I constantly experience [the Gell-Mann amnesia] effect on this subreddit; everyone sounds so smart and so knowledgeable until they start talking about the handful of things I know a little bit about (leftism, the arts, philosophy) and they’re so far off the mark — then there’s another post and I’ve forgotten all about it

Bias noted, impact not reduced. Basic rationality failed. These people are so willing to discard their own sense of right and wrong, moral or rational, just to belong in their weird cult. Why is it so hard for these dorks to admit that they don't actually care about being smart or rational and that they just want a bunch of other dorks to be friends with?

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Why is it so hard for these dorks to admit that they don't actually care about being smart or rational and that they just want a bunch of other dorks to be friends with?

Do they just want some likemindedly dorky friends, or a sense of superiority over the normies/NPCs/whatever they call everyone else, complete with extensively footnoted justifications for why they are the cognitive aristocracy?

[+] Soyweiser@masto.ai 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] self@awful.systems 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ima sit here and imagine a world where SneerClub makes enough money to cover its own infrastructure, much less the literal fuckton of cash that gets thrown at EA and rationalist groups because there’s good money in carrying water for billionaires who need a smart-sounding excuse for doing a whole bunch of racism

[–] self@awful.systems 1 points 2 years ago

Since that does not seem likely to be the sort of answer you’re looking for though, if I wanted to bridge the inferential gap with a hypothetical Sneer Clubber who genuinely cared about truth, or indeed about anything other than status (which they do not), I’d tell them that convention doesn’t work as well as one might think. If you think that the conventional way to approach the world is usually right, the rationalist community will seem unusually stupid.

get in the fucking locker

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 1 points 2 years ago

Why is it so hard for these dorks to admit that they don’t actually care about being smart or rational and that they just want a bunch of other dorks to be friends with?

because that'd involve talking about feelings, and those are the domain of weird squishy gooey human things, disgusting! :sarcmark: