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2026-09-23

minor edit on 2026-10-06 to be slightly less incendiary / ranty

My views on Indian community associated with EA / Lesswrong

Disclaimer

I know non-zero number of people associated with EA / LW India, but I've tried to not let it bias me too much when writing this post.

My priors about India

See also: (Links to my personal website) How to escape control of Indian parents
My baseline prior for any discussion involving India is that it is a country with many people who are unwilling to take the steps required to break out of their parents' control. Many people in India lack courage to go against their parents' wishes. Then, they spend years upskilling in the arts of deception and status games, such that they can fulfill some small inkling of their heart's true desires, while also ensuring none of this information reaches back to their parents.
- (Update - 2026-10-06) This lack of courage and leaning towards deception then percolates through various other aspects of their life.
Yes, that was atleast partially a rant, and I am somewhat biased. This is true only for a certain fraction of Indian society.
Indian population on average is more okay with authoritarianism than many other countries. This shows in their unwillingness to resist authority of parents, but also governments, religious institutions and so on.
You can write entire books to explain why all this happened in the first place. But that doesn't explain why a few individuals can't do better than this.
- For instance, countries with more poverty and poorer rule of law tend to more okay with authoritarianism and supporting any strongman to fix all their problems. This includes both a more authoritarian family structure and a more authoritarian government and so on.

Indian community associated with EA / Lesswrong does in fact do better than the average middle / upper-middle class Indian on these issues. But my guess is that many of them are also influenced by the same pressures. It is not common to find people going openly against their family's desires, even within EA / LW circles.
As of 2026-09, there are less than 10 people in entire India who I have met, who believe in a significant probability (say, above 10%) of human extinction due to artificial superintelligence by 2030. And I have put significant effort to meet everyone I can.
As of 2026-09, to the best of my knowledge, I am the only person in entire India (1.4 billion people) who has organised public protests in India on the topic of human extinction due to artificial superintelligence.
Just like in western context, atleast some people who hear about EA / LW end up taking the whole IFS / meditation / circling / etc route, in order to "heal" from interpersonal conflicts they have faced in the past.
For privacy reasons, I think I will end this note here.

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