Yudkowsky thinks literal terrorists are less evil than people who think he's a dick.
Someone should tweet that article to him and see whether he renounces the value of empathy.
Jesus christ the guy is so badly informed.
https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1099380909604691968
He never heard of 'hide your power level'. And he obviously has never read any 'evil' people forum where people discuss how to fake being a 'good' person.
The reality is the opposite of what he is thinking here.
> he obviously has never read any 'evil' people forum where people discuss how to fake being a 'good' person.
I might be misremembering this, but isn't there a taboo in the rationalist community on teaching people the "Dark Arts," which include things such as effective rhetoric? I remember seeing a comment under Alexander's "How to write an essay" guide calling it "Dark Arts."
Makes me wonder, if you shut out the study of effective rhetoric from your "think hard and know everything" club, aren't you just weakening yourself?
around 2010-2011 they would discuss "perhaps we could promote our ideas on AI risk with *oo wee oo* **DARK ARTS** maybe what do you think"
(eyes light up at the *transgression* of saying and contemplating "**DARK ARTS**")
until some realised there were people who do this shit for a job and it's a matter of expertise, and they went back to considering themselves too righteous to be actually effecitve
now they're just into scientific racism, so
> there were people who do this shit for a job and it's a matter of expertise
wait are you saying rationalists aren't instant experts on stuff they care about
My guess is that the "dark arts" includes all sorts of making-yourself-persuasive things like rhetoric, composition, public speaking, intonation, small talk, listening, asking questions, kindness, empathy, aesthetics, design, fashion, personal grooming, posture and generally doing your best to be pleasant for others to interact with.
To adapt the old saying, "Personality - if you can fake that, you've got it made."
A dark art indeed, which politicians and businessmen are known to dabble in.
The best way to reach your goals is to study the Dark Arts, apply it, and tell everybody else to not study the Dark Arts, and then signal you don't use the Dark Arts for social capital. (Even better, after learning the Dark Arts spread around fake 'this is the Dark Arts' posts so you can signal against the fake dark arts. Even better if the fake dark arts, or defense against the fake dark arts makes people more easy to be hit with the real dark arts (yeah I'm having a normal, not paranoid at all, one here)). Possible counter tactic, anybody who even talks about the Dark Arts should be suspect as somebody using them(*).
But seriously, I think the banning of the dark arts is because the dark arts are dishonest. (I'm not even sure what the dark arts of rationality are btw, and a quick google search of them seems to be about things that don't make sense to me. As im not a Bayesian robot with access to his own subroutines. Bonus points for the rationalists going 'using the dark arts [on others] is fine if you realize you yourself are being manipulative')). From what I can tell it involves lying to people and hiding information, and trying to take over their decision making processes.
Aha, it seems [to mean this](https://nintil.com/2015/12/31/less-wrong-shibboleths/): "Using ‘Dark arts’ to refer to systematic exploitation of biases to persuade someone". I can see how this, combined with inconsistent argumentation can be an issue when you are abusing it to convince people. But I fail to see how you can do it as a long term strategy without being called out.
There is also the 'rationalists should be winning' posts (To be fair, the people writing these now are saying they no longer stand behind them btw). Which could lead to people ignoring the community standards of niceness, honesty, etc and go for max winning sociopathy, so I'm glad there was a realization that this might not be a good idea to introduce.
Dark arts also seems to mean 'convince people of things which are untrue'. Using this idea, convincing people of 'becoming a rationalist is the most important thing you can do' is probably a dark art. (As 'the most important thing' seems to me an untrue claim. But if you believe that only Big Yud can safe the planet/human species it is not a dark art to convince people of this).
Im not going to touch [power point is a dark art](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Dark_arts). (one of the links at the bottom, is that ... [Aurini?](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Davis_Aurini) please tell me that is a common name and this is a coincidence. Or god he is a neoreactionary, it is him (LW aurini is from Calgary as is Davis). he is like the anti dark arts, if I wanted to convince people of X, I would hire him to argue against X. Ow god... my sides... I found the dark arts... it is laughing yourself to death... [send more paramedics](https://youtu.be/lRcle-JgnFA?t=67)).
