this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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As suggested at this thread to general "yeah sounds cool". Let's see if this goes anywhere.

Original inspiration:

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to make it a post, there's no quota here

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (18 children)

I learned about this because someone dragged a copy to aella’s birthday orgy and it showed up in one of the photos, but the rationalists have a cards against humanity clone and it looks godawful

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It appears that many of you have been hiding full blown hardout sneers from SneerClub, and I am baffled as to why

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

evidently we were just too good and they were intimidated

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Thank the acausal robot god for this thread, I can finally truly unleash my pettiness. Would anybody like to sneer at the rat tradition of giving everything overly grandiose names?

"500 Million, But Not A Single One More" has always annoyed me because of the redundancy of "A Single One." Just say Not One More! Fuck! Definitely trying to reach their title word count quota with that one.

The Zvi post that @slopjockey@[email protected] linked here is titled "On Car Seats as Contraception | Or: Against Car Seat Laws At Least Beyond Age 2" which is just... so god damn long for no reason. C'mon guys - if you want to use two titles, just use one. If you want to use two titles, just use one.

Then there's the whole slew of titles that get snowcloned from famous papers like how "Attention is all you need" spurred a bunch of "X is all you need" blog posts.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

My first mini sneer. Hope it fits the criteria.

I frequent some (very AI-critical) art spaces, and every now and then we get some trolls who act like literal anime villains, complete with evil plans and revenge plots, but unfortunately without cool villain laughs.

I always wonder if those bozos all were stuffed into a trashcan by a gang of delinquent artists in high school, judging from the absolute hate-boner they seem to have.

I've deliberately not been talking about it online to aid in keeping it from their knowledge as long as possible.

Not sure if he knows that not all artists live in caves and make cave paintings. And even those who do probably have a smart phone with them, for better or worse. So I’m afraid his nefarious plan doesn’t quite work out.

I knew it would scare the anti-Al shitless, because it completely bypasses scraping, datasets […].

Shaking in my chair over here, but I still don’t understand how this negates the needs for scraping and datasets. Just because I can attach a reference image to my prompt doesn’t mean the waifu generator can suddenly operate without training data.

I foresee a full-on tantrum when this becomes commonly known.

I mean, it’s not like Midjourney put out a big-ass announcement for that feature or anything. It’s totally a secret that only an elite circle knows about.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

this is just an increasingly desperate Seto Kaiba taking to the internet because yu-gi-boy pointed out his AI-generated Duel Monsters deck does not have the heart of the cards, mostly because the LLM doesn’t understand probability, but he’s in too deep with the Kaiba Corp board to admit it

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I just found out that there are Dominican Republic supremacists? Like, the latest thing on xitter is making the DR out to be Caucasian Haiti. It's some especial pol-brained nonsense about how the DR is successful because it's a white country, even though they're all very clearly AT LEAST lightskinned? It's an arguement about a country that only works if you've never seen the country or its people.

This one dude in particular namesearchs Haiti and spams the replies with as many white(ish) Dominicans as he can, along with the typical rants and graphs and then if he gets dunked in the quotes or the replies he just ritual posts the same 5 tiktoks of the same lightskinned Dominicans and says that all the darkskins are just Haitians. The worst part is that it works. His posting completely smothers any tweet disagreeing because he's paying Elon 58 dominican pesos a month to LARP as measurehead on pay to win 4chan.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not all that courant about the DR, but re: Haiti the "Revolutions podcast" has a long series about the Haitian revolution, and it's super interesting. It's clear to me that Haiti paid the price of being the first Black republic to gain independence.

Edit guess what historical figure Wikipedia is most interested in?

https://gerikson.com/m/2022/11/index.html#2022-11-17_thursday_03

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Literally paid the price. In the sense that France charged Haitians cash for their own bodies as formerly enslaved people, the US supported France in this, Citibank eventually bought the debt, and Haiti spent 122 years buying themselves free. The most obvious case for reparations one could make and France DGAF and neither does Citi.

