I would like to know, in good faith, how people who frequent this club think about and justify sneering as an activity.
Do you view it as a guilty pleasure, but not your best self? Or is it something that you fully endorse, such that you’d be able to calmly explain why it makes sense to someone willing to listen?
Edit: Downvotes ahoy xD
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It’s a good thing to push back against fascists, racists, neoreactionaries. Since the rationalists are rife with those sorts, and the rationalist project actively lets those sorts fester and infect the community, the rationalist project must be pushed against. But, that’s not the same as needing to actually “debate” their points (indeed, the idea that each and every opinion is equally valid in the marketplace of ideas, and each idea must be heard and considered equally is exactly what lets the aforementioned racists, fascists, and neoreactionaries infect rationalism). I don’t need to debate Scott Alexander when he says that historic homophobia was justified because anal sex has a higher rate of spreading STDs. And what’s more, I shouldn’t give that sort of shit the time of day. What’s left, then, is the sneer. Let the world know that that sort of bullshit is unacceptable without legitimizing it as something worthy of discussion.
well, it’s simple.
there’s a type of person whose self worth is based on the false notion of being smarter than everyone else. they portage this self image into groups that they perceive to be smart (the rationalists are the perfect group for this, as they have a much lower barrier to entry than other groups and are chock full of people who are socially inept enough to be happy telling everyone about how high their iq is) where they then defend all their garbage takes because if they’re wrong, then it means they’re not as smart as everyone else (and if they’re right, they’re smarter!).
you end up with a community of people who do that constantly, just shit out whatever hot garbage hits their brainball and defend it to the death. there is no way to communicate to them that the crap they care about doesn’t matter and in fact, you can be a total dunce and still have a massive positive impact in the world, or that self worth need not be tied to how clever you are, etc.
there’s only one thing the ego obsessed will pay any heed to: sneers.
or maybe this is all just a big brain hot take i posted as a post-hoc way to validate my actions and nothing you can say in polite discourse will discourage me because my self identity depends on it. who’s to say?
I cannot speak for anybody else, but for me is 80% fun, since online rationalism has that mix of “
i’m 14I never studied the subject seriously and it’s deep” and self assurance that makes mocking them so juicy.A good 15% is somehow educational: these people are out there, and albeit indirectly they have contributed to the cultural milieu that culminated in the alt-right setting the tune of the GOP, Tucker Carlson being allowed to talk like that on national TV instead than in gas station bar, and techbros talking like Andrew Ryan from Bioshock (with some skull measurement added for right measure) unironically. The consequences of all of this are already very very tangible, but what happens now is only an homeopathic dose of the worst case scenario. Knowing that, how these people think and proselytize, and ideally how to stop the contagion, is somehow useful. It’s a bit like watching “the alt-right playbook” by Ian Danskin, let’s say
Finally, 5% is understanding the hidden structure of the conservative (mainstream conservative, who has never heard about Moldbug or Siskind) brain. In their overthinking and overanalysing, rationalists or neoreactionary bloggers often come up with the 90% pure, deluxe, right from Colombia version of something that in a muddier and milder version inhabits any conservative’s mind. So there is the bonus of also having some insights on the conservative implicit and often unconscious worldview in general
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Unironically thank you for this thread. Can we link it in the subreddit sidebar/description as an FAQ?
Also unironically: When people ask “Why do X?” they usually mean “instead of Y”, even if they casually omit Y. In this case Y is “have a polite, enlightening exchange of views” and the answer is “it took me far too long to realize that that’s basically impossible on Reddit.” At best you get an extremely topic-focused credentialized forum like r/AskHistorians or a heavily-moderated-yet-still-full-of-bad-faith mishmash like r/NeutralPolitics or r/ChangeMyView. Otherwise, if you wander into a virtual room full of a hundred young white men and try to discuss big issues like race and gender, regardless of any made-up rules about civility or sourcing, it’s not very likely you’ll walk out of there more enlightened. Probably less. Same as if you walked into a room full of random Chinese people discussing American foreign policy or a room full of laypeople discussing vaccines. The pseudonymy makes it hard to tell who has any idea what they’re talking about and the agreevote system guarantees only that minority views will be silenced, not that the most insightful or rational or evidence-based views will be amplified.
