this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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SneerClub

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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I would also tell them that it’s possible to actually understand things. Most people seem to go through life on rote, seemingly not recognizing when something doesn’t make sense because they don’t expect anything to make sense.

Oh my god could you sound any more flushable.

Just fuck yourself. Everybody is thinking all of the fucking time, everybody has blindspots, stop being so insufferable.

They're so obsessed with this narrative that keeps them ahead of the curve, guess what ex gifted kids? Other people catch up, you're not competing with 4 year olds anymore.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 10 points 1 year ago

I would also tell them that it’s possible to actually understand things.

The most perfect set-up to date for a joke about how the Thing Understander has logged on

[–] elmtonic@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

https://xkcd.com/610/

I think a lot of rats have this idea that they arrived at their views and values solely by thinking really hard (and being really really smart). Which means that anyone who doesn't share their same basic views is simply a mouthbreathing NPC who doesn't have any curiosity in "the way the world works" - when in reality, people just have a lot of other shit on their minds, and tend to care about less abstract problems than [insert sci-fi trope here].

It's funny that the commenter talks so much about how people should just try to understand things, and in the same breath fails to try to empathize with people who think differently.

[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 10 points 1 year ago

Not to mention that even people who do think about those abstract problems can come to different conclusions than them.

A lot of the stuff in the tip of the rationalist iceberg, the obsession with intelligence and logic, the quasi-dogmatic faith in exponentially improving technology, even stepping my toes into the eugenics territory and getting burned, these are all things I remember from my tween years. I have been in that headspace, thinking of all the same questions every single self-appointed child genius LessWronger is obsessed with. And yet, I came out of it all as a leftist SJW with a raging disdain for the techno-financial-idustrial complex.

What happened is that I grew up, had my views challenged, met and befriended more diverse groups of people, learned about alternative views and synthesized them with my own, gaining a more nuanced understanding of issues I thought I had "solved" in my head by the age of 15. The worst thing that could have happened to me is convincing everyone who disagrees with me is an NPC and walling myself in a bubble full of other insecure logic bros all firmly locked in the adolescent mindset of having figured everything out forever.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 4 points 1 year ago

Aumann's Agreement Theorem says that I'm right so therefore you're wrong

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean it seems to me these people just copy what they think a smart person on the internet says, and theres little actual thought about things.

[–] gnomicutterance@hachyderm.io 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah, except instead of copying what a smart person says, they're copying Eliezer Yudkowsky.

[–] bcdavid@hachyderm.io 4 points 1 year ago

@naevaTheRat @dgerard People criticizing rationalism aren't suggesting we can't understand things, but we do often suggest we can't understand everything, or even some of the specific things rationalists claim to understand.

[–] zogwarg@awful.systems 4 points 1 year ago

Sneerious rephrasing:

I would also tell them that the rationality cargo culting, is the only way to portray understanding things,
fake it till you make it, you can solve this insecurity that I have about myself in you!
Other people are untinking NPCs, they don't see the cracks in the matrix (and PC hellscape) like I do.

[–] corbin@awful.systems 4 points 1 year ago

Hey, don't lump us "gifted" folks in with LW~ I survived Talented & Gifted; I stayed in school, studied, and learned about the world. Yud's contention is that I should have dropped out and read sci-fi books all day.

I do read sci-fi all day, though... Maybe we're not so different...