slopjockeyTracingWoodgrains launches a defense of Manifest's controversial reputation, all without betraying a basic understanding of what the word "controversial" means.
He also wants us to know that Hannania is much less right than he’s made out to be.. Richard gave him a signal boost and is cool with gay people! Unfortunately, Tracey hasn’t grasped that “right winger” is simply a metonym for “thinks blacks are the second least domesticable African animal after zebras”
Why so many “racists” at Manifest? — EA Forum
Comment by Isa - (This comment is more of a general response to this post and others about Manifest than a response to what Austin has specifically said here) I am a black person who attended Manifest, and I will say that I almost didn't attend because of Hanania, but decided to anyway because my interest in it outweighed my disagreements with his work. I walked past a conversation he was having where he was asked why he thinks "minorities [black people] perform so poorly in so many domains," which did not feel great, but I also chatted to someone who runs a similar twitter as him and briefly told him my issues with it, which he was receptive to. I overall prefer cultures that give me space to have those sorts of conversations, but I do flinch a bit at the fact that my demographic is on the receiving end of so much of this. Many of the "edgy" people were super nice to me, I had fun conversations about other things with some of them, and their presence didn't take away from my overall experience. I felt fine after those interactions, but many people wouldn't. Perhaps they don’t “belong” at manifest, but that explanation isn’t very satisfying to me. I think I'm much more tolerant of this sort of dynamic than many super reasonable people, including other black people. I'm personally fine engaging with critiques about how the Civil Rights Act has ushered in some not-so-great policy decisions over the last half century. “Woke Institutions” might just be civil rights law in action (according to Hanania) but the civil rights law is also, like, the reason why I have basic rights. I think it's completely reasonable for a black person to see arguments like that and think to themselves "what the actual fuck? The person who wrote that book is probably racist, and a conference hosting him might be racist too.” I think it is good to be curious about the world and interested in exploring unanswered questions so long as this is the true motivation. I take most people's self-reports about their i
David GerardTW went on Hanania’s fucking podcast
these threads are made of lie down in a flea circus, get up denying the existence of fleas
deborahHe also wants us to know that Hannania is much less right than he’s made out to be
Also he doesn’t grasp that people hate Hanania because he’s a racist, not because of where he falls on the forced left/right spectrum.
YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAMPeople like TW are the perfect distillation of the booksmart Slate Star Codex fan class, who are so completely sealed in their bubble that they aren’t even in touch with major parts of themselves anymore. They lose, or never developed, the capacity to even simulate a theory of mind which would make appropriate sense of what the other person is saying. Brains like a Frank Gehry building supported by warped tent poles of Scott Alexander heuristics sticking out at odd angles from each other.
“Yeah, they’re good people; we would hang out more, but my brain isn’t leaking out of my ears”
Not to get too corny about it, but there are people in this world who think “don’t condescend” means “be nice about other people’s shortcomings” and people who think it means “you might fucking learn something if you would just stop condescending to people you perceive as having shortcomings”, and the first group is completely oblivious to the difference
Amoeba_GirlAw, Hanania’s a good egg, he liked my incredibly stupid case for surrogacy from a reactionary perspective with shit machine-generated illustrations
200fiftyText in AI-generated images will never not be funny to me. N the most n’tural hnertis indeed.
mijn promptus hoorts
drunk thought: I want to hear Till Lindemann singing this, in the closest manner to Mein Herz Brennt as could be managed, with as much genml bullshit strewn in for serious insanity
[W]hat is perhaps my most fundamental philosophical conviction is this: life is Good, human life especially so. The most natural things in the universe are death, decay, and emptiness. Growth, life, and creation are fragile anomalies. We belong to an eons-long heritage of those who have committed to building and maintaining life in the face of inevitable decay. Our duty is to do the same.
Putting aside the obvious elders of zionny subtext… I’m an unabashed humanist and this is one of the most childishly anthropocentric things I’ve ever read. Death and decay are human concepts you big dummy. Enjoy reality instead of talking like a 1920s pulp protagonist.
