That being said, I think the article conflates a bit “rationalists”, “effective altruists” and “longtermists”. I’m pretty sure the boundaries between the groups are very blurry, but I guess for reasons of fairness one should still make an attempt to distinguish them.
A rationalist, an effective altruist, and a longtermist walk into a bar. He says, “ouch.”
One of the easiest ways to get downvoted on the orange site is to say anything even mildly critical of Scott Alexander Siskind. It’s really amusing how much respect there is for him there.
More depressing than amusing
While I love blaming slatescott for things, I do think there’s maybe a deeper story to the fascination with addies than slatescott blogging about it once.
A lot of millennials were prescribed stimulants as kids, enough that we have some level of folk knowledge about them. In Adderall Risks he more or less admits to handing them out like candy and he is far from the only (lol ex) psychiatrist to do so.
The article, while clearly endorsing stimulants as a safe nootrooic that everyone should take (and is good for the world now let me munch a few more pills 💊), is actually more of an apologia to convince people who are already using stimulants that no harm will come to them. Sure there’s the usual amount of discovering an apple pie from scratch new atheist libertarian bloviating that obscures it, but he does that about everything.*
One funny aspect of his ‘stimulants are required for modern work’ argument is that he’s basically endorsing the social model of disability, though more recently he has decided that expressing ableism to own the libs is more important than being correct.
*Except if he wants to sneak in an idea without you thinking about it. Those will usually be the hardcore nrx ones.
more recently he has decided that expressing ableism to own the libs is more important than being correct.
I already know these people are eugenicists who would rather die than think about sociology for one minute, but still I feel the need to say: god what a cunt.
Or rather die than come up with good metaphors to attack his shitty strawman. He knows his Everest metaphor is shit – some summiters are blind or double amputees, and the amount of equipment ableds need to climb everest is *evidence* of the social model – he backpedals halfway through, but he makes the metaphor anyway! NASA is literally trying to figure out how to design space travel for disabled astronauts, which he’d know if he’d typed two words into google.
He’s just… being a cunt.
Also the distance between the social model of disability and transhumanism is measured in nanometers, and yet these assholes are so offended that disabled people might be using the enhancements of their eugenicist dystopias.
These motherfuckers.
“We can transcend the limitations of our physical bodies via technology! Wait, no, not like that!”
obliterating all the rules of physical existence EXCEPT the ones that help maintain hierarchies they like
I have seen the same take rolled out for transgender people as well.
it’s a shame, because gender transition stuff is probably one of the most successful “human biohacking” type things in common use today, and it’s also just… really cool. alas, bigotry
B-but submarines aren’t wheelchair accessible and I can’t imagine alternatives to wheelchairs or different submarines! And I like to think about how my grandmother would die if I stranded her on a desert island! So I must be right! P.S. cars are a natural occurrence!
I’m glad you mention Zvi’s piece, it feels like the real insider take on SBF.
to be scrupulously fair there’s only a small subset in the threads doing that annoying passive-aggressive HN thing of “I don’t understand, please provide me with copious citations supporting your position”.
It’s very important for some HN to keep up the facade that Scott Siskind is just the author of the Neoreactionary FAQ and actually not a neoreactionary himself.
The latter is quite the rationalization esp when he has prefaced the article with 'I no longer believe in parts of this article [which parts, I thought epistemic honesty was important etc etc]) and just left it at that.
I’m reminded of a story I’ve heard told here in ZA (the details of which I’ve never seen confirmed anywhere, so treat it as apocryphal or folk retelling):
A leading cabinet member said in session “half of you lot are idiots”. When admonished about his remark and ordered to rescind it, he went with “half of you lot aren’t idiots”
In some sense I’m relieved that the “rationalist” crowd seem to be exactly as creepy and cultish in real life as they appear online.
lol
I don’t accept that as an excuse - because if it is a “joke”, then it’s one that only works if they say this stuff all the time seriously.
It’s the species of “it’s a joke!” that’s serious until someone calls them out on it, then they retreat to claiming it was just a joke.
This is essay worthy in itself. There is this thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately around the conflation of the flexibility of language and a flexibility of the definition of words. Just because language evolves it doesn’t necessarily mean that the meaning of things can, should, does, change with it. Every time someone says “it’s obvious this was a joke” they are fucking with the definition of a joke.
My favorite Stewart Lee bit is about this. (In regards to conservative trolls, but the point still holds.)
It’s just a joke!.. But in addition to it being a joke, it’s also my sincerely held true belief.
Holy shit, I used to watch the hell out of this routine. Thanks for this. It holds up tremendously well!
This came up after. I neeeed to go to a Stewart Lee show
Who is “we” and what is the description?
We is david in this case, he has earned the right to refer to himself in a plural as his crimes against humanity are that great. Matchmaker from hell, destroyer of twitter and reddit, creator of all the woke articles on wikipedia and rationalwiki, look at their works ye mighty and despair for his burning eye is upon you.
in this case, and Amy!
I was ignoring her for the joke, sorry Amy.
We = Cool
Orange Site = Hacker News
EA = Effective Altruism. Sam Bankman Fried identified with this group. Loosely associated with the rationalist movement.
Rationalists = Oh man where do I even start. A lot of them believe in the inevitable rise of an AI god who will rule us with either an iron or benevolent fist depending on how good a job we do of raising it. Also there’s a lot of misuse of Bayes’ Theorem for some reason.
Any questions?
Somehow more confused people are stumbling into awful.systems than ever stumbled into sneerclub.
The miracle of decentralization!
I don’t know what it is about the existence of multiple instances that confuses the truly Reddit-minded into stumbling into another sub and demanding they explain themselves
there is something about this that makes me more confident in the future of the federated social web. There is a core infrastructure but not a core brand.
Isn’t it just a hangover from doing the same on Reddit, just with subreddits?
dunno, who the fuck are you
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