this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]
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I ain't reading all this. I don't even know who Yglesias is.
My first thought: Man, why the fuck does the numbering of the sections annoy me so much?
Second thought: Ok, I'm skimming this because again fuck all these words. Looks like he's trying to explore something about "master" and "slave" morality that I will not dig into because it's probably a bunk formulation of thought. Why does Edward Teach, the pirate, come up? The section did not appear to explain it.
Final thought: Okay, I think I was right not to read any of this. Essentially, it is just a paean to some truly terrible people (Tate, Hanania, Ayn Rand etc.) in the form of a shaggy dog story, with Nietzche referenced a lot.
Anyway, now I'm fighting the urge to get drunk on scotch, listen to "No Surprises" by radiohead and walk into the fucking ocean
Perfect summary of Slate Star Codex.
TRUE FACT: Matt Yglesias is the reason Bluesky has a block function
I missed that(or have forgotten it already, a think which happens a lot with me re Yglesias. I have him mentally tagged as vague shithead, but never can recall why (and am aware this could be wrong)), tried a google search and couldn't find anything, what is the story?
David told the story in a recent Tech Won't Save Us episode, basically Matty boy came to BlueSky, everyone started laughing at him for his bad takes (as well they should), and Matty cried for a block function so long and intensely that they gave it to him so he'd shut the fuck up.
no, he complained and they scrambled to implement it for the Important Journalist
who essayied to post a few more times and was pilloried again
I guess my brain tweaked the story into something a little bit less bleak in self-defense.
Edward Teach is supposedly the pen name of The Last Psychiatrist who was sort of a precursor blog to slatestar, if only in the sense that it was a psychiatrist who was also a good writer, blogging about the human condition. He was doing parable-style short-form fiction way before slatescott, for instance.
While I don't remember there being any particular ideological overlap, both him and siskind seem to scratch the same itch for a lot of people, and siskind claims to be a fan.
If someone is talking in parables it’s a red flag for me dawg.
He wasn't usually. Another difference with siskind was that with TLP you mostly knew where you stood, or at least I don't remember any near-end-of-text jumpscares where it's revealed the whole thing was meant as really convoluted IQ apologetics, or some naive reframing of the latest EA embarrassment.
Yeah I mean, TLP is a lot more perverse. His reactionary ideology pemeates everything he writes but he never comes out and actually affirms anything. The only rhetorical mode is critiquing the supposed psychological perception of theoretical persons. No statement of fact is ever made. Any opinion one could ascribe to the author is plausibly deniable. I find it despicable.
Oh they absolutely are both infuriatingly coy reactionaries.
Here's for instance a million words by TLP, and they all say "i hate women".
I might actually hate TLP so much more, because he's more seductive, better at that typical nietzschean flattery of the reader, and for some reason even people here tend to view him more positively.
Wasn't that like his last post ever though?
Him not being an overt eugenics enthusiast while also not being the popular face of AI scientology probably helps ingratiate him to people here. Additionally, even though admittedly I haven't really bothered to revisit since he stopped posting like a decade ago, whatever overall sociopolitical agenda he might have had can't have been as glaringly obvious as siskind's, which can make for some inconsequential reading.
I think his aggressive contempt for the reader also makes TLP a much easier writer to bounce off of into a healthier direction. Like, I remember reading his stuff and thinking "wow, this guy is an asshole" and being more concerned than excited when something made sense. Eventually those parts that kind of made sense connected to a framework with less hate and rage.
I reject the implication that Slatescott is a good writer.
He seems very aware of how writing works at least, and unlike EY some of his fiction is serviceable.