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submitted 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) by dgerard@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems

this is Habryka talking about how his moderating skills are so powerful it takes lesswrong three fucking years to block a poster who's actively being a drain on the site

here's his reaction to sneerclub (specifically me - thanks Oliver!) calling LessOnline "wordy racist fest":

A culture of loose status-focused social connection. Fellow sneerers are not trying to build anything together. They are not relying on each other for trade, coordination or anything else. They don't need to develop protocols of communication that produce functional outcomes, they just need to have fun sneering together.

He gets us! He really gets us!

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[-] Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems 12 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

A small sidenote on a dynamic relevant to how I am thinking about policing in these cases:

A classical example of microeconomics-informed reasoning about criminal justice is the following snippet of logic.

If someone can gain in-expectation X dollars by committing some crime (which has negative externalities of Y>X dollars), with a probability p of getting caught, then in order to successfully prevent people from committing the crime you need to make the cost of receiving the punishment (Z) be greater than X/p, i.e. X<p∗Z.

Or in less mathy terms, the more likely it is that someone can get away with committing a crime, the harsher the punishment needs to be for that crime.

In this case, a core component of the pattern of plausible-deniable aggression that I think is present in much of Said's writing is that it is very hard to catch someone doing it, and even harder to prosecute it successfully in the eyes of a skeptical audience. As such, in order to maintain a functional incentive landscape the punishment for being caught in passive or ambiguous aggression needs to be substantially larger than for e.g. direct aggression, as even though being straightforwardly aggressive has in some sense worse effects on culture and norms (though also less bad effects in some other ways), the probability of catching someone in ambiguous aggression is much lower.

Fucking hell, that is one of the stupidest most dangerous things I've ever heard. Guy solves crime by making the harshness of punishment proportional to the difficulty of passing judgement. What could go wrong?

[-] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 5 points 6 hours ago

"So, what are you in for?" "Making a right turn on a bicycle without signalling continuously for the last 100 feet before the turn in violation of California Vehicle Code 22108"

[-] blakestacey@awful.systems 3 points 5 hours ago

"...And creatin' a nuisance"

[-] istewart@awful.systems 4 points 6 hours ago

Hmm, yes, I must develop a numerical function to determine whether or not somebody doesn't like me...

One thing he gets is that direct aggression is definitely more effective in this situation. I can, and do, tell these people to fuck straight off, and my life is better for it!

this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2025
28 points (100.0% liked)

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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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