It’s official: MarxBro has turned Scott A. communist. He won the debate.

marxbro #19: I’m prepared right now to make one of the largest concessions that I’ve ever made to Marxism about anything. I think that right now, a command-and-control system like China’s would be preferable to what we have in the US.

Tfw you run a coronavirus simulation months before the real outbreak and one of the Scotts still won’t give you credit.

Scott is off the wagon again

Incidentally, if anyone ever wondered why I despise SneerClub and woke Twitter, in ways that might seem wildly out of proportion to their actual importance in the world … well, you now have your answer. The people who get called clueless techbros, asshats, and a thousand other names on those forums were overwhelmingly represented among the people who turned out to be the clearest and rightest about the coronavirus from the beginning. And this is so directly consequential that, even if the rationalist techbro asshats were wrong about everything else in their entire lives (which I don’t think they were), being right this one time would more than cancel it out. Furthermore, the very qualities that the techbros get attacked for—e.g., arrogant reliance on their own reason and math abilities, refusal to defer to the authorities in other fields—were precisely the qualities that caused them to be unpopularly right this time. I might someday forgive the sneerers for targeting me personally, but I can never forgive them for so directly targeting our civilization’s error-correcting machinery, at what might end up being a huge cost in lives.

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The irony here is that the person with the most rationalist ties that had actual power, Dominic Cummings, was the idiot who kept pushing the insane “herd immunity” plan of getting as many people infected as possible.

You see, Graham is an expert at fitting exponential curves to everything. That is basically the same as being an expert in epidemiology, and thus we should respect him for his valued intellectual contributions to society.

Sure, many people can fit exponential curves, but these people I listed are my favorites which is why I use my platform to specifically praise and legitimize them over others.

Oh my. So this is how Aaronson is deciding to handle quarantine stress. I guess it could be worse.

Didn’t this dude say he’d stop coming to SneerClub

The Gregory Cochran endorsement is so beyond the absolute fucking pale I’m genuinely surprised he went that far

SneerClub exists solely to attack people—it’s right there in the name! It has no constructive purpose beyond that: not even refuting bad rationalist ideas, which is regularly done on the rationalist forums themselves. Yes, you “blow off steam” together, in much the same way that high-school bullies might blow off steam by knocking a nerdy kid to the ground and grabbing his stuff, ideally in front of as many laughing onlookers as possible.

Which is why we’re… in a separate subreddit, that you wouldn’t know about if it weren’t for other nerds complaining about it?

WHO THEN SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO? CONTRARIAN, RATIONALIST NERDS AND TECH TYCOONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

This is what they actually believe.

Also check the other discussions tab for the glorious opinions of ssc on how this place is the most evil, and the reason billions will die from coronacommunism.

And this is so directly consequential that, even if the rationalist techbro asshats were wrong about everything else in their entire lives (which I don’t think they were), being right this one time would more than cancel it out. Furthermore, the very qualities that the techbros get attacked for—e.g., arrogant reliance on their own reason and math abilities, refusal to defer to the authorities in other fields—were precisely the qualities that caused them to be unpopularly right this time. I might someday forgive the sneerers for targeting me personally, but I can never forgive them for so directly targeting our civilization’s error-correcting machinery, at what might end up being a huge cost in lives.

Since when did anyone in SneerClub convince you to be dismissive of your friend’s fears? That was 100% you, Scott Aaronson.

BTW, Balaji S. Srinivasan cites the CDC and WHO in his pinned tweet.

There is so much to comment on here that I missed it at first, but apparently Scott’s reaction to a pandemic during which people are hoarding essentials causing shortages is wishing he could have recommended his friend to

STOCK UP ON FOOD AND MASKS AND HAND SANITIZERS.

The appropriate response to “people will start hoarding in a couple weeks” to not “me and my loved ones should start hoarding right now”. Jeez, it’s no zombie apocalypse. Supply chain failure is not the problem, people hoarding is.

I can’t get this out of my head, disregarding the whole sneerclub angle Scott is mad because he/we/whatever are putting to much trust in official organizations and listen to them. Which seems to be displaced because now there are high death rates etc.

Which has one huge epistemological problem. How do we know there are high death rates etc? Because the same untrustworthy institutions are reporting them.

There is such a basic epistemological failure here. (His update that he is worried about institutions not experts doesn’t help one bit, as they feed into each other. It is all related to each other.)

E: Otoh:

Sit-coms aside…

Good sneer. I eyerolled so hard I need new glasses after reading that Sheldon reference. (Why the fuck if you worry about nerd bullying would you ever refer to the big bang theory, the whole show is basically ‘lets laugh at nerds in such a way that the nerds are not getting that you are laughing at not with them’).

e2: And the reason I sneer is not to pick on nerds or something, it is because the rationalists community has gone ‘but what if the neo-nazis are right?’. They are nicer to the various strains of fascists (including Scott, ongoing private correspondence with Moldbug for fucks sake. He gets more steelmanning than the whole of sneerclub) than queer people and women, and that is just an object level issue to me. Also Scott, if you are reading this, stop attacking sneerclub, or sending people after sneerclub (stop pretending you are innocent here), and do something productive with your life. Crusader kings 2 is free to play for example (‘but that isn’t creative or productive’ yes, and not everybody wants to be creative and productive, and that you can’t see this is part of the problem, in fact this is a very common tech nerd problem (mea culpa) see Stallman’s opinions on giving birth for example).

eNaN: This has got to be the worst example of a rationalist not being self aware in a long time. ‘Sneerclub singles things out’ here are two singled out examples, including one not even about the post from Scott (but made to look like it was), but actually about Hansons weird post (and one line from a several paragraphs long post), and all just about tone, and nothing about actual content.

Even in your attempt to find common ground (which I appreciate), you still called me an “arrogant, dismissive bully” and other names. And people criticize me for a lack of self-awareness! 😀

(By the way, I think that criticism is surely justified. One of the reasons why I hesitate to attack people, is that I always wonder whether others would notice the same flaws in me. Have SneerClubbers ever been stopped by such reflections?

is it ironic that this comes across as a very irrational rant?

Wait, Scott Aaronson is like this? Why?

I’ve always taken my cues from “mainstream, reasonable, balanced” authorities, in any subject where I’m not personally expert. That heuristic has generally been an excellent way to maximize expected rightness.

well, he’s certainly right-wing.

Let me try and be fair to Scott. Bill Gates has been harping “we are going to have a public health crisis” for a long time, so I’ll give him that one. But Eric Weinstein? Robin Hanson? The rest of them? They might have made a comment or two, but they’ve also made a lot of nonsensical comments. He also includes Christakis on the list; is he a sneer club target?

That George H. guy writes well. Hang in there buddy <3

I’m pretty weird, and I actually like the Scotts (just not their fan clubs), and despite all of that, I think the Scotts are actually starting to radicalize me against weird people.

The other Scott jumps on the wagon (part V.)