Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? 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 so 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.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
A rationalist made a top post where they (poorly) argue against political "violence" (scare quotes because they lump in property damage): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Sih2sFHEgusDEuxtZ/you-can-t-trust-violence
Highlights include a shallow half-assed defense of dear leader Eliezer's calls for violence:
Eliezer called for drone strikes against data centers even if it would start a nuclear war and even against countries that aren't signatories to whatever hypothetical international agreement against AI there is. That is extremely irregular by the standards of international law and diplomacy, and this lesswronger just elides over those little details
(Except for drone strikes and starting a nuclear war.)
They treat a Molotov thrown at Sam Altman's house as if it were thrown directly at Sam himself:
This is a pretty blatant misrepresentation of the action which makes it sound much more violent.
They continue on with minimizing right-wing violence:
Actually, outside of right-wing bubbles (and right-wing sources masking themselves as centrist), lots of people actually do blame Trump and the leaders of entire right wing movement as at fault for a lot of recent political violence. Of course, this is lesswrong, which has a pretty cooked Overton window, so it figures the lesswronger would be wrong about this.
Following that, the lesswronger acknowledges it is kind of questionable and a conflation of terms to label property damage violence, but then press right on ahead with some pretty weak arguments that don't acknowledge why some people want to make the distinction.
So in conclusion:
What I found interesting about the post was the total non-discussion about the most discussed source of terrorism in the last few decades, namely Islamic terrorism. AI safety terrs are fucking amateurs compared to the people recruiting Islamic terrorists, who not only have a convincing story to pitch but actually do the work to get people on board and prepared to risk their lives for the goal.
The author gestures vaguely at anti-abortion terrs, totally oblivious to the obvious connection between them and purported anti-AI activists - namely ,that they see any violence justified in the light of the murder of millions of unborn children. If the future of humanity is at stake, any means are justified!
After all, the author states
The onus is on the author to explain why murdering AI company execs is an unacceptable response to the unacceptable risk of AI.