posted on April 11, 2022 07:44 AM by
u/broclipizza
91
u/dingledog82 pointsat 1649684659.000000
I’m convinced anybody who unironically views HPMOR as a good piece of
fiction just doesn’t read anything other than blog posts. Just read the
‘brilliant’ takeaway from this convoluted parable:
The import of an act lies not in what that act resembles on the
surface, Mr. Potter, but in the states of mind which make that act more
or less probable.
It’s just so horribly written. He has a way of writing in which he
obscures extremely simple concepts in such labyrinthine language that
the reader comes away thinking he’s said something of value because they
had to read it 3 times to make sense of it. The takeaway here is
“intentions matter when evaluating a person’s character. You can’t look
at the act in isolation.” Which is… a foundational principle in every
legal system in the world? It’s like he’s never heard of editing.
> The takeaway here is "intentions matter when evaluating a person's character. You can't look at the act in isolation."
For example, you mentioned Kant. I have no idea who he is. Perhaps he is mentioned in the outgroup post, but if so, that's that's the only place that I've read of him. you understand, how in my mind that makes Kant somebody less significant than Yudkowsky? Because if Kant was more significant, then I should have found him first.
> It's just so horribly written. He has a way of writing in which he obscures extremely simple concepts in such labyrinthine language that the reader comes away thinking he's said something of value because they had to read it 3 times to make sense of it.
This drives me nuts as a technical writer. It's very possible to write clearly about complicated subjects so that even laymen can walk away understanding them. His superfluous writing style should have been nipped in the bud by his high school English teachers, but I'm sure he thinks he's smarter than they were.
I liked Methods of Rationality HP better when he was called Charles Wallace Murry, grew out of being an insufferable know-it-all and rode a unicorn into a time-travelling adventure to stop a nuclear war.
Unfortunately, on later rereading, the time-travelling adventure was EXTREMELY FUCKING RACIST, and that book went from being my favorite of the series to my least-favorite.
Yeah, the good timeline having Maddoc be a dude with a classically-proportioned face, while bad-timeline Mad Dog has mean eyes and a narrower face, and the stuff about the South Americans getting colonized For Good by the Welsh, that book has more than a few problems that were painful to discover.
I had a flatmate who read a ridiculous amount of books and was on her way of getting a PhD in philosophy (!) when she discovered HPMOR and became an instant fan. Not sure why, maybe her transhumanist streak... or her tendency to fawn over narcissist assholes
On fanfiction and HPMOR, OP writes: > I mean you’re not wrong. 99%
of it is smut or of similar quality writing. And then, every once in a
while, once in a thousand fanfics, you read something that’s better than
the original. And then you basically can’t go back to original anymore
because the mistakes stand out too glaringly now. You’ve been spoiled by
finally finding out what the original could have been, should have
been.
These guys would read Our Mutual Friend and say "wow, there should have been more anecdotes and tangents and pointless secondary characters and written-dialect conversations. It could have been great!"
tbh i'm not even sure he's wrong that HPMOR is strictly speaking "better" than the original (it is, at least, less *conventional*), but that's a bar so low you can step over it.
An insight into the privileging of their own minds that happens among
the rationalists as a case study in Scrybal the original poster.
cheeseless (hi! I’m not sure if pinging or not pinging is polite at this
point) writes:
I’ve read the ones you mentioned, yes. They still feel like restating
what’s already been said many times, just with, at best, new words and a
heck of a lot of padding.
My point isn’t so much that there is no value at all. But it’s
duplicated value to which Scott himself does not add much, beyond
anti-SJW pokes. You’d be better off just buying the more common books
referenced by rationalists rather than most content they produce
themselves.
I especially don’t like that his outgroup post goes against Karl
Popper’s idea of tolerance, since it doesn’t actually show any good
arguments against it, just the opposition itself (and an attempt at
ridicule that I feel falls very flat).
OP responds:
Well, when I read those new words, I read those ideas for the first
time. They actually were completely original to my mind. If there were
other written works that had produced these ideas before, then they
didn’t do a good enough job of delivering those ideas off to my brain.
The rationalists on the other hand pretty much injected those ideas into
my veins.
For example, you mentioned Karl Popper. I have no idea who he is.