So this is just Reddit being used for what it’s good for.
The sneer that can be told is not the eternal sneer. TheMotte that can be named is not the eternal motte. The irrational is the beginning of Cathedral and Sneerclub. The rational is the mother of ten thousand blog posts.
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Don’t worry, a text post cant be downvoted to below zero, and as such these are not utilitarian points that will be tallied up when you are finally judged before the acausalrobotgod.
E: on topic, well, it has always been the prerogative of fools and children to point out the emperor is wearing no clothes.
Some ideas are so stupid and bad they don’t deserve serious engagement and communities who regularly support these ideas and are unwilling or unable to discern good from bad ideas deserve ridicule and social estrangement
Really?
I will sneer at a community that considers me and others genetically inferior, or abides by those who do because they don’t use mean words.
I will sneer at a bunch of edgelords who never emotionally left high school, who think academic rigour is wanking with a thesaurus and citing a shitty blog.
I will sneer at a group with such megalomania that they think this small, highly verbose and low traffic shitposting forum is some kind terrifying boogeyman that never sleeps.
It’s not just incredibly funny, it’s also extremely time efficient. My actual guilty pleasure is corny medical dramas.
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“Wovon man nicht sneeren kann, darüber muß man schweigen.”
There are no reasons, just excuses, and rationalism is one big pile of looking for the perfect excuse to never grow up. Well worth making fun of.
If you have to tell people you’re acting in good faith, you’re not acting in good faith.
If you can’t understand why people sneer at Rationalist (so called) nonsense rather than engage with it seriously, I’d encourage you to read some Sartre.
(Repeating a comment I made a few months ago on a dead thread)
For me there are several reasons:
*I live not too far away from ground zero (Silicon Valley) and it’s curious/fun/interesting to hear about oddities of semi-local culture.
*I work in academic research. In my field it would be ludicrous to think one could just noodle up all of physics/astronomy/geology/etc out of one’s own brain-musings rather than trying to master whatever necessary slice of the enormous literature of experiments and theory that exist for any of these fields.
*Notwithstanding that , I am a relatively uncritical person when it comes to assessing people’s takes and their thinking. It is easy for me to take people at their word (“but I’m a liberal!”). It’s helpful for me to see the dissections of the bad faith of the various targets, I admire the critical skills of the posters here and try to take it on board.
i like that you are so afraid of us u made a new account to post your definitely good faith question. we are p terrifying
Not all of us have easy access to rationalists and a locker.
Oh. It’s another one of these.
I am personally against the SneerClub, their priors are all wrong, they all do bad on prediction markets, I recommend people read “Adumbrations Of Aducanumab”, “Control Group is out of control” and the “Mantic Monday” sequence. Really explains everything. Sprinkle in some google trends graphs and “untitled” (EDIT: I had to delete everything I wrote about this, post exceeded limit) you get the picture.
I Believe:
TL;DR: P(A|B) = [P(A)*P(B|A)]/P(B), all the rest is commentary.
I think this video essay really explains my outlook on it https://youtu.be/o2Is1oTUPHE
post hog
Please mark NSFW according to sub rules
Because a lot of these ideas are so inane and ridiculous that offering further rebuttal than a sneer is putting in more work than is justifiable.
I think one of our great philosophers said it best
have you ever heard of punching up?
jesus fucking christ
It’s that feeling from that Leonardo di Caprio gif from Django Unchained.
i come here to read something while/instead of working when i’ve got nothing better to read
wouldn’t know about the other weirdos though
It might not show up directly if you search for it, but you night find the discussions in this thread interesting to understand people here. Also features old time ssc interesting poster yodatsracist, who left ssc a long time ago and explained why he left.