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"Story concept: AU where capitalism actually works the way the illiberal left thinks it does. Almost the entire economy is still medieval peasants in mud huts; their crops are scarce and valuable but merchants' buying prices bear no relation to supply/demand; kings have iPhones." (https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1386422267412828161)
posted on April 27, 2021 09:04 PM by u/completely-ineffable
77
u/completely-ineffable 89 points at 1619557599.000000

Story concept: AU where Yudkowsky actually picks up a book and reads it.

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u/DELETED 25 points at 1619602483.000000
[deleted]
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 13 points at 1619603980.000000
Oh now you have to put me on to Yudkowsky’s Moby Dick take, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one
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u/finfinfin 6 points at 1619606121.000000
[you may suffer now](https://www.hpmor.com/chapter/64)
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u/vistandsforwaifu 14 points at 1619622375.000000
> TENGEN TOPPA GURREN RATIONALITY 40K > I have a truly marvelous story for this crossover which this margin is too narrow to contain. Thank fucking God for small mercies
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u/finfinfin 10 points at 1619606252.000000
oh my fucking god I had forgotten the lotr one and I want to cry
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u/Soyweiser 12 points at 1619621120.000000
Frodo the rationalist, missing the point. [E: one of the undertones is that the halfings are not that easily corrupted just because they are so content and not prone to having big ambitions (all this tied into 'races' is a bit meh but that is a different point). An idea often used more in LOTR inspired stuff. Also why does Yud hate Boromir, this is just the Ron Weasley HPMOR thing all over again]. Also, if Sauron is the mega smart super planner, why did he get his fingers cut off at all? Clearly Mega Sauron would have put his magical ring powers into a [bridge piercing](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_piercing), can't cut it off without cutting off the head, covered under armor, and never lose sight of it.
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u/finfinfin 7 points at 1619621832.000000
acoup.blog's posts about Saruman are great and do make me think that maybe, just possibly, he could be an example of Rationalist Sauron. Not because he's a Rationalist, but because of how badly he fucks up by assuming that of course he can build an army and plan a war, he's *smart*. https://acoup.blog/2020/06/19/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-viii-the-mind-of-saruman/ The earlier parts cover the army and its issues, but this one has the funny "even if everything comes up Saruman," flowchart.
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u/Soyweiser 4 points at 1619634399.000000
That blog series was great. And yes Saruman is a nice example of the hubris of the smart. Of course, Sauron being an actual hyperintelligent god would never make mistakes like that ;).
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u/finfinfin 7 points at 1619635363.000000
Sauron just wanted to make the trains run on time so his daddy could play. No, not his literal daddy, he was a loser. His cool daddy, played by Jack Black.
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u/finfinfin 3 points at 1619635379.000000
And when I say daddy I mean Angbang.
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u/finfinfin 3 points at 1619606435.000000
I want to *die*
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u/InvisibleAgent 2 points at 1619637049.000000
Please don’t kick me out of this sub, I swear I’m here to sneer. But... I actually think these stories are lighthearted and fun.
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u/finfinfin 7 points at 1619638141.000000
There are bits I can laugh at, and then there are bits that make me weep for Jirt. I just wrote jort by mistake and my phone has started autocorrecting typos to Jirt, I'm so proud. Anyway, ""Consider the computational power required to manifest over a hundred shadow clones," the Uchiha genius said in his dispassionate tones." is fucking hilarious and it's just a shame the snippet continues. The Anita Blake one is legitimately good, albeit mostly for the punchline. Same for the Matrix one, although not as good.
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u/InvisibleAgent 3 points at 1619638385.000000
I know right? Also: “Our species was capable of interstellar travel, Panthro, I know the quantities of energy involved! There is no way you can't build a nuke or steer an asteroid or somehow blow up that ever-living idiot's pyramid!"
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u/finfinfin 5 points at 1619638675.000000
Nah. Rocks are NOT 'free', citizen.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 21 points at 1619560834.000000
Traditional Hollywood wisdom dictates that you can’t sell a movie, however true, if people won’t believe it
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u/dgerard 14 points at 1619561608.000000
belief unsuspended, sorry