Perhaps he is mentioned in the outgroup post, but if so, that’s that’s
the only place that I’ve read of him. you understand, how in my mind
that makes Karl Popper somebody less significant than Scott alexander?
Because if Popper was more significant, then I should have found him
first.
<…>
Again cheeseless:
I read the essay, and to me it ended up being a showcase of exactly
one of the major issues with rationalists (which I think is part of what
opens the gate to right-wing BS later on), that being the tendency to
assume their thoughts are original, and also to assume that replacing
words with other jargon makes their thoughts original. Frame control =
long-term manipulation. Her thoughts on accusation-based implications
are equivalent to uncharitable framing of the sort we see every
politician do all the time (“My opponent is terribly unpopular, people
are saying” being the generic example). We’ve discussed the “secondary
effects” thing (and its defence) a million times when referring to any
occasion of dogwhistling, it’s not so much a common phenomenon as an
omnipresent one. I do observe how her many of her red flags regarding
frame controllers seems to apply very well, in practice, to rationalist
celebrities among the other groups that it clearly applies to, despite
them supposedly being more vigilant about this kind of bias. I think
she’s totally right about the impossibility of the manipulation problem,
and that it’s self-perpetuating.
I’m not discounting her suffering, for all that may be worth to you,
of course. I’m trying to only criticize the insular nature of the post
and how it tries to make original what most definitely isn’t.
I don’t know anything about you, but if your life experience led to
this post by Aella being revealing to you then that’s totally fair (I
guess the source of some knowledge being variable is a necessary
corollary of the “lucky 10,000” law). But it’s nothing new, and you’d
have come across this in far more mainstream channels, with the exact
same value.
and finally OP:
What is entirely possible that I could have come across this in more
mainstream channels, the truth is that I simply didn’t. And in my view
that counts as a failure of mainstream channels and a success of
Aella’s. She’s doing something right, or she’s making something
appealing in the right way that I would find it. Which makes her more
useful to me than mainstream channels. <…>
I am a voracious reader, and yet somehow what should be one of the
most basic common sense life lessons taught to kids somehow completely
missed me, even though according to you it is an unoriginal thought that
should have reached me through mainstream channels. To rediscover an old
idea and reframe it and repackage it so that it can be consumed in new
ways by a new audience is an irreplaceably valuable thing.
Like maybe just maybe consider that it might be a you thing that you
look for obscure forum communities that keep turning fascist to give you
secret knowledge? Furthermore, maybe the obscuring or ignorance of
original sources, the obscuring of their points and needless new jargon
that cheeseless mentions aren’t the same thing as paraphrasing something
you’ve learned? If I rewrite a bunch of elementary math in a convoluted
and obscure way and teach it to people online under new notation while
taking donations, isn’t it obvious how that is self-serving and
unhelpful to the learners? These points are made and just ignored.
Perhaps it’s something to do with why it’s this community
where the crazy rightwingers gather… OP again:
And ask for your point relating to opening up the gates to right-wing
bullshit, I’m not sure that’s entirely borne out. From what I perceive,
at worst it gives crazy right wingers a nexus around which to gather.
And I consider that that a good thing. I want there to be a place where
apparently crazy right wingers gather because I want to know what kind
of crazy infects them.
I think what scrybal was doing in my discussion with him is pretty different from what Destiny does. In part due to the fact that at the end of the day dgg doesn't end up being a home for right-wing nutters like the rationalists.
"For example, you mentioned James Watt. I have no idea who he is. Perhaps he is mentioned in *Thomas & Friends*, but if so, that's that's the only place that I've read of him. you understand, how in my mind that makes James Watt somebody less significant than Thomas the Tank Engine? Because if Watt was more significant, then I should have found him first."
SneerClub is to the rationalist community what lefty Twitter is to
Destiny and his community. They’re the exact same type of person:
resentful, eternally victimized, and pouty crybullies. Their brains have
been broken by confirmation bias, group conformity, and the cognitive
dissonance. They’re more spiteful than any other community I’ve
seen.
'resentful, eternally victimized, pouty crybully' now there is some nice flair for somebody
E:
> As for the actual articles of AstralCodexTen, if those are right-wing dog whistles then I guess everybody in this community is a right winger and so is destiny. But we're not.
