StarseederThat tracing woodgrains peice on David Gerard is out
Sailor Sega SaturnWhat happens when your spurned ex is a devoted archivist, a Wikipedia administrator, and perhaps the most online man the world has ever known?
I already thought he was cool you don’t have to sell me on it.
Didn’t he violate Wikipedias rules though
selfhey buddy, uh, you gonna post any sneers in this here SneerClub thread you’ve started?
previously, presently (this thread). also:
I regret to inform you that Trace is hate-reading awful.systems
I lack any concrete evidence, but wouldn’t it just be fucking hilarious
still hasn’t really posted any sneers :<
although they seem to be really on the ball with posted TWG updates!
Show me a long-time English Wikipedia editor who hasn’t broken the rules. Since WP is editable text and most of us have permission to alter most pages, rule violations aren’t set in stone and don’t have to be punished harshly; often, it’s good enough to be told that what you did was wrong and that your edits will be reverted.
NSFW: When you bring this sort of argument to the table, you’re making it obvious that you’ve never been a Wikipedian. That’s not a bad thing, but it does mean that you’re going to get talked down to; even if your question was in good faith, you could have answered it yourself by lurking amongst the culture being critiqued.
geriksonNGL the AI generated image make DG look cool AF
If we’re framing this as a breakup, david won the breakup.
Amoeba_GirlCool, it’s like any one of the thousands of rightoid whines about wikipedia and then it somehow devolves into even more boring nonsense which I’m not going to read especially since most of it was probably written by an LLM.
Mike Knell@Starseeder As someone with ADHD the only thing I find harder to cope with than the crazy, in-crowd bureaucracy of Wikipedia is attempting to read that mile-long polemic. Where do they find the time to write this shit?
Prolix insanity is kind of a Rationalist / Rat-adjacent calling card.
I don’t know i had to skim it too. Its hard to see what point he’s trying to make. I can see why many of wikis choices are shit but he also seems to complain about takis magazine being removed witch just seems like a sensible choice. And he’s still up on his high horse about that conference where HBD people were invited to speak. They think “rationality” is about seeking heterodox thinkers but you don’t see anyone who believes in shit like miasma theory or any other discredited idea besides race there.
I’n not joking when I say he’s probably using an LLM to write this junk. It reads like it, and he’s already perfectly comfortable with illustrating his diatribes with embarrassing midjourney slop.
The lesswrong Rationalist sphere people all write like this. And I assume he gets paid via various podcasts/substack subs/a patreon. So this is prob mostly their job.
The bit about how the Bitcoiners won because the number went up is beyond parody.
I skimmed most of it once I had an idea of where this was going, and 13000 words of tone policing is just insanity. “The EA guys are great because they use moderate language and Gerald cackled at how Scott Star Alex had his life ruined by the extremist non-moderates at the NYT.”
It’s also hilarious because literally thirty seconds actually skimming buttcoin on reddit would have turned up that exact argument and its canonical rebuttals. Like, if he had wanted to actually engage with the central premise there (or on scientific racism, fascism, cults of personality, journalistic standards, etc) the necessary context and argument were right goddamn there.
David GerardI am well acquainted with this genre of article and I ain’t reading all that. Not bothering to be involved with this example was the obviously correct decision, even if Trace kept nagging after I’d already said “no thank you” (that famous rationalist grasp of consent).
This in the companion article caught my eye:
While I am not personally a rationalist,
Trace, I have some unfortunate news for you.
I regret to tell you that Trace is hate-reading awful.systems too & has posted this comment on their Twitter.
You’d think these people would have learned by now that there’s no upside in them spending their precious time on this earth obsessing over why a group of people don’t like them, but nevertheless here they are: drawn like moths to the flame.
flere-imsahodear me. doesn’t he know that the actual art requires hate-skimming at most?
There would be an upside if they could magically acquire some self-awareness, and reflect on why a whole group thinks their ideas are idiotic. Alas,
must be woke mind virus, we don’t even acknowledge race and iq, smdh
Yeah see also his denouncement of Roko’s Basilisk (ctrl-f the page), we know it wasn’t that important, the funny part was that it was a dumb rehash of Pascals wager, and that at the time Yud took is very seriously.
Wood also doesn’t seem to link to the actual Rationalwiki article which also makes clear that Yud doesn’t really believe in it (probably). It also mentions just how few (but above the 5% lizardman constant, so cause for concern, if they took their own ideas and MH seriously) people were worried about it. And every now and then you do find a person online who does take the idea seriously and worries about it, which is a bit of a concern. So oddly they should take it more seriously but only because it wrecks a small percentage of minds.
