this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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The article itself does mention that creating cultured meat is already possible, just that the limits of the technology presently known for doing it make creating it at the same cost as regular meat infeasible. Which technically doesn't contradict with what the person you replied to said, because the commenter didn't exactly say how expensive or niche they expected it to be, so even something like a hundred dollar hamburger that doesn't replace a significant fraction of food consumption but does exist as a novelty luxury for someone that had the money to spend on animal protein once in a blue moon, fits.
Did that locker just say "but it was technically correct"?
Locker?
As awful.systems is a spinoff, of reddits sneerclub, there is a bit of lingo some of the old timers have taken with, these tend to go a bit nerdy. In this case the nerd being pushed into the lockers by the jocks. This is because the people sneerclub sneered about had a trauma of the nerd/jock thing from highschool and tended to see a lot of things via that lens. (So anybody who was their detractor was obviously a jock). This has created a bit of a tradition where you see a annoyingly dumb reply, esp when it does things in an annoying way that also often applies to the LessWrong Rationalists, like for example ignoring written and unwritten context (steelmanning nonsense is also a good point), to say you are putting the poster into a locker, or saying they should be shoved in one (of course, we are just as nerdy as the Rationalists, so if jocks were real we would also be in a locker just like them.). So here is a bit of initial context, we all want subconsciously be shoved into a locker by Henry Cavill.
Now how does this apply to our current situation? Well the first reaction here is a bit nonsensical and mentions things already mentioned, and argued against in the article. For example how the upper middle class of the western world eating a bit of vat grown meat every now and then is not going to solve the problems which vat grown meat should solve. It actually also makes the problems worse because money can only be spend once. As mentioned in the article. So sc_griffith, the OP rightfully replies with 'read the article please'. Which is fine, as it is a bit of a dumb reaction to all the myriads of problems shown in the article.
Then you come along, having reinvented Rationalist ways of discourse from first principles, or that Futurama episode, and you end up defending the person missing the point of the article, why it was posted here (ow look unwritten context, as foreshadowed), and you react with a somewhat annoying post going basically 'technically he is correct, if you squint, and steelman'. Ergo, into the locker you go.
Holy shit, why am I talking to a locker? Is it because I'm taking a bit of perverse glee too type out all the context both written and unwritten way, in a sick way to make myself feel superior to end with weak bad meme reference? Nah, it must be the kids who are wrong (I say from my own locker (in reality I have to do some things irl and im procrastinating)).
tl;dr: I was saying you were a bit annoying and you shouldn't steelman posts of other people like that.
Im not familiar with steelman either, tbh. I know that sneerclub and lesswrong were/are things that exist because Ive seen the names in passing, but dont actually know what theyre about. I tend to have a habit (possibly a bad one, carried over from reddit) of engaging with posts on the /all feed without stopping to look at what kind of community theyre actually in, so maybe Ive stumbled into some more niche community with its own lingo whilst thinking it a general purpose thing for discussing tech articles. What I was trying to say with all that was that I could easily see a situation where the person had read the article and yet had replied the same, as the article itself mentions what is being talked about, and so figured that the unwritten context was that they just thought what the article described as being a more realistic pricing and lack of large scale change for cultured meat was fine with them vs it not existing at all, but straight up replying with "I think you might be accusing someone of not reading because youre misunderstanding why they said it" felt rudely direct, so it felt like it would come across nicer if it was implied. Im sorry that was annoying, I dont really think it should cause annoyance, but I recognize emotional reactions like that dont tend to be consciously decided anyway, its probably just a result of my being rather bad at figuring out how I come across to other people.
Steelman is the reverse of strawman, so you take the best argument the other side could have made and attacked that, so if a neo-nazi says 'I want to kill those degenerates' you make up some story on how dunno I'm not going to steelman that. It is a Rationalist habit, and it just opens your mind to the worst ideas because of a fear you might dismiss a good idea which was presented badly. It has gargantuan failure modes, and if you want to start a cult teaching people to steelman is prob a good idea.
And yeah we can be a bit unfriendly, esp when this place goes 'this tech is bad' and then people go defend the tech, or miss the point. We prob also picked up some bad habits (this is me saying nay, it is not just you, we also suck at times).
Personally I think the whole reddit model of the internet where you had an /all and not just subforums was a mistake. It worked a bit for SA (I'm not a goon btw), but in SA it at least was somewhat clear where you were posting. The reddit/facebook/twitter ification makes everything one big goo where it is unclear you walked into a longer conversation, a different style of having conversations, or a nazi bar etc.