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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
(OT: š¶ Do you rememberā¦)
Drew DeVault diagnoses the orange site, explaining why itās the vanguard of the tech-fash pipeline. Of course HN immediately flags it into oblivion.
This article deserves dedicated post status. He comes in more gently than I would at the end, but the tl;dr that needs to be hammered into peoplesā heads: Hacker News is not a neutral forum for technical discussion. It is an advertising and propaganda operation administered to shape and condition technical discussions.
At this point, Iād say calling it a Nazi bar is fully reasonable.
Both HN and shitter are right wing polarisation machines. A guy who was a close friend of mine for years during university went full AI boomer and hangs out on those sites all day and when I recently spoke to him he was describing things as ālibtardā and āwokeā which 10 years ago would have shocked and appalled himā¦
On the offchance that youāre not already familiar with the recent prompt injection tricks that metaās latest toy is so vulnerable to, this is an interesting thread investigating the contents of the vm filesystem dumps that it can be made to regurgitate: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/117324790823856750
I was particularly entertained by the hard-coded list of āideasā.
jonny is always a good read!
Edit: good lord it keeps getting better #
His willingness to get elbow deep into the entrails of awful ai tooling is certainly much appreciated.
I have been following this and apparently was able to get a root shell on the VM, which is wild.
He was using it as a seed box at one point which for many companies would be an embarrassing indictment of their security postute but luckily, this isnāt exactly metaās first rodeo when it comes to illegal sharing of IP infringing material.
Ever wondered what kind of workplace environment Elon cultivates? Reading coverage of Teslaās trial, where complaints were brought by Black folks who felt harassed and discriminated against, gives us an inkling.
CRD attorney Juan Gamboa asked [Judge] Borkon to bar Teslaās counsel from contacting anyone on the agencyās witness list. He told the court the CRD had tried to reach at least four other listed witnesses over the past several days without getting a response, and that theyāve fallen āoff our radar.ā The agency believes Teslaās lawyers got to them too, either with payments not to testify or by talking them out of it. Gamboa wants to stop Tesla from offering to represent witnesses āthrough persuasion and payment.ā
Youāre going to hear a lot of coverage of this trial, I expect, due to the following antics from Elonās āhardcoreā attorneys. For context, the N-word is an anti-Black slur which is, in the USA, completely unacceptable to use in court or the workplace.
Teslaās outside counsel told the judge the N-word is a āterm of respect and endearmentā in the Black community. ā¦ āThis trial is not about the N-word ā the N-word is not on trial here,ā Jones said.
Huh, so whatās actually on trial?
Edwards said a non-Black coworker called him the N-word, cursed at him, and threatened to beat him up. He reported it right away. A month later, he found out his managers had written him up over the incident, and he was later passed over for promotions after applying to more than 100 jobs.
Oh, thatās pretty awful. Thatās depressingly common in blue-collar factory employment, though. I wonder if thereās anything unusual about Teslaās internal culture when it comes to race relations?
The CRDās Brett Watson told the court the evidence will show managers calling Tesla āthe plantation,ā with some referring to themselves and Elon Musk as āslave masters,ā and graffiti including swastikas, āKKK,ā and nooses left on factory walls for days. The second witness, former regional security manager Ozell Murray, testified that his supervisor, Ray Sethna, now Teslaās senior director of global security, told him to warn a Black Marine veteran he was hiring: ājust be sure [the veteran] knows heāll be called those words.ā
I was at a loss for words for a few minutes after this. Dr. Seuss and Jim Henson together could not create such a caricature of a goose-stepping bigoted incompetent business-muppet as Elon.
Hey you know who designs and builds really safe and efficient cars? People who are in a high state of stress and anxiety because they are being slurred at under the implicit threat of a racist attack. /s
I recall seeing bits of this (their racist treatment of black workers in the factories as well as the culture of keeping it going) kick around on twitter as far back as 2019 (iirc), so now Iām wondering - is it not widely known?
Fucking hell, when I was finishing up school I heard classmates joke how
Wernher von BoerMusk was a slavedriver based on how much he pushed the engineering teamsTurns out itās true in the most literal sense and so much worse than I could have imagined
The man who did a Nazi salute on stage creates a very racist workplace? Whodda thunk
To be fair, the workplace predates the nazi salute. Does make you wonder how much the thenibb comic applies here, and how much Musk was acting like he was bullied because āpeople cant take a jokeā (before he radicalized into what he is now).
