posted on February 05, 2023 10:59 AM by
u/ThePerson654321
91
u/ThePerson65432182 pointsat 1675595545.000000
As I walked to the restaurant, it suddenly occurred to me that all my
electronics in my room were up for grabs, causing me to frantically call
my roommate and ask him to keep an eye on her. However, as a testament
to my vetting process, she left uneventfully.
She wasn’t just a decent human being but it was rather his vetting
processes that ultimately saved his devices
He later of course catches one of the young girls watching porn
because why wouldn’t she do that?
Coming back, she slammed her laptop shut. Laughing, I asked what she
was doing that she needed to close it so frantically. She retorted
coldly that she was watching porn
She wasn’t watching porn. She was doing something that wasn’t any of his business and he was trying to sneak a glance at her screen. Similarly, “Julia” never came back because his roommate was completely rude about keeping an eye on her.
>She asked if I had a life, and that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
Given she seemed flippant towards him she was probably shit posting about him on social media or something, maybe he was behaving oddly, or alternatively maybe she was not a nice person.
I would grant that excuse if it were unequivocally understood that none of this is supposed to be taken seriously for any kind of real world judgment, but...
well, forget the but. Would you say that's the case? is this clearly not about truth claims? Like actually?
Perhaps you missed the adverbs of possibility. I was suggesting a possible situation tailored to what I saw as the facts of the situation, that the LW poster was doing a weird thing in a weird way and therefore is possibly a weird person.
Speculation and inference are the basis for many avenues of comedy, but if you're reading the LW post differently than me and see the guy as behaving totally within the bounds of 'normal' social interaction you're not going to appreciate the joke. That's okay though, shitty jokes are part of the sub.
> if it were unequivocally understood that none of this is supposed to be taken seriously for any kind of real world judgment
You're in the wrong place, friend, we judge these people incredibly harshly that's kind of the whole point of the sub. We don't get together to have an honest discussion of their ideas, though it may happen from time to time, we come here to shit on them because most of us agree that to be involved in the rat or EA communities is to be a shitty person, and so we sneer mercilessly.
This isn't a movement with tenets to be upheld, its random people coming together to sneer, and it is as serious as the people or ideas we are sneering at.
Edit: I see from your post history that you are EA/Scott Sisskind/Sam Harris sympathetic which to me means you truly are in the wrong place, although being that you read Scott Sisskind you should be more than comfortable with the idea that one might make wild speculations and judgement calls based on nothing more than surface level information on any subject whatsoever. It's kind of his bread and butter, or does that only count when the target isn't sympathetic to your favourite cause?
> This isn't a movement with tenets to be upheld, its random people coming together to sneer, and it is as serious as the people or ideas we are sneering at.
Yeah, that was my question. And the problem is that I don't think this is actually true. I think many people commenting here actually believe what they're saying. And the two people on LessWrong who have pointed to this thread as a source of genuine criticism to take seriously thought so as well.
Like "it's not meant to be serious" is only a valid excuse if you do, in fact, not take your comments seriously.
What makes your inferences about the posters in this sub, and this sub as a whole, more concrete than the suppositions of any user of this sub regarding the OP of the LW post?
At least the inferences made here are drawn from a substantial self reported and, presumably, honest post. You're inferring that we are serious because we post tongue in cheek comments in a subreddit dedicated to posting tongue in cheek comments.
What you really mean, I suspect, is that you 'feel' that some of us are serious, but you can't say it because it goes against the idea of rationality.
The very idea that members of your community are trying to treat sneerclub as some sort of pool of data from which conclusions can be drawn regarding your failings is part of the problems with rationality. The criticisms found here are generally so varied, being that we all have our own gripes with rationalism, that the only data you can reliably pull would be:
'a growing number of people think you suck'
And anything else will be purely cherry picked based on how you see yourself. If you don't believe that there is a racist subculture embedded withing rationalism, you won't accept that criticism, if you don't believe that there is a sexist culture...ditto, if you don't see the patent idiocy of wasting huge amounts of money to achieve what a free posting on your own message board could accomplish for free... You get the idea
> What makes your inferences about the posters in this sub, and this sub as a whole, more concrete than the suppositions of any user of this sub regarding the OP of the LW post?
> At least the inferences made here are drawn from a substantial self reported and, presumably, honest post. You're inferring that we are serious because we post tongue in cheek comments in a subreddit dedicated to posting tongue in cheek comments.
> What you really mean, I suspect, is that you 'feel' that some of us are serious, but you can't say it because it goes against the idea of rationality.
I wasn't trying to give any justification for the claim at all; I was just stating that I think it. If you had doubted it, I might have tried to justify it.
> The very idea that members of your community are trying to treat sneerclub as some sort of pool of data from which conclusions can be drawn regarding your failings is part of the problems with rationality. The criticisms found here are generally so varied, being that we all have our own gripes with rationalism, that the only data you can reliably pull would be: 'a growing number of people think you suck'
> And anything else will be purely cherry picked based on how you see yourself. If you don't believe that there is a racist subculture embedded withing rationalism, you won't accept that criticism, if you don't believe that there is a sexist culture...ditto, if you don't see the patent idiocy of wasting huge amounts of money to achieve what a free posting on your own message board could accomplish for free... You get the idea
Seems beside the point, I'm not arguing anything about the object level.
> You can keep telling me I take it seriously
I didn't say that. I said "some people in this sub"
Your reply is kind of all of the place, but the only point I was making is that (1) I think some people take what they say here seriously, and (2) if they do, the excuse "it's not meant to be serious" doesn't work.
I can't rightfully speak for all members of this sub and any indication given that I did so was a mistake on my part.
As I mentioned numerous times, some people possibly take the task of sneering seriously. But a comedian takes the job of writing jokes seriously, does that mean they seriously believe every joke they tell?
That's a rhetorical question, I am trying to illustrate that there are levels of seriousness, and your general ascertation that 'some people take what they say here seriously' is precisely meaningless unless you would like to point to specific examples, which you did, implicitly, in starting this comment chain by replying to my comment.
In fact the comment you replied to was me saying, in effect, 'I think this about this situation', you replied:
>I like how much information you guys have about the things you're writing about
So when you, later in your replies, stated :
>I think many people commenting here actually believe what they're saying.
My reply:
>What makes your inferences about the posters in this sub, and this sub as a whole, more concrete than the suppositions of any user of this sub regarding the OP of the LW post?
I was responding in essentially the same, albeit more well developed, way that you had responded to me, there is a degree of subtext, I know, because I framed my response, again, as a rhetorical question, the answer to which should have been self evident. I'm trying to point out that you are making the same baseless inferences as members of this sub, myself included, and I can speak for myself when I say, I wasn't being serious.
I also sprinkled in a couple of takedowns of rationalists because you quite clearly found your way here from LW, and hey, when in Rome.
> As I mentioned numerous times, some people possibly take the task of sneering seriously. But a comedian takes the job of writing jokes seriously, does that mean they seriously believe every joke they tell?
My bad, I didn't differentiate the two; you're right that they're different things. I do think the second one though; they take the things they say seriously. I think many of them believe that the person who posted the LW thread is pathetic for pretty much exactly the reason they stated.
> I was responding in essentially the same, albeit more well developed, way that you had responded to me, there is a degree of subtext, I know, because I framed my response, again, as a rhetorical question, the answer to which should have been self evident. I'm trying to point out that you are making the same baseless inferences as members of this sub, myself included, and I can speak for myself when I say, I wasn't being serious.
I wasn't even arguing that the assertions made here are false or wrong, though. I was only objecting to "we don't take it seriously", and to the specific thing in my first comment, which seemed extremely speculative.
> I also sprinkled in a couple of takedowns of rationalists because you quite clearly found your way here from LW, and hey, when in Rome.
And I'm not generally opposed to talking about them, I just don't want to mix things up. I'm a big fan of decoupling things.
