Want to wade into the snowy 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 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.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this. Merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, and happy holidays in general!)

  • scruiser@awful.systemsEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    PauseAI Leader writes a hard take down on the EA movement: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yoYPkFFx6qPmnGP5i/thoughts-on-my-relationship-to-ea-and-please-donate-to

    They may be a doomer with some crazy beliefs about AI, but they’ve accurately noted EA is pretty firmly captured by Anthropic and the LLM companies and can’t effectively advocate against them. And they accurately call out the false balanced style and unevenly enforced tone/decorum norms that stifle the EA and lesswrong forums. Some choice quotes:

    I think, if it survives at all, EA will eventually split into pro-AI industry, who basically become openly bad under the figleaf of Abundance or Singulatarianism, and anti-AI industry, which will be majority advocacy of the type we’re pioneering at PauseAI. I think the only meaningful technical safety work is going to come after capabilities are paused, with actual external regulatory power. The current narrative (that, for example, Anthropic wishes it didn’t have to build) is riddled with holes and it will snap. I wish I could make you see this, because it seems like you should care, but you’re actually the hardest people to convince because you’re the most invested in the broken narrative.

    I don’t think talking with you on this forum with your abstruse culture and rules is the way to bring EA’s heart back to the right place

    You’ve lost the plot, you’re tedious to deal with, and the ROI on talking to you just isn’t there.

    I think you’re using specific demands for rigor (rigor feels virtuous!) to avoid thinking about whether Pause is the right option for yourselves.

    Case in point: EAs wouldn’t come to protests, then they pointed to my protests being small to dismiss Pause as a policy or messaging strategy!

    The author doesn’t really acknowledge how the problems were always there from the very founding of EA, but at least they see the problems as they are now. But if they succeeded, maybe they would help slow the waves of slop and capital replacing workers with non-functioning LLM agents, so I wish them the best.

    • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      I can imagine Peter Singer’s short-termist EA splitting off from the longtermists, but I have a hard time imagining any part of the EA movement aligning itself against global capitalism and American hegemony. If you are in to that there are movements which have better parties and more of a gender balance than Effective Altruism.

      • scruiser@awful.systemsEnglish
        0·
        4 days ago

        I totally agree. The linked PauseAI leader still doesn’t realize the full extent of the problem, but I’m kind of hopeful they may eventually figure it out. I think the ability to simply say this is bullshit (about in group stuff) is a skill almost no lesswrongers and few EAs have.