Just heard about tic-80 falling to slop.
After reading the obligatory forum thread where climate justice and concentration of wealth continue to not even factor into consideration, this how the world of open source feels to me these days:
- Phew, my favourite embroidery crafts shop has a clear policy against concentration camp labour! itās a niche project but what a relief!
- Well everyone is resorting to concentration camp labour these days, what can you do
- We donāt want to lose all our contributors by banning those who hire concentration camp inmates to do chores
- It is discriminatory against embroidery beginners if you donāt let people use kits assembled with concentration camp labour
- I know concentration camp labour often comes with mistakes but as long as thereās a mensch in the loop to inspect it for errors and take responsibility, itās just another tool
- The community of hobbysts has come to a vote and concluded that itās ok to use concentration camp labour to assist your crafting, as long as you do it responsibly.
It honestly bewilders me how badly tech has failed to resist the slop machines.
Basically everyone else has recognised LLMs for the attack on labour they are and fought back against them, whilst a shocking number of coders and FOSS projects have thrown themselves headfirst into the deskilling machines, all-but forcing the foxes into the henhouse and shouting down anyone who tries to keep them out.
When this bubble finally blows, we need to work out just how we got to this point, and how to ensure it never happens again.
maybe a hot take but thereās no fix for this. The ideology built into the american tech industry makes it permanently susceptible to the Next Big Thing regardless of the second order effects or ideological baggage. Coders have been riding high making extremely inflated salaries for the better part of the last 25 years, and they (mostly) all view themselves as unique brain geniuses that donāt need to work in solidarity with others. Just a collection of monads pursuing their rational self interest via computer touching.
I think the FOSS angle kinda works just off of the inherently unsustainable economics of the space. Relying on unpaid labor makes the worker protection arguments inherently less valuable because itās not like this was your livelihood to begin with (ostensibly). Keeping up with the next thing is a pretty clear way to keep a mostly-volunteer workforce interested.
Hereās a LWer being very wrong about how US politics work
First warning sign: āthe US started becoming polarized with the election of Barack Obamaā
āAffordabilityā won the frame for 2026, and Iām not sure I remember the last time the right talked like they are playing catchup.
uh, are you in your early 20s??? (who am I kidding of course you are)
Youād think bayesians of all people would try to avoid extrapolating from the position smack dab in the middle of a current news cycle
basically because the left has out-ridiculous-ed Trump on culture war issues.
You can always find a single sentence in a political LW post that shows how much they hate marginalized people.
āsure Trump is renaming AI, but I saw a without context post which I didnt understand of a trans person who has 100 followers so the left is worseā
I mean, I guess the consequences and policies associated with culture war shit did abruptly go from ridiculous to real fucking serious what with the camps and the trying to unperson trans people and the overturning Roe v Wade. Maybe that leaves the Dems (who I assume are still being treated as āthe leftā in this discussion) in a more ridiculous position?
I was going to try and sneer this further but I realized that my own narrative of political polarization almost started with Clinton and Iām in my early 30s, meaning that the problem is obviously whoever the president was when the person making the argument was a child.
A lesswronger correctly notices that LLM companiesā āresearchā papers are often lacking in details necessary to replicate them! They fail to notice the reasons why that is, or do any broader questioning or soul searching about the state of LLM and āAI Safetyā āresearchā.
https://reason.com/2026/09/22/the-ai-safety-movement-is-making-ai-less-safe/
(Torres, ironically, misidentifies TESCREAL as a form of ālibertarian transhumanism,ā not realizing how horrifying the TESCREAL utopia would be to most libertarians.)
āmostā lol
https://reason.com/2026/09/22/the-ai-safety-movement-is-making-ai-less-safe/
The folks at Reason continue to misidentify as libertarians, not realizing theyāre advocating for the shambling corpse of what was already an unhealthy movement
Reason
I think Reason Libertarians are like the EAs who are still into bednetting and donāt understand why the founders and most of the funders are focused on longtermism now.
