The stuff about how the government functions is absolutely nuts
>The Angel of Preference takes census and survey data from every citizen of Raikoth, runs it through the series of utilitarian superstructure functions in the Risurion-Silk, and spits out a utility function. Its calculations bear the same resemblance to the QALYs and DALYs of today as a supercomputer does to an abacus. What it ends up with are a series of [preference weights](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/30/utility-weight-results/) for possible world-states and for various subcomponents of those world-states. It knows the marginal value of saving three people from poverty and how that compares to the marginal value of decreasing water pollution 6% in the Great Gleaming Fjord, or of one new baby being born in Uolrhaphen.
Really surprised nobody has figured out how to sell these people socialism. Take [Towards a New Socialism](http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/), throw in prediction markets, utilitarianism and AGI and you could probably convince a sizable minority of rationalists to go red
I mean Scott in Meditations on Moloch writes:
>And the whole point of Bostrom’s Superintelligence is that this is within our reach. Once humans can design machines that are smarter than we are, by definition they’ll be able to design machines which are smarter than they are, which can design machines smarter than they are, and so on in a feedback loop so tiny that it will smash up against the physical limitations for intelligence in a comparatively lightning-short amount of time. If multiple competing entities were likely to do that at once, we would be super-doomed. But the sheer speed of the cycle makes it possible that we will end up with one entity light-years ahead of the rest of civilization, so much so that it can suppress any competition – including competition for its title of most powerful entity – permanently. In the very near future, we are going to lift something to Heaven. It might be Moloch. But it might be something on our side. If it’s on our side, it can kill Moloch dead.
Rationalists aren't opposed to Marxist-Leninism, *they just haven't met a central planner they trust yet*
Sorry, it wasn't meant to be an insult towards philosophers, a lot of whom I am fond of, just those who think their expertise allows them to comment on other fields.
(in the spirit of honesty Scott openly admits that he's attracted to the idea of communism in his review of Red Plenty)
>[This book was the first time that I, as a person who considers himself rationally/technically minded, realized that I was super attracted to Communism.](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty/)
He says that and then sweeps away all rational argumentation that Marxism makes without any consideration. He's attracted to the idea of "people should live better than they do", he's not interested at all in any of the arguments Marxists make about class struggle etc. It's a little rhetorical tic to try make himself look magnanimous/reasonable.
> Hey Scott, do you ever think that maybe normal people might not want that information to be displayed to everyone they encounter, all of the time? Or do you really think fashion should revolve around your fear of being called a "creep" by some girl you hit on who clearly wanted to be left alone?
I'd give that system five minutes in the wild before someone comes up with a bead color that means "I will have sex with pretty much anyone who asks, with the notable exception of you. Yes, *you*. Go the fuck away and try to learn breathing through your nose while you're there".
Because that bead color is super useful.
The bead system seems taken from the Vorkosigan saga sci-fi books. One of the culture is very sex-positive and they use earrings to signify if they're available or not.
To be fair it is somewhat of a generalization of a wedding band.
The reason I got tired of rationality was the bizarre tolerance, in
large parts of the community, for alt right and Neo-Nazi opinions. I
really don’t give a shit if someone is/was involved in some silly
roleplaying game.
Some of the internet Nazi types like to defend themselves by saying
that anyone who disagrees with them just hates them for being weird and
nerdy, which is bullshit, and I’m not gonna validate that bullshit
narrative by laughing at irrelevant nerdy stuff.
Honestly, I posted this with no more of a complicated reason than "LOL, what the fuck is this picture of Scott Alexander on a fake currency?" Though I get how people could draw the implication of hating on a nerdy interest for it's own sake, which I don't mean to. I just stumbled into this on Google Images and thought "whatever the hell this picture is SneerClub would probably find it funny" and shitposted it.
It speaks to the personality cult around Scott that this even exists. And like commenters who've delved into things more have mentioned, it partially also speaks to the politics and psychology surrounding him. I think it's strategic to undermine a personality cult in *addition* to whatever ideas percolate around one. Swap out the pic of Alexander on currency to one where I found Peterson instead. It'd also be absurd on the face of it. And I think biting at *that* is relevant.
And I think it's riding a lot on one shitpost to think about how this post might be anti-strategic to Nazis and be used as evidence of nerd-bashing. Again, disavowing the later. I guess that's a valid concern to some here. Though that group is far from my mind as most relevant to that concern. But even then SneerClub to me, and I've been around since it had ~40 subs, has always been a place to post high and low content without necessarily being strategic about it.
> It speaks to the personality cult around Scott that this even exists
I'm not sure whether this counts as an argument either for or against your position, but Scott made those notes himself. I actually thought they looked pretty nice in 2008, by the standards of micronational money.
Naaaaah. We Shirithians and the others in the general community were always the cool kids who knew we were just having fun playacting politics and stuff, unlike the weirdos over there who thought they were actually going to found nations. It's just that while it didn't take us *that* long to figure out that "micronationalism" was really, *really* the wrong word to use for the stuff we did, it did take long enough that the name had already stuck. Besides, all the other options we came up with ("collaborative geofiction" was proposed at some point) sounded even dumber.
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The reason I got tired of rationality was the bizarre tolerance, in large parts of the community, for alt right and Neo-Nazi opinions. I really don’t give a shit if someone is/was involved in some silly roleplaying game.
Some of the internet Nazi types like to defend themselves by saying that anyone who disagrees with them just hates them for being weird and nerdy, which is bullshit, and I’m not gonna validate that bullshit narrative by laughing at irrelevant nerdy stuff.
Apparently, Scott’s worth 5 “erb” in the Shireroth.
EDIT: It’s some kind of micronation and RPG with possible real world aspirations.
Isn’t the Landsraad comprised of the Dune royal houses? How could one individual have five votes?
Holy fuck.
I make part of my living designing horror and sci-fi games and if I had the willpower, I’d go through and make redlines on this setting.
…actually, that would be kind of a fun sneer, but I think I’d have to be editor levels of drunk to do it without destroying my computer.