(I assume the podcast goes into all of this but clarifying for anyone else who does a drive-by. Usually “paid the price“ is a metaphor. Not here.)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (8 children)

So today I learned there are people who call themselves superforcasters®. Neat!

The superforecasters® have had a melding of the minds and determined that covid-19 was 75% likely to not be a lab leak. Nifty! This is useless to me!

Looking at the website of these people with good enough judgement to call themselves "Good Judgement", you can learn that 100% of superforecasters® agree that there will be less than 100 deaths from H5N1 this year. I don't know much about H5N1 but I guess that makes sense given that it's been around since 1996 and would need a mutation to be contagious among humans.

I found one of the superforecaster®-trainee discussion topics where they reveal some of the secrets to their (super)forecasting(®)-trainee instincts

I have used "Copilot" LLM AI to point me in the right direction. And to the point of the LLM they have been trained not to give a response about conflict as they say they are trying to permote peace instead of war using the LLM.

Riveting!

Let's go next to find out how to give up our individuality and become a certified superforecaster® hive brain.

To minimize the chance that outstanding accuracy resulted from luck rather than skill, we limited eligibility for GJP superforecaster status to those forecasters who participated in at least 50 forecasting questions during a tournament “season.”

Fans of certain shonen anime may recognize this technique as Kodoku -- a deadly poison created by putting a bunch of insects in a jar until only one remains:

100 species of insects were collected, the larger ones were snakes, the smaller ones were lice, Place them inside, let them eat each other, and keep what is left of the last species. If it is a snake, it is a serpent, if it is a louse, it is a louse. Do this and kill a person.


"But what's the catch Saturn"? I can hear you say. "Surely this is somehow a grift nerds find or a way to fleece money out of governments".

Nonono you've got the completely wrong idea. Good Judgement offers a 100$ Superforecasting Fundamentals course out of the goodness of their heart I'm sure! I mean after all if they spread Superforecasting to the world then their Hari-Seldon-Esque hivemind would lose it's competitive edge so they must not be profit motivated.

Anyway if you work for the UK they want to hear from you:

If you are a UK government entity interested in our services, contact us today.

Maybe they have superforecasted the fall of the british empire.


And to end this, because I can never resist web design sneer.

Dear programmers: if you apply the CSS word-break: break-all; to the string "Privacy Policy" it may end up rendered as "Pr[newline]ivacy Policy" which unfortunately looks pretty unprofessional :(

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

If you have ever wondered why so many Rationalists do weird end of year predictions and keep stats on that, it is because they all want to become superforecasters. (And remember by correctly forecasting trivial things that are sure to happen, you can increase your % of correct forecasts and you can become a superforecaster yourself. Never try to forecast black swans for that reason however (or just predict they will not happen for more superforecastpoints)).

See also you could have been a winner! And got a free sub to ACX!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

this is what literary Bayesianism promises: the ability to pluck numbers out your ass and announce them in a confident voice

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

lmao this is one of my all time favorite grifts. I've never understood why it isn't more popular among us connoisseurs. it's so baldfaced to say "statistically, someone probably has oracular powers, and thanks to the power of science, here they are. you need only pay us a small incense and rites fee to access them"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Isn’t it weird these people came out of internet atheism of all things and go right into this stuff?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Imo because the whole topic of superforecasters and prediction markets is both undercriticized and kaleidoskopically preposterous in a way that makes it feel like you shouldn't broach the topic unless you are prepared to commit to some diatribe length posting.

Which somebody should, it's a shame there is yet no one single place you can point to and say "here's why this thing is weird and grifty and pretend science while striclty promoted by the scientology of AI, and also there's crypto involved".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Fans of certain shonen anime may recognize this technique as Kodoku – a deadly poison created by putting a bunch of insects in a jar until only one remains

I understood this reference. I know it as Gu poison, which is listed in the wikipedia article you linked!

To minimize the chance that outstanding accuracy resulted from luck rather than skill, we limited eligibility for GJP superforecaster status to those forecasters who participated in at least 50 forecasting questions during a tournament “season.”

