SneerClub

989 readers

2 users here now

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.]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

In which Scott (other Scott) can't imagine why committing a crime would lead him to be treated (gasp) like a criminal (scottaaronson.blog)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Someone posted this on ssc with a warning about talking to cops, but really just marvel at what's going on here.

Aaronson manages to turn a story where he is briefly arrested for a theft (which he did commit on video!) into paragraphs and paragraphs of indulging in his persecution fantasies.

Zero empathy on display for the people he stole from, the people just doing their jobs, or reflection on the fact that it wasn't a simple little mistake anyone could make but rather... a fairly weird move? Do people usually put change in cups?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Another good comment:

sounds like the officers didn't know that the amount taken was so small. From the post:

After many more attempts to intimidate me, I was finally informed of the charge: “that smoothie place over there says you the stole cash from their tip jar.” Huh? How much? One of the officers returned from the smoothie bar, and said, a bit sheepishly: “they say it was $4.”

So the most likely scenario was a comedy of errors. All the cops know is that the manager of the smoothie place ran up to them and said "that guy just robbed our tip jar!" They interpret this to mean he emptied out the entire tip jar, which would be a pretty brazen thing to do, so they roll up on him hard out of disgust that anyone would do such a thing. Then they talk to him and discover that what actually happened is that he absent-mindedly took $4. That's a very different class of violation, but it's not like they can take back the aggressiveness of their initial approach. The damage was done.

In theory, the officers could have avoided the mistake by questioning the manager for more details before making the stop. Look at it from their perspective, though -- one of the people you're employed to protect is telling you that he's just been robbed, and if you futz around too long, the perpetrator gets on his plane and gets away with it. It's not surprising they would decide to stop the guy first and work out the details once they could be confident he wasn't going anywhere.

But no, it's just that the world is against Scott. It's not just feminist bloggers from the early 2010s, it's the cops, it's everyone.