It is weird to not mention Yuds freakout:
Listen to me very closely, you idiot.
YOU DO NOT THINK IN SUFFICIENT DETAIL ABOUT SUPERINTELLIGENCES CONSIDERING WHETHER OR NOT TO BLACKMAIL YOU. THAT IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE THING WHICH GIVES THEM A MOTIVE TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON THE BLACKMAIL.
There’s an obvious equilibrium to this problem where you engage in all positive acausal trades and ignore all attempts at acausal blackmail. Until we have a better worked-out version of TDT and we can prove that formally, it should just be OBVIOUS that you DO NOT THINK ABOUT DISTANT BLACKMAILERS in SUFFICIENT DETAIL that they have a motive toACTUALLY[sic] BLACKMAIL YOU.
And pretend this was just a blip and nothing more. Mf’er acted like he was in Stross novel.
Roko's basilisk
Roko's basilisk is a fanciful thought experiment about the imagined risks involved in developing artificial intelligence (AI). The idea is that an all-powerful artificial intelligence from the future might retroactively punish those who did not help bring about its existence, including those who merely knew about the possible development of such a being. It is named after English mathematician Roko Mijic, the member of the rationalist community LessWrong who first publicly described it, though he did not originate the underlying ideas. The "basilisk" is by analogy to the mind-breaking images in David Langford's short story BLIT.
Roko’s basilisk is one of my favorite things because of the combination of how stupid it is and also how utterly panicked they all were. Desperately imagining magical communication across time and space with their dumb paperclip demon and panicking.
Why don’t they just believe in a deity if they want one so bad?
YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAMIt’s funny because you will hear over and over again from them online, in almost rank-and-file prose, about how it was all a big storm in the teacup, and then some time later run across yet another story of a real life non-anonymous person who was freaked the fuck out, as were some large portion of their friends
And it still randomly freaks people out to this day, it clearly isn’t a storm in a teacup for some people. And it is quite easily countered, but that also adds some ideas which counter the whole FOOM bs, so it is clear why they rather all push this under the rug, no matter the mental health cost of any Rationalists or would be Rationalists.
flaviaHOW does he seriously use the phrase ‘acausal blackmail’. I assumed the majority of word combinations for ‘acasaul’ + noun were just jokes from people on here but apparently not.
Ikr, literally a plot point from Charles Stross Singularity Sky (2003) series and they take it seriously. (Which fits a pattern, CW: sexual abuse
::: spoiler spoiler
Yuds math pets thing also has a similarity to the horrible sadist torture scene in the last rifter series book (2004) in which a woman gets horribly abused more if she answers question wrong. (with the added plot twist that the torturer isn’t as smart as he thinks he is and is partially wrong about the questions he ‘rewards’ (which could be some 4d chess move but doubtful)). Anyway, not the greatest read. Esp 2 decades later, when a lot of the weird science fiction terms used in the books have taken a very alt-right/dark enlightenment turn (which makes me wonder if they stole that).
:::)
BigMuffin69lmaou bruv, great to know these clowns are both coping & seething
I regret to inform you that Trace is hate-reading awful.systems too & has posted this comment on their Twitter.
Surely out of the interest of Rational Fair And Balancedness, he will link back to this place in his article. Surely, he has already done so before I mentioned this.
Looked at his twitter. Dude seems to be or have been on a palpable adrenaline high at a time when it made have been less deranged to step away from the keyboard and go for a walk. I get it, but those are some weird-ass posts.
blakestaceyI regret to inform you that Trace is hate-reading awful.systems too & has posted this comment on their Twitter.
Their writing is so boring I can’t even summon up the enthusiasm to make a “senpai has noticed us” joke.
Quillette, Claire Lehmann’s longform magazine focused on science and cultural critique and the home of, among other things, the best-researched article I know of on gender differences in chess
Back in 1995, when I was born, Gerard was my age
Wait hold up this motherfucker is not younger than I am. Good God.
“Gerard was the age I am now in 1995 when I was born. Alice is twice my age and stands 4 metres to the left of Gerard. She is half the height of Imhotep…”
ah yes quillette, that fine bastion of whitewashing
the best-researched article I know of on gender differences in chess
just… the absolute weirdest thing to pick? like, fucking seriously? or is there some weird-ass chess proxy-fixation among the rats that I have thus far been blessedly unaware of?
or is there some weird-ass chess proxy-fixation among the rats that I have thus far been blessedly unaware of?
