Alicorn is mostly known for being responsible for the polyamory/rationalism link and HPMOR-themed Twilight fanfiction (yes really), however she also support the eugenic extermination of trans people.

u/DELETED 21 points at 1542126380.000000

Does anyone have a good take on the origin of the Yudkowskian language exhibited here and by other rationalists?

I am in favor of default voluntary immortality for anyone who wants it, and would also be in favor of rescue sims of past people if they looked feasible.

This kind of shit really wowed when I first read it, now it just makes me embarrassed for them.

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u/chimaeraUndying 21 points at 1542134591.000000

I think it's just sort of a terminus of linguistic evolution for "trying really hard to sound smart" that gets reinforced and developed by people who *do* talk like that talking to each other a lot -- people start out with an "intelligent tone" they're deriving from passive media exposure, and then get sucked down the rationalist whirlpool and impregnated with jargon by the Charybdiean monster at the bottom of it. ... God, I've caught it now, haven't I? Someone please shoot me before I turn.

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u/DELETED 10 points at 1542135005.000000

> impregnated with jargon Better than any rationalist vomitus I've ever read.

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u/chimaeraUndying 10 points at 1542135314.000000

I try my best! Seriously, though, it's like none of these people have ever had the idea of a "conversational tone" even exist nearby them. You'd think that making their stuff easy to get into (like a pitcher plant is) would be a priority, but apparently front-loading puzzle phraseology is critical to whatever they're calling their Bayesean Conspiracy this week.

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u/zhezhijian 9 points at 1542139651.000000

Why bother sounding conversational when the only people who would benefit are NPCs tho

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u/chimaeraUndying 5 points at 1542139807.000000

Fair point, I momentarily shelved the closed-circuit bit of the dogma because of how inconceivably dumb it is.

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u/holomanga 2 points at 1542814211.000000

It's about as easy to get into as Scottish twitter.

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u/dgerard 14 points at 1542140916.000000

The Extropians started on this sort of thing. Yudkowsky grew up on the Extropians list. But slightly-smart people trying too hard to sound sooooper-smart is a perennial.

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u/DELETED 37 points at 1542095360.000000

(why oh why did I write an essay on eugenics)

gee, I wonder

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u/DELETED 31 points at 1542115748.000000

"Whoops haha this happens sometimes haha don't forget to donate haha"

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u/chimaeraUndying 16 points at 1542134980.000000

Hey, let's be charitable here: maybe her hand slipped, and it was a *complete coincidence* that her sleeve was full of an unending stream of parafascist handkerchiefs which all spilled out.

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u/pipster818 47 points at 1542094058.000000

The rest of this section will assume that you have read my short story Threshold. Go do that now if you haven’t yet. Alternately, consider finding that trivially inconvenient and therefore ceasing to read this essay on eugenics

Before anyone reads the rest of this comment, I expect you to read my entire epic fantasy saga, The Throne of Dragonvampire King, available on Amazon for .99, plus the prequel series, and please spend a little time on my personal web forum familiarizing yourself with the most prominent fan theories and maybe attend a convention or two, tickets 50 in Vancouver biannually, otherwise you the probability of you being able to comprehend my reasoning is incredibly low. Ok that’s it the comment is over.

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u/completely-ineffable 36 points at 1542094213.000000

I see you've stumbled on the Jordan Peterson method.

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u/chimaeraUndying 12 points at 1542135942.000000

In a somewhat unsurprising twist, Peterson's just aping his method from Vermin Supreme's "BUY MY MERCH" system.

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u/freerange_hamster 14 points at 1542152368.000000

I actually read the story. It manages to make the attached essay more vile.

The story is set in the glorious robot future. Death is effectively cured; humans can upload their consciousness onto chips. The Christian church is chill with with genome editing and trans people. And yet, despite all this advancement, it’s still apparently worse– medically and socially– to be trans than cis.

If you caught me in the right mood, I could appreciate a story about parents realizing that their embryo would grow into a trans person and editing his genome to match his experienced gender preemptively. Science-magic him into a cis man rather than a trans man, if you will. In Alicorn’s story, however, the desirable child (Mercy) is a cis woman, whereas her undesirable alternate self is a trans man (Lyle).

So, uh, good to know that trans people have less inherent value than cis people, regardless of social conditions and systemic factors. Real comforting.

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u/LinearDE 5 points at 1542261417.000000

>Science-magic him into a cis man rather than a trans man, if you will. Doesn't the same criticism apply here? Does the fact that this is an endorsable choice means transmen are somehow less valuable or less male than cismen? Note: I have gender dysphoria (but am not going to transition), and it wouldn't cause me any grief if parents chose to select embryos with the motivation of avoiding gender dysphoria (if theoretically possible). It's not a pleasant experience, and I'd rather other people not go through it. I don't have a strong transsexual identity, which is perhaps why I differ. For example, and I'm not making any sort of comparison, I'm aware some disability groups with a strong sense of identity, such as deafness advocacy groups, seem to hold a very negative view of embryo selection.

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u/freerange_hamster 6 points at 1542286329.000000

> Doesn't the same criticism apply here? Does the fact that this is an endorsable choice means transmen are somehow less valuable or less male than cismen? I think the motivations of the parents in the two scenarios are just different enough to matter. If parents find out that their child has a high likelihood of being trans and decide to genetically alter that child's sex to match his or her experienced gender, that's a preemptive validation of the child's feelings. Perhaps saying that the child will be science-magicked into a cis man is improper; the child just transitioned earlier than most. Meanwhile, in Alicorn's story, the parents of the happier timeline child heard that they might have a trans son and went, "Nope, we're producing a cis daughter." That smacks of fundamentalism meeting biological determinism. Like... "God gave us a girl, and we're gonna make sure she stays a girl, damnit."

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u/DELETED 2 points at 1542305917.000000

[removed]

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 5 points at 1542487806.000000

I just thought I'd check up on your username and lo and behold, you're being shitty again. Transitioning is the *most effective* way documented for people with dysphoria (in general) to deal with it, however all patients should consult personally with their doctors to work out the best solution for them, and telling them that they *have* to transition is incredibly fucked up. The fact that TERFs hold stupid beliefs contrary to established medical practice is absolutely no excuse for you to do the same. This comment is being removed and next time you do something this shitty you're banned, k? The only reason you're not banned yet is that I'm giving you perhaps an unreasonably fair opportunity to learn from your mistakes, because you're obviously getting ahead of yourself and have shown some contrition for that in the past.

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u/palind_romor_dnilap 27 points at 1542094169.000000

The fact that she uses this:

I am not ready for all possible babies.

But I am ready for most possible babies.

I would like to make use of the tools that are available to me to increase the probability of getting a baby more like the sort of baby I am ready for.

as a way to claim “anti-eugenicists don’t want me to have children” inherently proves she really shouldn’t have children.

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u/brokenAmmonite 25 points at 1542102914.000000

*at my daughter's dance recital* god, my child sucks. if only i had had access to eugenics. then she would have been good enough to love

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u/pleasenottothrowaway 9 points at 1542111616.000000

Are you implying none of the parents of children with genetic disabilities should ever wish they didn't have the disability? Seriously, WTF is love has to do with it? A lot of people both love their children and regret having them.

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u/brokenAmmonite 22 points at 1542130346.000000

the joke is that someone who's pre-filtering the set of children they're willing to accept is likely to be overzealous with their culling (in the same way that eugenicists tend to get their foot in the door with "prevent genetic diseases!" and then try to press the "no more brown people" button when your back is turned)

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u/Whisk3yTang0F0xtr0t 14 points at 1542140378.000000

>eugenicists tend to get their foot in the door with "prevent genetic diseases!" and then try to press the "no more brown people" button when your back is turned That's some pretty deliberate culling. And then you have people like Charles Murray that publish The Bell Curve using scientific racism to really push the "no more brown people"-thing but also puts out Coming Apart: The State of White America basically calling people who don't like to eat at Chili's elitist in order to appeal to the white people who if they weren't white *perfectly* fit the criteria for culling by eugenicists. Double standards, blerghhh.

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u/pleasenottothrowaway 4 points at 1542135433.000000

> is likely to be overzealous with their culling What are you getting at? That "culling" unborn embryos is somehow morally wrong? Or that long term artificial selection may lead to reduced genetic diversity? I'm pretty sure people are aware of that. And you can have genetic diversity without having a *diversity of diseases and disabilities*.

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u/Whisk3yTang0F0xtr0t 21 points at 1542140501.000000

The people pushing this won't tell you up front, but not being white is a disability to them. Also, most eugenicists couldn't pass an undergrad genetics course if it bit them in the ass.

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u/pleasenottothrowaway 2 points at 1542140859.000000

The only "eugenics" practice currently available is embryo screening for known genetic diseases.

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u/Whisk3yTang0F0xtr0t 16 points at 1542144437.000000

Although that’s useful and “eugenics” to the same extent that using contraceptives is “eugenics”, current limitations to these technologies don’t change the bigoted agenda the eugenics movement is pushing to medicalize what are actually the result of negative social externalities. Your lack of concern over how people are actively pushing to define large swaths of healthy people in the population as diseased indicates that you don't see yourself as the kind of person the eugenics movement is trying to phase out. I am one of those people they would like to phase out, and no quantification of achievements -- even in money -- will appease these fuckers. They're using other people's legitimate medical concerns to gradually get society to ignore the results of an individual's action and legitimize discrimination before a person even comes into being.

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u/TynamM 1 points at 1655742003.000000

And that alone is enough to lead to horrors. In very recent memory, doctors considered autism a disease. Many people still do. And it's definitely genetic. I would very much prefer a world in which my personality and everything I'm good at hadn't been 'pre-screened' out of existence because people are really, really bad at telling the difference between "unusual" and "disease".

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u/sha_nagba_imuru 15 points at 1542139151.000000

I'm not completely opposed to your argument, but disease and disability are both socially constructed categories, so there's a lot of room for problems here.

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u/Ogjkdgnh 3 points at 1542396410.000000

I'm gonna free my mind and throw away my glasses, then! Thanks for the info, i feel so silly for all this time letting society convince me that lens-corrected vision is somehow "better" than a sea of vague blobs!

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u/pleasenottothrowaway 1 points at 1542140233.000000

> disease and disability are both socially constructed categories Removing the category won't remove the disease, though.

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u/sha_nagba_imuru 15 points at 1542143245.000000

So your position is that disease and disability are objectively determinable markers? Can you elaborate on this?

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u/zhezhijian 9 points at 1542139767.000000

/u/brokenAmmonite was perfectly clear about their point lmaoo

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u/Myrdradek 10 points at 1542157565.000000

Oh hey, the group blog that published luminaries like St “Trump is FAR better on LGBT rights than Hillary” Rev and Sarah “Steve Sailer is great insight porn” Perry

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u/xsampa12 1 points at 1555276170.000000

Sarah hangs out way too closely with the alt-right on twitter and other places for my comfort. I suspect that's because she doesn't like modernity's loss of community, idolizes traditional aesthetics and other preferences that overlap with the alt-right/nrx crowd.

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 21 points at 1542125091.000000

I really struggle to believe that one person is responsible for a bunch of people in the rationalist community choosing to pursue an unconventional sexlife, and suggesting that they could be errs on the side of “gross” for me.

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u/IneffectiveEgoist 5 points at 1542131078.000000

Alicorn actually bear a lot of the responsibility because of her "Polyhacking" article, which did not invent polyamorous rationalism, but it did more to justify and perpetuate it than perhaps any other article ever written.

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u/zhezhijian 19 points at 1542139675.000000

Rationalists do enough stupid shit without needing to kink shame

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 10 points at 1542131443.000000

Your tone makes it sound like you disapprove.

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u/completely-ineffable 10 points at 1542138791.000000

To be fair, there's a decent argument to be made that cishets lack the moral character to sucessfully do polyamory.

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 9 points at 1542138918.000000

I had this in mind too, but I wanna be fair, they're still learning

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u/Arilou_skiff 7 points at 1542151319.000000

Cishets has been doing polyamory for thousands of years, isn't it a bit too late for them to claim to still be learning?

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u/noactuallyitspoptart 7 points at 1542152738.000000

Let us realise the arc of the moral universe is long...

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u/FrobisherGo 1 points at 1542453675.000000

Is there? Unless there's an in-joke lurking in there I'm not aware of, that's one of the most extraordinary assertions I've read in a while.

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u/IneffectiveEgoist 1 points at 1542541120.000000

https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/8sjxm9/serious_twitter_thread_by_someone_detailing_their/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/9hacld/the_ballad_of_brent_dill/

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u/holomanga 2 points at 1542815302.000000

Of course we'd disapprove of those *degenerates* with their *sexual impropriety*! One man owns one woman, that's the way it's always been.

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u/fasquoika 6 points at 1542133074.000000

Kinda off topic, but does anyone else think the word “neurodiverse” is primarily a euphemism to allow progressives to pretend like they can treat mental health issues the same way they treat race, sex, and sexual orientation?

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u/chimaeraUndying 16 points at 1542136247.000000

Assuming you're acting out of ignorance and not veiled malice, why don't you think mental health issues should be treated in the same way other distinguishing classifiers are? They're more mutable than most, but "age" is a pretty important distinguisher that's lumped in with the three you provided, and it's certainly more dynamic than something like sex.

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u/fasquoika 10 points at 1542137096.000000

>Assuming you're acting out of ignorance and not veiled malice I'm acting out of personal experience actually >why don't you think mental health issues should be treated in the same way other distinguishing classifiers are? Well, I guess I must've phrased this poorly, because I didn't really mean anything about "distinguishing classifiers". I meant in the sense of people acting like mental illness is just "perfectly fine human diversity" and not intrinsically maladaptive by definition. I think a lot of progressives hear stuff like "I'm not interested in a cure" and assume that means the same thing as "there's nothing wrong with being mentally ill". The word "neurodiverse" rubs me the wrong because it seems specifically designed to avoid the phrase "mentally ill" despite the latter being almost strictly more correct.

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u/A7thStone 13 points at 1542139283.000000

I see it as more of an attempt to not dehumanize and other them. While mentally ill may be more technically correct; it has more of a "less than" connotation than a more sterile term like neurodivergant.

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u/fasquoika 10 points at 1542140893.000000

>While mentally ill may be more technically correct; it has more of a "less than" connotation than a more sterile term like neurodivergant I can't say I agree. Do you think that "physically ill" has a "less than" connotation? If "mentally ill" has a poor image, that's almost certainly not because of the words themselves. How many times have we come up with new and "sterile" euphemisms for "mentally handicapped" only for them to become pejorative again? And, quite frankly, I don't know why you would think "neurodiverse" sounds sterile. It sounds patronizing and Social Justice-y, not unlike referring to autistic people as "special"

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u/A7thStone 7 points at 1542141196.000000

I wasn't saying I agree, I was just giving my take on a possible reason for the change of language. Although I will say if it is the reason I agree with the attempt, even if the new language does become a pejorative in the future.

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u/fasquoika 4 points at 1542142188.000000

Alright, I can understand if this is just your attempt to (using that atrocious Rationalist jargon) "steelman" the term "neurodivergent". To be honest though, the reasoning still doesn't make sense to me. "Neurodivergent" sounds like something a stereotypical blue-haired Feminist would say and "mentally ill" sounds like something a licensed medical professional would say. I don't know in what universe the former would appear more sterile. It seems like it's mostly just a dog whistle in practice.

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u/A7thStone 4 points at 1542144697.000000

I can see that, and while I find the attempts to police our own language commendable, I think it is taken too far sometimes. What would I know, though, I'm not a progressive. I'm an unapologetic offensive leftist.

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u/Myrdradek 6 points at 1542157654.000000

Oh no, not social justice-y!

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u/Sagebrysh 8 points at 1542182616.000000

Being mentally ill implies as you said, that something is maladaptive, causes distress. But there are ways of being...brainweird, that don't actually make your life worse, not everyone with autism has a strictly worse life than everyone without autism. There's this stigma that's been created in the west around any for of divergence from societal ideas of normality for a long time, but it's *framed* as an illness and that's not necessarily always the most...technically correct, description if it's not actually hurting them.

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u/pleasenottothrowaway -3 points at 1542140939.000000

eugenic extermination of trans people

I guess preventing gender dysphoria is bad somehow.

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u/completely-ineffable 20 points at 1542145159.000000

Congrats on earning yourself a ban.

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