this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
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TechTakes

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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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

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)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (6 children)

after all this time, TIL that Roko pronounces his name "Rocko" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIwJDnej7pg

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Quick, someone file the copyright for "Roko's Postmodern Life"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

it's amazing how he continues to provide fresh reasons to want to boop him on the nose

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

man, all these old transhumanist videos https://www.youtube.com/@Transentience/videos you could waste hours of your life on old and pointless bs

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

"Genes vs Memes"

okay, I checked, it's after midday. definitely okay to start drinking.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure you're only allowed to have that discussion if you're a Metal Gear villain. Which despite his best efforts Roko does not have enough dramatic presence or raw drip for.

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

https://bsky.app/profile/jonpennington.bsky.social/post/3kxqkmezcwe2o

I went to college with him. Yarvin is curdled nerd rage personified. He also lies about his age. He's older than me & claims a birth date that would make him younger than me.

I was on a Quiz Bowl team with him & whenever he would buzz in for an answer, he would jerk his body spasmodically, which the other people on the team called "Yarvinating."

He's the kind of player that other Quiz Bowl players hate, known in the subculture as a "pickoff lord." That is to say, he's the kind of guy who would pad his stats by diving in to buzz on easy questions, make wild guesses on intros so he could get more points than teammates, etc.

Hand to God. If anybody disputes me, I've got at least one other person who would remember the "Yarvinating" anecdote. I've got legit Quiz Bowl cred. I used to play against Ken Jennings before he was even a Jeopardy! contestant, let alone host.

I connected on Facebook with a former classmate, somebody else from that team who once appeared in a College Jeopardy! tournament. We're both kind of just gobsmacked that we were there for somebody else's Lex Luthor origin story.

Another bit of tea... He lies about his age. He was an upperclassman at Brown when I was a freshman & he claims to be younger than me.

see also https://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

Yarvin played on the College Bowl-only team for Brown from 1989 to 1992. In 2021 he published a poem[2] stating that "No one can fucking touch me / In College Bowl." Brown failed to advance out of the Region 1 tournament for all four years of Yarvin's participation, making his lifetime record at intercollegiate tournaments 0-4 and demonstrating that, at a minimum, the Brandeis, MIT, and Williams teams were capable of "touching" his performance.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It’s my strong belief that rats only like analytic philosophy because of the word “analytic” in the title. If there were some other broad category of philosophy with a name more synonymous with “rational” they’d be all over it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not familiar with Indian politics but I'm curious if anyone understands what this site is or what its politics are https://democracycollective.in (I'm just nosy and curious, I saw this pop up out of nowhere)

Though maybe I already have an idea:

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

You can read a blog post from the dude who started that site here: https://rushabh-mehta.medium.com/starting-a-new-political-party-28a2e70cc8c3 I didn't spot any huge red flags, but I didn't dig too deep (nor do I know the first thing about Indian politics).

Apparently he aims to start an online political party without any leaders or hierarchy where everything gets voted on. Not to be too cynical, but looking at how small it is right now I imagine they won't get far enough to see why that doesn't really work.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Catching up on SMBC and finding a quality sneer I'm a little bit surprised I didn't find here sooner.

Can I get an abot?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

NASBLOL (I'm not sure this abbreviation will work out): "Investors in anti-Biden cryptocurrencies are getting absolutely destroyed." (Source)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

not only are the DCs burning water and harming ears, we’re on to the stage of taiwan not farming rice in service of making more chips

She shows us one of her rice paddies. It used to hold enough water to raise ducks. Now it's nothing but cracked earth and a few crispy flowers.

I’m neither a climate nor agriculture scientist so I can’t guess the longer term impact of this; I immediately wonder whether the soil could get harmed by disuse over years, along with other warming-related problems

I’m too angry to even sneer properly at this. it’s so fucking obviously nuts, but perverse incentives roll right ahead unchecked.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I think some people are from hell

Here is the worst thing I didn't have to read today from a transhumanist:

Yes but laws are often outpaced, presumably having your dog walk in and say he liked it is a pretty good reason to have your bestiality charge thrown out and perhaps move on to the discrimination countersuit.

.

Also this may have historic reasons, as the first futa was drawn centuries ago, long before the technology that enabled transgenderism, with breasts being the key difference.

Bonus round:

spoiler

What percentage of homeless people do you think would be worthwhile having as slaves? Many of them are broken people who can't reasonably support themselves in their current state, nor do anything to fix it.

This is vaguely similar to my idea for how to fix homelessness, build a community for them on a large scale, either state or national, where property is cheap and low skill jobs are abundant. Then you build a prison there, and everyone guilty of a 'crime of homelessness' such as trespassing, illegal camping, stealing food, etc. Then they get put in jail for a few days, probably put through some level of rehab, given basic medical care, and eventually a job for the massive debt they've just wracked up. What work it would be is the hard question, but the benefits to everyone else would pay for them to dig holes to fill back in if needed. Maybe have them sort recycling or something.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

how to fix homelessness, build a community for them on a large scale, either state or national, where property is cheap and low skill jobs are abundant

Okay, I mean, there's no indication as to how you'd achieve this, but yes, community help and cheap rent are absolutely a good ideal to aim at...

Then you build a prison there.

Aaaand you're a cartoon villain. What the absolute fuck.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

just want to make sure this is on the record

those suggestions (from the deranged OP) are basically segregationist: “you take all the poor, you give them their own little world [and then they’re no longer here, where we have to look at them]”. there’s a long track record of awful enterprises that have been done with that spirit. they carry names like Apartheid, ghetto, etc.

(there are occasionally serious well-meaning suggestions on how to provision for the poor and unfortunate in ways that allow improving lives, but those don’t tend to handwave the details, and never (afaict) involve the “make them go over there” step)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

robin hanson blogging about his activities on a typical monday

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

i've seen some of these takes coming from libertarians, but never from a single person

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

This is the kind of take a libertarian makes, and then goes 'well nobody debates me on this so my logic is solid'. While he isn't noticing that people are just avoiding the conversation all together, as nobody wants to roll in that mud with him.

The UR example of these kinds of bad takes is the book "Defending the Undefendable", a dumb book I have ranted about before.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

certified awful content, don't open if you like dogs

So in addition to normal libertarian drivel like daydreaming about being a slaveowner or such, this reminds me of an incident when certain libertarian org found that they have an actual dogfucker in their ranks (kompromat in polish) https://web.archive.org/web/20161206144701/https://www.wykop.pl/wpis/20957439/mirki-neuropa-moze-was-to-zainteresuje-na-zdjeciu-/

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Holy shit every one of those was like getting ounched in the head from a completely random direction

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Have not read it yet, but seems relevant to our collective interests. NSFW due to NASB. Accelerationism, amphetamine philosophy, and the Death Trip. (A long post about Nick Land).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Great article. It's always fun to read about smart people lionizing a terrible person like Aleister Crowley and inevitably going insane (or dead, in Jack Parson's case).

The article never discussed the topic directly, but for others interested in esoterica would probably enjoy reading about the concept of egregores.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (6 children)

terrible person like Aleister Crowley

Wait, why is Crowley terrible? Wasn't he basically an overly enthusiastic cosplayer that did all the drugs and all the sex? So basically an occult hippy? Am I just unaware of him abusing people or some other dark shit?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

he was an abusive gobshite, including physically abusive.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

you know, I’d wondered previously about the higher-than-average divinity-and-spirits obsession among TPOT. between some of the history of land/ccru there, the other shit previously observed in the stubsack (iirc?) about rightoids and aliens/fairies (and ofc the nazi history of occultism)… what a fucking faith to make

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Truly the weirdest consequence of crank magnetism and conspiracy syncretism is the kinds of bedfellows you find. UFO cults align with Christian dominionists because the aliens are actually demons (or vice versa - which direction isn't important).

It feels like modern fascism is less driven by orthodoxy (right belief) than they are by orthopraxy (right action) to the degree that as long as they aren't actually in power anyone who hates on the right people and rejects the right facts can join the same club regardless of what they actually think. The weirdo occultism of the Nazis was largely tied to the project of reifying their racial hierarchy in all aspects of society by establishing that the Aryan race had the best religion and the best history in addition to the best genes and the best country. The weirdo occultism of modern fascism doesn't have that kind of thread to it that I can see, and I don't know what that means for ongoing development. Does it turn into a source of internal strife as they get closer to having actual influence? Do they settle into a more specific doctrine and cull the ranks of those who don't adopt it? Or is accepting a consensus reality actually the optional part here as long as the group can broadly agree on what to do?

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

Helena Blavatsky and Rudolph Steiner made up much of what went on to constitute esoteric Hilterism ab nihilo.

Blavatsky, in particular, was a prolific bullshitter in the Frankfurtian sense. She invented the notion of the Aryan master race as a thing that exists in the future, which white europeans should strive to bring into the world.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

"sold by the Society of the Precious Blood" paging peter thiel

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Not stately enough.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

No idea how true it is but apparently crowdstrike fired some of their QA and replaced it with AI, anybody heard about this? (source bsky) (Also 'AI' is doing a lot of work here, that could be anything)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I am attempting to track down this precise story.

  • They are gung ho on AI
  • They laid off a pile of their QA
  • They have a "virtual security analyst" which is an LLM
[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

iirc Crowdstrike does use regular ML for security, or at least a lot of security companies, I think they might have talked about it on the risky business podcast, so you might want to look at their (many iirc) crowdstrike sponsored parts. No episode directly springs to mind however.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This can also be an area where ML is an appropriate and useful tool. You'll see it used to establish a statistical baseline for what traffic should look like and then it can flag when it detects something that doesn't match that as suspicious and worth further investigation. In this space there is actually a lot of value in some of the statistical modeling techniques, though generative AI is obviously a very different and less useful beast.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

Yes indeed. Which is iirc what people talked about re ML before the current hype cycle started.

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