Gonna take a shot in the dark and say the fixation’s from viewing chess more as an IQ showcase than as a game.
probably but it isn’t one I’ve come across (in this form), thus my surprise
also, just ito “things to pick by which to point out dirtrag as a Shining Beacon”, it’s pretty fucking out there
They’re all in for Chess as a sine qua non metric for intelligence. Better to call it g than IQ tbh. Not only does it have the lick of rigour, it has the nerd cultural cachet and the ludicrous white masculinity complex.
I assume any publication that has ever run anything by Andy Ngo is absolute trash garbage.
or is there some weird-ass chess proxy-fixation among the rats that I have thus far been blessedly unaware of?
Iirc ssc has written about it so yes
not playing it, you understand
AllNewTypeFaceHas anyone informed them that Elon Musk, the smartest man alive, dismissed chess as two low-dimensional and prefers to be challenged by some PC multiplayer combat game instead?
Musk is fascinating for the Rationalists ideasets, as he clearly is really inspired by Rationalism (and follows a few of them, ssc iirc). But he also so mid and bland that he draws the Rationalists ideaset down with him. If you heard him talk about space colonization (esp the argument he had with Bezos, who is more of a O’Neill Cylinder guy which iirc caused one of those weird dismissive Musk reactions (dismisses it as dumb without any good argument (if there is one at all)) which people mistake for genius), simulation theory, AI and esp AI safety (ow to see the LW reactions when Musk said ‘we are just going to make the AGI safe by building in safety’, etc.
It is like as a metal fan you hear a big celebrity is into heavy metal, but turns out all he knows is Metallica. A politician who claims he is into warhammer, but all he has is a few tactical ultramarine squads.
It is a bit of a pattern, there in something dumb, a new even more popular thing or person appears which sucks in all the attention and then draws all the ideas down by being even worse. Which causes people to look more clearly into the first thing and see how bad it is by association. For example cryptocurrencies and NFTs, the obvious uselessness and scammyness of NFTs revealed the similar qualities in the cryptocurrencies space. But also just every culture war Vox Day parasitically attaches himself too (He does this a lot, any rightwing thing that becomes a bit popular he leeches himself onto, often makes a worse related movement (the sad vs angry puppies for example) and then drags it all down by being an open sexist/white nationalist/all out horrible dumb person who thinks he is smarter than he is.
Sorry this turned into a bit of a rant.
Her lie reflected my lie.
200fiftyNot even – it’s a simplified Civilization clone for mobile. (It actually sounds like a pretty neat little game, but, uh, chess it is not!)
There are no hidden layers to Elon Musk’s thinking. He likes the gratification of impulsively pushing a button and seeing the numbers go up. He likes games that are straightforward and easy to beat. He’d rather reset every 45 minutes than execute meticulous plans that extend far into an uncertain future. He does not think ten moves ahead. He just responds with maximal aggression to the latest change of conditions. (The stock is down again. Announce robotaxis!) When this works, he gets the satisfaction of dominance. When it doesn’t, he can always just reset and try again. Elon Musk’s suit of armor is that he is extremely rich.
So it’s the gamer equivalent of one of those big-game hunting safaris where the game has been corralled and pre-tranquilised for the client’s convenience?
sc_griffithmy honest reacton:
Judit Polgár
Sadly, I know where this goes, they will just point out she is Jewish and point to that. (I think SSC even did that).
Wishful thinking on my part to think their sexism/eugenics posting was based on ignorance instead of deliberately being massive piles of shit. Don’t let them know Iceland has the highest number of GMs/pop or else we’ll get a 10,000 page essay about how proximity to volcanoes gives + 20 IQ points.
Careful, that might cause the humanbiodiversity posters to react and draw lines on maps! (Is that still a thing? I can’t recall seeing much HBD posters anymore, likely my own bubble of course).
In that case, selling sulphur supplements for drinking water may turn out profitable
Indeed. He did a post entirely about the family being Ashkenazi Jews. You’re never going to guess the premise of the post!
Was it about how feminism is bad.
No wait sorry, I’m misrepresenting his position.
Was it about how only 30% of feminists are sane and the rest are insane?
Or at least not provably not insane.
Yes thanks, didn’t want to dreg up the full quote.
The National Socialist party of Germany, Hitler’s party focused on advancing German rights and the hone of, among other things, the best outfits I’ve seen of a political party