When I was a kid I read a vignette of a guy trying to scam people into thinking he was amazing at predicting things. He chose 1024 stockbrokers, picked one stock, and in 512 envelopes he said the stock would be up by the end of the month, and in the other 512 he said it would go down. You can see where this story is going, i.e. he would be left with one person thinking he predicted 10 things in a row correctly and was therefore a superforecaster. This vignette was great at illustrating to child me that predicting things correctly isn't necessarily some display of great intelligence or insight. Unfortunately what I didn't know is that it was setting me up for great disappointment when after that point and forevermore, I would see time and time again that people would fall for this shit so easily.

(For some reason when I try to think of where I read that vignette, vonnegut comes to mind. I doubt it was him.)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking Saturn, that could have been a post!

I know I know, but I can't handle that kind of pressure. If someone else wants to make a post about this, or prediction markets, don't let me stop you. It's an under-sneered area at the intersection of tech weirdos, that other kind of tech weirdoes, and that third kind of tech weirdos.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Here that car seat post I was talking about

The best sneer is from the comments imo

Unfortunately, the genie is out of the bottle here. It would be political malpractice to liberalize these safety rules. The first child who dies or is critically injured after eliminating the post two year old requirements is a political disaster for whoever changed the rules

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

of fucking course it's a Zvi post

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

I didn't realize he was namebrand

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Undisputable Champion of “Well ackshually”

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Give people hope for the future. Climate change takes away people’s hope, so solve climate change to give them their hope back.

Can't argue with that. Why don't we just get on solving climate change, eh?

Edit: found the HN discussion, not positive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38709653

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This might be sacrilege, but HN sneers are my favorite sneers. Especially because snark is a dang-able offence

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

To be scrupulously fair, it's perfectly possible to construct vehicles that are both good at transporting multiple people and don't take up square miles of road. See the vehicle market in SE Asia as an example.

Or this segment, almost unknown in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_MPV

In fact, if more vehicles like this were available, it would be good both for Quiverful families and Earth-huggers! Alas the pickup truck will enable us to drive, one by one, to the Apocalypse.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That’s a great thread name!

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

no regerts - from the SomethingAwful meme stock lols thread

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Unsure if this meets even the lowest bar for this thread but I was jumpscared by Aella while browsing Reddit

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

And I was so happy we had resisted talking about the graph/incident directly (here is the incident indirectly). My opinion remains a bit like, wow that is weird but good for her, and good to see they took safety seriously.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Mom: We have Eyes Wide Shut style orgies at home

Eyes Wide Shut orgies at home:

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (5 children)

people are laughing because some people came in the fluffer, but I'm just thinking who logged all this shit? There was one person here who didn't participate but just had a clipboard and logged everybodies actions. The orgies middle manager.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

i will never forgive aella for giving good and wholesome birthday orgies a bad name

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Aella : birthday orgies :: Yudkowsky : fanfiction

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

ah, now I got that reference

let's see if it's something that continues to grow and grow so in 1 month or so people I know will try to explain it to me and I will have to pretend I've known all about it, because I am Terminally Online

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Nah this thing has come and gone.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

(raised hand of disapproval) slut-shaming

(pointing finger of approval) Substack-shaming

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

To be fair, it was beautiful data. This is definitely the first time that reading about a gangbang made me want to subscribe to canva dot com.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

What the fucking fuck

There are some rather notable layers to that snippet of interaction, holy shit

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

i expect she was looking for something to be more famous for than not washing

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Oh my Glob that's on her Wikipedia page

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

thankfully the Spreadsheet Orgy is not

it made Know Your Meme tho

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

The spread of the parody chart led to jokes about what "came in a fluffer" could mean in a business context. For example, on March 4th, Martin Shkreli joked

Fuck this, launching myself out of the Universe

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yet.

Is knowyourmeme WP:RS?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No, for good or ill.

(I forget where I learned about that list, but it makes for interesting reading.)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

keep in mind that it is not a comprehensive list of sources, it's a catalogue of querulous wikipedia arguments

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