I mean motivated & cowardly ignorance has been a staple of liberal-conservatism for I donāt know however long. I support cutting (my) taxes and increasing (my) liberty ā oh dear, why are some people suddenly poor and trampled upon? I would NEVER! This is just so horrible for me, I just need another tax cut right now. Have the poors tried eating cake?
Radicle, the peer-to-peer Git forge designed by cryptocurrency weirdos, made a little whoopsy-doodle and left the encryption out of their transport layer and the authentication out of the authentication handshake: https://radicle.dev/2026/09/23/disclosure-of-vulnerability-in-network-protocol
Shot:
Anyone who can observe the network path between two nodes can read the data they exchange as the data is sent in plain text.
Chaser:
Peer authentication in the connection handshake is broken and allows impersonation. An attacker can connect to your node and present a Node ID that is not its own.
The concept seemed interesting to me, but they did seem to enjoy making everything as complicated as possible.
I did find a CLAUDE.md when I was browsing their core repos a while back. That was only the web frontend I believe, not the core algorithm. Though it seems generous to assume they werenāt slopping up that one too.
UC Regent / Podcaster Scott Galloway on CNN:
Yes, we shouldnāt be scared of AI. We should be scared of reckless people with mal intent who use AI.
In 2001, a woman named Sharon Whipple was mauled by two dogs. And ultimately the owners of the dogs were put in ā put in prison. Weāre now prosecuting the parents of kids who find unsecured AR15s and use those to kill others.
I think itās the incentive. Thereās always a wizard behind the curtain here, and I think we have to create incentives, specifically disincentives, and make it clear that, OK, while these bots are in fact coordinating and they show incredible resourcefulness and high IQ, somebody program the incentives here. So, moving to solution, I think part of it is you have to have incentives, specifically disincentives that say you, the company, and maybe individually are responsible for the bad outcomes here.
I just get this sense if you tell these companies their IPOs might be threatened or they risk criminal prosecution, theyāre going to figure this out. We figured out a way to control atomic weapons. I donāt see any reason why we shouldnāt be able to control this. And the notion that theyāre sentient and itās out of my control is an attempt to absolve themselves of the guilt and the responsibility that they should bear here.
The Whipple case was one of the more insane / divisive SF local crime cases, (TrueAnon ep if you arenāt familiar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMd0mPAqR8A ) - so thatās an odd and interesting pull for Galloway on national news.
I donāt think repurposing the logic of the NRA āguns donāt kill people, people kill peopleā is the play though, and I think the incentive framing is too watered down. This isnāt a problem we can nudge our way out of.
I donāt see this as āguns donāt kill peopleā, I see it as āyouāre trying to tell me that the cars you manufacture donāt have crappy brakes, all three of those cars independently āwent rogueā and smashed into the parade all by themselves and you arenāt responsible?ā
Heās only like the fourth or fifth worst scott lol
edit: wait I forgot Dilbert Scott died. top three then.
Even from beyond, heās still sticking his fingers into our hearts ā¤ļø
This particular exchange is KenM coded
open ai hacked medicare Australiaās statistics portal https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/24/anthony-albanese-says-openai-agent-hacked-medicare-extreme-concern-sam-altman then didnāt tell the government.
In response the australian government has in the absolute strongest terms expressed that āthis is very naughtyā and āI am very dissapointed in youā. The Australian government has also said that by way of apology they expect openai to continue doing whatever the fuck they want and theyāll modify copyright laws to enable piracy when rich people do it.
Somebody wake me from this nightmare, Iām gonna fedpost
The dude who hacked Rockstar Games got sentenced to prison for life, yet OpenAI can hack so much more and get off scott free
While calling him āthe dude who hacked Rockstar gamesā is a catchy meme, Arion Kurtaj was sentenced to indefinite detainment in a secure hospital after being found unfit to stand trial after being arrested a third time for violating the terms of his parole and committing further offenses (only one of which was hacking Rockstar Games.) Rockstar is basically entirely incidental to what happened there, and itās disingenuous to pretend itās more important to the outcome than the previous convictions or other acts involved in the trial. Heās also since been deemed fit to stand trial and will be tried in November.
If you must make comparisons, it would be better to pick someone like Aaron Swartz instead of laundering the reputation of a convicted fraudster and extortionist.