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u/dogdiarrhea 18 points at 1619557735.000000
Hey! He's read the harry potter books
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u/Lightwavers 34 points at 1619559292.000000
He actually *hasn’t*, funnily enough.
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u/Anna191916 21 points at 1619560554.000000
Give the man the cred he deserves. He said he read the first one, right? That's the only important book, the rest don't advance the plot at all. He's also read all the books he's written, which he assures us is a lot, so he must be educated. (sarcasm obviously ey is an idiot)
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u/DELETED 16 points at 1619561310.000000
>He said he read the first one, right? That's the only important book There's a reason it's not *Animorphs and the Methods of Rationality*
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u/N0_B1g_De4l 15 points at 1619568404.000000
I mean, there actually is a rationalist version of Animorphs.
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u/Lightwavers 6 points at 1619584689.000000
You can [find it here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5627803/chapters/12963046) if anyone wants to do some analysis on it.
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u/foobanana 13 points at 1619590123.000000
isn't that dragon army guy lmao Edit: just checked, yes it is in fact by the idiot who came up with the failed "dragon army" cult-house idea. god save me This asshole: https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/9hu945/dragon_army_guy_has_an_extremely_normal_one/
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u/DELETED 5 points at 1619572323.000000
oh no
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u/LaoTzusGymShoes 8 points at 1619563392.000000
Yeah because those books are actually *about* something other than the author just vomiting up bigotry.
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u/Lightwavers 4 points at 1619560718.000000
Lmao, he isn’t an idiot, but he takes pride in his lack of education. And personally I think being smart but ignorant is the worst possible combination for someone like him, since he’s able to extrapolate in ways that *seem* correct to people without knowledge of what he’s talking about, giving him a lot of persuasive power.
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u/DELETED 22 points at 1619564081.000000
[deleted]
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u/Lightwavers 0 points at 1619567460.000000
>which I'd say is something like "people who are consistently very wrong in obvious ways" Well, yeah, that’s not my reading of the word. Mine is the (I believe) more common meaning of someone who struggles with tasks that require a lot of concentration or more difficult logical leaps. But, mate, you can just say he’s consistently wrong in very obvious ways and have that point said without it getting lost in being translated down to a single word with very broad meanings attached to it. >People whom we have reason to believe perform well on IQ tests (like Yud, people with advanced degrees, people in highly technical fields) often display the same consistent, obvious wrongness we're talking about here. But this consistent, obvious wrongness is not due to a lack of cognitive ability, which the word ‘idiot’ implies. Thus, using the word is liable to get you into some misunderstandings, as people belonging to this group are falling into the same mental traps that anyone can fall prey to regardless of intelligence.
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u/DELETED 17 points at 1619573774.000000
[deleted]
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u/Lightwavers 1 points at 1619574225.000000
The point is that people who get called dumbasses for reasoning poorly and stating bad conclusions get lumped into people who have trouble with many common tasks and take longer to get things a lot of other people would consider simple and obvious. The latter group of people do not deserve to be compared with the former.
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u/DELETED 12 points at 1619574617.000000
[deleted]
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u/Lightwavers 1 points at 1619575384.000000
>That's verbally abusive high school shit. Unfortunately, "verbally abusive high school shit" is very common.
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u/DELETED 9 points at 1619575777.000000
[deleted]
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u/Lightwavers 1 points at 1619576591.000000
>Do that on a job and you'll be (rightfully) fired. Not in my experience.
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u/DELETED 30 points at 1619561997.000000
[deleted]
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u/Lightwavers -12 points at 1619562579.000000
Idiot just means mentally handicapped. Tbh I think it’s not a good word to use, just in general, for the same reasons you wouldn’t call someone a cripple as an insult. More accurate would be to call him a tool. He’s very useful for the right even though he doesn’t realize it, and it’s that use which makes him dangerous. If he were just peddling cryonics to rich people he’d still be promoting bad, wrong science (as a tangent, I think cryonics as an *idea* might have potential—current implementations not so much), but when he enables people like Charles Murray is when his actions become truly despicable.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 23 points at 1619563570.000000
