correspondent Tom Chivers.
In July 2010, LessWrong contributor Roko posted a thought experiment similar to Pascal's wager to the site in which an otherwise benevolent future AI system tortures simulations of those who did not work to bring the system into existence. This idea came to be known as "Roko's basilisk," based on Roko's idea that merely hearing about the idea would give the hypothetical AI system stronger incentives to employ blackmail. Yudkowsky deleted Roko's posts on the topic, saying that posting it was "stupid" and "dangerous". Discussion of Roko's basilisk was banned on LessWrong for several years because it reportedly caused some readers to have a nervous breakdown. The ban was lifted in October 2015. David Auerbach wrote in Slate "the combination of messianic ambitions, being convinced of your own infallibility, and a lot of cash never works out well, regardless of ideology, and I don’t expect Yudkowsky and his cohorts to be an exception. I worry less about Roko’s Basilisk than about people who believe themselves to have transcended conventional morality." Roko's basilisk was referenced in Canadian musician Grimes' music video for her 2015 song "Flesh Without Blood" through a character named "Rococo Basilisk" who was described by Grimes as "doomed to be eternally tortured by an artificial intelligence, but she’s also kind of like Marie Antoinette." After thinking of this pun and finding that Grimes had already made this pun, Elon Musk reached out to Grimes, which led to them dating.
