McGlockenshire posted:

Thank you, that's a great resource. I hadn't thought to look at RW, as it's still classified in my brain as a resource in fighting fundies only. How times have changed...

The Vosgian Beast posted:

I have my issues with some of it, but it's like one of the last few holdouts of old internet atheism that haven't gone super racist or intolerant, so it's nice to have that.

Neon Noodle posted:

Racism is like the worst mind-virus ever. It's so hard to eradicate. All of our human vulnerabilities play into it -- people look different, so that means there are categories of people. Plus in the U.S. we all grow up with a level of historical background radiation that makes racism seem like the reasonable default. It takes SO MUCH EDUCATION to counteract. It's just the loving common cold of memes.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

It's like how the reason libertarians don't bring up Nozick, despite him being by far one of the most respected figures to argue for libertarianism is that he thought the government should be allowed to step in if a basic quality of life isn't being maintained, there should be a massive estate tax to prevent an uber-rich aristocracy from developing, and before we implement the libertarian society we should do one massive redistribution of goods in order to fix the lovely start various groups have had(for instance, reparations for the descendants of slaves). He doesn't have appeal to libertarians who basically want the status quo, plus marijuana and minus any restrictions on corporations and taxes.

divabot posted:

edit: AHAHAAHA kirkegaard shows up personally and says IT'S ALL RATIONALWIKI'S FAULT

NikkolasKing posted:

Can someone tell me more about this Big Yud guy?

The linked song and Wiki make him sound like a kook but not a horrible racist kook which I thought this thread was mainly about.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

He's a kook who isn't NRx, but is beloved by a significant amount of them and he writes terrible Harry Potter fanfiction which will somehow save us all from being killed by future robots

Pope Guilty posted:

Neoreaction A Basilisk goes into how Yudkowsky's website served as a sort of Petri dish in which neoreaction partially evolved.

quote:

So allow me to say with absolute explicitness: Eliezer Yudkowsky is not a neoreactionary. He repudiates the philosophy in explicit terms. He has shown no sympathy for and ative hostility to its most noxious beliefs. If I have ever suggested otherwise, I apologize profusely for the infelicity of writing, and if it is possible to edit the text in question I will do so.

[...]

For what it's worth, though, the reason I needed Eliezer Yudkowsky in the book was that I needed someone who wasn't evil. Mencius Moldbug's philosophy is indefensible, and Nick Land is ostentatiously playing a super-villain, which is delightfully evil, but nevertheless evil. And Yudkowsky is wrong, and sometimes wrong in ways that genuinely deserve a bit of condemnation, but at least he's a fun crackpot, and that counts for an awful lot in my world. And while Neoreaction a Basilisk does not offer anything that might be mistaken for hope, it has a sense of good guys and bad guys, and Yudkowsky's one of the good guys.

McGlockenshire posted:

There's something about this that makes me hesitant to believe anything else he says.

quote:

The openmindedness of this blog in general and the comments policy is a sterling example of what the Left should be (and often is not): fraternal, no holds barred, unafraid to engage with anyone, democratic, intellectual, intelligent, and barring no-one from its debates on account of their politics alone. It deserves to be much more widely known within the blogging community worldwide. The political and intellectual culture of the community who debate here (with the exception of a few trolls and debate stoppers) is an example to all seeking an egalitarian alternative to capitalism, and a challenge to the boring and otiose official bourgeois media.

Fututor Magnus posted:

NikkolasKing posted:

Thank you for the replies everyone. But now I want to read this "Neoreaction A Basilisk" book. Where can I buy it?

Fututor Magnus posted:

I came across Robert Lindsay's blog some years ago. He literally believes himself to be an anti-racist and a leftist, because, well, read for yourself.

It's amazing how he can think of Trump and his supporters as racist and then write posts like [url="https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2016/12/06/racist-elitist-arrogant-indian-man-kanwal-rekhi-by-magneto/this[/url]. Or anything under this tag.

Pretty refreshing coming back to this blog and reliving that same sense of utter cognitive dissonance I felt the first time. This has got to be the definition of doublethink.

Like, check out this comment / testimonial:


Also, this picture of his really pisses me off:

Peel posted:

So far it's only legally available to backers of the associated kickstarter. Sandifer is preparing a general release with some bonus essays (TERFs, gamergate, Austrian econ, lizard people) for later this year, I forget when.

NikkolasKing posted:

Thank you for the replies everyone. But now I want to read this "Neoreaction A Basilisk" book. Where can I buy it?

Fututor Magnus posted:

https://twitter.com/slavojzyzzek/status/849050690181885955

ate all the Oreos posted:

It's almost like dick dorkins is a bad scientist whose only respected by nerds because he panders to them and has an authoritative English accent that makes him sound smart to dumb Americans who have been culturally trained that English accents mean sophistication.

(Completely tangential: My favorite thing I learned about the whole subconscious accent thing is when I was watching a British gameshow and they used an American accent narrator to emphasize how HARDCORE EXTREME SERIOUS something was, like the exact opposite of what we do )

Improbable Lobster posted:

For some strange reason the majority of white wing gays seem to be wealthy white men who hate "mainstream" gays. I wonder why.

divabot posted:

Zoe Quinn has a book on Gamergate coming out in September!

The Vosgian Beast posted:

A. Wyatt Mann was a LaVeyan Satanist too.

The real danger of satanism is that it's a gateway drug to Ayn Rand

BENGHAZI 2 posted:

laveyan satanism is basically objectivism, the Church of Satanism or w/e owns

BENGHAZI 2 posted:

laveyan satanism is basically objectivism, the Church of Satanism or w/e owns because they're basically a political group that exists solely to troll people and point out how stupid religious objections are, citation that time they got a baphomet statue erected somewhere and then gay married some dudes in front of it

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Immediately contradicting yourself

The Vosgian Beast posted:

The real danger of satanism is that it's a gateway drug to Ayn Rand

divabot posted:

When the comments on SSC itself aren't sufficiently terrible, there's always Reddit /r/slatestarcodex, including Scott Alexander as a regular! It's a sea of Dunning-Kruger, racism and frothing about the evils of SJWs, but of course they all self-identify as "leftists" of some variety hitherto unknown to political science.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Immediately contradicting yourself

BENGHAZI 2 posted:

Nah I meant the Satanic Temple. They rule.

divabot posted:

When the comments on SSC itself aren't sufficiently terrible, there's always Reddit /r/slatestarcodex, including Scott Alexander as a regular! It's a sea of Dunning-Kruger, racism and frothing about the evils of SJWs, but of course they all self-identify as "leftists" of some variety hitherto unknown to political science.

* A genetics grad student dares tell them that the horrible scientific racism and HBD bollocks on display makes him not want to show the site to other geneticists, and Kirkegaard in particular is a huge crank. The SSC commentariat know how to deal with this sort of mainstream academia argument from authority SJW bullshit, of course. Scott joins in on the side of his commenters, combating the opinions of mere geneticists on genetics with the opinions of psychiatrists.

* An economics grad student sees this and desperately tries to get across what determined Dunning-Kruger it is even taking notice of Kirkegaard. Again the commentariat, including Scott aren't taking this SJW joined-up-thinking bullshit.