Lol.
That is the power of the grey tribe, you can pal around with people who shout about white people being replaced, constabtly shit on sjw strawmen and still have your audience think you are somehow not a group of rightwingers.
Here's a baroque, speculative parable meant to suggest that socially inept weirdos who subscribe to me are in principle and without need for any empirical evidence necessarily a superior race of human being = science.
What? Lol = resentment, victimization, confirmation bias, group conformity, and spite.
I can’t understand a single thing in the linked post or the (what in guessing are) rebuttals here. I have literally no clue what anybodys talking about lmao I found this tho
https://www.google.com/search?q=HPMOR&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
It’s not a circle as such. I can picture lots of people coming to two out of three at a time through similar channels, though not all three at once (for the bright sparks amongst you, that’s three ways to get to two at once each, see if you can work out how that reasoning goes).
In particular I remember SSC getting some trade in the early badeconomics/neoliberal origin story days, lots of hymns penned glorying Siskind’s erstwhile calm, rational, heterodox persona - I mean they really liked his *tone*; the stupider and more credulous at that intersection could be forgiven for falling for the same trick as Destiny fans, which trick I suppose is exemplified in this very post. It’s awfully easy to be impressed by one thing if you don’t know *any* things and even easier if you believe the fuck out of a lot of things first.
A Wikipedia article I was just reading has something similar to quote about Susan Sontag, that she flatters the reader’s intelligence without being intimidating - ie she says clever things without saying anything hard to understand. And I fucking hate Susan Sontag.
I've been on arr neoliberal for many years. Scott Alexander comes up extremely rarely, the broader rationalist community practically never. A few months back someone asked what the sub's view was on the latter, and [the response was extremely mixed](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/s0repn/what_does_this_sub_think_about_the_rationalist/). So I dispute the Venn diagram of rationalists and neoliberals is a circle.
The Venn diagram of neoliberals and Destiny fans has more overlap. I don't watch him personally, but I know Destiny has quite a few stans on arr neoliberal and he comes up more frequently -- still I feel the general sentiment is that he's more "the least worst streamer" than "a good streamer".
This is the part where I pull my “the people who kicked off /r/neoliberal as you know it consulted me for 20th century history of political economy tips when they started it” card again, I’m well aware of the overlaps and non-overlaps, and if I fail to take at face value the “what do we think of x here” posts in /r/TheMotte I am similarly happy to extend the same failure to /r/neoliberal
Fortunately we agree there is no such circle as such, and assuming that we are both reasonable, thoughtful, people I think we can safely agree that /u/129499399219192930 was exaggerating for an effect on a basis of nonetheless real solidity
Even better, we can agree that the linked thread shows a general and distinct familiarity with LessWrong and environs amongst the respondents - well above the mean average more or less anywhere - and that certainly in different times my experience had been that SSC at least, whilst obviously not the sole focus of the sub, certainly got tossed around a bit and in the associated region of twitter - more favourably on neoliberal the BE as it happens
Liam Bright listed it, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as one of the more utilitarian leaves of the current, [Anglo-American Analytic Philosophy Left](https://sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-anglo-american-analytic-philosophy.html) writ large. I think there's a reasonable degree of overlap, and it persists as a current alongside the more economic-academic/fed memeplex inherited from BE.
Discussing the 'rationalists' as a coherent internet group seems increasingly anachronistic along the same lines as new atheism, with the tensions in the project ultimately winning out. The AI risk people went one way, crypto nerds another (before getting memetically swamped by hodlers), the neoreactionaries somewhere else to fester, while others found alignment with the /nl package of urban yimbyism and immigration.
>I think we can safely agree that /u/129499399219192930 was exaggerating for an effect on a basis of nonetheless real solidity
Far more exaggeration than real solidity IMO.
Of course "what do we think of x here" can't be taken at complete face value. If you go to a straight-up Nazi sub and ask them what they think of Jews, the most upvoted responders will still not be showing their true power level. But I don't think that dynamic is involved here in the specific case of asking neoliberals what they think of rationalists.
The bigger issue is that there's nothing scientific about it, you just have a bunch of self-selected randos speaking for the sub and oftentimes they will substitute their own idiosyncratic views for the general zeitgeist. It may very well be that the vast majority of posters *never heard of the rationalist community*, but you'd never know it, because they would simply not reply to such a post.
