this post was submitted on 07 Apr 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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For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 14 April 2024 (awful.systems)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (4 children)

oh no

Aella
@Aella_Girl
My dad, a professionally evangelical fundamentalist Christian with no exposure to rationality, somehow independently discovered lesswrong and is now really worried about AI. idk if this means AI risk is going more mainstream or if it's a genetic disposition thing

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

"could it be that we both have the predisposition to believe batshit fairytales because of our social background rooted in an environment filled with them? no, must be that the AI truly will kill us!"

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The AI worry gene.

From the comments: "wait, how did he discover LessWrong and stay a professionally evangelical fundamentalist Christian?" lol

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

I mean, the rationalist conception of God and the evangelical conception of AI are basically the same: hypothetically omnipotent and omnibenevolent forces that will nonetheless subject everyone to the most twisted tortures that their imaginations can invent unless appeased through a specific series of actions that just happen to involve a lot of money ending up with the leading figures of the church.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

My coworker at work asked me if I had read HPMOR and said it was "really good".

I know I work in silicon hell-hole, but that still surprised me a bit -- to have what I thought was the weird obscure drama corner of the internet brought up in real life.

For it to have also reached some evangelicals... well that could turn into a real problem.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

HPTMOR is so obviously and unequivocally terrible that I can't help thinking I must be missing something significant about it, like how it could be scratching a very specific itch in young people on the spectrum.

As always, all bets are off if it happens to be the first long form literature someone read.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

At the time, I rather liked the first half of HPMOR, because I thought it was going somewhere and it was taking the piss at Harry Potter. I also enjoy fiction where people aren't idiots for sake of the plot, so I was enjoying a bit of deconstruction of that.

And then it just... Stopped the story and spun in place for what should have been the second half of the book and turned into drivel that takes itself very seriously.

I may have even told people to read it. I'm so sorry.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think when most people say a culture product was good, they mean that they were entertained. I found it entertaining way back when. Looking back at it now, I'm not sure why. It is objectively awful.

Thinking about it, I think it's a combination of:

  • Due to real life stuff, I wanted to be distracted and entertained (I binge watched and read a lot of material of questionable quality at this time)
  • Fanfiction, so large suspension of demands of any formal structure and logic
  • Fanfiction of children's fantasy books, so another large helping of suspension of disbelief
  • I started reading just as it was wrapping up, so binge reading and then moving on (only to then 10 years later finding out that it was a cult recruitment tool, like finding out you had been to Scientology seminar, enjoyed free snacks and just missed all the cult recruitment going on)

I also think stories happens to a very large part in the mind of the reader/listener/watcher/player. So the story as perceived by me of ten years ago, or sailor's coworker, doesn't have to have much connection with what was actually written. That is also what I have noticed trying to re-read some of the sci-fi I read as a kid. The stories I remembered was much better than the ones in the books.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I mean I like the idea behind it is amusing enough -- Harry Potter but magical science evil mastermind (he's uh supposed to be a bad guy in the story right?).

Everyone wants to read about that sort of stuff it's why Death Note was so popular.

But HPMOR just never really went anywhere with any of it and was too superficial and it's only really interesting for as long as the reader fails to notice that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

he sold on the big promise, got bored, started up again writing Ender's Game But Shit, got bored again and finally finished it technically.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Ender's Game 5: No Sleep 'Til Brookington -- The Fansub

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

it always feels like someone’s walking on my grave when my friends or coworkers bring up Rationalist shit, and it’s been happening increasingly often

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

about 2y back, one of my (ML, datascience) friends asked me "so what do you think about the EA thing" while we were on a hike (!)

I'd been peripherally aware of some of it but not the full picture, but my stance of the time bears out learning more about them

worried about when I hear the mention in a bar though. and it is near guaranteed to happen around these parts sometime, even if just because there's some things that ZA has a timelag on

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

at least we now have Sam Bankman-Fried to point to

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Sam Barsman-Unfreed