[-] jax@awful.systems 46 points 4 months ago

This is all highly speculative. I know near-zero about biology, chemistry, or physiology.

epistemic status: my ass

[-] jax@awful.systems 32 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

lmao this person writes a personal goodbye message, detailing their experience and motivations in what reads to be quite an important decision for them, and receives "15 disagrees" for their trouble, and this comment:

I gave this post a strong downvote because it merely restates some commonly held conclusions without speaking directly to the evidence or experience that supports those conclusions.

This is EA at its "open to criticism" peak.

[-] jax@awful.systems 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

these people can't stop telling on themselves lmao

There’s currently a loud minority of EAs saying that EA should ostracize people if they associate with people who disagree with them. That we should try to protect EAs from ideas that are not held by the majority of EAs.

how fucking far are their heads up their own collective arses to not understand that you can't have a productive, healthy discourse without drawing a line in the sand?

they spend fucking hundreds of collective hours going around in circles on the EA forum debating^[where "debating" here is continually claiming to be "'open to criticism" while, at the same time, trashing anyone who does provide any form of legitimate criticism, so much so that it seems to be a "norm" for internal criticism to be anonymous for fear of retribution] this shit, instead of actually doing anything useful

how do they, in good conscience, deny any responsibility for the real harms ideas cause, when they continue to lend them legitimacy by entertaining them over and over and over again?

I swear these fuckers have never actually had to fight for or defend something that is actually important, or directly affects the day-to-day lived experience or material conditions of themselves or anyone they care about

I hope we protect EA’s incredible epistemic norms

lol, the norms that make it a-okay to spew batshit stuff like this? fuck off

Also, it’s obvious that this isn’t actually EA cultiness really, but just woke ideology trying to take over EA

[-] jax@awful.systems 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The couple both said they found the backlash they faced on social media to be racist since, they argued, minorities often hit their children without the same backlash.

"We are kind of shocked by the racism threaded throughout this recent controversy. It is pretty well-documented that African Americans and other minority groups practice corporal punishment much more than other groups," Simone Collins said via email, linking to a CNN article published in 2011.

Malcolm Collins said it was "uniquely offensive" to him considering "the majority of Americans practice some form of corporal punishment, as you can see from the statistics with specifically that being the minority groups of Americans. So yeah, I think it's an arguably racist position."

this is the stupidest fucking thing I've read all year

[-] jax@awful.systems 5 points 5 months ago

Over 50% (!!) of the country I live in (hint: 6th biggest country by area in the world, so it's a big bit of land) is used for cattle grazing.

Sure, a fair amount of that land isn't ideal for cropping, but a large portion of it would be, and the rest is what we have left of native vegetation. It'd be great if we stopped letting cattle trample it, and who knows, maybe we'd even have some land available for serious land-back and treaty talks??

[-] jax@awful.systems 45 points 5 months ago

"Dad, why is my sister's name Octavia George?"

"Because your mother loves the Roman Empire."

"Thanks Dad."

"No problem Industry Americus."

[-] jax@awful.systems 29 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

gems from the comments:

Academics and Journalists could interview an arbitrary EA forum user on a particular area if they wanted to get up to speed quickly. The fact they seem not to do this, in addition to not giving a right to reply, makes me think they're not truth-seeking.

Why don't academics and journalists do their job properly and interview random forum members to inform their research?

[-] jax@awful.systems 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

ffs...

orange site poster finds 2 and 2, struggles to come to terms with the fact that they add to 4:

Every time race comes up on HackerNews i am shocked at how horrifyingly racist (some) users of this site are. Not only did a user somehow think that this context would exonerate this very racist man, both you and I are getting immediately downvoted for disagreeing. There was a post last week or so that was so full of racist comments it just got taken down. I wonder what on earth brings together HackerNews and racism like this.

I wonder mate...

A shining HN knight hoists themself onto their (very) high horse to respond:

You know, topics like this are not always black and white. There is a full-range, nuance and discussion.

I'd also wager that the downvotes here are because this flame-bait kind of comments are not appropriate for HN, or if they are appropriate then some might not think it's contributing to the discussion anyways.

Me, I think the refusal by some to admit (or accept) that the full-context post adds to the discussion and to instead double-down and cry more racism is definitely not constructive.

I'm honestly getting tired of these "race card" low-blows and one-sided thinking shutting down conversation.

jax

joined 7 months ago