So wtf is big Yud’s hairsplitting over fucked up 20th century
eugenics? Saving ‘defective transhumanism’ from association with the
Nazis? Saving ‘bioconservativism’ from ‘defective transhumanism.’
As far as I know, the ‘Soviet New man’ was neither a eugenic ideal
nor ‘transhuman’ in concept, so amazing that Yud excoriates others for
one misconception (I mean, Nazis leveraged eugenics for the goal of a
racial ‘ubermench,’ in any case) but gives his own.
Any work of neo-eugenics has to carry a pro-forma disclaimer that no really it's good this time and not at all related to Nazi stuff. Unless you're a hardcore NRxer, then you can just say it's all the same but Hitler was right.
[Also, disclaimer, no catgirls.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Py3uGnncqXuEfPtQp/interpersonal-entanglement)
One can hear a sea of heavy breathing suddenly take on an intonation of disappointment.
>Where "nonsentient romantic/sex partner" is pretty much what I use the word "catgirl" to indicate, in futuristic discourse. The notion of creating *sentient* beings to staff a volcano lair, gets us into a *whole* 'nother class of [objections](https://www.lesswrong.com/lw/x5/nonsentient_optimizers/). And as for existing humans choosing to take on feline form, that seems to me scarcely different from wearing lingerie.
On the one hand, I guess I'm glad he's for "people taking feline form" catgirls. On the other hand, what the fuck?
In what kind of subculture do you end up debating "nonsentient" sex slaves who look like cats?
> but what rationalist wouldn't want a pet they could uh teach to do math
I honestly think they'd be too lazy to teach a catgirl math. Have you seen catgirls, they all got ADHD.
Wasn't the [New Soviet Man](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man) overwhelmingly a social concept?
Bardzinski argues it had a eugenics component, but also says that eugenics includes things like (re-)education and training.
That's actually pretty common. Eugenics was at the time a bit of a buzzword, and was used for a lot of things that we wouldn't strictly consider within the parameters. (i did a paper on early 20th century marriage advice manuals, and it kind of intersected with eugenics a lot)
**New Soviet man**
The New Soviet man or New Soviet person (Russian: новый советский человек novy sovetsky chelovek), as postulated by the ideologists of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was an archetype of a person with specific qualities that were said to be emerging as dominant among all citizens of the Soviet Union, irrespective of the country's cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, creating a single Soviet people, Soviet nation.
***
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Whole article is short and a gold mine but the last line in
particular:
It’s the Communists who were the defective transhumanists.
“New Soviet Man” and all that. The Nazis were quite definitely the
bioconservatives of the tale.
Yudkowsky evidently is ignorant of programs like this which, through
forced experimentation on people held in concentration camps, attempted
to grant superhuman enhancement to endurance and other attributes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-IX
The weirdest thing to me is how he starts out by referring to the reader as 'educated denizens' who know about Nazism, then condescendingly corrects a misconception no one who knows anything about Nazism actually has, and then claims this nonexistent misconception is actually because of how awesome and progressive people in the west are. The mind boggles.
Also even if the Nazis weren't attempting to grant superhuman enhancement, what the fuck is Aktion T4 if not the most brutal form of eugenics? Literally murdering the genetically undesirable. There's nothing bioconservative about that.
That's kinda the opposite actually of what he's trying to say. He's trying to say that it's unfair to compare his lot to the nazis, because the nazis are actually more like his enemies, while he and his friends are more like a way better version of the Soviets if anything.
Which mind you is still REALLY FUCKING DUMB
You're right, I jokingly used 'nazis are misunderstood' because that's technically what he said even if he's not actually saying what my comment implies.
EDIT - I'm not actually sure he's flattering the USSR though. It's reads to me more like 'don't slag off shit transhumanists by associating them with Nazis... the Soviets were the *real* shitty transhumanists!'.
So wtf is big Yud’s hairsplitting over fucked up 20th century eugenics? Saving ‘defective transhumanism’ from association with the Nazis? Saving ‘bioconservativism’ from ‘defective transhumanism.’
As far as I know, the ‘Soviet New man’ was neither a eugenic ideal nor ‘transhuman’ in concept, so amazing that Yud excoriates others for one misconception (I mean, Nazis leveraged eugenics for the goal of a racial ‘ubermench,’ in any case) but gives his own.
Whole article is short and a gold mine but the last line in particular:
Yudkowsky evidently is ignorant of programs like this which, through forced experimentation on people held in concentration camps, attempted to grant superhuman enhancement to endurance and other attributes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-IX
I don’t even know what this is trying to say
What a bunch of a-holes.
Oh, gag me and shut up and do your fucking research.