François Fleuret, a Meta FAIR researcher and University of Geneva professor, jumped into an X thread to reject cult-like thinking in tech, describing it as the surrender of personal agency to manipulative people or stray information fragments that out-evolved our defenses.
@francoisfleuret Very French take
Strong disagree. Cult-like mentality really is horrible. It fundamentally boils down to surrendering your agency to people, or even worse, to parasitic fragments of information whose natural selection has outsmart your brain. It's the ultimate inhuman phenomenon.
DeepSeek booster Teortaxes replied by tagging the entire critique a stereotypically French outlook, turning a philosophical stance into a cultural shorthand without engaging the agency argument itself.
Fleuret’s post keeps circling back to the same warning: handing over independent reasoning, even to appealing worldviews, counts as the ultimate loss of self in AI conversations.
Many users criticize French rationalism and its cult of reason for overemphasizing control, deduction, and skepticism, which they see as shackles slowing AGI progress and tech development.
No Digg Deeper questions have been answered for this story yet.
The French are very hostile to cults, because they worship Reason. This may have held them back in AGI, too, despite their monstrously accomplished mathematical school, abundant energy, and state aspiration to sovereignty and greatness. But ironically…
Strong disagree. Cult-like mentality really is horrible. It fundamentally boils down to surrendering your agency to people, or even worse, to parasitic fragments of information whose natural selection has outsmart your brain. It's the ultimate inhuman phenomenon.
@teortaxesTex "worshiping reason" is worshipping a process, not a world view. It has the meta level that makes you a free individual. Equating worshipping a world view to worshipping means to build one is nihilistic.
The French are very hostile to cults, because they worship Reason. This may have held them back in AGI, too, despite their monstrously accomplished mathematical school, abundant energy, and state aspiration to sovereignty and greatness. But ironically…
@francoisfleuret Well, that's not really blind faith then, just a high-risk high-return bet But I think that Mensch's sneering at "AGI" and Mistral's trajectory show that the cult of reason has its downsides.
@teortaxesTex "a posteriori this blind faith was a good idea" makes no sense, since you operate without an oracle.
And to decide if blind faith in X is a good idea given the available information is what reason is.
@teortaxesTex I agree, but in practice in a cult-like setup people *truly* surrender their freedom, which is what I find horrible, and which is dangerous with e.g. fascism or death cults.
@francoisfleuret My point is that you are presenting a very strong notion of "reason", which is more like wisdom. that is how reason works, in the limit, but many people are heavily biased by heuristics, such as "successful, faith-driven collective X looks like a cult". That's roon's point too
@teortaxesTex You are using reason to pick a strategy that in another contexte could be "blind faith" but is not anymore the second it is justified rationally.
E.g. "momentum in research", continuing in spite of failure is not blind faith, it's sgd with momentum.
@teortaxesTex You are using reason to pick a strategy that in another contexte could be "blind faith" but is not anymore the second it is justified rationally.
E.g. "momentum in research", continuing in spite of failure is not blind faith, it's sgd with momentum.
@francoisfleuret Well, that's not really blind faith then, just a high-risk high-return bet But I think that Mensch's sneering at "AGI" and Mistral's trajectory show that the cult of reason has its downsides.
@francoisfleuret it can also have a meta level of making one overcorrect against an "unreasonable" doctrine that allows faith-coordinated groups to transcend activation barriers. incapability is a lack of freedom in its own way.
@teortaxesTex @francoisfleuret OK guys I got a chance to show you here the bigger map. Please look and see. @curtis_yarvin is right to look for WW2's hidden paths and I'm not wrong pointing out the 1789's are still unresolved meanwhile. But that's going even deeper into our shared history.
@francoisfleuret though ironically,
@teortaxesTex "a posteriori this blind faith was a good idea" makes no sense, since you operate without an oracle.
And to decide if blind faith in X is a good idea given the available information is what reason is.
@teortaxesTex The cult of reason is real tho and worships control and deduction. That is why the French are so good at well defined logical math and bureaucracy but can't handle incomplete information well and are comparatively poor at physics and induction.
@teortaxesTex Good French, right?
@teortaxesTex I thought he was French but looks like he's got a chance to be Swiss. There is a chance to the Federation. Look and listen, please: Reason is a limited brain issue sold as only way out. French are brilliant merchants AND merciless colonists
@teortaxesTex 理性过头反成科技发展的枷锁啊
@teortaxesTex @francoisfleuret @curtis_yarvin First question to the early immigrants arrived. Find the brilliant lady who wrote this. Women are indeed our only chance to get something, Jesus knew it, Socrate got that too
@teortaxesTex The real irony is in your post: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason
@teortaxesTex @francoisfleuret @curtis_yarvin we're so limited in here by the attention span and limited forensic skills. I won't sketch out more before having a confirmation some ppl arrived already at this window.
@teortaxesTex in my end is my beginning all roads lead to the bastille
@teortaxesTex >it is cults all the way down, like turtles