PYF Dark Enlightenment Thinker

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Fututor Magnus: Feb 22, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

DarklyDreaming posted:

Serious intellectual answer: The game takes place in 1354 BC which was the height of the New Kingdom and when Egypt was at it's most "Egypt-y" by this point the country had conquered and assimilated (and been conquered and forcibly assimilated by) regions and ethnic groups that ran the full gamut from Mediterranean Europeans, Middle Easterners, Anatolians and Saharan Africans. Because of this the Egyptian populace would have reflected that and looked more "Diverse" than what most people would picture a North African state to look like. That said, the absence of direct contact with central and western Europe would have meant that very few among them would be considered "White" by modern definitions of the term.

Shitposting answer: NO ONE IN ANCIENT EGYPT LOOKED LIKE GERARD BUTLER DIPSHITS

i find it ironic how white racists today ignore the one-drop rule if it suits them. usually when some crazy afrocentrist hotep or somesuch is essentializing and claiming a historical culture to be black, ironically based on a lot of the same one-drop logic of exclusive whiteness.

either way it's not an empirical debate for these people.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 00:13

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# ? May 8, 2024 21:57

Fututor Magnus: Feb 22, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

on the topic of terrible gamers' ideologies coming up this e3, the best looking game and it's creator has the worst opinions

http://kotaku.com/e3-show-stealer-s-old-political-tweets-spark-internet-f-1796025311

# ? Jun 13, 2017 06:21

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Fututor Magnus posted:

on the topic of terrible gamers' ideologies coming up this e3, the best looking game and it's creator has the worst opinions

http://kotaku.com/e3-show-stealer-s-old-political-tweets-spark-internet-f-1796025311

the game starts with a 75 minute cut scene of a piece to camera recorded on a phone with muffled audio

easter egg: you can play as the skull in background

# ? Jun 13, 2017 09:49

Angry Salami: Jul 27, 2013; Don't trust the skull.

DarklyDreaming posted:

Serious intellectual answer: The game takes place in 1354 BC which was the height of the New Kingdom and when Egypt was at it's most "Egypt-y"

Oh, cool, it's set in the Amarna period? That's almost enough to get me interested in a new AC game!

# ? Jun 13, 2017 11:31

BravestOfTheLamps: Oct 12, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Lipstick Apathy

Angry Salami posted:

Oh, cool, it's set in the Amarna period? That's almost enough to get me interested in a new AC game!

Counter-point: Assassin's Creed.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 12:06

Shame Boy: Mar 2, 2010

It's pronounced "rear end Creed"

# ? Jun 13, 2017 13:00

The Vosgian Beast: Aug 13, 2011; Business is slow

divabot posted:

Matt Forney seems to think being the hugest possible shithead is a competitive endeavour. At least he's gone off Milo.

He went off on Milo before, shortly before Milo was banned from Twitter

I was hoping people would blame the latter fact on the former, but it was not to be.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 15:52

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Little heavier than our usual content, but here's a pretty good Twitter thread on white nationalist radicalisation:

https://twitter.com/andreuswolf/status/855074427419209728

# ? Jun 13, 2017 22:08

Shame Boy: Mar 2, 2010

Fututor Magnus posted:

on the topic of terrible gamers' ideologies coming up this e3, the best looking game and it's creator has the worst opinions

http://kotaku.com/e3-show-stealer-s-old-political-tweets-spark-internet-f-1796025311

That article doesn't really mention it beyond "AI took all the jobs" but the actual driving factor of the cyberpunk dystopia was that they instituted guaranteed minimum income.

Yes really. The thing that causes the dystopia is everyone being able to afford to live without struggle, which apparently made them bored and listless?

# ? Jun 13, 2017 23:39

Fututor Magnus: Feb 22, 2016; by FactsAreUseless

remember how struggling to survive day to day actually helps your creativity? because not having any time, energy, or resources to devote to artistic endeavours because of the requirements of daily survival is actually good.

it's like wesley talking about how basic incomes and being leftist / socialists is what makes people depressed (while being pretty clearly depressed himself and surrounded with the worst kind of fascist sadsack losers) and is now crying about he should be given a basic income or welfare so that he can write his blog and read wikipedia in comfort.