So to come back to your question, on 'are you weakening yourself', I think it depends on what your goals are. If you are looking for truth and honesty perhaps banning methods that work irregardless of truth and honesty isn't weakening yourself. (But as I can't get a clear definition of what The Dark Arts means, this seems like a sort of circular reasoning).
I wasn't referring to dark arts rationalist posts btw. More racist/sexist forums, 'this is how you act SJW stuff' (btw mimicry is often also wrong, or uses out of date terms, but if somebody makes a fake SJW profile, it can still be used as an example for the anti-SJW crowd).
\*: Did I just say you shouldn't trust anything I say here? I think I did (\*\*).
**: I think that thinking too excessively about these kinds of things can easily drive you quite mad, esp if you are already a bit of a paranoid person.
Edit: sorry for the novel.
Holy shit I honestly don't know what to do with the realization that Davis Aurini is a lesswronger. It is so funny (that is the guy [hbomberguy used to mock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsdIHK8O5yo) a lot in his videos, Davis also has a pet skull) and so sad (for the LW crowd) at the same time.
Hahaha. Sorry thats mean but, haha lol.
Ow god, Davis even rejects LW transhumanism because ... [CW: davis, is euh yeah everything bad: sexist, racist, white nationalistic, etc] [I have no clue. I guess because it looks like Yud is pro forcibly uplifting people so they no longer have sex or something? Owww it is an april fools post (well he got me).](http://www.staresattheworld.com/2014/04/transhumanism/)
(Yes, yes, this post means he broke with LW / rationalism and self-ejected out of the movement so my earlier statements about 'he is a LW'er should be 'he was a LW'er').
Reaction from Davis blog: "Ironicaly, I found your works through LessWrong." The rationalist -> white nationalist pipeline is real! (this cured me from my laughing btw).
He would probably respond that he can see how good people could be led to hate the US and become terrorists. That distinction is exactly what he's trying to express in the tweet.
You can see how "good people" can be driven to murder American civilians, but you cannot see how good people can be driven to write snarky comments on the internet? Really?
>You mean Yudkowsky? Yes, I'm sure he can.
In OP's link, Yudkowsky says:
>>Hate directed at Scott Alexander? At Scott Aaronson? These are some of the nicest, politest, *kindest* people on Earth and anyone who goes after them is, there is no mincing this word, evil.
"No mincing this word, evil". That's how he describes people who hate Scott Alexander or Scott Aaronson. You're simply wrong in your claim that he can see how good people may be driven to snark at slatestarcodex.
>Can you see how good people can be driven to murder American civilians?
I can see how people can be driven to murder American civilians. I can imagine walking in the shoes of someone who has made that decision; I can understand how they got there. But I refuse to call such people "good". That's not how I define that word.
Sorry, I meant that I'm sure he can imagine the one thing and not the other at the same time.
> I refuse to call such people "good".
You don't think anyone that ever murdered a civilian was a good person? Come on. Whether Muslim terrorists are more evil than Sneeritors doesn't hinge on this.
Defining "good" is fairly difficult, and it may be the case that there are murderers whom I'd label "good", but I don't believe the typical terrorist is in that category.
To be a terrorist generally requires allowing your [viziers](https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/05/31/hansonian-optimism/) to use some sketchy as fuck arguments to sway you, so sketchy that you really ought to know better. I can't be sure that's the case for all terrorists, but from my current understanding I'd be willing to bet it's the case for most of them - most are not good people.
Maybe, but that's kind of the crux of his argument. The vast majority of these terrorists probably actually have such viziers, and really really want to believe that killing people in morally good; and it is easy for Yud to see how they could get in such a spot. Whereas a certain strain of Sneeritors seem to him to hardly even pretend that they aren't having fun on the expense of someone else's mental health. If they were blowing themselves up to murder Scotts, he probably would see them differently.
Although to be fair, he doesn't mention the sneering aspect of this in the tweet; he presents the hate towards Scotts itself as enough to make someone evil. And that's probably not quite tenable. I suspect he's exaggerating a little.
OK, but Yudkowsky also couldn't understand how people can dislike HPMOR, and invented a ridiculous theory that maybe their brains work differently and they have a "get upset at people disrespecting authority" brain module that he lacks ([link](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-experiences-are-you-missing-without-realizing-it/#comment-45814)). In other words, he has a complete blind spot about how normal people could possibly dislike him and his friends, and generally starts making up nonsensical theories to explain this when it happens.
In this particular case, the nonsensical theory is "they are evil". Like, literally that's all he has.
---
I want you to let me know what you personally think of this matter, because it feels weird to argue with the (likely flawed) model of Yudkowsky you have in your head. I'd rather be arguing with someone real, thanks. So tell me: are we sneerclubbers evil, in your estimation? If a sneerer tells you that she finds her sneers to be a (small) moral good, can you imagine how she arrived at that conclusion? In other words, do you stand behind Yud here or are you playing Devil's advocate?
I think terrorists do evil things, and I think doxxers do evil things. I don't really have a strong opinion on whether people who hate Scotts (or Yuds, or SJWs etc.) are evil. I was just trying to explain a common-sense interpretation of what he wrote. You can view that as playing devil's advocate if you want.
I can imagine how people find some sneers a moral good, yes.
I wrote a short story on the events so far, and my predictions of the future:
So it goes, The Doxxers dox (and harass) 'Doxxed man'. Doxxed man also gets infohazards targetted at him from one Iraq. Iraq then goes, wow yes, our boss is a tirant(*), but we didn't Dox/harass. Doxxed man gets hurt deeply and writes post going 'fuck you Iraq' as he thinks The Doxxers came from Iraq (and he was mad, and hurt, so understandable), the dox might have, as there surely were doxes in Iraq in the past. But, the UN came in and orderd IraQ to remove the dox. Iraq complied. Also Iraq knows having somebodies dox is different from harassment (and 4chan also had it, and they are evil). (I don't know btw, people here deny it, I'm a recent immigrant of Iraq).
Inhabitants of the country 'Doxxed man' get mad and write angry texts. the leader of the country of 'Big Yud'(**), ally of 'Doxxed man', says Iraq is The Great Evil, because they harassed Doxxed man and Quantum computing man, and write infohazards against about The Big Project. It seems the distinction between The Doxxers and Iraq is gone.
Iraqis laugh at the absurdity, but also are a bit worried. They know what Bush did to the sneerclub in reaction to 9/11. Iraqis who say to the country of 'Big' and the country of 'doxxed man', it wasn't us. Get ignored. (of course, don't negotiate with terrorists). Country of quantum computing has no idea what is going on, or wisely picks the French option. Dehumanization of Iraq (and the 'infohazards' coming from Iraq) intensifies. Iraqis laugh after finding out 'Big Yud' was less mad at the sneerclub than Iraq.
Irak gets invaded, the infohazards destroyed, the inhabitants flee to the winds, and geopolitical stuff gets worse. The Doxxers laugh and hide in anonymity, 4chan continues to pump oil and money into ssc and finance doxxers and harassers. Nobody talks about Yemen. The awakened AI continues to maximize profit on paperclips in the background. Few years later the planets ecosystem finally says 'wtf is up with all these profits over here? Fuckit, im out'. Humanity as a higher civilization dies. The great filter laughs in the background.
*: aka: yes sneerclub criticizes the rationalistsphere. Not saying the mods here are literal tyrants.
**: I like the term Big Yud, it makes me think of some big Lovecraftian monster. Something big and massive holding stone tablets with ancient writing on them, and gibbering incomprehensible secrets out into the void.
> Can you see how good people can be driven to murder American civilians?
Yeah. The issue isn't this point in isolation, it's in combination with his view that his critics are evil that leads to the conclusion that he thinks critics of him are worse than ISIS.
It isn't just him btw, SSC people also called this place terrorists. And we all know how the US deals with terrorists.
Whohooo free weapons!
Ow wait, leftwing terrorists. Those get the business end of weapons.
I said in a different tweet that if I said it as a Twitter quote, one
of those folks would adopt the Reddit flair: “There is evil that knows
itself for evil, and hates the good with all its strength.” As
predicted, they did.
Oh, Bre'er Yudkowsky, please, do whatever you must to Sneer Club using your formidable powers of rationality, but please, if you have any pity in you at all, don't give us more cool flairs. Why, that'd be just about the worst dang thing you could do to us.
