Presenting a relevant chapter from “Harry Potter becomes a
Communist”: Chapter 63, “the methods of irrationality”
“Imagine if your Aunt Petunia did marry Michael Verres,” said
Quirrell wistfully in a stupid bourgeois way. “You would have been very
different when you arrived at Hogwarts. I imagine you would have been a
charmingly self-righteous child prodigy who plays cruel pranks on your
classmates by snapping your fingers, but it’d be okay because you’d
be doing it with such a brilliant flair and that’s what really
matters. Also, you would only be friends with worthwhile people
like Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy, ignoring the people who have no
reason to exist like Ron Weasley.”
“You mean I’d be friends with bourgeois elitists and ignore THE
FUCKING PROLETARIAT!” I yelled righteously for all the working-class
proletarians. “When you say that people like Ron Weasley have no right
to exist, YOU’RE SAYING THAT POOR PEOPLE HAVE NO RIGHT TO EXIST!”
“Oh, it’s not only the poor people I have a problem with!”
laughed Quirrell in a voice of intellectual elitism. “I also hate the
people of the Third World. You see, they fail to embrace the bourgeois
capitalist values of the Enlightenment, so their cultures are obviously
worthless. That’s why there’s so much child rape in Saudi Arabia and the
darkness of the Congo, but it doesn’t exist in the West at all!”
...Okay, just from this excerpt out of context, I genuinely have no goddamn idea if this is meant to be pro-communism or anti-communism. I mean, Harry and Quirrel *both* read like shitty strawmen a writer opposed to their ideology would come up with.
The context will only make you marginally less confused.
Though, uh, since this is sneerclub, I will point out that 2011-era Eliezer Yudkowsky (allowing for personal growth I don't know about) kind of *is* a shitty strawman of a rationalist. That passage about the third world was apparently based on a passage in the first draft of his fanfic. And the rest is just a mean summary of HPMOR.
Strawmen are a form of bias and anti rational problem. Rationalist want to fight irrational behaviours. So they became the strawmen. Strawmannin no longer exists, praise Moldyud.
Umm that fanfic. I mean wow.
It’s honestly impressive that someone has made a fanfic that makes me cringe more than HPMOR.
That fanfic makes me want curl up into a little ball it’s so bad/good.
There’s a subtle and nasty logic to why you shouldn’t (right now)
personally work on things associated with #altruism or any kind of
altruistic building activity. Let me explain.
Ideally, when you work on something to do with solving coordination
problems or making the world a better place, you would be rewarded for
your work in some proportion to how much value you create (say, 25%).
…
But in reality, it very rarely happens.
“I refuse to do anything altruistic unless I, personally, get
something material out of it”
I don’t know, I suspect he may be slightly misunderstanding
the definition of altruism.
It's actually very easy to turn charity into a good deal. For example, I donate clothes to the Salvation Army and then I'll buy them back for much cheaper than they would cost new. Everybody wins.
The depiction of the "Einsteins" as a manual labourer is pretty much implying that actual manual labourers are the backbone of the economy while explicitly claiming the opposite. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
I'm a software engineer. I do R&D in AI/Robotics/sensors (actual AI, not the MIRI pointless thought-experiment version). Because I listened to my mom and studied to do the things I loved. Now I'm weirdly ashamed of it because it's obvious that I'm not as useful to society as a teacher or a nurse or a social worker, but I make about 2-3 times as much money as them and I'm treated with more respect by my employers. We're not geniuses who bring value to the world, we're monkeys paid with the vast sums of money that VCs can afford to gamble with. Most of us in the "innovation" game are working on projects that are doomed to fail in one way or another, often by the hubris and greed of our bosses. Even if I end up working on a successful product, it's likely it will only benefit rich/powerful people. Those people I mentioned make a real difference with the sick, the young, the old, the poor, every day and every hour they spend working. The rationalist techbro worship makes me want to puke.
So I’ve done graduate study on the economics side of this, but honestly the most offensive thing here is the mis-use of that Werner Herzog reference. Herzog’s fascination with the stupidity of chickens is supposed to be about his (often dissenting) views on ecology, and the way humans developed civilisation as a result of departing from nature. I love Werner Herzog, and his point is the exact opposite of the one in the tweet: whenever he references chickens he’s saying that even somebody capable of having “technical conversations” ends up just as stupid as a chicken.
That dude used to run a really good blog criticizing LW and Yudkowsky, in fact he came up with a lot of the rebuttals of the basilisk. Sad to see he re-bought the whole LW mindset.
I didn't realize the ultra-wealthy and talented created all the wealth that exists. I thought the billions of ordinary people trading their time and labor had something to do with it.
The economy understander has logged on. Who is this IQ-brain?
>Note: That something appears on this blog does not indicate that I endorse it, not even that I have read it. The most you can assume is that I bookmarked it for future evaluation.
Must be a lawyer.
Yeah esp as crypto is designed from the group up to fulfill his def of the 'woke'. If we actually made polluters pay for their shit, the energy wasted and ewaste of cryptocurrencies would cause the creation of a new category of parasite just for them.
Ow, now i had an idea for a science fiction story. Basically the twist, turns out any intelligent species eventually discovers bitcoin, and that causes them to turn ever more inward and destroys their civilisation.
Haha I have a similar idea for a sci fi story where any intelligent species eventually puts commercials on satellites and limits their ability to see the stars and thus understand physics well enough to do interstellar travel
Yes, I guess Elon Musk's nonsense was what made me think of it. It could go that way... I guess there's something more chilling about the idea of a massive "drink coca cola" satellite though.
This “good incentive structure and win-win game” is why I am so
absurdly bullish on Ethereum by the way. Ethereum Dapps cooperate with
each other, whilst the “#Ethereum killers” all compete. Guess who wins
in that game.
man, do i have news for this guy about the possibilities of economic
cooperation
An individual who makes reductive and essentialising statements
on Twitter in pursuit of their desire to normalise their often
sociopathic views, and antisocial behaviours more generally.
A curio to seek out when you want to get a glimpse into the mind
of a remarkably sheltered and out of touch individual.
My head is spinning with how awful this take is on so many levels.
One of the ones that’s easy to gloss over, is defining everybody who
spends what they earn as a “zero marginal product” person betrays a
total lack of understanding about how the world or economy works. Hint:
a world in which we all work, earn money, and spend it all, is a much
happier world than one in which we do not.
He’s somehow a Galt’s Gulch Randian who doesn’t even get
capitalism.
Presenting a relevant chapter from “Harry Potter becomes a Communist”: Chapter 63, “the methods of irrationality”
(emphasis added.)
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9655837/63/Harry-Potter-Becomes-A-Communist
Eliezer Yudkowsky is a international hero for convincing some number of people who chronically generate hot takes to write fanfic instead.
“I refuse to do anything altruistic unless I, personally, get something material out of it”
I don’t know, I suspect he may be slightly misunderstanding the definition of altruism.
[deleted]
The audacity of discussing social value of labour when he’s day trading crypto currency
I’m sure Rococo joined twitter to show that the basilisk isn’t the peak of his stupidity.
man, do i have news for this guy about the possibilities of economic cooperation
Imagine thinking you’re really smart while you are that dumb
Yes, me and my friends all create immense value while being extremely undervalued. You all wokes wouldn’t get it
Rationalist:
An individual who makes reductive and essentialising statements on Twitter in pursuit of their desire to normalise their often sociopathic views, and antisocial behaviours more generally.
A curio to seek out when you want to get a glimpse into the mind of a remarkably sheltered and out of touch individual.
And of course the whole post turned out to be about cryptocurrency lol
My head is spinning with how awful this take is on so many levels. One of the ones that’s easy to gloss over, is defining everybody who spends what they earn as a “zero marginal product” person betrays a total lack of understanding about how the world or economy works. Hint: a world in which we all work, earn money, and spend it all, is a much happier world than one in which we do not.
He’s somehow a Galt’s Gulch Randian who doesn’t even get capitalism.
normal borlaug