this post was submitted on 01 Sep 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.]

See our twin at Reddit

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a detailed examination of the leaked Scott Alexander emails, for your reference (www.tumblr.com)
submitted 1 month ago by dgerard@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (20 children)

This was an excellent read if you're aware of the emails but never bothered to read his citations or to dig into what the blather about object-level and meta-level problems was specifically about, which is presumably most people.

So, a deeper examination of the email paints 2014 Siskind as a pretty run of the mill race realist who's really into black genes are dumber, you guys studies and who thinks that higher education institutions not taking them seriously means they are deeply broken and untrustworthy, especially with anything to do with pushing back against racism and sexism. Oh, and he is also very worried that immigration may destroy the West, or at least he gently urges you to get up to speed with articles coincidentally pushing that angle, and draw your own conclusions based on pure reason.

Also it seems that in private he takes seriously stuff he has already debunked in public, which makes it basically impossible to ever take anything he writes in good faith.

[–] excerpta@zirk.us 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

@Architeuthis @dgerard "...impossible to ever take anything he writes in good faith."

See also this unguarded moment from Tumblr. All the alpha is in bad faith social engineering!
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/9lj3g7

If I am 30% of the way from socialist to libertarian, and all of my friends are 10% of the way from socialist to libertarian, I think it’s fair to tell my friends “No, look! Libertarians make some good points! We need to pay more attention to the way libertarians think instead of hating them and rejecting everything they say out of hand!” This doesn’t make me a libertarian - I’m still only 30% of the way from socialist to libertarian and so more on the socialist side...I thought I had an SSC post where I explained this further, but I can’t find it. The gist was that if everyone else is at 10% and you think the correct answer is 30%, you can either argue for 30 and have them compromise at 20%, or you can argue 50% and have them compromise at 30%. I’m not sure there’s a right answer to this question, but I sometimes end up arguing for 50% and I think this is at least a defensible choice.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I wonder if this is just a really clumsy attempt to invent stretching the overton window from first principles or if he really is so terminally rationalist that he thinks a political ideology is a sliding scale of fungible points and being 23.17% ancap can be a meaningful statement.

That the exchange of ideas between friends is supposed to work a bit like the principle of communicating vessels is a pretty weird assumption, too. Also, if he thinks it's ok to admit that he straight up tries to manipulate friends in this way, imagine how he approaches non-friends.

Between this and him casually admitting that he keeps "culture war" topics alive on the substack because they get a ton of clicks, it's a safe bet that he can't be thinking too highly of his readership, although I suspect there is an esoteric/exoteric teachings divide that is mostly non-obvious from the online perspective.

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