> In case you’re wondering about the subtext, it’s about a colony of folks whose primary group activity is rebelling from the British Empire. They took a name very similar to “unsophisticated American”, a name that I once would have honestly expected to make somebody stop and ask “Are we the insolent?”
yudkowsky as a Loyalist completely minunderstanding the appropriation of “Yankee doodle dandy”
Honestly, I feel like this misunderstanding is where things went wrong for SSC. "Nice and polite" fascists are preferred over oppressed populations that are impolite about out it.
Out of curiosity, did anyone here participate in the Goodkind threads
of the asoiaf.westeros.org forums maybe a decade or some ago? They were
broadly devoted to making fun at the
fantasy books written by Terry Goodkind, and ever since hearing of
Less Wrong and company I’ve always been struck by the parallels:
the guiding philosophy of Objectivism /
Rationalism, which sounds all logical and science-y, and is
about understanding the fundamental truths of the world in a way that’s
better than alternatives; but really suffers from the what’s good
isn’t new and what’s new isn’t good thing, as well as no small
touch of “arrogance”
the charismatic (?) figurehead (Ayn Rand + Terry
Goodkind / Yudkowsky)
the fondness for technology and libertarianism (as the industrial
age cedes way to the information age)
the centerpoint of pedagogical fantasy literature (The Sword
of Truth / Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality),
with more distant nonfiction philosophy canon (Ayn Rand’s books and
essays / the Sequences)
the formation of a left-leaning group devoted to mocking the
above (the aforementioned threads / this very subreddit)
the adoption (? amused reclamation?) by that group of a term of
disparagement used by the fantasy author for self-identification
(Lemmings of Discord / SneerClub)
I wrote the following in a comment last week, on the thread about an article about Internet Logic Men:
> This phenomenon predates the internet - I first came across these same tendencies among self-identified Objectivists (i.e. Ayn Rand followers) in the 1980s.
Same traits, new label.
That's pretty hysterical, because I'm pretty sure one of the Sequences is some sort of handwringing over the possibility that rationalists might turn into a cult the way Objectivism did.
I used to like reading the sword of truth series, and then I noticed what he was doing, and liked it a lot less (I think he even goes somewhere, rape and pillage is good when we do it, and not when they do it, using a long rationalization).
Never participated in these threads so will have to take you on your word for it.
I think a lot of the people from those threads were once pretty solid fans (I lurked more than participated, but they were probably my favorite book series between the ages of 9 and 12... I think all the sex and violence made me feel all adult-like, esp. framed in the comforting cocoon of familiar fantasy tropes). Much like a lot of people here consider themselves to be *ex*-rationalists.
Putting on my sloppy-social-psych hat, I bet there's something of a reactionary (lol) growth process -- we can come to terms with mistakes we've made in the past by openly mocking them, and in so doing show ourselves that we've grown beyond them. Plus, the built-in familiarity is better at keeping participants around than just the so-bad-it's-good effect. Another possible example: back when New Atheism was peaking, many of the most ardent *sneerers* there were ex-fundamentalists, iirc. There's also probably a more acute sense of, idk, betrayal in these cases, which motivates one to action beyond just coming upon bad thinking in the wild. One feels stronger dislike for a cheating ex if the relationship beforehand were more serious, etc.
I seem to remember /u/dgerard saying something about how many of them are low-key Randian, but consider it shameful to admit it out loud. Probably because there's a shot directed at her in *HPMOR*, to the tune of "I'm just too *~rational~* to fall for this widely-mocked author".
Third, I would like to offer one final, admittedly
from-a-position-of-weakness, f**k you at everyone who contributed to
this. I think you’re bad people, and you make me really sad. Not in a
joking performative Internet sadness way. In an actual,
I-think-you-made-my-life-and-the-world-worse way. I realize I’m mostly
talking to the sort of people who delight in others’ distress and so
this won’t register.