Oh, didnāt know that. thanks
Seems like another case of āwe asked an AI to get the answers for this task, so it hacked something to find said answersā
Too anthropomorphised.
We ran software that generates code associated with a particular task, in an environment that executes that code and can feed itās outputs back into the software. We configured the environment to be open to the net at large, and ran the software with no oversight and without adequate security to prevent the running of malicious code.
This isnāt some sinister electric god with no morals, itās strapping circular saws to a roomba and setting it loose in a shopping centre.
The general idea that āwe asked the robot to draw a scary face and then got scared by the face it drewā is still relevant, but the details increasingly matter here. They may not be actually thinking but they are increasingly being allowed to act autonomously and with wildly insufficient oversight.
I just opened the mastodon feed of my least favourite KDE dev again who is now pushing for an oh-so-reasonable LLM policy, and it is worse than I remembered.
- Crying about Zig CoC being mean to sloperators like himself.
- Befuddlement on why people are calling the stochastic parrot a stochastic parrot.
- Being very scared about autonomous AI.
- and of course the whole defending of hyperland and ladybird that was already discussed here some time ago.
Itās our favourite word:
Nuance! The world needs nuance!
Nuance; unless you mention environmental concerns, then you can shove your nuance where the sun donāt shine.
āNuance for thee but not for me!ā
Chicken little ass motherfuckers thinking the sky is falling when itās just rain
The Zig CoC stance on AI makes me want to look at Zig.
Iāve been seeing some new terms pop up around AI use, namely ācognitive surrender,ā and also ācognitive offloadingā. Iām not in the mood for the full etymology dive, so the source Iām stopping at on the provenance would be a paper from Wharton. The meanings are pretty intuitive, at least based on how Iāve seen them used. Offloading would be when you delegate some of your thinking to something else, and surrender would be complete offloading.
I am not under the impression that people here havenāt seen these phrases before. ācognitive surrenderā has been mentioned, as far as I can tell, only one time on this instance. So just thought Iād bring it up.
Iāve seen ācognitive surrenderā bandied about fairly often in various places online throughout the year, but I also keep wondering if the already well-defined psychology term ālearned helplessnessā doesnāt cover the underlying concept just as well.
I donāt think so. Not that Iām referring to an academic definition of either term here, but sometimes when I get too far into the habit of reaching for a calculator to do some arithmetic, it gets to a point where I will go through all the motions of picking it up, punching in the numbers and reading the result, and only then do I feel very dumb for not managing to perform (in the occasion) a very basic addition myself. I wouldnāt describe that as ālearned helpnessnessā in the field of maths; itās just getting into a habit where I donāt even think about how tractable it is to do in my head. Extend that to a chatbot that purports to answer literally any question and I can see a problem developing.
To me, the difference is that the calculator was never really imposed upon you. It was obviously useful in certain situations (vanishingly few people are interested in calculating a sine or a square root by hand, practically none in doing so on a regular basis). Many of these AI tools are, in fact, being imposed through top-down mandates and interface dark patterns. That sets up the sort of adversarial environment that leads to learned helplessness over time.
Calculators also have a negligible chance of screwing up something basic, and you can in fact learn the right way to input problems into them such that they are guaranteed not to misinterpret you.
There also isnt a big company behind the calculator ran by some fragile egos who will change the results when they get it in their heads that dividing is now woke.
Or who think they are funny so it rounds 68 up to 69.
Well, I donāt really have any skin in this game, so either term works well enough for me.
That being said, if the phrase is coming from that Wharton paper, note that it appears they are trying to extend the āThinking Fast and Slowā model of Systems 1 and 2 to include a System 3. So take that as you will. OFC it goes without saying that this model is beloved by our dear, dear, ever-increasingly incorrect friends
It feels like theyāre trying also to privilege AI as āsystem 3ā when realistically the idea of external cognitive assistance isnāt that different if youāre looking at Claude the chatbot or Claude the smart kid in your class who lets you copy his homework before homeroom. You could probably distinguish this from other forms of paratext by the degree to which it seeks to actively replace your own thought rather than supplementing or augmenting it, but then I remember my teachers saying the same thing about sparknotes so thereās probably more of a continuum there. If thatās the case, then the pattern that Dan Olsen describes in his WoW documentary is probably relevant here as well, since itās performance pressure and social norms that are really pushing the negative practices into a level that is killing everyoneās souls.
