this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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SneerClub

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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.]

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[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (6 children)

these guys should really stop using words they don't understand. (i know, in case of the muppet quoted below it's almost impossible.)

[–] barsquid@lemmy.world 19 points 5 months ago

"Human biodiversity denial." There's a guy who is self-aware about his racism laying the groundwork for pretending he is not.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"a hbd denial movement" sure is a hell of a turn of phrase for "oh fuck. maybe they don't like our weird racist shit, quick everyone PANIC STATIONS"

[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 16 points 5 months ago (3 children)

him referring to lysenkoism in this context is extra weird; the scientific racists and lysenko are but another facets of the antiscientific ignorance

[–] YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAM@awful.systems 16 points 5 months ago

I said in a comment the other day that Roko’s view here is the natural consequence of Yudkowsky’s original naive physical-scientific reductionism. He proceeds from those (abysmally vague but superficially straightforward) premises here. In essence, if everything ultimately reduces to the physical, then when you perform the natural reduction on e.g. the status of black people in modern America, the causes must by physical-biological causes.

The reference to Lysenkoism is perfectly apt on this (stupid) model: attempts to thwart the reduction are merely ideologically driven cludges to the real theory, and the example of Lysenko demonstrates how easy it is for a whole discipline (in this case: biology in the USSR) to fall to that ideology. Liberal (read: communist) biologists are just pandering and making exceptions when they produce their own demonstrations that scientific racism is bunk.

It’s helpful that, for historical and political reasons, i.e. America and modern Europe’s original sins (colonialism and slavery) scientific racism is always waiting in the wings when the Rokos of the world reach their inevitable conclusions. Put it’s important not to conceive of scientific racism as a form of ignorance: it is, rather, an often highly organised political movement devoted to proving and promoting its claims by any means necessary - it is a knowing lie, with the caveat that insofar as scientific racists frequently show that they implicitly know that they lie (with absurd clandestine promotion strategies and revealing statistical sleights-of-hand), it’s rarely clear that they are wholeheartedly aware of it.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

chemtrails guy: look at least we're not flat earthers

(chemtrails guy: even if we both agree it's the jews,)

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 6 points 5 months ago

Clearly you need to go up a layer of meta to see the parallels, you aren't a high enough decoupler!

/s just in case, because that's exactly how they would defend insane analogies.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The net downvotes are the rest of the community frantically whispering "FFS Roko keep our racism on the down-low!"

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Roko is also violating their rules of assuming charitably and good faith about everything and going meta whenever possible. Because defending racists and racism is fine, as long as your tone is careful enough and you go up a layer of meta to avoid discussing the object level claims.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 5 months ago

Roko's role is mad prophet who just says the loud part ever louder

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 16 points 5 months ago

if there is a huge split in EA because the rationalists insist on turbo racism it will be hilarious

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 5 months ago

if they did, they would have nothing to say (at least some of them)

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

lol who the hell gave this a downvote

[–] mawhrin@awful.systems 3 points 5 months ago

whoever it was, i clicked the arrow down too, so that person didn't feel so alone.