It seems ridiculous to have to point it out, but: this is the same
guy who will happily defend and signal-boost all manner of
reprehensible, harmful views… yet when he’s the one being hurt he
immediately jumps to “people who say stuff that is harmful to me are
just evil, sadistic monsters!”.
fortunately there's a page on Bayesian breast cancer risk, it's even got javascript widgets to help you calculate your ~~racial superior IQ~~ i dunno, stuff in your life,
I'm sure the person behind the blog is quite nice to talk to in real life. "Scott alexander", the blogger persona, on the other hand, is quite a dickhead.
Scott is an asshole, full stop. He knows people use his blog to belittle others and he actively encourages it. Please don't give him the benefit of the doubt.
he and shtetl are quite kind if you're a white sadboy technologist being cruelly bullied by sjws for mere minor flirtations with phrenology
that's about as far as their "empathy" extends, though
Word. There’s no point in harassing anyone, but especially people incapable incapable of developing empathy for people different than themselves, and it shows by how they’ve never asked themselves whether someone abused their “openness” to “unpopular ideas” as a means to obtain Scott’s personal information, which is a far more common practice among the internet bigots we call out here.
I remember when Scott was talking about how awful Those Nasty Feminists were for getting upset that Aaronson was talking about women as ambulatory vaginas who were holding sex back from Nice Guys. He was very offended because Aaronson is Kind.
Of course, more lefty woke online bullies often get characterized as "kind" by their partisans as well.
What the hell is it with awful online types getting characterized as "kind?"
I’m upset at the trolls who bullied Scott into ending his Culture War
threads too. We all should be. Because in addition to the usual
awfulness of cyberbullying (god help us if the reactionaries ever
discover that tactic), after that experience there’s no way anyone could
be expected to rationally consider the thing that made so many people
mad at them, which indeed Scott did not. Now there will
never be a reckoning. Good job, trolls: you absolved him of ever taking
responsibility and you pushed the toxic morass into a new and probably
better venue.
> after that experience there's no way anyone could be expected to rationally consider the thing that made so many people mad at them, which indeed Scott did not.
Even if everyone on the internet reacted in a reasonable and polite way (which, incidentally; hahahaha), I can't imagine Scott would have had the "ahh, I'm the bad guy here!" reaction you seem to want.
No, but there still would have been a big difference between "I'm shutting down this forum because people harassed me even though it was a totally awesome forum that serves a good purpose and ought to keep existing" and "I'm shutting down this forum because the content is embarrassing and hard to explain to other people and impossible to keep clean even though [I think it deserves a platform](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/9lj3g7/accused_of_being_prohbd_on_tumblr_scotts_defense/)". I notice Scott didn't mention how he had already taken little steps in the second direction before, like there was one time when his bastion of free speech [tried censoring](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/8cpzjg/ssc_decides_to_ban_hbd_for_a_month_commenters_are/) the subject of ~~scientific racism~~ ~~glorified phrenology~~ ["human biodiversity"](https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/8cwwla/because_rslatestarcodex_has_banned_hbd_lets_play/) because it got so ugly. I'm guessing if they had made that permanent and shunted it all off into its own separate forum, Scott wouldn't have a pity party about what a shame it is that people can't have alt-scientific intellectual discussions about [the Negro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He4lO6Ggk_I&t=41) without being criticized for merely providing a platform.
EDIT: links
No. First, the issue isn't Scott Alexander's personal prejudices, whatever they may be; it's the cesspool of reactionary and fascist circlejerking he created in his (blog's) name. (Though since he's an ethnic Jew I'm gonna guess even without meeting him that he's not as interested in reconsidering the Holocaust as his fanclub is.)
Second, the act of *not* offering a cash reward for doxxing and *not* making a fake phone call to get someone fired from their job is not "walking on eggshells", it's just being a law-abiding grown-up. If you want to call him a Nazi, fine (though I think "Nazi sympathizer" is more accurate); if you want to warn his friends and fans about what's going on in his freeze peach zone, maybe that's good; but the behaviors of personal harassment that he described should be off-limits even among those of us who see the problems and hypocrisy in his gospel of civility.
Bullshit: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/28bAMAxhoX3bwbAKC/are-your-enemies-innately-evil
“The 9/11 hijackers weren’t evil mutants.”
“Sneerclub no mincing this word, evil.”
It feels good to be noticed.
[deleted]
“Nice and polite” are very different from actually being good and their kindness and empathy only extends so far.
