Imagine one day David Gerard of /r/SneerClub said, "Eliezer Yudkowsky is a white supremacist!" And you replied: "No, I'm not! That's a lie." And imagine E.T. Jaynes was still alive...

I‘m impressed at the way you still manage to live rent free in these chud’s heads. The bogeyman is real if you’re a rationalist apparently & his name is D.Gerard.

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

Imagine one day Dan Gackle of Hacker News fame banned the Linus Tech Tips guy for sockpuppeting but actually you were the sockpuppet. Also suppose Terry A. Davis were still alive so you went to ask him how to sockpuppet like a veteran, but instead you run into Timnit Gebru, who is also a terrorist. She calls you pronouns and slurs like TESCREAL and your pants drop to your ankles and everyone is laughing at you and also Terry calls you the N word because you don't know how to write a compiler. Then you turn around and see Scott Siskind and Joanne Rowling and they're also laughing at you and you start to cry.

Anyway you'd be really upset.

[–] Muireall@awful.systems 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Picture a scene: the New York Times is releasing an article on Effective Altruism (EA) with an express goal to dig up every piece of negative information they can find. They contact Émile Torres, David Gerard, and Timnit Gebru, collect evidence about Sam Bankman-Fried, the OpenAI board blowup, and Pasek's Doom, start calling Astral Codex Ten (ACX) readers to ask them about rumors they'd heard about affinity between Effective Altruists, neoreactionaries, and something called TESCREAL. They spend hundreds of hours over six months on interviews and evidence collection, paying Émile and Timnit for their time and effort. The phrase "HBD" is muttered, but it's nobody's birthday.

From here.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 10 months ago

The EA/LW community loves to think from first principles, and that is usually one of its finest traits. I notice and respect the times their first-principles thinking leads them to be correct about things broader society is incorrect about—a regular occurrence.

[citation fucking needed]

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

A thing that is sort of amazing about that article (by Woodgrains, who is supposed to be part of the leftwing people of themotte) is that their complaints about journalism being unfair to them is said by everybody all the time in every subculture when there is a non 100% puff piece on their subculture.

The problem with journalists is that they tend to shine a light on the parts of your subculture that you pretend isn't there, but a part that you should really check out and do something about (a bit like that mole, ow god I'm projecting and need to call my doctor). How can you be a grown person and not have seen this happen to several groups over and over again already? How sheltered and only inside LW spheres are these people? (Rhetorical)

And this is without talking about how journalist are pressured for time, underpaid, etc etc. Seeing how six months of work isn't enough to uncover the truth in their own paid sex slaves (yes, this is the intentionally worst way to describe that situation) and more work keeps piling up on up on just that case with claims, counterclaims, miss attributions etc should ~~tell them something~~ update their priors about just how much work and how difficult journalism is, but it will not.

(I know Woodgrains is praising the ability of LW to criticize themselves, but crucially he doesn't really seem to notice that nothing changes, the various racists/sexists etc are still there and talking about happy birthdays (urgh). But hey at least it got Gwern mad)

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

leftwing people of themotte

lol the empty fucking set

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

Yeah remember how themotte had a "quality contributions of last month" post every month? The schism (for people not in the know: the less 'far right culture war, more good faith discussions' spinoff of themotte (how many layers deep are we now? Damn you Hanson!), what a failed project from the start, the culture war anger is the point and the draw of themotte) has a 'Quality Contributions for the first half of 2023' post. Guess there were no quality contributions the 6 months after that.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 10 months ago

I follow drama and blow-ups in a lot of different subcultures. It's my job.

Wait, you can get paid for this???

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

the fuck. apparently I secretly do run rationality.

scratching his itch to be productive by traveling the world and doing charity via talking with cool, smart people about meaningful ideas.

i'd want some pretty convincing evidence that the bit after "and" goes with the word "productive".

@Geoffrey Miller, with his own long history of serious, sincere engagement within the rationalist community,

uh yeah lol ok

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