this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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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.

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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.

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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.)

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah, what the fuck is this passage

If you believe that If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, then you should say that if anyone builds it, then everyone dies. Not moral blame. Cause and effect. Note that this is importantly different from ‘anyone who is trying to build it is a mass murderer.’

(note the rat-tic of using "importantly" as an adjective)

This deftly evades the main question - how do we ensure that no-one builds it? There's a host of options, and political violence is one of them. I guess categorically stating it's off the table is a start, but Zvi has the moral gravitas of a dormouse. If I was of the political voilence bent I'd probably commit some just to spite him.

It's a willful refusal to actually consider the consequences of their beliefs, which is deeply ironic for a bunch that pride themselves on their hardcore consequentialism. Like, even if you just mean "if anyone builds it, everyone dies" as a simple cause and effect, that should imply some kind of action unless you don't think everyone dying would be bad actually.

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

how do we ensure that no-one builds it?

Eliezer made a lesswrong post yesterday where he explains that since anyone could build it, lone acts of violence are obviously ineffective and the only solution is the right and proper ("Lawful" as he calls it, because he has been stuck on DnD since writing Planecrash) state violence which can enforce a worldwide ban (which you may recall Eliezer has put at the absurdly low 8 2024 GPUs).

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

All their doom scenarios are made-up sci-fi bullshit, so of course they have free rein to pontificate about the right and wrong ways to prevent them. And because they are high on their own sci-fi, they downplay or neglect or misunderstand the real harms of the rising slop sea. Consequently, they fail to grasp the real social reaction to acts of violence.

[–] scruiser@awful.systems 7 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

they fail to grasp the real social reaction

side-note... I wonder what the overlap is between rationalist that showed up to their stupid "march for billionaires" and AI doomers?

[–] Evinceo@awful.systems 6 points 19 hours ago

Aella showed up.