It’s a safe space for people who have read anything by Scott or Eliezer and made a giant audible eye roll instead of immediately ejaculating on to their chromebook.

1. As long as you don’t say something along the lines of “maybe the nazis did have a point,” you’re welcome here. There are a handful of users who post both places.

2. Yes. Although depending on topic, it’s not always “friendly.”

3. /r/ssc is also uncharitable. We just don’t pretend to be charitable or to be in search of some greater truth. If someone says some racist shit, and someone calls it racist, I wouldn’t consider that bullying. Your definition of bullying may vary.

You could guess that the name of this subreddit would clue me in on (3), but since everything is ironic today, I’d rather ask.

The answer is no, some reasonable people really don’t believe in charity for Nazis. That’s not exactly Effective Altruism. There are some old, bad ideas that decent parts of humanity have managed to move past: Biblical creation, the flat earth, fascism, white supremacy/nationalism, misogyny, Holocaust historicity, anthropogenic climate change. It’s not just that these ideas are bad, but that they are old: we’ve already debated them, tried them, defeated them. Society has paid a dear price to move past some of these ideas, and in every case it’s clear why people in some situations would have strong irrational biases in favor of the wrong conclusion. You know, the sort of thing rationality is supposed to overcome.

Yet Rationalist discussions keep getting overwhelmed by these bad ideas, and I’ve wondered aloud before whether that’s because Rationalism is broken or because Rationalists almost entirely come from the same small group of people with the same set of biases. Maybe the former is more germane here: there’s this anti-intellectual tendency not to believe any truth about the world unless it’s been independently reconstructed using Rationalist mumbo-jumbo instead of thousands of years of messy incremental progress. Thus Rationalists have set up a big ol’ soup kitchen for trolls. That’s your charity.

When I hear someone proposing to debate some race-realism nonsense “for the sake of argument”, it sounds the same to me as if someone wanted to bring up the fossil record or ships receding at the horizon. I don’t even think it’s a good idea to argue about it anymore (though I plead guilty to taking the bait sometimes). I know my mind won’t be changed, but more to the point, I don’t even have the arrogance to be sure that I, who am not an expert in those domains, would actually win the argument in favor of a round earth or evolution or not doing ethnic cleansing. The likely outcome of giving those old bad ideas a fresh hearing, to be relitigated by amateurs, is just more people believing them. When you extend them that charity, you’re pretty much granting them the entire victory they sought, by treating them as if they’re even worth debating instead of laughing them right out of the discussion.

I’m an SSC regular on an alt. For me, it’s just an outlet to complain, laugh, and low-effort sneer at the various foibles of the sub.

I suppose anyone is welcome to post, but keep in mind the rules of SSC don’t apply here. Yeah, we’re probably uncharitable - so what? “Charity” has been weaponized on the main sub, so it’s nice to hold up a mirror to them.

Since the side-bar is not so informative, I wanted to ask:

1. Are /r/ssc posters actually welcome here, or should we stay away?

Yes, you are welcome to participate in whatever capacity you feel is appropriate. We do, however, emphatically disagree with the SSC moderation guidelines and requests that we honor then aren’t likely to lead to productive conversation for either party.

2. Often, /r/sneerclub makes good-natured friendly fun of all the bullshit that accrues in /r/ssc and the greater rational-sphere. I guess that’s one of the purposes of this subreddit? Laughing at my own folly, and exposing BS for what it is, is kinda nice; like cabaret / comedy is for politics.

The tone fluctuates between good natured ribbing and genuine horror and dread, depending on the topic.

If Rationalism often behaves like a cult, then perhaps it’s best to think of us as a cult deprogramming facility. That’s one part goring sacred cows until they don’t feel sacred anymore, one part anthropological interest in the superficially attractive but deeply unhealthy group dynamics and one part shining a spotlight on the noxious fruit of the poison tree.

