ebu

there were bits and pieces that made me feel like Jon Evans was being a tad too sympathetic to Elizer and others whose track record really should warrant a somewhat greater degree of scepticism than he shows, but i had to tap out at this paragraph from chapter 6:

Scott Alexander is a Bay Area psychiatrist and a writer capable of absolutely magnificent, incisive, soulwrenching work ... with whom I often strongly disagree. Some of his arguments are truly illuminatory; some betray the intellectual side-stepping of a very smart person engaged in rationalization and/or unwillingness to accept the rest of the world will not adopt their worldview. (Many of his critics, unfortunately, are inferior writers who misunderstand his work, and furthermore suggest it’s written in bad faith, which I think is wholly incorrect.) But in fairness 90+% of humanity engages in such rationalization without even worrying about it. Alexander does, and challenges his own beliefs more than most.

the fact that Jon praises Scott's half-baked, anecdote-riddled, Red/Blue/Gray trichotomy as "incisive" (for playing the hits to his audience), and his appraisal of the meandering transhumanist non-sequitur reading of Allen Ginsberg's Howl as "soulwrenching" really threw me for a loop.

and then the later description of that ultimately rather banal New York Times piece as "long and bad" (a hilariously hypocritical set of adjectives for a self-proclaimed fan of some of Scott's work to use), and the slamming of Elizabeth Sandifer as being a "inferior writer who misunderstands Scott's work", for uh, correctly analyzing Scott's tendencies to espouse and enable white supremacist and sexist rhetoric... yeah it pretty much tanks my ability to take what Jon is writing at face value.

i don't get how after so many words being gentle but firm about Elizer's (lack of) accomplishments does he put out such a full-throated defense of Scott Alexander (and the subsequent smearing of his """enemies"""). of all people, why him?

they really are just sitting around the campfire telling the exact same shitty spooky story, back and forth, forever, aren't they

I don't think emojis should be the place to have a socio-political discussion.

have some entirely non-political emojis:

🗳️: BALLOT BOX WITH BALLOT

🇹🇼: FLAG: TAIWAN

🇵🇸: FLAG: PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

🗽: STATUE OF LIBERTY

🤡: FACE OF "NON-POLITICAL" PERSON

"rat furry" :3

"(it's short for rationalist)" >:(

What of the sources he is less favorably inclined towards? Unsurprisingly, he dismisses far-right websites like Taki’s Magazine (“Terrible source that shouldn't be used for anything, except limited primary source use.”) and Unz (“There is no way in which using this source is good for Wikipedia.”) in a virtually unanimous chorus with other editors. It’s more fruitful to examine his approach to more moderate or “heterodox” websites.

wait sorry hold on

in a virtually unanimous chorus with other editors

so what is the entire point of singling out Gerard for this, if the overwhelming majority of people already agree that far-right "news" sites like the examples given are full of garbage and shouldn't be cited?

Note: I am closer to this story than to many of my others

ahhhhhhh David made fun of some rationalist you like once and in turn you've elevated him to the Ubermensch of Woke, didn't you

i started to read and just about choked when i got here

Why did evolution give most males so much testosterone instead of making low-T nerds? Obviously testosterone makes you horny and buff. But I think there is a second reason: you might kill yourself without it. Trans women have high suicide rates.

congrats on the most baffling, condescending explanation for the epidemic of suicidality among trans women. silly transes, it's not the persistent and systemic transphobia that makes you want to kill yourself, it's actually the fact that you have lower testosterone now. it's just science! wait what? "trans men have high rates of suicide too"? nah probably not

Anecdotally, my smartest oldest brother had low sex-drive and small muscles and killed himself. Eliezer's brother killed himself [citation needed] and if he was like Eliezer then he probably had low-T. My low-T nerd friends seemed kinda suicidal sometimes.

it was gross enough to watch this person try to prop up dead trans people to prove their point but even more bizarre to watch them do the same for their own older brother. not gonna even comment on the retroactive diagnoses based on "had small muscles" and "seemed suicidal to me"

and later in the footnotes

Nobody in the comments has presented any first-hand counter-evidence.

"nobody proved me wrong yet" is peak crank

when the pool of people around crypto is:

• not particularly critical or skeptical of the space
• demonstrably have lots of money to gamble
• susceptible to promises of hyper-wealth

it's not much of a surprise that the entire ecosystem of scamming grew like a weed in crypto. i've seen the hordes of twitter bots responding to every "all my apes gone", i guess it makes sense that they were turning a pretty penny double dipping victims

syncthing is an extremely valuable piece of software in my eyes, yeah. i've been using a single synced folder as my google drive replacement and it works nearly flawlessly. i have a separate system for off-site backups, but as a first line of defense it's quite good.

"i reflexively identify with the openly-fascist right-wing base that has found its home on elon's twitter, and since i'm a reasonable person, the evidence that they're flagrantly conspiracy-minded and/or are CSAM posters simply must be fabricated"

i mean. definitionally, some did, yeah? if you bought in at 25, 50, 75, 100, 200, or 400 -- these are all the same number in the end, the only difference being how much you're down by between then and now.

eta: that's not even to mention the fact that since this demand is all synthetic, all the money coming in is from people who are going to be left holding the bag, again. we're just watching it repeat.

finally... MOASS... this time for real... if January 2021 buyers sell now, they'll only be down about 70%, instead of the 85-90% it normally hovers around. i think the only hodlers that could come out positive are ones that bought in late 2022 or later, and even then, you're not up by much.

i think this, more than watching the Folding Ideas video (a must-watch for anyone out of the loop), is really kind of selling the sadness of watching people suckered into hype pour even more money down the drain. an account belonging to a guy we once liked made a tweet; this is it, liquidate your retirement and gamble it away. ugh

i suppose if Elizabeth Holmes can wear Steve Job's turtlenecks and carry a biomedical scam to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by doing so, maybe "financial pickup artistry" will see more success attracting VC funds than "pickup artistry" has attracting the ladies

...

oh gods we're going to get so many self-stylized Elon clones. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck