"hey wait, EA sucks!" (www.lesswrong.com)
from dgerard@awful.systems to sneerclub@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 14:36
https://awful.systems/post/826674

#sneerclub

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swlabr@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 15:04 next collapse

I hate this phrase but this is “saying the quiet part out loud” in action.

Soyweiser@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 15:14 collapse

I couldn’t finish reading this, when I read this out loud: “I don’t want to be cuckolded by someone else’s pretty network-TV values.” all the nearby dogs started barking.

E: seems a bit like a younger person who is now going through some trauma about how much influence they really have vs how much they imagined they had when they were 12 and now they are at risk of replacing that with nihilism tinted with far right dog-whistles (and as they keep searching for new values, and the nihilism turns out to also provide none they will just turn far right (if they aren’t there already looking at the ‘globohomo’ blog (the blog is also fucking weird, look at the other things posted, it is just a massive list of blog posts all at the same day/days and a quick check (about 5 articles) shows the globohomo post is the only one with any upvotes) post they linked at). I think one of the more annoying problems of LW is that you simply cannot talk about this, you cannot go ‘“globohomo”, “cuck” wtf you really need to read some other things than trash, you are poisoning your own brain’.

swlabr@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 15:36 next collapse

RE: your original comment. Reminded me of this LW post from half a year ago (discussed here)

RE: the followup edit. God, that is sad, and par for the course. Removed from context, I resonate with the youthful hopefulness of thinking you’ll change the world, followed by the slightly less youthful hopelessness that changing the world in any meaningful way is much harder than what was quoted. Staying in the orbit of LW, NRx and other right/far right corners of the blagosphere is definitely not setting oneself up for success.

Also yes in their attempts to moderate and elevate their level of discourse, they’ve hamstrung themselves in many ways, least of all in being able to tell this dude to stop and get some help. It’s like 10% of why they seem so humorless, self-serious, and unable to change (the last 90% is because they are humorless, self-serious, and unable to change)

locallynonlinear@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 16:47 collapse

seems a bit like a younger person who is now going through some trauma about how much influence they really have vs how much they imagined they had when they were 12

This really resonates. Unfortunately I think that’s right. Having this epiphany, this existential correction, about ones self, has either the possibility to create true life long wisdom or, irrecoverable life long self loathing, and from my experience it comes down to the quality of this person’s relationships to lean on when confronting the internal fear of mortality.

So it’s sad to see but this is another example of the latter and not the former.

elmtonic@lemmy.world on 11 Jan 2024 16:43 next collapse

My optimistic read is that maybe OP will use their newfound revelations to separate themselves from LW, rejoin the real world, and become a better person over time.

My pessimistic read is that this is how communities like TPOT (and maybe even e/acc?) grow - people who are disillusioned with the (ostensible) goals of the broader rat community but can’t shake the problematic core beliefs.

The cosmos doesn’t care what values you have. Which totally frees you from the weight of “moral imperatives” and social pressures to do the right thing.

Choose values that sound exciting because life’s short, time’s short, and none of it matters in the end anyway… For me, it’s curiosity and understanding of the universe. It directs my life not because I think it sounds pretty or prosocial, but because it’s tasty.

Also lmfao at the first sentence of one of the comments:

I don’t mean to be harsh, but if everyone in this community followed your advice, then the world would likely end.

dgerard@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 18:24 next collapse

maybe, but I got to “moral cuckoldry” and realised their goal was to choose being worse

thesmokingman@programming.dev on 11 Jan 2024 19:59 collapse

Whenever I see someone saying they are freed “from the weight of “moral imperatives” and social pressures to do the right thing” my immediate assumption is that they’re about to suggest something genuinely reprehensible or, best case scenario, advocate for crabs in a bucket positions.

dgerard@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 20:56 collapse

EA: if a neoreactionary looked up “charity” in a dictionary, often literally

locallynonlinear@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 22:39 next collapse

The cosmos doesn’t care what values you have. Which totally frees you from moral imperatives and social pressures. Also, I’m doing this particular set of values which is better.

The limit of the cosmos not caring about what values you have, is the cosmos not caring if people choose to have value in their life.

locallynonlinear@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 22:42 next collapse

And as my senior dad likes to say, “Ying and Yang Baby”

blakestacey@awful.systems on 12 Jan 2024 21:16 collapse
jonhendry@awful.systems on 21 Jan 2024 05:48 collapse

It directs my life not because I think it sounds pretty or prosocial, but because it’s tasty.

Who wrote this, Hannibal Lecter?

carlitoscohones@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 18:29 next collapse

I made it to the second sentence and had to google “hedonium,” which I figured was a portmanteau-type thing and indeed it was. In my search results for the word, I see LessWrong and Nick Bostrum at the top, so yeah.

Soyweiser@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 18:37 collapse

It is all the same stuff ‘what if the AGI transforms all the matter in the universe into computronium in which we can live forever as digital beings’ but now with Hedonium. It is all the same LW-pattern.

mawhrin@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 23:01 collapse

so, copium?

Soyweiser@awful.systems on 12 Jan 2024 12:25 next collapse

Well …euh… that… euh fuck.

I guess!

dgerard@awful.systems on 12 Jan 2024 14:57 collapse

hopium is on its way to being bitcoin jargon, so

[deleted] on 11 Jan 2024 19:02 next collapse

.

mountainriver@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 20:37 next collapse

It looks like they combine the hubris of an anarchist or a communist group that talks about being the vanguard of the proletariat while being like five people (and Steve only comes for the snacks, and Mike is probably a fed) with the methods of an upper class philanthropy association that has gala dinners and discuss the problems of poverty (Upper class twit voice: is it that the poor are stupid, of bad stock or just lazy? Maybe all three!)

Somehow it’s not beneficial to their mental health, or anything else really.

Soyweiser@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 21:58 next collapse

Your snacking privileges have been revoked for this reactionary claptrap! We might even vote to expel you from the meeting! (After we vote on how to vote on the voting).

self@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 22:52 next collapse

Mike would like to yet again propose that the community garden effort be reformed into an illegal revolutionary militia, and insists that all affirmative votes be projected loudly and clearly into their shirt

dashdsrdash@awful.systems on 12 Jan 2024 11:44 collapse

Mike is a fed, yes.

So is Steve. The snack thing is left over from his previous undercover assignment at NORML. That didn’t end well, but he’s pretty sure he can get Mike to agree to buy explosives, which will be a good bust.

Evinceo@awful.systems on 12 Jan 2024 15:28 collapse

Nobody in the LW discussion seems to understand the many points between “saving the world” & “do as thou wilt is the whole of the law“.

Black and white thinking is a classic hallmark of… something.

carlitoscohones@awful.systems on 11 Jan 2024 21:12 next collapse

Saving the world sucks unless you do it while traveling the world in luxury as an EA “charity worker” maybe.

Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems on 12 Jan 2024 00:33 next collapse

Wow, moral relativism, how daring!

Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems on 12 Jan 2024 00:38 collapse

If some guy promised to send you to secular heaven if you just let him fuck your wife, you’d tell him to hit the road.

I would?? I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean so maybe I’ll ask my wife!!

zbyte64@social.rootaccess.org on 12 Jan 2024 16:15 collapse

@dgerard

There needs to be a Richter scale for telling on one's self. Is this a magnitude of 4?