Deep into that diatribe:
Some people’s moral intuitions are that nonexistence is preferable to, or not obviously worse than, existence in a less-than-ideal setting. I wholly reject this intuition, and looking at the record of the persistence of life in the face of adversity, belong to a heritage of those who have, time and time again, rejected it. Life is Good.
What a disgustingly privileged thing to say. People have survived in shitty situations so therefore more children in poverty is good? This guy deserves poverty.
V0ldekI parsed “right” there as “much less correct than he’s made out to be” and was like, ye, probably, he’s like 0 correct so any amount he’s made out to be is too much.
TracingWoodgrains was the person who wanted to create ‘themotte’ but leftwing right?
I genuinely don’t know, but I would believe it 100%. He seems like an arrdestiny-esque debate pervert in a reply-guy world. I think a “left wing” motte would suit him
Looked it up, and guess which sub he mods, could be that im thinking of a different guy who came into sneerclub to go ‘we should setup some better rational arguments against the Rationalists’, which is always quite the waste of time.
TinyTimmyTokyoUntil a month ago, TW was the long-time researcher for “Blocked and Reported”, the podcast hosted by Katie ‘TERF’ Herzog and relentless sealion Jesse Singal.
Architeuthisdebate pervert in a reply-guy world
Well done.
That is correct, it was called TheSchisim.
Tracingwoodgrains is a reference to one of the sillier plot points in Card’s Ender series, right?
oh god is it from that messed up OCD plot line in one of the bad ones – Xenocide? – which I’d forgotten about until just now? I guess if someone has an OCD diagnosis you could imagine taking that as a reclamation…
flere-imsahoI’m assuming they do have OCD, but given the context I don’t know if I’m very confident about how much ironic distance there is to the name…
Ben Stewart:
Manifest’s decisions are and have been bad not in terms of PR, but bad for its own epistemics, the forecasting community, EA, and basic human decency.
TW:
“Basic human decency”? Jeez, mate. I understand not wanting to engage with right-wingers personally, but treating it as a deep affront when others choose to do so is off-putting, to say the least.
Ben Stewart:
Yeah that was a bit strong, sorry late here.
Ben, honey. You do not have to apologize for referring to platforming Hanania as an affront to basic human decency. That TW is successful in shaming you for accurately identifying what happened here is no credit to your own ability to recognize the dangerous epistemic bubble in which you find yourself, or the cultlike social pressures that persuade you to distrust your own correct judgement – not because TW challenged your facts or your interpretation, but because he – gasp! – called it “off-putting.”
Not everyone’s going to like you. Not everyone’s going to agree with you. Social stigma is a good and correct tool in your toolbox when a member of your community says that cites-the-Turner-Diaries, enforced-sterilization, anti-“miscegenation”, “women’s liberation = the end of human civilization” Richard Hanania has something valuable to add.
look this only pattern matches to a racism fan making a bad faith appeal to geek social fallacies
Why do they care about hbd to begin with? Listening to fringe ideas isn’t a formula for becoming smarter
look at this incredibly offended dork
earthquakeTracingWoodgrains seems to have developed, in the process of leaving mormonism, an obsession with seeking out contrarianism. But perhaps more importantly, he openly admits to being racist/HBD “align[s] broadly with informed experts that the distribution of genetic traits associated with intelligence is non-zero”. As such, he only considers it “racism” if it’s “racial crassness and antagonism”.
In which TW names who he thinks is treating the topic with the seriousness it demands without sinking to crassness: our good good friend Cremieux.
Woow, TIL. I thought he was halfway decent from the way he flatly called sailer a racist (low bar I know), but his consistent fraternization with Hannania seemed strange to me.
Sailor Sega Saturnalign[s] broadly with informed experts that the distribution of genetic traits associated with intelligence is non-zero
Now I’m not the smartest cookie in the bakery but I know a dog-whistle when I see it!
sc_griffithno type of racist is more rabid than the genteel racist
the distribution of genetic traits associated with intelligence is non-zero
This doesn’t even make sense. What the fuck is a zero distribution? A probability distribution cannot be “zero” in any sensible meaning of the word. Did you mean uniform?
Also obv citation needed you sack of spuds.
zero distribution is what they got, the day sense and awareness were handed out
I think he is trying to say something like “non-zero skew”, but really, he just means “I subscribe to race science, but only for the articles”.
I think you’re being too generous. What they wanted to say is “There are genetic traits associated with intelligence.” However, not inserting probability distributions in every fucking sentence is a class 2 misdemeanor in Rat circles, hence what was written.
There are genetic traits associated with intelligence.
Which is obviously true, since the genetic traits of BEING A HUMAN quite strongly correlate with intelligence.
There’s no way to say the quiet part without saying it out loud here!
Is “informed experts” really an accurate description to use over “other racists?”
The author appears to now be planning a hitpiece on David Gerard:
With apologies for resurrecting an old thread: I am an independent writer exploring the potential to write an article focused on Gerard’s Wikipedia-related history. I’ve reviewed the information here and the on-wiki behavior and controversies I can find, but if anyone has information I may have missed or other thoughts to share, I would welcome direct messages or replies. In particular, if anyone with an informed perspective is willing to chat at length on the record, I’d appreciate it. I’m an outsider to the whole Wikipedia ecosystem and trying to parse through thousands of pages of history and edits looking for key moments gets rather dense–it’s quite easy for me to miss relevant info.
https://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11466&start=50#p355881
I, for one, am just psyched to see what Jesse Singal’s research assistant is going to tell us about the evils of Wikipedia.
ten years ago the wikipedia cranks had compiled lore on me, and some of it had a vague relation to anything that ever happened! Sure can’t wait to see what a good faith rationalist researcher comes up with
“wikipediocracy”? fucking seriously?
for all the good bits that wikipedia has (and there are notably many), a rulership is definitely not among that list afaik. wtf.
aaaaand then I actually looked at the page. fuck me it’s even worse.
literally started by a guy who was banned for trying to set up a business to write wikipedia articles, and the evils of JIMMY WAAAAAAAAALES!!! still fill his spleen
I tried to look up this Mr. Gerard’s lurid wikipedia past expecting at least a torture dungeon or wiki-cult or something; but all I found were a bunch of people grumpy that they couldn’t turn wikipedia articles into cryptocurrency ads.
Booring.
don’t forget the ones outraged they can’t use the Daily Mail or the Sun as sources
When I was listening to the most recent episode of the Maintenance Phase podcast which was all in on mocking J. Michael Bailey with a special dig at autogynephilia theories, I went to go see if David had any history policing weirdos on Bailey’s wikipedia page, as an excuse to bring the episode in for a stubsack link. And he didn’t, which means, once again, booring.
"Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria" Part 2: Panic! At The Endocrinologist. - Maintenance Phase
Thanks to Jules Gill-Peterson (jgillpeterson.com) and Julia Serano (patreon.com/juliaserano) for help researching this episode and Evan Urquhart, Parker Molloy and Katelyn Burns for fact-checking!Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on ...
so now we have confirmation know tracing w. is (a) a petty, vengeful prick and (b) reads this; good. tracing, whoever you are, why don’t you focus on some introspection, like consider what causes you to agree with obvious anti-scientific crap (scientific racism, hbd) and why do you prefer the company of fascists (proto, wannabe, true, disguised, and the illinois nazis) to the company of people who don’t think genocide can be justified for any reason?
i must point out that i’ve barely interacted with the guy, if at all, and had previously considered him on the saner end of the rationalists from his reasonably coherent twitter
TW emailed me asking if I’d be willing to help with the piece. I declined (I can’t see it being any sort of productive use of my time), but I expect he will cobble together something from the extant public records.
x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1805683265480933638
He’s getting mad at scientific american again because they wrote a shit opinion peice but he should know the wiki guidelines are generally against citing opinion pieces as fact in your article
“Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (invited op-eds and letters to the editor from notable figures) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact.”
x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1803489864488460647
Same here, and I’m not even sure what was so bad about what was said because it was generally a tame article compared to many others.