Idiot doesn’t “just mean[...] mentally handicapped”, unlike say, the word “retarded”. In fact even when “idiot” *was* used as a term specifically for the mentally handicapped (are we still really using the term “handicapped” at the same time as complaining about the word “idiot”?!), it was derived from the more general usage with which we use it in common parlance today: > Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing In this passage Shakespeare is not referring to somebody with cognitive difficulties, but to a babbler, a metaphorical babbler whose utterances reflect no interest in or correspondence with meaning. This could just easily be an annoying guy who want stop talking to you at the pub, in the full awareness or not of what he’s doing, regardless of their intelligence. In other even earlier contexts it referred to somebody who was clumsy, or guileless, or who behaved foolishly. Later on, it was borrowed as a technical term for people with cognitive difficulties with the birth of modern psychiatry and psychological science in and around the 19th century. However, the word “idiot” as a generic term as described above has always been around. Similarly, “stupid” can refer to somebody behaving foolishly, as is its original meaning.
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u/Lightwavers -2 points at 1619567212.000000
> are we still really using the term “handicapped” at the same time as complaining about the word “idiot”?! That’s a good point, do you have an alternative term without the offensive connotations I could use instead? I’m not sure ‘people with cognitive difficulties’ is the best phrase either. >Later on, it was borrowed as a technical term for people with cognitive difficulties Yes, and this is generally what we mean nowadays. Like, if I went out and asked a hundred people what idiot meant, I doubt the majority would say it means someone who babbles senselessly.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 16 points at 1619567560.000000
Perhaps in your neck of the woods, but I’ve been around a fair bit in 27 years and I don’t think I’ve once heard somebody directly equate “idiot” with any such diagnosis It’s so out of style to do that it was considered unacceptable in the 70s to use it as a medical term
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u/Lightwavers -2 points at 1619567848.000000
>It’s so out of style to do that it was considered unacceptable in the 70s to use it as a medical term Right, because people were using the, originally medical, term as an insult instead, so much so that someone diagnosed with it was going to have heard it used in an insulting manner before in their life. So now all that’s left of the original meaning is the insult and the implication that the person it’s directed at struggles with basic tasks due to a mental disadvantage.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 7 points at 1619568403.000000
Again, perhaps in your neck of the woods. Insisting on a genealogy like this doesn’t make it accurate.
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u/Lightwavers -1 points at 1619568798.000000
Well, alright, if you want accuracy above all there’s a very easy way to see how the word ‘idiot’ is viewed by the general English-speaking population at large. But if we’re going to do this, let’s place our bets. My hypothesis is that the word is viewed by the majority (more than 50%) of people as, to get the idea across, someone with a disadvantage in regards to their mental capabilities which makes many cognitive tasks take longer to comprehend and/or perform. I’ll put down this week’s drinking budget of $40 toward this general definition. If you’d like to match that bet with your definition of someone who’s silly and babbles meaninglessly, clarified to your liking, we can go ahead and proceed toward finding the answer.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 9 points at 1619569158.000000
I don’t do prediction markets, I’ve written about that here before. What’s your plan anyway? Set up a self-declared online survey for a dozen people to vote yes or no on Proposition “idiot is a slur” and call it a representative sample of what I estimate as about 450,000,000 native English speakers? Besides, $40 covers about two days on my drinking budget - never mind the cost of transferring it to a UK bank account - it isnae worth it.
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u/Lightwavers 1 points at 1619569484.000000
Well, [Google Surveys](https://surveys.google.com/your-surveys) have been used in research. I was planning on having three options, my definition, yours, and a third that’s basically, “neither, lol.” And hey, I’m cheap. I don’t judge your taste, let’s not judge mine, yeah? I can go up to $80 though, if you did do prediction markets. I don’t exactly look at usernames on this site so I didn’t see you’d written about that before.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 6 points at 1619569852.000000