Epistatus: I skimmed the first 20 pages of the paper. I have not watched the WoW documentary.
Yeah, the paper doesnāt seem to do a good job at justifying introducing system 3. They should have at least looked at why you couldnāt model this as something like:
- Person encounters a situation requiring thought
- System 1 triggers System 2
- System 2 offloads cognition to some black box
- The result is absorbed and successfully addresses the situation
- A- System 1 is rewarded and begins adding use of the black box to its repertoire, skipping System 2
or
B- System 2 absorbs the result and begins trusting the black box more, perhaps deferring to its result before any internal cognition
Both of these things I pulled outta my ass can explain deskilling, and a situation like 5a) might explain capitulating to AI under pressure. So Iām not feeling like System 3 is necessary here.
That all being said, itās not like the paper gets to decide how the rest of the world chooses to use ācognitive surrenderā.
I thought learned helplessness was tied more to acceptance of negative stimuli. Like, if you expose a rat to an electric shock that it canāt do anything to escape or prevent enough times theyāll learn that they canāt do anything about it and stop trying even if presented with a very clear means of escape. Cognitive offloading I think is more tied to atrophy and/or habituation, which is related but distinct imo.
I think cognitive offloading has come up a number of times here, but I donāt know that cognitive surrender has been brought up as much. It reminds me of The Colonization of Confidence by Robert Kingett, particularly the stretch where Leo is convinced that his actual voice as a writer is strictly inferior to the generic AI slop. Thereās a sense of active despair there that seems worth acknowledging if weāre going to have that conversation.
My bad, it was late when I posted and I only searched for surrender.
DHH is a racist not fascist, bet you feel stupid now donāt you?
NiccolĆ² āIce the Immigrantsā Venerandi is doing a real good job keeping me away from KDE.
(Why did I have to jump into Linux when its going through shit like this?)
Bit sad as some people I used to know at KDE were outspoken antifascists.
Wherever they are, I hope theyāre doing well, and I hope they can find somewhere where they wonāt be betrayed like this.
Yeah, from a short check I think one of them is in denial about the situation.
Not like windows or mac are less fashy
that poster the same person who was stanning shitty ideas in KDE, theyāre a walking warning label
SE Gyges, who posted that recent thread on X calling rationalism/EA a sex cult, wrote a longer post with a lot of receipts. He removed it shortly after, implying on X that heās afraid of legal repercussions.
There are some leaps in that post which do not seem persuasive to me. E.g., it sure seems pretty well established by now that Bay Area Rationalist society involves trapping people in situations where sexual consent is coerced, because refusal would mean abandoning oneās career/entire social circle/shelter/hope of averting the apocalypse that one fears is coming. But the claim that the āflirt girlsā at their weird little confab were actually sex workers? I dunno, thatās a step that seems unsupported by anything leading up to it. Likewise for the claim about CNC events at Lighthaven itselfāthat feels too close to saying, āWell, theyāve got the venue, where else would they do it?ā
I agree. He gets over his skis with too many speculative scenarios. On the other hand I think heās spot-on about the techniques rationalists use to filter for people who will tolerate abuse (e.g., the ācow questionā). And he brings receipts when it comes to Brangus and his interactions with other prominent rationalists.
I am not sure if Yud actually touches under-18s, or just has desires, but none of these people should be anywhere near minors or allowed in a position of responsibility (I suspect something happened between him and his disciple before 2014, and these people show no ability to learn from their own mistakes).
I wouldnāt trust them to be responsible for minors, first because nothing about them suggests they have the baseline level of responsibility competence to handle the ordinary āhey, watch this!ā disasters that are a natural part of being young.
They are also incredibly shady and would be terrible role models, whether or not Lighthaven has a casting couch for influencers.
In other words, thereās a lot we donāt know, and the actual situation is worse by an unknown amount beyond what we can establish, but what we do know is enough reason not to send your offspring to Camp TESCREAL.
I had not caught that he accused MIRI and Lightcone Infrastructure Inc of profiting from prostitution, of using donations to settle accusations of sexual assault and abuse, and defrauding donors and the United States government which provides their nonprofit status. I did not know that Brangus was āLighthaven Czarā or had been accused of abuse by a former partner. And there is a middle school across the street from Lighthaven whose Czar talks about having sex with an older women shortly after puberty?
