The health store phenomenon you observe (weird alliances) is called “crank magnetism”. People who believe one weird thing tend to believe other weird things. (This particularly applies to conspiracy theorists.) Alternative medicine advocates are highly supportive of other alternative therapies that directly contradict their own, because they’re of a subculture that defines itself oppositionally. The money flows in to support this weird alliance.
LW’s interests do indeed not necessarily hang together, except being things advanced by the transhumanist subculture. Friendly AI doesn’t go naturally with cryonics or nanotechnology as interests, for example (even if those things might plausibly have synergies).
I submit that promoting LW as material for crank magnets may not work well and will just end up infuriating those capable of joined-up thinking.
The health store phenomenon you observe (weird alliances) is called “crank magnetism”. People who believe one weird thing tend to believe other weird things. (This particularly applies to conspiracy theorists.) Alternative medicine advocates are highly supportive of other alternative therapies that directly contradict their own, because they’re of a subculture that defines itself oppositionally. The money flows in to support this weird alliance.
LW’s interests do indeed not necessarily hang together, except being things advanced by the transhumanist subculture. Friendly AI doesn’t go naturally with cryonics or nanotechnology as interests, for example (even if those things might plausibly have synergies).
I submit that promoting LW as material for crank magnets may not work well and will just end up infuriating those capable of joined-up thinking.