I never said I wasn’t cheap, alcoholism is an expensive lifestyle in a lot of places. I’m dropping this conversation because I get the impression you’re getting more agitated than this conversation requires or deserves. Let it only be said that I get the impression I’ve a stronger case than you: on the one hand you started out and went on (at times*) insisting that “idiot’ as a derogatory word for people cognitive difficulties is the only horse left in town*; whereas all I’m saying is that while it may still be in use that way in certain quarters I’m unaware of, it certainly isn’t in mine. *which let’s be honest is a bit inconsistent with a first past the post either/or bet
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u/Lightwavers 1 points at 1619570224.000000
You’re getting the impression I’m getting ... agitated? Over an internet discussion? I mean, alright, but I kinda feel like that’s projection or something because I don’t really react to words on a screen. Maybe that’s a product of me subconsciously thinking of face to face interactions as more ‘real’, but as a rule getting riled up at semi anonymous internet comments is just a bad idea. Anyway, yeah, for most people I’m insisting ‘idiot’ does have derogatory connotations to it, and maybe it’s different in your community, but online spaces are much wider. So if something’s derogatory in one place it’s generally not a good idea to say it online. Like, I live nowhere near anyone who’s an Inuit, yet I’d still be a thoughtless slime to use the word Esk*mo online.
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u/noactuallyitspoptart 9 points at 1619571003.000000
Yes, I’m getting the impression you’re getting agitated because you just tried to settle a minor dispute about English usage by betting $40 against a complaint stranger over the results of a google analytics stat before upping the ante to $80 when I declined. People say it’s hard to read tone over the internet but that maxim can be overstated.
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u/Lightwavers 1 points at 1619571673.000000
I mean, I bet money because it’s fun, but you’re doing this whole first year psychology student thing and now it’s not fun anymore and I’m going to retract the offer. You’re wrong, but I no longer care to wager anything over it.
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u/LaoTzusGymShoes 10 points at 1619563355.000000
> Idiot just means mentally handicapped Incorrect.
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u/Lightwavers 1 points at 1619567016.000000
Then it means ... ?
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u/AllNewTypeFace 4 points at 1619566447.000000
“idiot” originally meant undistinguished member of the public
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u/Lightwavers -2 points at 1619567516.000000
And the r-slur was originally a clinical term.
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u/LaoTzusGymShoes 14 points at 1619563339.000000
> Lmao, he isn’t an idiot Incorrect.
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u/Lightwavers -3 points at 1619567052.000000
One can act in terribly wrongheaded ways without being mentally handicapped.
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u/foobanana 6 points at 1619590509.000000
That's not what idiot means and as poptart says, 'mentally handicapped' isn't much better. That use of idiot is only popular amongst people who read too much about the US army and IQ testing or some shit like that.
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u/IsThisSatireOrNot 24 points at 1619568523.000000
> Read the first 3 books, watched the next 5 movies, checked the wiki often, and most importantly, read at least a hundred other Harry Potter fanfictions. I know off the top of my head who Fleur Delacour's little sister is, in fact I've read a whole book about her bonding to Harry Potter's ghost after he dies in the Second Task of the Triwizard tournament. --the esteemed Eliezer S. Yudkowsky https://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/2ytvky/has_the_author_read_canon_or_just_the_wiki_sources/cpcw71f/
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u/dogdiarrhea 26 points at 1619569031.000000
I've never seen someone put in so much effort to not read a book. Respect.
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u/SpillTheCheerwine 18 points at 1619570750.000000
At what point does writing fanfic of something you don't even much care for, just as a stalking horse for your bullshit scam research institute, become more trouble than getting a fucking job?
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u/Soyweiser 6 points at 1619613845.000000
[Laughs in [Hubbard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard)]
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u/bighunt16 3 points at 1619675071.000000
Putting the issue at hand aside, I can't actually say I can recommend anyone read past, at most, the third Harry Potter book.
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u/Shitgenstein 6 points at 1619616608.000000
All my money on Yud's concept is inspired entirely by the peasant scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
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u/Sag0Sag0 3 points at 1619561125.000000
Sounds too far fetched.
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u/sissiffis 41 points at 1619575923.000000