But also, straight-up asking what people think is not *worthless* as evidence. In the hypothetical Nazi sub example, you'll have **some** Nazis saying what they really think, and you'll also see those views not downvoted into oblivion like they would anywhere else.
In fact, I'd have a hard time imagining a *better* way to getting a sense of what a sub's views are than just asking. I suppose you could look at is whether rationalist content makes up a high proportion of the top posts, which again I think is far from the case for arr neoliberal. Far from being "the sole focus", I'd say it's hardly a focus at all, by this metric.
You could also maybe look at [subreddit overlap statistics](https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps/neoliberal), but I don't see a lot of rationalist subs in that list either.
As for "general familiarity", I wouldn't give a lot of weight to it. I doubt how many people use the phrase "my priors" actually know what a Bayesian prior probability is. I think a lot of people know what a motte-and-bailey fallacy is without necessarily knowing that the term was popularized by the rationalist community in general and Scott Alexander in particular. I think it's also very easy to read Scott Alexander very superficially and be impressed by his style of writing, and not really *understand* the more problematic aspects of his views, such as "why the IQ thing matter so much to him?" And then, of course, simply *knowing* about the community is a totally different ball of wax than *agreeing with* or even *being a part* of that community -- just look at this sub as an example.
Sorry for the wall of text but I just don't see how the two communities have anything more than coincidental overlap.
You’re doing a thing that from the very early days of the /r/neoliberal subreddit has been sort of a calling card: assume that somebody with a critical eye to the goings on there must not have thought about it, then explain to them where they’ve gone wrong. You will remember in my reply above that I referenced in fact being *very familiar indeed* with the subreddit, so most of this defensive posturing isn’t relevant to me.
For example: I think there’s a lot of ways to cash out why they *would* have significant overlap if one exists (nominal political values; wonk-brain mindset; “we are the grey tribe” mindset; media consumption; socioeconomic class; age group; gender identity; hell, geographic location), so sheer rapacious coincidence is definitely out the window.
> I doubt how many people use the phrase "my priors" actually know what a Bayesian prior probability is.
Whether they understand what, how, or why the concept is, is obviously irrelevant to its being thrown about in either space, and for a number of reasons. Certainly plenty of people in both spaces toss around talk about priors loosely, and with a carefree attitude to actually understanding the relevant mathematics.
> I think a lot of people know what a motte-and-bailey fallacy is without necessarily knowing that the term was popularized by the rationalist community in general and Scott Alexander in particular.
If I put in the effort I could quickly find you dozens of direct citations to SSC for the origin of phrase both within /r/neoliberal and places like Vox, “globe twitter” etc.
> I think it's also very easy to read Scott Alexander very superficially and be impressed by his style of writing, and not really understand the more problematic aspects of his views, such as "why the IQ thing matter so much to him?
This isn’t evidence against overlap at all, obviously, it’s a defence that *if* /r/neoliberal *is* familiar with SSC, then *certainly* they’d have nothing to do with the Pioneer Fund. Now, fortunately, I never suggested otherwise, and even more fortunately I agree that by and large race science is a strict no no with the /r/neoliberal crowd. Why do you bring it up? (The question is overtly rhetorical)
> And then, of course, simply knowing about the community is a totally different ball of wax than agreeing with or even being a part of that community -- just look at this sub as an example.
Nobody in this conversation is so stupid that they would think knowing of internet rationalism is evidence of being a fan thereof, you and I are both smarter than that.
If, in your opinion, the neoliberal subreddit is by and large blissfully unaware of internet rationalism that’s completely fine and, insofar as the subreddit is about the subreddit, not about LessWrong and environs, absolutely - indeed trivially -true.
If your opinion is that there is no overlap then that’s obviously, trivially, wrong; worse, if you think demonstrating that the overlap is *relatively* small compared with eg the overlap “Biden voters” then you’re just bad at reasoning out what “overlap” is supposed to mean, because nobody is saying that the overlap has to be that large to be notable.
