this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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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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It feels like this person was mad at the TESCREAL label and decided to make a blog post going "nuh-uh, I know you are but what am I"... except they have none of the academic ability of the TESCREAL authors so they just sort of pile on labels and ideologies without properly showing any causal or ideological relationship (like the TESCREAL authors do). Heck, they outright screw up words and definitions in a few places, (Orate sticks out to me).
This has two potential readings, and both of them are funny.
Yep.
"Yall are in a cult, and it is TESCREAL."
"No, you jocks are are doing a religion but dont know it, here is why you are doing ruh-nine-presentationalism, and ..."
"Yeah this it"
E: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/are-yall-with-the-cult
So I know you were going for a snappy summary, but I think one of the important things to note is that the TESCREAL essay doesn't call them a singular cult, it draws connections between the letters of the acronym including inspirations, people in multiple letters of the acronym, common terminology, common ideological assumptions, and such.
I think a hypothetical more mature rationalist movement would acknowledge their historical and current influences and think critically about how they relate to them instead of just going nuh-uh. Like the relatively more reasonable EAs occasionally point out problematic trends in their movement and at least try to address them (not particularly effectually, but at least they aren't all in total denial).
Yeah i was just doing the meme from king of the hill. If I go indepth, I would sneer at stuff like: "Because if TESCREALism really is a secularized religion, then… so what?"
For being a misrepresentation, it is secularized eschatological Christianity (perhaps even Catholicism, but not Protestant enough to say that, counting the rich feels very knife in church door ish), not just a religion. Doesn't even represent the argument correctly. It is the rapture of the nerds, not the breaking of the Saṃsāra for nerds.
E: bonus points for after first generalizing religion then picking islam as some weird anti apostate example. Must have been an accident. E2: the apostate (yes, my word, he said 'shirkers', which is not a term I have ever seen used re religion) stuff is even funnier considering that Émile P. Torres (who for some reason is not mentioned in the opening, just later), is somebody who has written about “existential threats” for ages (more on his ideas on this here which also has the bonus that it is way more readable than the main post), DavidG was a lesswronger, a lot of science fiction writers who are not positive about TESCREAL are people who wrote transhumanist sf, and see also the large group of sneerclubbers who used to read LW/SSC etc. (E3: forgot to mention, Gebru is a computer scientist).
"shirk" is an islamic term for idolatry/type of heresy, person who does that is called "mushirk"
Thanks, I was not aware.
i'm not reading all that so idk if it's used correctly in context, but more usual islamic term for infidel is "kafir" (spellings vary; there's no single romanization of arabic)
Yeah I also dont know what is correct, because they used an odd term, specific to one religion, to which most people reading do not belong, or if they do do not experience that way, so their point is unclear. Like the rest of the text the attempt at sounding well read and learned actually impedes the message trying to convey. Cargo cult stuff. (Im assuming not LLM generated here).
Oh duh, I remember that meme now. With the people getting on the bus wearing weird white robe outfits?
Yep
@Soyweiser What is "king of the hill"? TV/cinema or some other visual entertainment?
Animated series about an honest propane salesman from Texas trying to survive modernity.
It is a tv series yes, this is basically the clip from the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aOHQ-sMCps there is more context re the episode but it isn't that relevant. I should have just linked it initially. (I have since edited the first post with a link to the know your meme page which explains it).