invertebrateinvert

amazing how much shittier it is to be in the rat community now that the racists won. before at least they were kinda coy about it and pretended to still have remotely good values instead of it all being yarvinslop.

invertebrateinvert

it would be nice to be able to ever invite rat friends to anything but half the time when I’ve done this in the last year they try selling people they just met on scientific racism!

  • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
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    11 days ago

    source: a reblog of the original

    first time i spoke to a rationalist about the AI doom thing in 2010, he tried to sell me on scientific racism

    yudkowsky was making posts literally of race scientist talking points in 2007

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      11 days ago

      Scientific racism doesn’t exist.

      Racism is unscientific, it is purely emotional and not based on reality or statistics if you dig deep enough.

      You can call it scientific-sounding racism though.

      • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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        11 days ago

        The point is that you are still calling it out as racism, a term racists very much don’t like. Meaning, the “racism” is the important part in “scientific racism”, because it unequivocally tells us that the science in question is shit.

        The actual euphemism for sciency racism is human biodiversity studies.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
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        11 days ago

        I mean yes you are right but “scientific racism” and “race science” etc. are real phrases that are useful to describe and discuss particular racist ideas.

    • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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      10 days ago

      I feel like this is going to be a pretty common cope line for rationalists that face an increasing social cost for associating with a technofascist AI cult. I’m sure some of that is legitimate, in that there’s been a kind of dead sea effect as people who aren’t okay with eugenics stop hanging out in rationalist spaces, making the space as a whole more openly racist. But in terms of the thought leaders and the “movement” as a whole, I can’t think of any high-profile respected rat figures who pushed back against the racists and lost. All the pushback and call-outs came from outside the ratsphere. In as much as the racists “won” it was a fight that never actually happened.

    • ulterno@programming.dev
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      11 days ago

      Close,
      You should have tried a “person capable of rational, coherent thought”, instead of a rational-ist.

        • ulterno@programming.dev
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          11 days ago

          Oh, I just realised!
          Does “rat” refer to “rationalist”?

          I thought it was referring to Lemmy because of the rat symbol.

          • Architeuthis@awful.systems
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            11 days ago

            When this was posted to the curatedtumbler subreddit so many people thought it calling out racist pet rat owners.

          • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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            11 days ago

            It does, I dont like it personally because of the whole dont compare people you do not like to vermin bit. But it is also a commonly used thing inside the Rationalists community. (I personally also like to capitalize Rationalist when im talking about the lesswrong etc people to make it clear im not talking about normal rationalism).

            • ulterno@programming.dev
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              11 days ago

              Now I feel like I need to read up on all terms in the sidebar before continuing further.

              Either way, I’d most probably still stand on my point of not defining a person by the community they relate to and not defining a community by some people that you interact with from said community.
              *-ism and *-ist haven’t been doing much good for a long time now.

              • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
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                11 days ago

                not defining a person by the community they relate to

                u wot m8? they’re hanging out with active racists recruiting people to racism and their response is to stop taking those guys to parties? you fuckin bet i’m gonna judge them by relating to that community

              • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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                11 days ago

                This is the stance of a lot of people when they first learn of or get skeptical about the Lesswrongosphere. Not a stance you can hold for very long when you read more and more of their work with a critical eye.

                Or you find another of their blogs where Steve Sailer is a beloved (but sometimes begrudged) regular. Or when you notice that big twitter race and IQ guy and eugenicists started in Rationalism. Or when the EA people themselves admit this is a huge problem. Or… Etc. Drink horse drink!

                • ulterno@programming.dev
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                  11 days ago

                  the stance of a lot of people

                  This is my stance on Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Racism, Scientism, realism, pragmatism, capitalism, communism, fascism, left-ism, right-ism, up-ism, down-ism, and whatever other way to group people you can come up with.

                  And history will prove me right, as it has before.

                  Here you see just one of those -isms. And there will be similar examples everywhere.
                  People who got fooled. People who were just better than others. People who fooled others into adding them to their group, just to then overthrow everything the group stood for, just to use it for totally different things.

                  Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

                  ― Steven Weinberg

                  • David Gerard@awful.systems
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                    11 days ago

                    This is my stance on … fascism

                    both-sidesing Nazis, you’re not smart enough for this ride.

                    programming.dev, eh

                  • YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems
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                    7 days ago

                    I know I’m kinda bouncing the rubble at this point, but I want to highlight another bit of crazy here:

                    I will go ahead and extend this to anything and everything that gives a person the sense of belonging.

                    That sense of belonging is definitely part of normal human psychology, and ties into the whole self-concept and sense of identity; we need to know ourselves in relation to one another just as much if not more than we need to understand ourselves in relation to the physical world. Rejecting (checks notes) the concept of community is wildly unhealthy and will lead to deeply unhinged and unhappy people.

                  • swlabr@awful.systems
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                    11 days ago

                    Wild move to quote weinberg, noted zionist and hero of enemy of the instance saaronson.

                    I’d most probably still stand on my point of not defining a person by the community they relate to and not defining a community by some people that you interact with from said community.

                    This is my stance on […] fascism

                    You probably shouldn’t be here.

                  • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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                    11 days ago

                    Lol you seem really invested in this idea. Seems to be an important part of your identity, so much so it seems to have reduced your critical thinking skills.

                    Turns out I wasn’t trying to get a horse to drink, but a wolf.

                    (Yes, I intended it as a self-deprecating joke about trying to reach people who can’t be reached, and im now turning it into a joke about selfawarewolves. And because I think too highly of my jokes and do not want people to miss my meaning, im also explaining it).

                    Anyway, odd thing to say about a cult incubator in which the head honcho is pro bombing datacenters.

            • CinnasVerses@awful.systems
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              11 days ago

              I wish they had not literally called their ideology rationality ™ because I can’t call it that with a straight face, but eighteenth-century rationalists would go through them like a galleon through a fleet of canoes. I don’t know if teenaged-Yud was already a Libertarian or if he reinvented Objectivism from first principles. Political movements on the American right also rely on the same rhetorical move: “we are for freedom! How could anyone be against freedom?”