[-] maol@awful.systems 5 points 1 month ago

While googling around for stuff about them I found this article about a sting Hope Not Hate did on them. They produced a slideshow of doom for a fictional wealthy investor, imagining a proposed eugenicist city state on the Isle of Man.

What is it with these people and islands? Bankman-Fried wanted to buy Nauru. I assume none of them realize the inherent economic and planning disadvantages of building your empire on a tiny island....

[-] maol@awful.systems 4 points 1 month ago

"pro-LGBT rights" here means "pro Peter Thiel". He gives them a lot of money.

[-] maol@awful.systems 5 points 3 months ago

It's the glitz of Catholicism with fewer of those pesky liberals around.

Also, some Orthodox monasteries had an enslaved workforce until well into the 19th century, which must appeal to neoreactionary scum.

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

I can only assume the vibes were rancid

[-] maol@awful.systems 5 points 9 months ago

"AI gore, smug and pretentiousness" is a good summary of the sneer-subject of this server.

[-] maol@awful.systems 4 points 1 year ago

The foreign legion? Fuck me.....in fairness a relative of a relative also did this after a breakup but he quickly deserted.

[-] maol@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago

Ah, shameless propaganda.

[-] maol@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago

Unfortunately, I don't think so. One of the hosts of this show did make a blogpost about this episode with links to other interviews and podcast eps with McQuillan.

[-] maol@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The False Memory Foundation did a lot of damage by convincing people that you can't forget and then remember traumatic events. Yes, some people were coerced by memory regression therapists into recalling increasingly unlikely and spurious memories. But many people avoid thinking about traumatic events because it's painful, or use distractions to avoid remembering them. Traumatic memories from childhood can be particularly difficult to understand and deal with because the trauma occurred at an early stage of psychological development.

[-] maol@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago

Whenever I see some new pearl of wisdom from Mr Yudkowsky, I think, "Surely it can't be that plainly, baldly wrong. Surely he can't have it that twisted, but still speak with so much authority...." I'm no expert, but I know slightly more about trauma than I do about computer science, maths or formal logic and this seems so incorrect.

Surely trauma is defined as something that you learn from in your body, not your mind; from your subconscious, not your conscious. By their nature, people cannot understand the meaning of a traumatic experience the same way they can understand an abstract idea.

Does Yudkowsky think traumatic memories aren't different from other memories - but psychiatrists are just too self interested to expose this? That people could get over their traumatic memories - but they're just too dopey to do so without a helpful tweet from Eliezer Y? And while it's fairly trivial really, does he actually think that the general public are impressed and intimidated by X and Y variables, a concept most of us were introduced to when we were 12 or 13?

[-] maol@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago

Well, I don't know if we're more fixated on individual genius now than ever before. But it does feel like we're living through a retreat from democracy. I don't know what's coming next but it probably won't be good.

[-] maol@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's the Amanda Marcotte incident. Here's an article about the incident (from the Atlantic's regular series, "annals of the nerd blogs we feel the need to share with the nation"). The article is very sympathetic to Scott A but some of it just cannot be made to sound sympathetic. He unironically believes (believed?) that nerd men are "some of society's least privileged males". He also refers to all non-nerd men as neanderthals....

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maol

joined 2 years ago