To my mind there’s no point trying to litigate a hard distinction between the two groups in the specific way you have other than to put distance between yourself (/r/neoliberal fan) and LessWrong: breathe easier knowing that just because /r/neoliberal is a cesspit of bad-faith triumphalist crap slimed with a veneer of self-serious valedictorian academicianism just like internet rationalism doesn’t mean that it’s your fault, and it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person for posting there.
I'm probably bound to have a different opinion since I found this subreddit via /neoliberal and that's probably not the kind of overlap you would expect or embrace, but these reasons - especially the demographic ones - seem pretty ridiculous to me.
>For example: I think there’s a lot of ways to cash out why they would have significant overlap if one exists (nominal political values; wonk-brain mindset; “we are the grey tribe” mindset; media consumption; socioeconomic class; age group; gender identity; hell, geographic location), so sheer rapacious coincidence is definitely out the window.
Well in the case of the demographic ones, because to my knowledge, /neoliberal demographics are just Reddit demographics, so of course they would cross over with a lot of subreddits. As I'm sure you know, the young American white male Redditor is so pervasive on Reddit that subs like twoxchromosomes and blackpeopletwitter have had to take quite specific actions to preserve them as spaces for others. So /neoliberal being a subreddit full of Redditors is by definition not notable - unless I'm missing the demographics you meant.
As far as the other reasons, I'll give my answers with lower confidence because my only familiarity with these other subreddits comes from SneerClub. My understanding of the "grey tribe mindset" is that it's a rejection of US party politics, whereas neoliberal openly embraces the Democratic party, including in some fundraising capacity. This seems like the opposite of "grey tribe" on its face.
As far as nominal political identity, that's not ridiculous on its face because I don't know much about the political identity of the other subreddits, and I'm not sure what exactly the "nominal" political identity of neoliberal is, since as I'm sure you know one of the most oft repeated meta-tropes there is that the name is literally a misnomer. I could go either way on this, depending on what exactly you mean.
As far as wonk mindset goes, I agree in a sense, but from my limited knowledge of the rationalist community, they think that means having a high IQ supplemented by weird brain tricks they use on themselves, whereas on neoliberal it's a more conventional focus on expertise and experience. I think both groups would find those differences quite important, to the point where neither of us would necessarily see that as something we have in common with the other. And I understand that the expertise and experience of the average neoliberal commenter isn't that high, but what I mean is (for example) the adoration of Hillary Clinton there is based on those traits, whereas the rationalist community seems to choose its heroes on the basis of assumptions about IQ.
All of that being said, I wouldn't be that surprised if there is notable overlap, I just don't think those are the reasons.
It’s not intended as exhaustive, and the overlap is more significant than ‘just reddit’
The grey tribe mindset can certainly take in the neoliberal claim to be “above the fray”, even if in the case of the NL subreddit that winds up with being strongly pro-dem; this remains the case in much of the rationalist world too
I don’t know what you mean with the paragraph including the word “misnomer”, although I think I know where you’re going
With wonk mindset you’re asking for a fairly strict isomorphy, people express wonkiness in directly overlapping if distinct ways
These are all fair points, I'll mostly walk back my initial "ridiculous" assessment, although I still think the demographic makeup of virtually all subreddits is meaningless and should be left out of most discussions about their similarities and differences.
The overall point I'm trying to make is that I think you are comparing two overlapping communities from such an ideological distance that differences appear small matters of detail, whereas I am close enough to one of those communities that those differences are actually quite objectionable, at least to me. I wouldn't usually get involved in a discussion like this, but I feel in this case my perspective is potentially illuminating, because ultimately I'm the one who gets to decide who I have things in common with. That being said, I'm obviously not necessarily representative, and I have seen overlap between /nl and subreddits I find more objectionable than the rationalist ones.
> The grey tribe mindset can certainly take in the neoliberal claim to be “above the fray”, even if in the case of the NL subreddit that winds up with being strongly pro-dem; this remains the case in much of the rationalist world too
I accept (to some extent) the critique that neoliberal has that mindset, but my understanding is that in the SSC community it seems to be a committment, and that's an important distinction to me. So from my perspective on American politics - as an interested non-citizen with the general political views of a /nl shitposter - let's say I have a "grey tribe mindset," but not a committment to maintain it when the GOP goes completely off the rails (when that happened, or if they were ever on the rails is a different discussion). I therefore have more respect for someone with just a lifelong, uncritical allegiance to the Dems, than I do for someone who writes pseudointellectual screeds about steelmanning Trump.
