this post was submitted on 20 Dec 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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Is uh, anyone else watching? This dude (chaos) was/is friends with Brent Dill.

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[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 11 points 11 months ago (3 children)

My brain is blanking on TPOT even so I have no idea what is going on.

But I do recall I noticed this about Dill while we were still on reddit:

"he wasnt dating a 17 year old, he was domming (but worse) a 16 year old who he met when she was 15. And from his profile page his bday is 09/27/1974. So he was about 28 at the time"

So people talking about 'sex crimes involving a minor when he was 20, which is 20 years ago.' makes me wonder how much rounding down (and for the years ago) rounding up there is going on. If that vaguepost is about Dill.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That Part Of Twitter, another euphemistic name for the post-rationalists who realise Yudkowsky is cringe but want to vibe with like-minded race scientists. They founded Vibecamp to this end, where Curtis Yarvin showed up and was feted like a rockstar descended from heaven.

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Apparently Aella and Robin Hanson showed up at vibecamp too, I guess it's a big deal for the greater rationalist community.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

Hanson was the Gentle Silent Guest of Honor.

(This is a joke, and for the people who don't get it trust me you are better off not knowing. No really. Still curious? Google "Hanson Gentle Silent" (without "), but I warned you).'

E ~~1~~, ~~2~~, ~~3~~, ~~4~~, 5!

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

CW SAJESUS, that is bad. MF literally woke up and said to himself, "today I will defend rape," pondered for a moment, and then said "using evopysch"

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I did warn yall. I'm surprised people didn't know this already tbh.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)
[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How bad can it be?

Search. Read a few paragraphs. Close tab in disgust.

Yikes. These people. Did they become rats because they couldn't understand other people existing and valuing their bodily autonomy or did becoming rats do this to them?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

rats

As that dehumanizes people we try not to use those words.

But I think they value logic, reason, having new ideas, and looking at things from an neutral way so they come up with these kinds of contrarian bullshit ideas. And the worst is of course they aren't even trying to be edgy funny, no just banality of evil lack of emotions. There is also an element of 'look at what we can think about without being all disgusted' part.

[–] mountainriver@awful.systems 6 points 10 months ago

Intended as abbreviation, but fair point. And no slight to any actual rattus rattus, if any are acasually lurking from the civilization they will build long after humans wipe themselves out. Impressive animals.

Reasonable explanation of why they write this kind of stuff, thanks. And of course such a culture attracts those who like to write such.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

For my part I didn’t read the “rats” bit as (intending to be a) dehumanising (use), but instead as the short form of the name as they themselves use it too

But the possibility from overloaded context doesn’t help, I’ll definitely agree on that - if someone read this without some context knowledge, it could def read badly

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I get how people mean it, but these kinds of things can escalate quickly, and I thought I should refer back to the norms of r/sneerclub at least once. 'Make fun of' places online quickly turn into harassment when people are not careful. And there are non-zero people who look at an online community and see that as some sort of social proof for the bad things they want to do (See also the risk of the Rationalists hinting at blowing up AI labs/chip fabs, stochastic terrorism is a risk and I'd rather reduce the risk by not using dehumanizing language (even if I also love to abbreviate)).

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I first encountered the word "post-rats" a couple years ago in random contextless tweets and I was so, so disappointed when I found out they weren't talking about some sort of weird animal transformation fetish subculture.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 4 points 10 months ago

Whenever I see "rationalist" abbreviated to "rat", I think of the Sliders episode where they land on Fundamentalist Earth and discover an underground movement of "radical rationalists" or "rad rats".

So, if for no other reason, we should avoid abbreviating "rationalist" to "rat" because we do not need life to resemble Sliders.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 10 months ago

you didn't lie, ignorance really is bliss

[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 3 points 10 months ago

... 5. Jesus that's an infohazard if I've ever seen one.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

You had furry femboy ancoms rubbing shoulders with proto-fascists

I flatly do not fucking believe this claim

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago

Yeah, seems doubtful they'd get along though I imagine both groups were present based on what I know of the rationalists.

