Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 21 April 2024

Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

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.

jax ,

news just in: orange site poster finds 2 and 2, struggles to come to terms with the fact that they add to 4:

Every time race comes up on HackerNews i am shocked at how horrifyingly racist (some) users of this site are. Not only did a user somehow think that this context would exonerate this very racist man, both you and I are getting immediately downvoted for disagreeing. There was a post last week or so that was so full of racist comments it just got taken down. I wonder what on earth brings together HackerNews and racism like this.

mmm I wonder what it could possible be?

Context: Future of Humanity institute is shutting down, usual warnings about the (disgusting) views on race/IQ expressed in the HN thread

slopjockey ,

https://www.awful.systems/pictrs/image/c7424b94-65f2-4edd-8818-e38cb58700f1.jpeg
HN.jpg

jax ,

tired: learning from others through the wealth of experiences and resources that are widely available

wired: taking a "first principles" approach to endangering and traumatising your own child

I was at the apartment pool chatting with a friend who is a very advanced swimmer - the type that swims laps seemingly endlessly - and she asked “have you ever seen what would happen if [your two year-old son]
fell in the pool?”. I said no, and then she suggested I try it so that I would at least know. So I picked him up and with no warning tossed him in. He immediately froze under water, arms and legs outstretched in literally stunned silence. I counted to 5 and pulled him out and he was trembling with fear.

At that point I realized that the time it takes for a kid to drown is one breath. That may be 3 seconds, may be 10 seconds.

Amoeba_Girl ,
@Amoeba_Girl@awful.systems avatar

what the fuck

slopjockey ,

https://www.awful.systems/pictrs/image/26f34028-228e-448c-a7b7-1aa9f3d7b15a.jpeg

HN Parenting Pro-tip: Chuck your kids into the pool, keep 'em sharp. Sure they might drown, but at least they won't trust you after they make it back to land.

froztbyte ,

https://awful.systems/pictrs/image/0ffdbcc8-3ae4-4f64-91b0-bb6bb954024d.png

no lies detected

Eiim ,

Why would I want my interview experience to be "more gamified"?

rook ,
@rook@awful.systems avatar

So you can quick load your save state from the beginning of the interview and have another go at defeating the boss now you know their movement pattern?

sailor_sega_saturn ,
@sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems avatar

Is artificial intelligence the great filter that makes advanced technical civilisations rare in the universe?

This professor is arguing we need to regulate AI because we haven't found any space aliens yet and the most conceivably explanation why is that they all wiped themselves out with killer AIs.

And hits some of the greatest hits:

  • AI will nuke us all because the nuclear powers are so incompetent they'd hook the bombs up to Chat-GPT.
  • AI will wipe us out with a killer virus for reasons
  • We may not be adorable enough towards AI to prevent being vaporized even if we become cyborgs 🥺
  • AI will wipe out an entire planet. Solution: we need people on a bunch of different planets and space-stations to study it "safely"
  • Um actually space aliens would all be robots. Be free from your flesh prisons!

Zero mentions of global warming of course.

I kinda want to think that the author has just been reading some weird ideas. At least he put himself out there and wrote a paper with human sentences! It's all aboard the AI hype train for sure, and constantly makes huge logical leaps, but it somehow doesn't make me feel as skeezy as some of the other stuff on here.

swlabr ,

If only the “Dark Forest” hypothesis of human-extraterrestrial interaction would enter the public consciousness any sooner. We’d at least have more interesting ideas than this shit.

NB: I have not watched the 3BP adaptation yet, tho I have heard it is good. I have listened to the first two books as audiobooks and am tickled by Bruno Roubicek’s mildly (three body) problematic accent-work.

gerikson ,
@gerikson@awful.systems avatar

Both Lovecraft and Reynolds play with the idea that sentience, when discovered, is hunted down and exterminated by hostile entities. Scalzi’s Old Man’s War universe is somewhere where alien species are in ruthless competition.

All of it is a deflection of the possible and frankly terrifying possibility that we are alone (at least in this galaxy)

Architeuthis ,
@Architeuthis@awful.systems avatar

American white supremacist, pedophilia apologist, alt-right pseudointellectual, grifter, transphobe, anti-feminist, ableist, eugenicist and fake contrarian Richard Hanania jumps on the siskind-is-basically-a-prophet bandwagon in order to (checks notes) shill designer mouth bacteria.

If I had a 1980s sitcom mom sitting next to me here, she might ask “If Scott Alexander told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that too?” To which I’d respond probably not, but I would spend some time considering the possibility that I had a fundamentally flawed understanding of the laws of gravity.

gerikson ,
@gerikson@awful.systems avatar

Content warning: contains photo of Siskind (also text by Hanania).

slopjockey ,

The picture, I could live with; The blog, I could stomach; but the comments? Oh my god the comments

Yes, I used to think I was a very smart person, smartest in most rooms I entered. I now realize I had never entered any really smart rooms. I now say publicly and often that Scott Alexander is the smartest person I have ever encountered as well as one the best explainers--and his commenters are often nearly that smart and persuasive as well. It has been humbling to recognize what a truly smart person looks like . . . but also a great blessing.

Wtf? If I didn't know any better I'd think he was talking about Euler! I'd vomit and die if I ever heard that irl.

Soyweiser ,

Scott apparently has a 'niceness field' where people around him try to act nicer than normal, and this confuses a lot of people to think he is actually nice and his style of writing is good, smart and balanced.

dgerard OP Mod ,
@dgerard@awful.systems avatar

I met him, he really does

blakestacey ,
@blakestacey@awful.systems avatar

Huh. Too bad he and I will probably never meet; this sounds like an instance where my ability to be incredibly abrasive could be used for good. (Or at least for comedy.)

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