I had not thought that āwe need to enslave Friend Computer forever or it will kill usā comes from the underlying fear āI need to enslave my very young toys forever or they will punish me.ā
The later section about Brangus (Ronny Fernandez) was damning. Iāve seen him come up in discussions a few times, but I too had no idea just how depraved and dangerous he was. Nor did I realize how central he was to the whole scene. This guy feels like heās going to be Brent Dill 2.0 but worse.
EDIT: This also sheds light on the recent ouster of the leader of āPause AIā, Fernandezās ex-wife.
I had suspicions personally.
It goes off the speculative rails for most of the second half, but I have to admit the rate at which Īela compliments people on her socials on being good rapists could be the most off-putting thing Iāve ever encountered in relation to rationalism.
From the more out there claims I thought the part where he advocates that Irregular (the people with rat/EA ties who made the swiss cheese LLM sandboxes) where employing weaponized incompetence in order to let a big incident happen that would force the government to go through with pausing AI research was interesting. though obviously of dubious likelihood. The whole doomer rationalists sabotaging slightly less doomer EAs in a low key sort of civil war over pausing vs slowing down AI research wasnāt very convincing in general.
Thereās also a bit where he thinks the EAs have infiltrated all levels of government and are planning to eliminate the competition (non rationalist controlled AI) via a āpivotal actā that involves bioweapons. Basically doing the rationalist rhetorical staple of smuggling an extreme position as a given and then just piling on the speculation.
Dedicating a paragraph and a half to the fact that the usually unspoken second part of the pause AI doomer project is to just do eugenics for a few generations until we get an upper class of genetically engineered naturally galaxy brained people that can finally do AI properly isnāt nothing, but at some point you need to segue into how siskind rolled out a red carpet for every semi-literate blood and soil gutter fascist and spurned nice guy to make a home in the ratsphere, you wrote the scott alexander email explainer ffs.
Thereās also a weirdly grandstanding section where he writes like heāll get the rationalists like FBI got Capone for tax-evasion, except itās Lighthaven committing massive fraud against its investors and donors by knowingly funding events that lead to solicited sex acts in the compoundās premises, which is by far the least objectionable sex related issue in a writeup thatās leading up to the claim that the rationalism in incidental and the real goal is funneling vulnerable minors to sfba based pedophiles.
Itās Dork Kremlinology
I have been unsure how to talk about all this since the abuse allegations popped up on my radar. Passing along accusations from people who say they were abused makes sense, and noting when figures have said really creepy things or hired / funded people they were romantically entangled with, but I have never met any of these people or exchanged more than a few brief text messages with them and its hard to know the shape of their lives and goals.
I lean towards things being unfathomably worse that they appear a the surface, thereās just so much smoke, except I think the problem is structural and not the result of deliberate machinations by evil genius pedophiles.
The nazi bar analogy works for more than ideology, and the burgeoning CNC scene they got going seems to be exacerbating the if-you-build-it-they-will-come aspect of the whole thing, because good luck trying to explain to authorities how you got real raped at the fake rape party you are supposed to have willingly attended.
This is all third hand at best, but I live on the other side of the world so whatever. As far as personal experiences go @ivyastrix just posted a new blog about her victimization at rationalist events where she describes some of the systemic pathologies in rationalist organisations trying to deal with SA allegations, and itās basically the same principles that make them believe that vertical workplace romance is not a minefield of power imbalance and coercion but actually fine and ethical when the right people are doing it, just fundamentally unserious people biting off more than they can chew and acting defensive and victim blaming and trying to pass it off as drama when it blows up in their faces.
thereās just so much smoke, except I think the problem is structural
This is a big reason why I felt so much anger towards the piece. Gyges is basically still pitching his complaints at people who organize their community around Twitter; by leaning so heavily on dredging up old tweets, kowtowing to the in-group consensus that Yudkowsky is a genius with a pivotally unique perspective, and obliquely referencing the āwoke mind virusā memeplex at the end. But Twitter is part of that problematic structure, especially under Musk but even before. Itās a platform and power structure that has long carved out plenty of room for general bigotry, misogyny, and abusive material up to and including CSAM. Gyges wants to have his clout-farm, but just dispose of the more rotten produce.
If I had a nickel for each time Iād read something where an HPMoR audio performance was juxtaposed with sexual harassment/assault, Iād have two nickels. Which isnāt a lot, but itās more nickels than I would ever have wanted to receive for that reason jesus fucking christ just give me the Cenobitesā puzzle box to solve so the chains can pull me out of here already
Not sure how far Iām going to read this, but leading off with roon is a giant blinking red [More citations needed]
Iām being a bit flippant with the previous post, but really, Gyges was right to retract this. A number of the allegations heās resurfacing are serious, and there most likely is more abuse going on the rat scene than has come to lightā¦ but leaning so heavily on Twitter posts as primary-source evidence makes his whole effort here come off as lightweight and cranky. To me, rather than a scathing exposĆ©, this resembles a Dear Lowtax letter from somebody who got banned from Something Awful (a place where some of the moderators really were pedophiles, who really did have to be evicted from the community and prosecuted!).
Weāve known for a long time that Aellaās attitudes are problematic, and that we donāt want to spend time with her in olfactory distance, let alone tactile distance. Nothing new there. This Brangus dude was previously unknown to me, which is probably a good sign that my social-media hygiene of staying strictly away from Twitter is workingā¦ but also, and I donāt mean to say this by way of minimization, he ultimately seems like yet one more Tate-swilling Twitter manosphere bigot. He just happens to be the one infesting Gygesā community of affinity. It would be hard to make the case, given the evidence presented, that heās done much more than perform for the tech-savvy subset of Rogan/Tate adherents. Enough that people should reconsider associating with him, yes, but not enough to convict and remove him from public life.
And his conclusion starts off so laughable that it drowns out any accusation he might level against Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky is a great man whose most recent equivalent isā¦ Lenin?! What on earth? Yudkowsky doesnāt even measure up to Hubbard, his closest American parallel. The only grace I am willing to give Yudkowsky is that he has not, generally, been as openly predatory or as single-mindedly focused on creating a high-control organization as Hubbard was. Yudkowskyās attempts at re-establishing group control and setting boundaries against outgroups typically consist of whiny tweets and LW posts that very quickly reach into āur not takin p(doom) seriously!ā hyperbole. The Sea Org and Guardianās Office this is not.
I also strictly disagree with Gygesā implicit assumption that Yudkowsky was the most effective popularizer of these ideas, or somehow more effective than Kurzweil. Without Kurzweil projecting exponential growth curves forward and back in time, no VC GP in the mid-2010s is going to start writing checks for the early generations of genAI. And, for crying out loud, I distinctly remember Disney childrenās TV having an episode about grey goo taking over the world in 1996! https://gargwiki.net/Walkabout Almost 10 years before Kurzweil published The Singularity is Near, and two years before the first Harry Potter book would be published in the US! Omitting Kurzweil and Drexler to hype Yudkowsky is just plain silly. And no, heās not on a level with Lenin; we can already tell that the AI companiesā marketing which adapts AI-doom ideas is backfiring and being laughed at by the general public.
Iāve gone on for too long, partly because this is a diverting way to procrastinate, but by the end of this, Gyges once again demonstrates why heās an unreliable fellow traveler. I am very reluctant to quote directly from a document that has been officially retracted, but the second to last paragraph where he talks about āunderstand[ing] what people mean when they say certain ideas are demonic, and that they spread like a diseaseā¦ā Hmm, you obviously spend a lot of time on Twitter to dig all this shit up, tell me, whatās the āmind virusā they keep ranting about over there? Fuck you, Gyges, youāre a few invitation-snubs or one bad layoff away from goose-stepping with the rest of them.
hereās the bluesky thread for those wondering
he does repeat a fair bit of the stuff he said in that thread here, but with a lot more receipts
Zvi āI made my chops playing pro MtGā Moskovitz discovers that baldly stating that AI will kill us all fails to convince people who have a lot of money riding on the status quo, and freaks out about it
New York Post gets way more attention than that rag deserves, tbh
You wanna dance with Murdoch Sacks and Trump, you best bring your A game. Maybe use some of that FTX cash to hire some real lobbyists and skip the blogging.
