this post was submitted on 07 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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AI disagreements - Brian Merchant on our very good friends (www.bloodinthemachine.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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[–] bigfondue@lemmy.world 19 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I told myself I’d go in with an open mind, do my best to check my priors at the door, right next to the Harry Potter fan fiction.

This got a laugh out of me

One AI safety expert said, let’s just assume in the past that automation has replaced 30% of workplace tasks every generation, as if this were an unknowable thing, as if there were not data about historical automation that could be obtained with research, or as if that data could be so neatly quantified into such a catchy truism. I could not help but think that sociologists and labor historians would have had a coronary on the spot; fortunately, none seem to have been invited.

This got a laugh too. Perfectly sums up the Rationalists' tendency to ignore all scholarship that occurs outside of blog posts and fan-fic

[–] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 18 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's a really good article. This part stuck out to me:

If you are seriously, legitimately concerned that an emergent technology is about to exterminate humanity within the next three years, wouldn’t you find yourself compelled to do more than argue with the converted about the particular elements of your end times scenario? Some folks were involved in pushing for SB 1047, but that stalled out; now what? Aren’t you starting an all-out effort to pressure those companies to shut down their operations ASAP? That all these folks are under the same roof for three days, and no one’s being confronted, or being made uncomfortable, or being protested—not even a little bit—is some of the best evidence I’ve seen that all the handwringing over AI Safety and x-risk really is just the sort of amped-up cosplaying its critics accuse it of being.

[–] diz@awful.systems 9 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think it's a mixture of it being cosplay and these folks being extreme believers in capitalism, in the inevitability of it and impossibility of any alternative. They are all successful grifters, and they didn't get there through some scheming and clever deception, they got there through sincere beliefs that aligned with the party line.

They don't believe that anything can actually be done about this progression towards doom, just as much as they don't properly believe in the doom.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This piece links to a recent New York Times story about our very good friends, by Cade Metz. Nothing in it will surprise SneerClub regulars too much, including how it ends up giving Yudkowsky too much credit. It says that the Sequences taught critical thinking, when they were cult shit all along; it says that in HPMoR, Harry uses real science, which is balderdash.

(If anyone says "Gell-Mann amnesia" I will fucking cut you.)

[–] corbin@awful.systems 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm now remembering a minor part of the major plot point in Illuminatus! concerning the fnords. The idea was that normies are memetically influenced by "fnord" but the Discordians are too sophisticated for that. Discordian lore is that "fnord" is actually code for a real English word, but which one? Traditionally it's "Communism" or "socialism", but that's two options. So, rather than GMA, what if there's merely multiple different fnords set up by multiple different groups with overlapping-yet-distinct interests? Then the relevant phenomenon isn't the forgetting and emotional reactions associated with each fnord, but the fnordability of a typical human. By analogy with gullibility (believing what you hear because of how it's spoken) and suggestibility (doing what you're told because of how it's phrased), fnordability might be accepting what you read because of the presence of specific codewords.

[–] diz@awful.systems 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think I have a real example. Non hierarchical (or, at least, less hierarchical) arrangements. Anarchy is equated with chaos.

Anything in nature we ascribe a hierarchy to; ants or other hymenoptera and termites have supposed "queens", parent wolves are "alphas" and so on. Fictional ant-like aliens have brain bugs, or cerebrates, or the like. Even the fucking zombies infected with a variant of the rabies virus get alphas somehow.

Every effort has went into twisting every view on reality and every fiction to align with the ideology.

[–] BigMuffN69@awful.systems 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The part about them sitting around crying made me big sad :(

[–] TinyTimmyTokyo@awful.systems 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's reminiscent of the freakout among some of the rationalists when Roko's basilisk first appeared. And they wonder why people keep calling them an apocalyptic cult.

[–] BigMuffN69@awful.systems 4 points 2 weeks ago

Me and the gals having a totally normal evening at SBFs compound