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 11 months ago* (last edited 11 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 11 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.