Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
OT: whats the best way to explain rationalism et all to complete normal people with no connection to tech?
decentralized cult which worships the concept of rational thinking as superior to evidence. has lots of little rituals which are supposed to invoke rational thinking. uses AI in the place of angels and demons. no core holy texts, but the closest things are a sequence of blog posts and a harry potter fanfic. very influential in silicon valley, very intermingled with various explicitly fascist groups
the problem of my life. I have literally found it easier to explain Scientology than Rokoās basilisk.
Weirdly and widely applicable, as always
Longer than Iād intend, but the way I describe it is probably as
A mystical Harry Potter based sex cult deeply embedded in the techbro scene. They want what many cults want: to commune with God, achieve immortality or enlightenment, and obtain power in the current world, but they dress it in the trappings of science and computer programming.
Do to demographic features, their desire to be clever, and a certain contrarian attitude, they will often seek to rationalise harmful social practices, which leads them to support anti-feminist and race realist positions with shocking frequency.
Because of their close connections to the tech scene, along with the personal relationship the cult founder had with Peter Thiel, and the fact that the cult has been indoctrinating kids since the aughts, they are shockingly influential in the AI scene.
As most cults, they claim to want to teach people to think correctly (rationally), but they actually value the community of being in a cult (and the potential social networking and financial benefits) over thinking rationally.
In terms of style, they like long works with unclear arguments, being clever or witty over being right, and strongly signalling their rationality (sometimes even using good tools), but not allowing that to interfere with the core features of being a cultist.
(1-3) are what Iād consider core. (4-5) are what Iād add if the person seems interested. If they seem really interested, Iād also discuss other connections (e.g. to Effective Altruism, the Future of Humanity Institute, George Mason University, Future Perfect, neoreaction), their ideology in more specific terms (e.g. the Sequences, Rokoās Basilisk), and associated members (e.g. EY, SSC, Aella, SBF).
SV Scientology, they canāt land you a leading role in a summer blockbuster but they sure as hell can put you in the running for AI policy related positions of influence or for the board of a company run by one of their more successful groomings. Their current most popular product is court philosophers for the worst kind of aspiring technofeudalist billionaire.
If this gets them interested youāll eventually get your chance to do a deep dive to any details of cosmist lore you find relevant.
Itās a little bit like a tiny version of the Mormons if Joseph Smith had read the collected works of Isaac Asimov instead of the Bible and also his name was Yud.
Or to go with less of a sneer, the Rationalist/TESCREAL/Californian Ideology is a loose grouping of fringe beliefs rooted in old-school science/tech fetishism with a lot of science fiction overlays and libertarian/reactionary politics that effectively define ālet ultrawealthy tech capitalists do whatever they wantā as the only reasonable choice and make it a moral imperative.
Actually the Mormon thing might work given its a priest Iām talking with. Thank you!
ah, heād understand people then? Heavy on the slipping into cultishness then
Sheās like the vicar of dibley so this is really quite funny when you think about it.
I tried to think of a smaller cult thatās still pretty well-known or influential but kept coming up with Heavenās Gate or the Branch Davidians.
Scientology would seem like the obvious one, then.
Peoples Temple?
I was trying to think of one that didnāt end in a mass murder/suicide/conflagration-of-violence though.
There are a couple 19th century ones that fit and didnāt go lethal. The New Motive Power guys would be the best match imo.
Techish (I would use the word techbro here, but that needs an explantion even) people who want to make their fictional science fiction utopia real, but got so scared of their own science fiction ideas going wrong and killing everybody they started a cult around rationality, sort of a Vulcans fan club. They have a pattern where they think they and their methods are smarter and better than actual experts.
When trying to do their own research with an open mind, but they left their minds so open that all kinds of sexists and racists crawled in. Who are welcomed as long as they are verbose enough.
And to close it off, Musk is a fan.
Their minds are open to all ideas, so long as the idea is a closed form solution that looks edgy.
Yes, there is a certain yearning for āsecret forbiddenā knowledge and contrarianism, but I tried to keep it short and simple. Almost never do they find a solution in anything in the left side of politics.
Yeah thatās totally fair, I just was tailgating the sneer I guess.
Thatās a good point, and I think it speaks well to their savior complex. They want above all to push the guilt and discomfort of social issues away so they donāt have to live in the discomfort of reality. Dogma does this, and it really doesnāt matter if you have the veneer of science or the mythology.
Personally I might try explaining some of the foundational stuff before going into the big R. Scientism, utilitarianism would be my starting points.
I first read this comment before having coffee and thought that āR. Scientismā was a joke about Asimovās robot novels.
I knew R. Scientism. I went to high school with his son. He was a real piece of shit
canāt unsee