But since we seem to have resolved the initial question, okay, I'll bite on one of them. You said,
> What you really mean, I suspect, is that you 'feel' that some of us are serious, but you can't say it because it goes against the idea of rationality.
If you had asked me why I believe it, this is more or less what I would have said... and it doesn't go against the idea of rationality in any at all whatsoever. Rationalists tell each other about intuitions they have all the time.
But to turn this into a complement, if you assume it goes against rationalism, I agree that would make rationalism really stupid. We have these intuitions that evolution has fine tuned over hundreds of millions of years and refusing to use them sounds like one of the worst ideas since {insert humorous comparison of your choice here}.
My broader suspicion, which we could maybe also talk about, is that >50% of stuff you dislike about rationalism is similar, i.e., something rationalists actually don't think at all.
The problem here is that you are ignoring your own initial comment (criticism) which was that we are making assumptions based not on fact but on feeling (or something to thay effect). My point isn't that it is right or wrong, it is that you came into this thread with what I assumed was a complaint, and then fell into the same trap. It was the hypocrisy that was at issue.
I think a large part of your mistaken assumption here is, again, that there is some kind of group philosophy and that what one person says reflects the general outlook beyond: 'rationalism is dumb'. Something which I do believe is largely true of the rationalist community, or at least the less wrong community, which I equate to the same thing, insofar as to be a member of that community in any reasonable way you have to have read and agreed with the Sequences, HPMoR and a number of other rationalist screeds.
Most of my dislike for rationalism comes from what I have read of Yud and Sisskind's (notable thought leaders in the community) writings and the controversies surrounding the community at large. I don't engage with the general theory of rationalism because, frankly, I don't believe there is one outside of what Yud, and to a lesser extent Sisskind, have to say.
I think that being rational does not equate to rationalism and therfore I can engage with the former without having anything to do with the latter.
I don't think that every member of the rationalist community is wrong about everything, but that the well is poisoned enough that I'd rather not drink, even a small amount, when I can get clean water elsewhere.
You can decouple if you like but I don't come here to have these discussions, I come here to sneer, consider that me decoupling my disdain for rationalists from the rest of my life. This discussion has already taken more time than I would prefer so don't expect much more, we will have to agree to misunderstand each other where we do, and to disagree where we do.
> The problem here is that you are ignoring your own initial comment (criticism) which was that we are making assumptions based not on fact but on feeling (or something to thay effect). My point isn't that it is right or wrong, it is that you came into this thread with what I assumed was a complaint, and then fell into the same trap. It was the hypocrisy that was at issue.
This doesn't make much sense to me. I never claimed to have a standard of not concluding things based on feelings. I claimed that this particular instance of concluding things was stupid, which I still think is obviously true. Not all instances of "reason by intuition" are identical. In this case, they weren't even similar.
I mean one of the two guys even admitted that it was hyperbolic, so it doesn't seem like there even is something to debate.
> This discussion has already taken more time than I would prefer so don't expect much more
sure. I got the impression that you were actively trying to start a debate because you threw in the (imo irrelevant) comment about rationalism, so I decided to engage, but if you're not, that's totally fine.
I think the discussion has become confused, I assumed you were here from the LW forum to start a disingenuous argument hence why I went in on rationalism, but I don't really think that's the case anymore (the part about starting arguments).
I don't think I can help you though as, like I said, this isn't really a place where I can speak for anyone else since our only unifying feature is our disdain for rationalism, so whether others seriously believe thay can make genuine inferences about the OP is beyond me.
Have a good one anyway.
Some people take their comments on this sub deadly seriously and I dare say with good reason.
Some, like myself, are in a position where sneering is largely for fun because I don't come into contact with Rats very often. As I said, this isn't a movement, it's a reaction to a dumb 'philosophy' which draws sneers from all walks of life. The only thing that truly unites the members of this sub is that we find rationalism sneerworthy for some reason.
Is it strange that a group dedicated to sneering on LW might come up with some valid critiques of the stupid shit they do over there?
I think it's telling that LW is taking the sneers more seriously then the members of the sub do.