3. Sometimes /r/sneerclub is rather… uncharitable? As some people complained, actually sneering at people in an unfriendly almost-bullying way. Is this part of the purpose of /r/sneerclub, and this behavior welcome here?

We don’t really have community guidelines on this specific topic, although maybe it’s time.

Speaking for myself, I’m here to mock ideas not people. Linking to and quoting comments is fine, but I try to avoid mentioning users by name or participating in the linked thread without a good reason. Most of the comments we discuss here are more illustrative examples of some theme anyway.

That said, I realize that what at least some people want from SSC is a safe space to explore ideas that are too taboo to be discussed elsewhere and that it can feel like a personal attack when elsewhere rears its ugly head to emphatically remind everyone why those ideas are taboo in the first place. We can and should endeavor to be kind in our criticism, but that can’t extend to allowing bad ideas to stand unchallenged for fear of offending the holder of those ideas.

Eh, people come here for different reasons. I’m basically here to make fun of the more cult-like aspects and complete ineffectiveness of this whole Rationalist thing. Basilisks and paperclips, mate.

Others are genuinely angry at e.g. the HBD stuff and feel threatened by it, so they’re a bit more aggressive.

instead of making a new thread:

Does it seem to anyone else that the entire “gray tribe” thing actually turned out to be a bunch of bullshit? Granted, I never was really a hardcore follower of the blog + comment sections, but I can’t recall thinking previously (maybe say like 3-4 years ago) that it felt red tribe. It’s hard for me to say if it was always like that, or if I’ve just moved leftward over the years.

Any thoughts?

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I think it’s good that this place is ‘uncharitable’ insofar (and only insofar) the norms of ‘charity’ in the Rationalosphere are warped and positively harmful. I haven’t seen anything in this subreddit, including making fun of Aaronson, that I would find inappropriate.

[deleted]

The principle of charity only extends as far left as Bernie Sanders (and that’s pushing it). Nazis are given the benefit of the doubt but communism is assumed to be obviously evil. Look at Scott’s review of Singer on Marx which is one of the most uncharitable things I’ve ever read.

This sub is about:

1. a certain 501(c)3 charity with a budget of over a million dollars a year of tax-exempt money to push literal pseudoscience. The ruthless dissection of everything to do with this is unambiguously in the public interest.
2. the cult-like subculture that’s accreted around it in the past couple of decades.
3. the terrible and socially damaging ideas that emerge from 1 and 2. The ruthless dissection of everything to do with this is unambiguously in the public interest.

Number 2. is the one where one has to draw a discerning line between public awfulness and tawdry private matters. So e.g. Scott’s personal life is not IMO a fair call. But when e.g. Dragon Army advocates a cult compound run by a house dictator, 1. and 3. give reasonable concern.

Slate Star Codex itself is absolutely part of the disease. Scott’s got a 000/month gig as a public intellectual, and that’s absolutely fair game for dissection. And e.g. James Damore’s infamous memo seems to have been cribbed from a SSC post, and it was sufficiently obvious that /r/slatestarcodex flagged it first. And then Scott heartily endorsed it. Again: the ruthless dissection of everything to do with this is unambiguously in the public interest.

/r/slatestarcodex is the merest dot of that, it’s just one that’s handy. To be absolutely unambiguously clear, /r/slatestarcodex is a Nazi-friendly toxic waste dump that thoroughly warrants being treated as a source of pathological ideas infesting the public sphere. Given that it’s a friendly, welcoming and heavily upvoting environment for literal fucking 14-Words-advocating Nazis, I suggest that your complaints of “… uncharitable?” can get in the fucking sea.

Well, /r/ssc is a perfectly good sub and I don’t see why anyone should mock it or shun its users.

The sub /r/slatestarcodex, on the other hand, has its problems, and deserves the occasional sneer.

(These are actually some very good questions which deserve real answers, but I don’t have time for that right now, I’m about to be late, sorry.)

As an aside, am I right in observing there’s a bunch of mods listed who haven’t posted here in many months? I doubt it does any harm, but it might make sense to remove them.