>I don’t know what you mean with the paragraph including the word “misnomer”, although I think I know where you’re going
It's going down a path of a conversation I doubt either of us will find interesting, so I'll just leave it.
> With wonk mindset you’re asking for a fairly strict isomorphy, people express wonkiness in directly overlapping if distinct ways
Sure, but almost by definition, the details are important to someone with a "wonk mindset," and we're the ones who are deciding whether we have something in common. To continue with the Hillary Clinton example, let's say I'm a typical /nl poster and I think she'd have been a great president because her experience would result in good outcomes (wonk mindset). Person A disagrees with me because although she is clearly competent, she is not sufficiently guided by the moral and ideological courage for her competence to make a positive difference (a position people here may find relatable). Person B has a wonk mindset, just like me, but disagrees she would be a good president because she seems to have a massive blind spot in relation to AI safety, doesn't appear to have read the sequences, and female brains are typically worse at the kind of tasks required of a president anyway. Similarly to the previous example, I have more in common with Person A.
>I will say, if all you see is what gets posted here, you’re not getting “the best of /r/neoliberal on SSC”
>But David Friedman, for example, is/was a regular on SSC
I'll take your word for it. Someone on /nl in one of the threads linked from here said "Scott is a better writer than a thinker." Since it's well documented here that Scott is a dogshit writer, I will take that as a sign that my ignorance is not doing me any harm.
I will say, if all you see is what gets posted here, you’re not getting “the best of /r/neoliberal on SSC”
But David Friedman, for example, is/was a regular on SSC
> if you think demonstrating that the overlap is relatively small compared with eg the overlap “Biden voters” then you’re just bad at reasoning out what “overlap” is supposed to mean, because nobody is saying that the overlap has to be that large to be notable.
If I get you right, though, then seems unlikely it's that small, even.
No, I'm doing that thing where I read the words that you write, try to understand what you meant by them, unpack what I believe the implications of those words are, make a decision as to whether I agree with them or not, and then reply with my own thoughts.
You know, having a *conversation* ...
You say we can safely agree that there is a "nonetheless real solidity". Well, no, actually I don't agree. I go through my mental checklist of what I would expect "real solidity" to look like, and it fulfills none of them. I then try to look at what "real solidity" might mean to you. There's not much in the text to go on, but the thing I see you highlight is a "general and distinct familiarity". How am I supposed to interpret this? "Why would poptart bring this up," I ask myself, "if not to suggest a connection, somehow, between 'real solidity' and 'general familiarity'?" A connection that, obviously is very silly when stated so plainly like that, but it's far more charitable than the other interpretation I can think of, which is that your writing is no more than a jumble of unconnected thoughts, and I should not expect two adjacent sentences to build on each other, or for the piece as a whole to lead to any particular conclusion.
I haven't made *any* assumptions about your mental states so far, but if I can be so bold as to make one now, you seem unnecessarily aggro at me for merely expressing a different opinion than you about the significance, extent, or "notability" of the overlap.
A simple "you're interrupting the circlejerk" would have been sufficient.
I know you don't care for neoliberal, in fact the vast majority of the sub doesn't. I don't really care. You can call it a cesspit of bad-faith valedictorian academicianism blah blah blah, I've heard it before. It's fine. I'm just here for the dank sneers, not to fight with leftists.
But don't you *dare* ever lump us in with rationalists ... that, my good sir, is a step too far.
Seriously, you’re saying this all in such incredibly bad faith over a definition of the fucking word “overlap’, why do you want to get banned from here so bad?
And don’t ever call me “leftists” again, asshole
I fall under the general category “leftist” in terms of what I broadly believe in and support, sure. But I don’t like the specific name and I dislike a enough of the people who avow themselves of the name to be uncomfortable, and I’m certainly not a “leftist” in the life of its own sense it has in a lot of day to day conversation of the living moment with eg neoliberalism - say from about 2014 to now. “Left wing”;”communist”;”anarchist”;”looney leftie”;”traitor” will all do fine.
Ask yourself which is more characteristic of going off one’s meds. The above, or this ever dropping in and out to remind me you’re still there and still weird?
I think it’s a lot easier to understand what I mean if you *don’t* studiously ignore all the times I point out that I know /r/neoliberal very well, and the times when I draw conclusions from my experience with the subreddit. If you *do* ignore that I said any such things it becomes much easier to pretend that all I’ve done is posted a wall of nonsense that has to be decoded with a magic eyeglass.
I think the overlap is that both acott and destiny are pretending to be enlightened centrists while just favouring the right viewpoints. Destiny is just going to drift further and further right because he can give up the nword and he will seek out friends who also dont mind using the nword (cause they are racists).
But like how some of the Rationalists keep calling the sjws crazy but keep having personal correspondence with nrx ers (who they disagree with, they say of course).
Nobody seems to realize that if you keep posting anti sjw culture war stuff eventually you will morph into themotte.
>“the people who kicked off /r/neoliberal as you know it consulted me for 20th century history of political economy tips when they started it”
What for? This sounds really interesting.
What it says on the tin. They wanted to know more about the history of their political-economic school of thought than they got from the headlines. I suggested some books.
Sometimes, it is easy to become tribal, and to conjure up a false
causility that links the prima facie stupidity and gullibility of
right-wing streamers to the fact that they are right wing. But here the
Occam’s razor comes handy: it is simply because they are streamers, and
we should expect nothing of value coming from a guy trying to reinvent
human knoledge through debates, no matter their political colors.
I know it is mega soy, but I read the patronus scene as a teenager
and it was one of the few moments in any media when I felt something
truely touching.
There are only a couple moments like that that I can remember:
original Snape reveal, the first time I read the Red Wedding in GOT,
first time seeing Boromir defending the hobbits, final scene in
Shindler’s List, Mass Effect 2 ending, Life is Strange ending and Arcane
S1 ending.
3 dozen racist, fascist, reactionary terrorists, so actually based. Not quite enough to make up for all the people that took Quirrelmort as a role model…
SneerClub is to the rationalist community what lefty Twitter is to Destiny and his community. They're the exact same type of person: resentful, eternally victimized, and pouty crybullies. Their brains have been broken by confirmation bias, group conformity, and the cognitive dissonance. They're more spiteful than any other community I've seen.
I had to stop reading half way though and put on some death note music to get in the proper mood love you buddy dggL
if destiny ever reads this put on near's theme on stream buddy
And if we are to be even more precise, then while I suppose it is
barely possible that a once in a generation genius AI researcher exists
even though I have never met one, it is nonetheless improbable that
someone would be a once in a generation genius AI researcher and spend
all his time writing fanfiction about the representative heuristic and
Bayesian evidence. On the other hand it is less improbable that a young
child would imagine this as the role to play in order to convince his
teacher and classmates that he is a very smart AI researcher.The import
of an act lies not in what that act resembles on the surface, Mr. Yu-…
Potter, but in the states of mind which make that act more or less
probable.
It’s written by a nerd who knows his stuff, a fairly respected AI
safety researcher called Eliezer Yudkowsky.
Harry blinked. He’d just had the dichotomy between the
representativeness heuristic and the Bayesian definition of evidence
explained to him by a wizard.
In both cases, Destiny/Quirrelmort were presented with behaviour that
suggested a certain state of mind, and then rejected that evidence by
considering the states of mind that made that behaviour more or less
likely. In Booksmart’s case, Destiny did it by modeling an alternate
state of mind that predicted a completely different response from
Booksmarts than the one Booksmarts presented on stream.
To further double down on this nerd shit:
The representativeness heuristic is a
mental shortcut that we use when estimating probabilities. When we’re
trying to assess how likely a certain event is, we often make our
decision by assessing how similar it is to an existing mental
prototype.
The use of evidence under Bayes’ theorem
relates to the probability of finding evidence in relation to the
accused, where Bayes’ theorem concerns the probability of an event and
its inverse.
Reminds me of how Norm Macdonald said that the best joke is [one where the punch line is identical to its setup](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/magazine/norm-macdonald-still-in-search-of-the-perfect-joke.html).
>It's written by a nerd who knows his stuff, a fairly respected AI safety researcher called Eliezer Yudkowsky.