You can keep telling me I take it seriously but I, generally, only come back here to reply to replies after my intitial sneers.
I read this comment as pure snark, but following the thread I think you're trying to engage sincerely, and that's worth similar regard in return.
I have no idea what the assistant in question was doing. I phrased it as a certainty as a rhetorical device to challenge expectations and shock readers out of their comfort zone. It's very easy for humans to get sucked in by the rhythms of a confident writer like Simon. In the same vein, Simon took the assistant at face value and didn't consider any other possibilities but complete honestly.
Always dig further. Statements that confirm your biases are worth particular scrutiny.
The comment you're replying to was snark, but it felt justified? Idk.
> In the same vein, Simon took the assistant at face value and didn't consider any other possibilities but complete honestly.
what on earth makes you think this? Simon himself didn't speculate on what really happened (unless it's somewhere else in the post), and other people on LW [didn't seem to think so](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gp9pmgSX3BXnhv8pJ/i-hired-5-people-to-sit-behind-me-and-make-me-productive-for?commentId=A9iEAocHLEH6crnHy).
Because he didn’t say he considered other possibilities, and his self-described behavior is completely consistent with taking her at face value and believing that she was watching porn.
> I proceeded to stare blankly into my screen, afraid to turn around and look at her, as I processed the situation. After calming myself down, I continued the session as normally as possible to avoid awkwardness and breathed a sigh of relief when she left.
It's also consistent with not having any hypothesis and just being weirded about because she said she was watching porn. Certainly I'd be extremely weirded out there, whether I believed it or not.
Damn, you really need help reading the situation!
> Coming back, she slammed her laptop shut. Laughing, I asked what she was doing that she needed to close it so frantically.
He knew she wanted to maintain her privacy. It's very rude to ask. Most people would've been uncomfortable or pissed off.
> I proceeded to stare blankly into my screen, afraid to turn around and look at her, as I processed the situation.
She wanted to get back at him and shut him down, so she went for the edgiest thing she could because she could tell he was a nerd who didn't have a lot of social skills and that she could get under his skin. And it worked. I don't know why this is so hard for you to understand--possibly you think it's too "mean," and maybe she should've just calmly told him that it was fucked up to joke about her desire for privacy?
“I was super productive starting multiple blog posts and spending
time interviewing people and meticulously tracking my time and doing 27
minute yoga sessions. I even totally started a new company that I refuse
to give any details about(crypto?). Hiring a team of nannies was the
best decision I ever made, even though most of them didn’t like me and
quit. It only cost k!”
Also in the comments:
“Thanks for spending your own money to generate data the rest of us
can use!”
Income generated: ?
Money spent: 5k
Blog posts completed: 0?
When I have months like this I feel guilty but I guess I can take solace in the fact that it costs me much less than five thousand dollars.
I’d like to think if I had an army of servants I’d do way more productive or cool things with my life but the truth is I’d probably spend most of the extra free time on Reddit/twitter
i love that one day after the experiment ended he tested positive for
COVID but we don’t hear anything about whether or not his assistant did
or if he told her he did. that’s very nice of him!
I track my time and I understand that there tends to be many fewer productive hours than most people expect. There's always a lot of faffing about and breaks add up. But 15 is low. Especially if you're putting extra effort into getting out more hours.
I just checked my data and coincidentally I managed to find a week where I worked 15 hours. Turns out I only worked Monday and Tuesday (which is admittedly high for 2 days - I must have been rushing before a holiday). And I don't put in above-average hours; others I know who have also tracked their time seem to report similar results.
Personally, I had a great time cranking out tasks and getting to know
my assistants (the savory ones). Next on my list: one year of
productivity assistants
Like you know he wants to wear a gakuran and all the 'productivity assistants' have different color hair and matching personalities but that would give it away.