Also lol at the gender ratio.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ah right of course, I think you have explained this to me once before, I will prob keep forgetting it.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 11 points 11 months ago
[–] lithiumbrigadebait@awful.systems 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Long story not-very-short:

The vaguepost is about Matthew Richard Sheahan (AKA @chaosprime), who runs an..."alternative tantric lifestyle community" (I.E. sex cult), and recently invited Brent Dill (AKA @HephaistosF) to live with him, as an alternative to Brent's previous living situation of "being homeless in the jungles of Hawaii."

This did not go well, and Brent left after ~one week. @chaosprime appears to have sent him on his way with something to the tune of $20000. They had a public back-and-forth about the whole thing on Twitter, if anyone cares to actually dig it up.

Contemporaneously, two women appear to have had, shall we say, "negative" experiences of living with @chaosprime's "community", and while they're not making public claims (for fear of retaliation and/or wanting to Just Move On), this kicked the hornet's nest of whisper networks that have known @chaosprime as a bad actor for some time now (at bare minimum, he's earned a lifetime ban from VibeCamp events, and his "sizable donation" to them was returned), and prompted someone to dig up his criminal record and share it rather than staying quiet; long story short, 20+ years ago he was imprisoned for five years for child sexual assault, among other tidbits, to go with his current reputation of "Not Very Good At Consent" and show that it's a well-established, long-term pattern of abusive behavior when in positions of power over women.

That's the setting for the current drama-implosion, which seems to have resulted in @chaosprime being fired from his developer contract gig with Freehold Games / Caves of Qud (which is actually a really excellent traditional roguelike that I'd highly recommend, and how I initially ended up stumbling across all of this crap being relevant to my interests).

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 7 points 10 months ago
[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I apologize if you saw my post before the current edit, I was similarly confused.

To clarify, there are actually two sex offenders, Brent Dill ( @HephaistosF) and a friend of his, @chaosprime (haven't discovered the real name yet). Someone recently posted @chaosprime's criminal record showing that he was convicted of sexual assault in 2000.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, wondered if it was something like that.

To clarify, there are actually two sex offenders

Think you are off by a large number there.

Oof that link, for a short moment I was wondering if this was one of those 17/20 edge cases but then I saw the 13.

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I should have said at least two sex offenders.

In other threads people are saying the victim was his 9 year old stepdaughter, but who knows?

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 11 months ago

Yeah I def don't want to know more, jesus christ

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

edit: The first draft of this comment was inaccurate, I was confused about what happened before because of a misleading tweet but I think I understand now. Anyways I found the background check tweet they're referring to: https://nitter.net/mimi10v3/status/1737273351016525986

Also the occultist sex bakery guy has been weighing in on the drama: https://nitter.net/Morphenius/status/1736956594582368429

Since TPOT is defending sex offenders now I decided to go through more of Brent's old livejournal and archive everything that seemed sufficiently creepy for the purposes of documenting it:

https://ialdabaoth.livejournal.com/6657.html

https://ialdabaoth.livejournal.com/7199.html

https://ialdabaoth.livejournal.com/7547.html

https://ialdabaoth.livejournal.com/8829.html

https://ialdabaoth.livejournal.com/11561.html

https://ialdabaoth.livejournal.com/20142.html

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

clicked one of the livejournal links at random:

Personally, I'd have liked to see him touch on some of the more interesting heresies in our culture, like:

  1. Children are sexual creatures

aaaand I'm out.

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 5 points 10 months ago

I should probably confess I didn't actually read the longer ones all the way through, for the reason you just demonstrated.

[–] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm clueless on the context but the level of euphemism in vajrakali's big tweet has got me extremely skeeved out.

[–] lithiumbrigadebait@awful.systems 5 points 10 months ago

She's married to the aspiring-sex-cult-leader-of-the-day. (@chaosprime)

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

"post-rationalists", essentially just rationalists who reject Yudkowksy's anti-woo stance

[–] clearleaf@lemmy.world -4 points 10 months ago

I don't know what this is but I hope Brent Dill gets his pickle back or whatever