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dgerard@awful.systems

Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 12 May 2024 (awful.systems)

submitted 7 months ago by dgerard@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post, there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 11 points 7 months ago (4 children)

The slatestar subreddit is doing its regular so what's up with all the racists constantly crawling out of the woodwork around here surprised pikachu thread, in response to Scotty doing Hanania Week in the substack.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

You can like a thinker without endorsing all of their beliefs, even if their beliefs are evil. Why do people like Schmitt and Heidegger even though they were fascists? Or Foucault given his views on the age of consent? I agree that Hanania's views are relevant context, but I think it's fine to write a book review that doesn't try to analyse the author's motivations or the book's place in a wider political context.

Hanania is clearly analogous to Foucault and Heidegger, and also is it even wrong to completely divorce a work from all context.

I think Scott was simply more interested in writing an article on arguments aginst civil rights law than an article on whether Hanania is engaged in an insidious project to smuggle rascist ideas into the mainstream via his legal arguments, and frankly I find that kind of review more interesting too. Perphaps this is irresponsible, but at the end of the day Scott is a modestly influential blogger that just likes to write about things he finds interesting.

uwu smolbean blogger with absolutely no agenda besides the pursuit of truth and civility strikes again.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Scott is of the opinion that being able to maintain peaceable discourse with people who you deeply disagree with on political issues is an important feature of society which we shouldn't readily make exceptions to.

"Scott being nice to racists and reviewing their books positively actually means he's less racist" is a good rhetorical trick.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 7 points 7 months ago

HBD is a legit line of scientific inquiry you guys, it's not just eugenics obsessed weirdoes and fascists trying to bring back birthright as the primary path to privilege.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 5 points 7 months ago

It's also a patently idiotic philosophy boiling down to basically negotiating with terrorists.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 7 months ago

Amazing how much they memoryholed the Scott emails.

[–] slopjockey@awful.systems 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

So what exactly happens to people who get really into Scott et al. and then realize that they're racist? I mean people like OP who genuinely seemed shocked by how buddy buddy their "unorthodox" intellectuals are with blatant racists.

Do they slowly disengage from rationalist-spheres, or do they just become cryptoracists like all the other idw types?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They start reading sneerclub and then see that the stereotypes about hwo horrible the place is are not true. Then they post, then they are lost.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Trapped in Acausal Robot God's maze forever

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 3 points 7 months ago

We just cut out the middleman, no fancy simulation needed, we can torture ourselves well enough.

[–] slopjockey@awful.systems 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Also what the fuck?

In your mind, is a racist who "possesses strong animus towards non-whites" a special category of person with which we should not engage in any kind of discussion? Or if we should not be casual towards them, how should we act? Why?

[–] 200fifty@awful.systems 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

is this trying to say "discrimination against racists is the real racism"? ... Would that be "racismism"?

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 4 points 7 months ago

"should we really treat violent racists any differently from how we would casually treat a neighbour? what is it really you expect me to do do? why are you so ridiculous?"

just some casual afternoon reframing of violent racism and dehumanising anyone that isn't like themselves, no biggie

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 3 points 7 months ago

at least one vein of this goes off into the vibes cluster that is TPOT