Man, I knew this was going to be good going in, but that bar graph
with the line for ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ exceeded my
expectations and I laughed when I saw the note about the “experiment”
ending.
especially since you can write this off as a business expense if you
have an S-corp or similar.
hahaha holy shit. Look, I know it’s the American way to make a stupid
LLC and make stupid business decisions, I have one of them myself, but
there are SO many more cost-effective ways to be more productive. Like
even a coworking space is 00 a month. Or pay a productivity consultant
for a couple hours of advice, I’m sure there are many in whatever Bay
Area hellscape OP is in.
Once again, the rationalist tendency to throw out all prior work,
start from nothing, and get nowhere.
As I've mentioned, the comments on that post are replete with people talking about how they would like to try something similar.
I can only assume they all mean the part about
hiring girls to spend time with them, and not the part about finding productivity buddies, otherwise the answer is right there in front of them.
Someone mentions in the comments that they’re doing the same thing,
and i found it notable that he gets like 6 paragraphs and an image in
before referring to his assistant as ‘her’.
It’s pretty obvious to me that there’s a lotta misogyny buried in the
whole idea of this “experiment”, for the people doing it.
> My assistant's primary job is to track how much time I'm spending on everything, and produce a google sheet at the end of the day showing what I did for different chunks (e.g. "10:30: Processing inbox + breakfast" or "13:34: Reading new Eliezer-Scott dialogue").
there's nothing more productive than a new Eliezer-Scott dialogue
Small aside, what is with these people and burning money needlessly?
Mf spends $27 on a timer, you can get any number of better, free software timers on your pc and smartphones come with them built in. Sheesh
She wasn’t just a decent human being but it was rather his vetting processes that ultimately saved his devices
He later of course catches one of the young girls watching porn because why wouldn’t she do that?
To sum up the post:
“I was super productive starting multiple blog posts and spending time interviewing people and meticulously tracking my time and doing 27 minute yoga sessions. I even totally started a new company that I refuse to give any details about(crypto?). Hiring a team of nannies was the best decision I ever made, even though most of them didn’t like me and quit. It only cost k!”
Also in the comments:
“Thanks for spending your own money to generate data the rest of us can use!”
I wish I had 10k to waste on whatever the fuck this was. Fucking rich ass weirdos.
i love that one day after the experiment ended he tested positive for COVID but we don’t hear anything about whether or not his assistant did or if he told her he did. that’s very nice of him!
Has a roommate but can pay 320$ a day for an assistant?
Beyond parody. The wooden chair for the assistant broke me
I don’t understand how he had planned to hire people for 16 hour days 5x a week and the total amount of productive time in the week is 15 hours.
Hold up…
“the savory ones”?!
Rationalism is the capacity to ignore the painfully obvious subtext that this is some perverted anime fantasy thing.
Halfway thru I realized this is something you’ll want to unpack with a therapist.
So for him “being productive” means starting a blog post?
In addition to everything else this much anxiety over productivity seems a bit pathological.
Behind every successful Rationalist, there are five underpaid female service industry laborers?
Man, I knew this was going to be good going in, but that bar graph with the line for ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ exceeded my expectations and I laughed when I saw the note about the “experiment” ending.
Massive win guys, massive.
This feels like a vignette from American Psycho if it took place in 2023.
hahaha holy shit. Look, I know it’s the American way to make a stupid LLC and make stupid business decisions, I have one of them myself, but there are SO many more cost-effective ways to be more productive. Like even a coworking space is 00 a month. Or pay a productivity consultant for a couple hours of advice, I’m sure there are many in whatever Bay Area hellscape OP is in.
Once again, the rationalist tendency to throw out all prior work, start from nothing, and get nowhere.
Someone mentions in the comments that they’re doing the same thing, and i found it notable that he gets like 6 paragraphs and an image in before referring to his assistant as ‘her’.
It’s pretty obvious to me that there’s a lotta misogyny buried in the whole idea of this “experiment”, for the people doing it.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gp9pmgSX3BXnhv8pJ/i-hired-5-people-to-sit-behind-me-and-make-me-productive-for?commentId=vQZekKWBEHcwH5JxL
Please please please let this man post a video of himself breakdancing.