Story concept: AU where Yudkowsky has a real job and isn’t preying on the gullibility of spectrum coders who can’t see that their concerns about super intelligent AI takeover are just the techno version of theological arguments about God’s wrath.

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u/scruiser 17 points at 1619596131.000000
In this AU, EY is a niche sci-fi and fantasy author with a few (relatively) good early works, however his later works descend too much into his fetishes (BDSM, TPE, and rape) to be enjoyable by the average reader.
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u/finfinfin 13 points at 1619605970.000000
Also everyone's an anthropomorphic pony for reasons which are never entirely clear, but since no-one remarks on it it doesn't matter.
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u/pusillanimouslist 5 points at 1619612023.000000
I’d love to see what happens if he actually had to work to survive. That would be entertaining
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u/RealmofMaat 3 points at 1619618373.000000
Roko's Basilisk as reimagined from the White Throne Judgement scene of Christ
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u/wholetyouinhere 29 points at 1619564784.000000

I L L I B E R A L

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u/completely-ineffable 18 points at 1619575204.000000
Being a liberal is a bad thing, so being illiberal has to be a good thing
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u/finfinfin 2 points at 1619619042.000000
sicknastyliberalism
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u/SpillTheCheerwine 22 points at 1619570617.000000
At least they gave up on "CTRL-Left."
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u/foobanana 9 points at 1619590548.000000
lol this is so cringe
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u/finfinfin 7 points at 1619605997.000000
I prefer Alt Gr-Left.
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u/DELETED 2 points at 1622116625.000000
esc, esc, esc, :left
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u/Masebrock 16 points at 1619569516.000000
One of those "*neutral*" political terms that for some reason people never self-describe as.
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u/dgerard 2 points at 1620043641.000000
liberals be illin
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u/ProfColdheart 20 points at 1619572905.000000

“Nice division of reactions between”Nobody on the left believes this strawman” and “Lol so you mean the modern-day world then”.”

“… throughout the work, what is new is not good; and what is good is not new.”

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u/blakestaceyprime 25 points at 1619567830.000000

Story concept: AU where Yudkowsky does not autofellate in public

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u/Soyweiser 26 points at 1619568031.000000

‘Illiberal Left’ Right…

‘Kings with iPhones’ I am very intelligent…

‘Medieval peasants in mud huts’ … does he think the unabomber is a leftist?

Wonder when he goes full conceptual james and just openly transforms into an anti-semite conspiracy theorist. He clearly is courting the crazy rightwingers already. (and lol, doing this thing in 2021).

This asshole is supposed to be the ‘lets learn to think rationally’ big guy, and he comes up with this kind of bullshit…

E: and yes, it sucks that you can reply this whole post with just ‘gottem’.

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u/DELETED 0 points at 1619619302.000000
[removed]
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u/Soyweiser 9 points at 1619620705.000000
Yeah, that would never [happen](https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1384707924673503232). E: but yes, sorry, I should have made it more clear it was all just for the grift, not because he really believes in it. But just because he wants money/attention, and that is in big supply on the right. Also you might want to cut down on the dogwhistles there.
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u/grraaaaahhh 14 points at 1619562597.000000

Isn’t this just the worldbuilding for Altered Carbon (and also every other cyberpunk novel I’ve ever read)?

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u/Soyweiser 13 points at 1619569301.000000
I think that depends on the type/era of cyberpunk novel (don't think altered carbon isn't cyberpunk, but more transhumanpunk), most of them are more like '99% of humanity is stuck in min wage jobs while megacorps grind everybodies humanity and the planet to dust, with cool implants'
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u/Consistent_Actuator 5 points at 1619606872.000000

Truly, Yud is a scholar of True® Economics, and the ivory tower leftists’ Fake-Frankfurt Critical POMO-Social Economics does not stand up in the light of Rea and Rationality™

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u/bighunt16 3 points at 1619675693.000000

https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1387251443338412033

What the actual fuck

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u/drcopus 3 points at 1619570788.000000

What a clown

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u/Lonewolfeslayer 3 points at 1619572961.000000

Illiberal Left… I have no idea what that means but im stealing that.

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u/vistandsforwaifu 7 points at 1619597629.000000
Reminds me of "Illiberal Democracy" that was a popular buzzword in the Foreign Affairs/WSJ circles a few years ago. I think they mostly stopped when they realized they were saying too much about the kind of democracy they actually like. As for "illiberal left" in particular, it means "left of center", or basically... left.
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u/gordianus24 6 points at 1619663052.000000
Basically they think of "liberalism" in the [political philosophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism#Classical_and_modern) sense, focusing especially on civic & property rights, religious/ideological tolerance, & free speech as a [cultural norm](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/is-it-possible-to-have-coherent-principles-around-free-speech-norms/) & not just a restraint on the government. So by "illiberal left" they mean leftists & progressives who they think are too willing to sacrifice these things in the interest of their idea of justice & fairness.
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u/nacholicious 5 points at 1619589959.000000
Liberalism is generally a right leaning ideology, so illiberal left describes anything that is left of liberalism such as social democracy.
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