this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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TechTakes

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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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 you’ll 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 cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

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[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 10 points 4 months ago (8 children)

OT: whats the best way to explain rationalism et all to complete normal people with no connection to tech?

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 11 points 4 months ago

SV Scientology, they can't 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 you'll eventually get your chance to do a deep dive to any details of cosmist lore you find relevant.

[–] YourNetworkIsHaunted@awful.systems 10 points 4 months ago (8 children)

It's 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 "let ultrawealthy tech capitalists do whatever they want" as the only reasonable choice and make it a moral imperative.

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[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Personally I might try explaining some of the foundational stuff before going into the big R. Scientism, utilitarianism would be my starting points.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I first read this comment before having coffee and thought that "R. Scientism" was a joke about Asimov's robot novels.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 4 months ago

I knew R. Scientism. I went to high school with his son. He was a real piece of shit

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[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

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.

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[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 10 points 4 months ago (3 children)
[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 9 points 4 months ago

ABSOLUTELY CURSED

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[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 10 points 4 months ago

I wonder how soon we’re going to hit the “we have team $foo building that internally since we can’t use $serviceX for that (externally hosted has security issues)” phase of corporate fafo

why am I thinking of this? oh, no reason. just pondering the cyclic nature of history I guess you could say.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)
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[–] dgerard@awful.systems 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)
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Today in finding statistical association in text data is not the same as reading

Your name appeared in a lot of articles about terrible crimes. You know who else's name appears in those articles?

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