I can mentally see the wikipedia ^(\[)[^(by whom?)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:By_whom)^(\]) template being used already.
I’m convinced anybody who unironically views HPMOR as a good piece of fiction just doesn’t read anything other than blog posts. Just read the ‘brilliant’ takeaway from this convoluted parable:
It’s just so horribly written. He has a way of writing in which he obscures extremely simple concepts in such labyrinthine language that the reader comes away thinking he’s said something of value because they had to read it 3 times to make sense of it. The takeaway here is “intentions matter when evaluating a person’s character. You can’t look at the act in isolation.” Which is… a foundational principle in every legal system in the world? It’s like he’s never heard of editing.
On fanfiction and HPMOR, OP writes: > I mean you’re not wrong. 99% of it is smut or of similar quality writing. And then, every once in a while, once in a thousand fanfics, you read something that’s better than the original. And then you basically can’t go back to original anymore because the mistakes stand out too glaringly now. You’ve been spoiled by finally finding out what the original could have been, should have been.
When you can tell what quality writing is.
I am 13 and this is deep.
The comments in that thread make me want to sand the folds off my brain
Man, these weirdos talk in such an obnoxious way. Needlessly complicated.
Honestly that guy needs therapy and his community needs to find a better role model so they don’t end up like him.
An insight into the privileging of their own minds that happens among the rationalists as a case study in Scrybal the original poster. cheeseless (hi! I’m not sure if pinging or not pinging is polite at this point) writes:
OP responds:
Again cheeseless:
and finally OP:
Like maybe just maybe consider that it might be a you thing that you look for obscure forum communities that keep turning fascist to give you secret knowledge? Furthermore, maybe the obscuring or ignorance of original sources, the obscuring of their points and needless new jargon that cheeseless mentions aren’t the same thing as paraphrasing something you’ve learned? If I rewrite a bunch of elementary math in a convoluted and obscure way and teach it to people online under new notation while taking donations, isn’t it obvious how that is self-serving and unhelpful to the learners? These points are made and just ignored.
Perhaps it’s something to do with why it’s this community where the crazy rightwingers gather… OP again:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/u0wi4y/if_you_havent_read_hpmor_what_destiny_did_to/i49i689/
🍷
the omniliberal is too powerful for our sneers
wtf is going on in /r/destiny? idk, seems like a normal day on the sub to me lol
just think of destiny as babby’s first political/philosophical discourse and adjust your expectations accordingly.
I know what some of these words mean
[deleted]
Sometimes, it is easy to become tribal, and to conjure up a false causility that links the prima facie stupidity and gullibility of right-wing streamers to the fact that they are right wing. But here the Occam’s razor comes handy: it is simply because they are streamers, and we should expect nothing of value coming from a guy trying to reinvent human knoledge through debates, no matter their political colors.
I know it is mega soy, but I read the patronus scene as a teenager and it was one of the few moments in any media when I felt something truely touching.
There are only a couple moments like that that I can remember: original Snape reveal, the first time I read the Red Wedding in GOT, first time seeing Boromir defending the hobbits, final scene in Shindler’s List, Mass Effect 2 ending, Life is Strange ending and Arcane S1 ending.
And if we are to be even more precise, then while I suppose it is barely possible that a once in a generation genius AI researcher exists even though I have never met one, it is nonetheless improbable that someone would be a once in a generation genius AI researcher and spend all his time writing fanfiction about the representative heuristic and Bayesian evidence. On the other hand it is less improbable that a young child would imagine this as the role to play in order to convince his teacher and classmates that he is a very smart AI researcher.The import of an act lies not in what that act resembles on the surface, Mr. Yu-… Potter, but in the states of mind which make that act more or less probable.
It’s written by a nerd who knows his stuff, a fairly respected AI safety researcher called Eliezer Yudkowsky.
In both cases, Destiny/Quirrelmort were presented with behaviour that suggested a certain state of mind, and then rejected that evidence by considering the states of mind that made that behaviour more or less likely. In Booksmart’s case, Destiny did it by modeling an alternate state of mind that predicted a completely different response from Booksmarts than the one Booksmarts presented on stream.
To further double down on this nerd shit: