includes considerable nonspecific shit-talking of assigned EA enemies, including - horrors! - Timnit Gebru talking about the social issues of the actually-existing AI-industrial complex. also it’s not a CASTLE it’s a MANOR HOUSE, you fools, you rubes,
gems from the comments:
Academics and Journalists could interview an arbitrary EA forum user on a particular area if they wanted to get up to speed quickly. The fact they seem not to do this, in addition to not giving a right to reply, makes me think they’re not truth-seeking.
Why don’t academics and journalists do their job properly and interview random forum members to inform their research?
The problem with this type of criticism is that for the most part it’s usually pretty lazy. If you just want to make people laugh, there’s no need to be charitable or high-effort. The average r/sneerclub post consisted of finding something seemingly absurd or offensive said by a rationalist and then mocking it. The resulting threads are obviously biased and not epistemically rigorous. Like, Wytham abbey was technically a manor house, but “EA gets a castle” is objectively a funnier meme. There are sometimes good arguments in there (I think my old sneerclub posts weren’t terrible), but they’re not the point of the community, and you shouldn’t expect them to be common.
@titotal@awful.systems hey I spend whole minutes crafting sneers, how dare ya call me lazy!
also its COMPLETELY WRONG to say that they blew millions in charitable donations on buying a castle. they blew millions in charitable donations on buying two castles
It was a chateau in the Czech Republic
It wasn’t CEA/EV like with the other ‘castle’, but it was an organization that had its own tag on the EA forum, so at the very least EA-aligned.
The average r/sneerclub post consisted of finding something seemingly absurd or offensive said by a rationalist and then mocking it. The resulting threads are obviously biased and not epistemically rigorous.
This is correct
Like, Wytham abbey was technically a manor house
Lol, ‘technically it was a manor house not a castle’ come on, you cannot just complain about how low effort sc is and then post something as silly as that.
Wait, was this bait? Have I been baited?
“Wytham abbey was technically a manor house” is objectively even funnier than “EA gets a castle”
Gotta start disclaiming our sneers
THE SNEER is provided AS IS in the hope that it will be funny,
but WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
including but not limited to the warranties of MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, and NONINFRINGEMENT.
In NO EVENT shall the authors or commenters be liable FOR ANY CLAIM,
DAMAGES or OTHER LIABILITY, arising from, out of or in connection
with THE SNEER or the reading or commenting on THE SNEER.
Wytham abbey was technically a manor house but “EA gets a castle” is objectively a funnier meme.
My “My non-profit castle is actually a manor house” t-shirt provokes a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt.
Also I’m sorry, but “EA buys a castle, but akchualy it’s a manor house so it’s cool” is objectively the funniest meme.
Why did 3.6 million people watch this hour long video dunking on flat earthers? Because the topic of people believing crazy things is fun and interesting.
Dan Olson’s In Search of a Flat Earth is most definitely not just an hour of dunking on flat-Earthers.
It pivots to discussing QAnon at 37:30.
From the comments:
This just went from 0 to 100 real quick.
Lord, the cry of pure anguish I gave out in response to that line…
Props to the Qanon guy’s kid for standing up to him and saying “nobody’s gonna help you” when he kidnapped them, that must have been terrifying
Occasionally rewatch this while dealing with the loss of my own parents to conspiracy lunacy. Even tried using this video to pull them back from the edge. Ended up precipitating cutting contact with them, something that has done wonders for my mental health. I have since realised they were deeper in than I thought, and were never going to listen to their child, and unlikely to listen to people they actually might have respected the opinions of.
The person I used to consider my father now believes that viruses aren’t real and is getting deep into transphobia and Putin worship. He is likely to already be a holocaust denier. There is no bottom to the conspiracy theory abyss and few ever seem to find their way back from the depths.
Thank you for crushing that last bit of remaining hope I didn’t even know I had.
It’s honestly kind of chilling to see him effectively spending half an hour predicting the Jan 6th riot.
“Fun and interesting”?
This Is Financial Advice would’ve been a much better video to make that point with - that video was about a financial doomsday cult centered around a dying mall retailer, and doesn’t start going into anything particularly heavy until near the end.
Not to mention a lot of the first part is just honestly beautiful shots of nature, while showing the curve of the earth. There’s very little that’s dunking on flat-earthers. In fact, focusing on dunking on flat-earthers is something he criticizes other youtubers for in the video.
In my skim of the two posts I didn’t get to any suggestion of “used to be favorable, then realized they’re led by duplicitous misanthropes” as a pathway.
What about: “read a particular HP fanfic to try and fit in with a new crowd, was utterly repulsed by the narrative voice, discovered later it was part of what seemed like an elaborate cult that was weirdly sensitive to sneers, and finally found an outlet for their nerd bloodlust”
I wandered over somehow from RationalWiki, which I had known of since the science-blogging days of yore, and found it more congenial to my tastes than other subreddits. E.g., it was friendlier to excursions into the wonky and erudite than r/badphilosophy, and generally had a justifiably low tolerance for superficial politeness while maintaining a level of empathy for serious matters.
