this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
1 points (100.0% liked)

SneerClub

982 readers
1 users here now

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.]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

I don't know what man-made horrors beyond my comprehension I just stubled upon, but this person really really really needs psychological help and possible to be forced out of their self-hatred jesus christ

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

ya dont fucken say

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

jesus christ

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Going through random pages of Zack's blog, which I don't recommend unless you really like to look at self-harm, which you shouldn't, ... sometimes you find passages that make you remember the important things and you feel a little less bad about all the mess.

(The really hard part is overcoming the improbability of finding a wife who I could love and who could love me, and who is enthusiastic about starting a family qua eugenics project rather than merely qua family. Any single (cis) women reading this who like my writing: please, don't hesitate to write me!)


Also this one's really just kind of cute.

I continue to maintain that fandom conventions are boring. I enjoy consuming fiction. I even enjoy discussing fiction with friends—the work facilitating a connection with someone else present, rather than just between me and the distant author, or me and the universe of stories. But for the most part, these big, bustling conventions just don't seem to facilitate that kind of intimacy. [...]

But that's okay. Ultimately, I did not come to Fan Expo San Francisco 2022 for the intimacy of analyzing fiction with friends who know me.

I came because of the loophole. As reactionary as it might seem in the current year, I am spiritually a child of the 20th century, and I do not crossdress in public. That would be weird. (Not harmlessly weird as an adjective of unserious self-deprecation, but weird in the proper sense, out-of-distribution weird.)

But to cosplay as a fictional character who happens to be female? That's fine! Lots of people are dressed up as fictional characters at the convention, including characters who belong to categories that the cosplayer themself does not. That guy dressed up as a vampire isn't actually a vampire, either.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

@Amoeba_Girl @dgerard Sometimes I think there's a goldmine of comedy to be had laughing at these eugenics types having kids and slowly realizing they aren't rich like Musk and Grimes and have to care for these humans. Then I remember that isn't funny at all, it's extremely upsetting.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

well, cute for someone who would transition to a trans neoreactionary

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

I admit my standards might have been lowered due to consuming too much of the brain sludge.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is this stuff deliberately written to be word salad?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

all the evidence is that Zack cannot not write like this

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

As somebody who has read terf shit to self harm in the past I want to thank this poor soul for writing something too impenetrable to even be readable let alone effective

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Someone asked in the comments that Zack clarify wtf the claim is, and Zack posted this abstract:

Does this help? (159 words and one hyperlink to a 16-page paper)

Empirical Claim: late-onset gender dysphoria in males is not an intersex condition.

Summary of Evidence for the Empirical Claim: see "Autogynephilia and the Typology of Male-to-Female Transsexualism: Concepts and Controversies" by Anne Lawrence, published in European Psychologist. (Not by me!)

Philosophical Claim: categories are useful insofar as they compress information by "carving reality at the joints"; in particular, whether a categorization makes someone happy or sad is not relevant.

Sociological Claim: the extent to which a prominence-weighted sample of the rationalist community has refused to credit the Empirical or Philosophical Claims even when presented with strong arguments and evidence is a reason to distrust the community's collective sanity.

Caveat to the Sociological Claim: the Sociological Claim about a prominence-weighted sample of an amorphous collective doesn't reflect poorly on individual readers of lesswrong.com who weren't involved in the discussions in question and don't even live in America, let alone Berkeley.

so this is a two-hour post about Zack's arguments with unnamed Bay Area rationalists. Today, in posts that should have been a Discord chat.

(the paper he names is a Blancharding ramble)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

One day, when Zack is a little older, I hope he learns it's okay to sometimes talk -to someone- instead of airing one's identity confusion like an arxiv prepublish paper.

Like, it's okay to be confused in a weird world, or even have controversial opinions. Make some friends you can actually trust, aren't demanding bayesian defenses of feelings, and chat this shit out buddy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Sociological Claim: the extent to which a prominence-weighted sample of the rationalist community has refused to credit the Empirical or Philosophical Claims even when presented with strong arguments and evidence is a reason to distrust the community’s collective sanity.

Zack my guy you are so fucking close. Also just fucking leave.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

And the arguments seem to boil down to them saying "if you wanna transition, just do it", and Zack is all like "nooooooo you must convince me not to via Rationality!!!!"

(sorry if I'm being flippant, this person seems to be in a lot of mental distress, but they're also kinda big deal in the community? Like fucking gwern weighed in a bit sarcastically?)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Who knows? They seem to know all these people personally, so I guess they attend rationalist cuddle puddles in SV or something.

