this post was submitted on 10 Jun 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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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 16 June 2024 (awful.systems)
submitted 5 months ago by blakestacey@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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Need to make a primal scream without gathering footnotes first? 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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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 11 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I couldn't remember who Chris Langan was, and mobile search gave me "Chris Langham":

Christopher Langham (born 14 April 1949) is an English writer, actor, and comedian.

No mention of philosophy, but this turned up

On 2 August 2007, Langham was found guilty of 15 charges of downloading and possessing level 5 child sexual abuse images and videos.

OK so maybe the correct person?

No it turns out Langan is the person with "the world's highest IQ".

From the podcast transcript

… if people look up Chris Langan on Wikipedia, under his views section, they'll be like, ah, these are some far right views. The CTMU is obviously not about that, but… anything you want to just fill in for people that might be curious about that part of it?

[...]

When people bring up his political views, I often mention that Heidegger was a Nazi, and that doesn't mean his philosophy should just be dismissed outright. I don't think Chris is remotely a Nazi. In my personal interaction with him, he's been a wonderful person. He's been kind and generous with me, and I respect him personally.

No doubt Himmler's friends and family thought he was a great guy too.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 15 points 5 months ago

I often mention that Heidegger was a Nazi, and that doesn’t mean his philosophy should just be dismissed outright

Very true. It should instead be dismissed because it is the exact sort of reactionary nonsense a craven nazi would try to pass off as philosophical inquiry.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

From a brief glance at the CTMU it fits into:

  • not even wrong
  • not that deep
  • cloaked in really unecessary jargon

It's fascinating to see people re-invent the same bad eschatology, it's like there's crazed compulsive shaped hole in the heart of man or something.

[–] carlitoscohones@awful.systems 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Wikipedia tells me that Langan says that he can prove the existence of God, the soul and an afterlife, using mathematics ... I feel like there's gonna be some bad Bayes in there somewhere.

[–] cstross@wandering.shop 9 points 5 months ago

@carlitoscohones @techtakes See also Frank Tipler, "The Physics of Immortality" (or: Astrophysicist goes cray-cray, tries to prove TESCREAL bullshit only takes a left turn into evangelical Christianity by way of the fine structure constant)

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

From what I recall from the halcyon days of science-blogging, it was more bad Gödel than bad Bayes, but a dose of the latter would be unsurprising.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

previously featured here, too

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 5 months ago

Yeah I realized that as soon as I found the correct result.

So many high-IQ fascists, I get memory buffer overruns.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 5 months ago

I had missed that post, no idea Ben had fallen that far. (Like I knew the psi stuff, not the fanboying of the person people need to 'well not all nazis were bad' things about).

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

He’s been kind and generous with me

Reminds me of this comic, xcancel