Out of curiosity, did anyone here participate in the Goodkind threads of the asoiaf.westeros.org forums maybe a decade or some ago? They were broadly devoted to making fun at the fantasy books written by Terry Goodkind, and ever since hearing of Less Wrong and company I’ve always been struck by the parallels:
the guiding philosophy of Objectivism / Rationalism, which sounds all logical and science-y, and is about understanding the fundamental truths of the world in a way that’s better than alternatives; but really suffers from the what’s good isn’t new and what’s new isn’t good thing, as well as no small touch of “arrogance”
the charismatic (?) figurehead (Ayn Rand + Terry Goodkind / Yudkowsky)
the fondness for technology and libertarianism (as the industrial age cedes way to the information age)
the centerpoint of pedagogical fantasy literature (The Sword of Truth / Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality), with more distant nonfiction philosophy canon (Ayn Rand’s books and essays / the Sequences)
that fantasy literature (SoT / HPMoR) being held up by its author as some apotheosis of the written word (edit: e.g. from some interviews from Goodkind: “I don’t write fantasy. I write stories that have important human themes… My primary interest is in telling stories that are fun to read and make people think. That puts my books in a genre all their own,” or “What I have done with my work has irrevocably changed the face of fantasy. In so doing I’ve raised the standards. I have not only injected thought into a tired empty genre, but, more importantly, I’ve transcended it”)
the formation of a left-leaning group devoted to mocking the above (the aforementioned threads / this very subreddit)
the adoption (? amused reclamation?) by that group of a term of disparagement used by the fantasy author for self-identification (Lemmings of Discord / SneerClub)
the original authors making vigorous denunciations of the above (I distinctly recall Goodkind declaring that the Lemmings “hate truth” and are driven by their sense of hatred, edit: stuff like “…they hate that my novels exist. Values arouse hatred in these people. Their goal is not to enjoy life, but to destroy that which is good… These people hate what is good because it is good. Their lives are limited to loathing and indifference. It isn’t that they want to read a good book, what they want is to make sure that you do not. Ignore them.”, etc. / the assertion of evil in the OP and elsewhere)
…
I remember drawing up a longer list of comparisons between objectivism / rationalism some time (5-10y) ago, but can’t seem to find it now.
Scooter agrees:
It seems ridiculous to have to point it out, but: this is the same guy who will happily defend and signal-boost all manner of reprehensible, harmful views… yet when he’s the one being hurt he immediately jumps to “people who say stuff that is harmful to me are just evil, sadistic monsters!”.
I adopted the literal Basilisk as my flair and yet they still won’t say my name
what’s a traumatized girl gotta do around here
It’s like Sondheim wrote. They’re so nice. They’re not good, they’re not bad. They’re just nice. We’re not good, we’re not nice, we’re just right.
deleted ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^0.2328 [^^^What ^^^is ^^^this?](https://pastebin.com/FcrFs94k/48593)
I never went after him, I went after his bad ideas and lazy thinking, and his explicit values would suggest he should thank me for it.
Really curious as to what dude’s actual definition of “evil” is, tbqh. Though I doubt he’s much thought about it.
Rationalists: “Yeah, okay, our websites attract racists and other assholes, but those are just bad actors!”
Also rationalists: “A few douchebags harassed my friends so obviously r/SneerClub is 100% evil.”
otoh, thanks to EY for leading me to a good twitter
Scott Alexander is not kind. He’s an unpleasant combination of asshole and spineless people-pleaser.
I’m upset at the trolls who bullied Scott into ending his Culture War threads too. We all should be. Because in addition to the usual awfulness of cyberbullying (god help us if the reactionaries ever discover that tactic), after that experience there’s no way anyone could be expected to rationally consider the thing that made so many people mad at them, which indeed Scott did not. Now there will
never be a reckoning. Good job, trolls: you absolved him of ever taking
responsibility and you pushed the toxic morass into a new and probably
better venue.
fwiw, I can’t hear “mincing” and “evil” without wanting to support the idea
https://i.stack.imgur.com/AcaRm.jpg
http://screenprism.com/assets/img/article/_1080x400/bannerppg.png.jpg