I ran into them online a year ago when a Twitter follow shared their last essay with some acerbic comments about the lengths (both in the mental & absurd word count senses) they were going to do deny their desire to transition & they appeared in the comments after I made a snarky remark along the lines of “methinks the lady doth protest too much”. Still quite proud of that one.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

yeah i noticed yesterday there's a link to (one of) Zack's blog(s) in SSC's sidebar.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

so what precisely is Zack supposed to be good at in Rationality other than Blancharding?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Word count.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

God it feels so fucking good not knowing who any of these idiots are, time to ruin that feeling forever

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

^F David Gerard

Imagine one day David Gerard of /r/SneerClub said, "Eliezer Yudkowsky is a white supremacist!" And you replied: "No, I'm not! That's a lie." And imagine E.T. Jaynes was still alive...

I‘m impressed at the way you still manage to live rent free in these chud’s heads. The bogeyman is real if you’re a rationalist apparently & his name is D.Gerard.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Imagine one day Dan Gackle of Hacker News fame banned the Linus Tech Tips guy for sockpuppeting but actually you were the sockpuppet. Also suppose Terry A. Davis were still alive so you went to ask him how to sockpuppet like a veteran, but instead you run into Timnit Gebru, who is also a terrorist. She calls you pronouns and slurs like TESCREAL and your pants drop to your ankles and everyone is laughing at you and also Terry calls you the N word because you don't know how to write a compiler. Then you turn around and see Scott Siskind and Joanne Rowling and they're also laughing at you and you start to cry.

Anyway you'd be really upset.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Picture a scene: the New York Times is releasing an article on Effective Altruism (EA) with an express goal to dig up every piece of negative information they can find. They contact Émile Torres, David Gerard, and Timnit Gebru, collect evidence about Sam Bankman-Fried, the OpenAI board blowup, and Pasek's Doom, start calling Astral Codex Ten (ACX) readers to ask them about rumors they'd heard about affinity between Effective Altruists, neoreactionaries, and something called TESCREAL. They spend hundreds of hours over six months on interviews and evidence collection, paying Émile and Timnit for their time and effort. The phrase "HBD" is muttered, but it's nobody's birthday.

From here.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

The EA/LW community loves to think from first principles, and that is usually one of its finest traits. I notice and respect the times their first-principles thinking leads them to be correct about things broader society is incorrect about—a regular occurrence.

[citation fucking needed]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

I follow drama and blow-ups in a lot of different subcultures. It's my job.

Wait, you can get paid for this???

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

A thing that is sort of amazing about that article (by Woodgrains, who is supposed to be part of the leftwing people of themotte) is that their complaints about journalism being unfair to them is said by everybody all the time in every subculture when there is a non 100% puff piece on their subculture.

The problem with journalists is that they tend to shine a light on the parts of your subculture that you pretend isn't there, but a part that you should really check out and do something about (a bit like that mole, ow god I'm projecting and need to call my doctor). How can you be a grown person and not have seen this happen to several groups over and over again already? How sheltered and only inside LW spheres are these people? (Rhetorical)

And this is without talking about how journalist are pressured for time, underpaid, etc etc. Seeing how six months of work isn't enough to uncover the truth in their own paid sex slaves (yes, this is the intentionally worst way to describe that situation) and more work keeps piling up on up on just that case with claims, counterclaims, miss attributions etc should ~~tell them something~~ update their priors about just how much work and how difficult journalism is, but it will not.

(I know Woodgrains is praising the ability of LW to criticize themselves, but crucially he doesn't really seem to notice that nothing changes, the various racists/sexists etc are still there and talking about happy birthdays (urgh). But hey at least it got Gwern mad)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

leftwing people of themotte

lol the empty fucking set

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yeah remember how themotte had a "quality contributions of last month" post every month? The schism (for people not in the know: the less 'far right culture war, more good faith discussions' spinoff of themotte (how many layers deep are we now? Damn you Hanson!), what a failed project from the start, the culture war anger is the point and the draw of themotte) has a 'Quality Contributions for the first half of 2023' post. Guess there were no quality contributions the 6 months after that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

the fuck. apparently I secretly do run rationality.

scratching his itch to be productive by traveling the world and doing charity via talking with cool, smart people about meaningful ideas.

i'd want some pretty convincing evidence that the bit after "and" goes with the word "productive".

@Geoffrey Miller, with his own long history of serious, sincere engagement within the rationalist community,

uh yeah lol ok

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

/r/SneerClub

these people are so terrified of Satan Church that they haven’t read the change of address we stabbed into the front door with a ceremonial dagger like 5 months ago

load more comments
view more: next ›