22
Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 4th October 2026 (awful.systems)
submitted 1 week ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
186 comments fedilink hide all child comments

(The spooks shall soon be upon us.)

Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid - welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

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 so 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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] rhamph@awful.systems 6 points 5 days ago

This is his rationale:

(For the otherwise confused, I do not advocate that people individually refuse to avail themselves of pre-superintelligent AI or AGI. Because AI is not a linear system where slightly less input results in slightly less damage; because the "now you have to pay us $20/month or fall behind" trap is real; and because I personally think it wise to learn and understand the frontiers in whatever ways I most easily find energy to invest there. I would give it all up in a heartbeat if there were an effective and collective treaty to stop it all at once. Don't be the "Yet you participate in the system. Curious!" meme.)

And yet you fail to name ‘Mr. Gotcha’. Curious!

I still haven’t managed to decipher what he means by ‘the "now you have to pay us $20/month or fall behind" trap’, or how that apparently justifies sending money to the organisations most at risk of destroying the world? But it sounds like submitting to a kind of blackmail.

If he just meant that not having access to chatbots put you at some sort of societal disadvantage, that isn’t a trap. It’s just something you would do. ‘Trap’ implies that, what, this is only a problem if you start slopping things? So how does that mean that you should?

[-] lurker@awful.systems 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

“now you have to pay us $20/month or fall behind” trap is real

I’m baffled by this too. If I was Yud I would prefer to fall behind than to give money to the people I wholly believe will end the world so they can keep developing the things that I believe will end the world.

Because AI is not a linear system where slightly less input results in slightly less damage

So I’m assuming this means “well less people using AI doesn’t mean less damage overall done”, which is dumb because AI has very well documented effects of damaging the individual who uses it: just look at all the AI psychosis and suicide cases.

and because I personally think it wise to learn and understand the frontiers in whatever ways I most easily find energy to invest there.

you could do this without using the AI by looking at papers and stuff but most AI papers are riddled with hype so that might be difficult

The thing about the “yet you participate in society, curious!” meme is that you don’t really get the option to not participate in society. you do however get the option to not participate in AI, and there are plenty of people happily taking that option

[-] scruiser@awful.systems 9 points 5 days ago

The thing about the “yet you participate in society, curious!” meme is that you don’t really get the option to not participate in society. you do however get the option to not participate in AI, and there are plenty of people happily taking that option

Yeah, rationalist utterly fail at understanding collective action, or really anything besides lib-brained centrist methods of action. Well, maybe even lib-brained centrist is giving them too much credit, because even milquetoast liberals will occasionally avoid using products for ethical reasons. See Only Law Can Prevent Extinction, where Eliezer basically explains how all other action besides an international total ban on AI and GPUs is pointless. (I think he is trying to avoid people bombing data centers, but Elizer's "logic" is also implicitly against stuff like going to town halls to complain about data centers.)

[-] rhamph@awful.systems 4 points 5 days ago

I think the ‘trap’ might just be something akin to addiction? Once you’ve had your dose of the premium slop, you have to keep paying to get your fix. Except that completely fails to address why ‘people [shouldn’t] individually refuse to avail themselves’ of chatbots – it rather seems like a pretty good reason to stay away!

[-] lurker@awful.systems 2 points 5 days ago

If he’s talking about addiction than that defeats his point even harder

[-] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 5 points 5 days ago

The closest thing Yud ever had to a job or a business was selling pulp fiction on Amazon. He is not the person to talk about pressures that working people face! (the “now you have to pay us $20/month or fall behind” trap)

[-] scruiser@awful.systems 8 points 5 days ago

Considering how much compensation he gets a MIRI, he could afford to hire an artist out of his own pocket and he would end up with something better and not be funding the technology that he claims is going to kill us all...

[-] rhamph@awful.systems 10 points 5 days ago

On the other hand, that artist might have some sort of creative vision of their own that could irrevocably taint Yudkowsky’s Authorial Intent. Even worse, he would have to prominently credit their contributions, rather than attributing to Claude only the menial labour of piecing together his sacred vision.

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 5 points 5 days ago

and because I personally think it wise to learn and understand the frontiers in whatever ways I most easily find energy to invest there.

What exactly about "the frontiers" does this one-handed promptfondling help to understand?

[-] istewart@awful.systems 5 points 5 days ago

He's hammering refresh on the prompt button until it spits out a catgirl based on that furless Sphynx breed

this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2026
22 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

2719 readers
472 users here now

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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
dgerard@awful.systems