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this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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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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Good rant, seems not controversial or weird at all.
(And lol, because I also go 'sigh, okay this is going to sound weird as fuck' when I talk to people outside of here about this LWsphere stuff. I do sometimes call sneerclub a hategroup but just out of the 'here is the steelman handout for the LW people' impulse, and a reminded to myself that while I don't think it is one now, it could very easily turn into one, esp if we were to start brigading. I have a solution on how to fix all that, but sadly I cannot fit that all in the margin of this comment).
Thank you!
I actually have some thoughts about that topic as well- could be an interesting thread! (I personally think that we are, at least to a small extent, similar dynamic-wise to the cult survivor networks that help their friends and family escape the cult they themselves escaped- after all, a huge number of us are former Rationalists or, like myself, narrowly escaped their gravitational pull. Kinda puts a weird twist on our relationship to the Rationalists. Doesn't make us immune from transitioning from "unkind critics" to something worse, especially if we were to start brigading or something else awful, but I think has some valuable social lessons for the group?)
I didn't actually have that much thoughts sorry, I was making a fermats last theorem joke.
And im not sure how much the mods want to change it into a support group. I thankfully never could really fall into the Rationalists as I live in The Netherlands, it did give me brainrot on certain subjects, enough for people to start mentioning that I sometimes defend weird things, and that was one of the many things which got me into becoming a little bit more critical of the movement. (that and well, reading and interacting with slatestarcodex reddit people, at least I got out before they created themotte). There are also enough people here (or at least there were on reddit not sure if they jumped over) who were onto the Rationalists from the start due to badphil stuff.
So, guess I do have thoughts. It should probably be both here, a sort of support network and a 'lol ow god, get over highschool' place. Bit like how reddit was. And on reddit even after we got more and more people following, the amount of brigading going on was pretty low.
i mean, not really? while i don't want to be needlessly cruel to recent leavers, and we can and have helped, that's not why sneerclub exists. that said, there's nowhere else, so they're gonna end up here anyway. so i guess don't be unfairly cruel. just fairly cruel.
Yeah being a full-on support group sounds EXHAUSTING. But we definitely already fulfilled that role to a small extent for a small number of people, especially back on Reddit where this space and rationalist spaces were more porous?
And I'm all for just cruelty to the eugenicists, neoreactionaries, and other nasties of the Rationalist movement. They have MORE than earned it. Something something Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance something something.
Oh damn that's actually pretty good, I'm sad I didn't get the joke. (Lots of jokes sail over my head. I'm very literal much of the time, hah.)
I was in the States, so I was more at risk- but I'm a huge science nerd, enough that Yudkowsky's anti-science crap tossed up a BUNCH of red flags for me, and convinced me to start seriously researching the Rationalists and looking for critics.
Yeah it's interesting to see which of the regulars from Reddit transfer over or not. Took me months, and it was researching for this essay among old Sneerclub posts that inspired the switch.
Don't worry about not getting the joke, you need to have heard of it, and need to have remembered it. I just recall it because people told me a story about the joke being written on a toilet door somewhere. (even nerd toilet graffiti is deeply cringe in a way).