# ? Jun 13, 2017 23:55

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Fututor Magnus posted:

remember how struggling to survive day to day actually helps your creativity? because not having any time, energy, or resources to devote to artistic endeavours because of the requirements of daily survival is actually good.

it's like wesley talking about how basic incomes and being leftist / socialists is what makes people depressed (while being pretty clearly depressed himself and surrounded with the worst kind of fascist sadsack losers) and is now crying about he should be given a basic income or welfare so that he can write his blog and read wikipedia in comfort.

like, I spent my dissolute youth in Australia in the '80s and '90s, back when the system really did love you and want to be your friend, and I can absolutely assure you that a dole you could live on was the greatest impetus to creativity and cultural productivity you could think of. We've done this experiment.

ahh 1993, which I spent sitting on the couch on my front porch drinking coffee, smoking genuine US Lucky Strikes, reading all the papers (we didn't have internet then) and talking poo poo with my interesting and charming friends. I sorta miss that couch, though I eat way better these days.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 00:04

Pope Guilty: Nov 6, 2006; The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

Percussive industrial music in Germany basically started because the West German and American governments were offering young German creative types a stipend to live in west Berlin and have a thriving arts scene, to rub it in the East Germans' faces.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 00:37

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

http://8ch.net/ratanon/

holy poo poo

# ? Jun 14, 2017 01:17

Pope Guilty: Nov 6, 2006; The human animal is a beautiful and terrible creature, capable of limitless compassion and unfathomable cruelty.

divabot posted:

http://8ch.net/ratanon/

holy poo poo

I'm not blind-clicking an 8ch link, what is that?

# ? Jun 14, 2017 01:34

Luisfe: Aug 17, 2005; Hee-lo-ho!

Angry Salami posted:

Oh, cool, it's set in the Amarna period? That's almost enough to get me interested in a new AC game!

Hmm, Wikipedia says it is in Ptolemaic era... and the magazine had roman looking enemies so I guess not.

Cleopatra is mentioned (and if one gets to kill Cleopatra and Antony that would be hilarious)

# ? Jun 14, 2017 03:43

GlassElephant: Oct 25, 2009; Schwere Panzerabteilung 502
Discovered they were Glass Elephants, 27 APR 45

Darth Walrus posted:

Little heavier than our usual content, but here's a pretty good Twitter thread on white nationalist radicalisation:

https://twitter.com/andreuswolf/status/855074427419209728

gently caress reading anything 1/55 on twitter.

quote:

Hey guys, I know that I've been doing a lot of hot takes lately, but there's something rather important I need to talk to you about.

This is some personal poo poo and it's been on my mind for years, but I've always been afraid to talk about it for fear of losing friends.

I used to low-key subscribe to white nationalist views, back in my early 20s. Not going to make excuses for it, I should have known better.

The reason I want to talk to you guys about it is that you - particularly my younger followers - need to know how these people recruit.

This is really difficult to talk about even though to the greatest extent it didn't affect my behaviour. Didn't start screaming epiphets.

White nationalists are exceptionally clever in the way that they recruit people. It is a terrifyingly insidious process.

I never even met the person who "converted" me in person. In fact, I'm fairly certain he doesn't even know that he succeeded.

We were talking through anonymous imageboards - britchan, britfa.gs, back in the days of the Chanology protests in 2008/2009.

The initial moves might not seem like recruitment at all. He constantly, relentlessly insulted me, in a tremendously condescending manner.

I was 20 and not particularly good at structuring my arguments, so he was able to easily tear apart almost any argument I put forward.

Everything he said was drenched in pretentious melodrama. From an outside perspective it would've seemed comical and ridiculous.

He literally referred to himself and his allies as "the forces of good." Anyone who disagreed with him was evil, intentionally malicious.

These behaviours weren't meaningless. They were meant to make people like me emotionally invested in the argument.

I was meant to feel offended and affronted by his behaviour so that I wouldn't just disengage from the debate and stop listening to him.

The more I lost arguments against him, the more insulting he got and the more desperate I became to "defeat" him.

Now, the vitally important to note about white supremacists is that not everything they say is a COMPLETE falsehood. This is the danger.

White supremacists are very, very good at curating snippets of verifiably true information to support their arguments.

They will present, for instance, the IQ statistics or crime rates of African Americans without any reasoning other than "they're black."

Of course, there's a whole lot of context behind those figures. But that context takes more time to present than the statistics do.

And if you try, they will misuse the principle of Occam's Razor. "That's all very complicated reasoning. There's a simpler answer."

We continued in this manner for a while. Then suddenly, the "recruiter" did a 180 turnabout in tactics and plotted a new course.

All the insults stopped abruptly. Suddenly, he was saying things like "you're clearly a very intelligent individual. I can respect that."

He explained very articulately the concept of cognitive dissonance, which was, of course, what I was feeling at that point.

White nationalists are VERY fond of argumentum ad lapidem - dismissing an argument as ridiculous without explaining WHY it's ridiculous.

The insults returned, but they weren't REALLY directed at me anymore. They were directed at "ridiculous" things like liberalism and equality

With the subtle implication that I, as an intelligent young (white) man should be able to see through all of these falsehoods.

There was an extensive use of motte and bailey arguments as well, whenever I started showing discomfort with a suggested course of action.

What he really wanted, of course, was the removal of all non-white individuals from Britain. That was often implied or outright stated.

But whenever I showed discomfort at this idea, he'd say "well of course we wouldn't evict legal residents, just the illegal ones."

This sort of maleable, amorphous ideology is a very useful asset for white nationalist recruiters. You can't nail them down to a viewpoint.

The white nationalist recruiter has some core beliefs they won't compromise on, but only he knows what they actually are.

One day he'd express billious hatred for atheists, Jews and gays, and the next he'd discuss how Islam was a terrible threat to their rights.

The recruiter lovingly, carefully tailors your understanding of what white nationalism "actually is" to your personal preferences.

Then there was the 2009 MEP elections, where he swore that the BNP would get 12 seats minimum. They got only 2.

He vanished. Completely. I have, from May 2009 to this day, never knowingly spoken to him again. That, also, was by design.

There was no closure. There was no "victory." There was no embarassed scratching of head or admittance of defeat.

He just disappeared without a trace, and I never got to prove the supremacy of my ideas over his. THIS WAS BY DESIGN.

Since I, in my own head, hadn't proved to him that he was wrong... I hadn't really proved to myself that he was wrong, either.

So those ideas just sat and festered in my head. Ready for someone else to come along and continue where he'd left off.

See, it's useful for white nationalists that their ideology is somewhat difficult to discuss their ideas with anyone other than them.

White nationalists are actually exploiting the stigma attached to racism for their own benefit. Recruitment targets are scared of it.

They feel like they can't discuss the things that they've been told without being shunned for being racist. And white nationalists love that

They'll tell you that society is afraid of people discovering the truth of their ideas, and so will shut down debate on the subject.

They set up this drip-feed of "true" information that cuts through society's "lies" and then when it starts getting good, they cut you off.

So that if you want more of this "truth" you need to go to them and seek it out on their terms, in an environment they control.

They are the EXACT opposite of "it's not my job to educate you." They are OVERJOYED to show you all their painstakingly-curated information.

And they will heap praise on you for having the perspicacity to see through society's "lies." You're welcomed like a long-lost brother.

I never got to the point where I was hanging out on nationalist forums, or attending real life gatherings, or even insulting people online.

I just had these ideas bouncing around my head, unrefuted, because I was too afraid of social censure to seek deprogramming.

That's sort of a failure state for white nationalists, but not an unrecoverable one. They have ways of making you useful.

See, with that toxic poo poo in the back of my mind, it was in some subconscious ways affecting my ability to interact with others.

I sometimes felt deeply uncomfortable interacting with people of other ethnicities because I'd have these intrusive thoughts in my head.

And it made me vulnerable to another insidious tactic that they've developed and perfected in recent years - co-opting liberalism.

White nationalists have played dog-in-the-manger with a lot of ideas that are generally thought of as liberal in recent years.

Free speech, freedom of expression - "listen, you may DISAGREE with white nationalist views, but don't they have a right to state them?"

"If they censor white nationalists, who will they censor next? It could be your video games! It could be YOU!"

In a horrifying twist of historical revisionism, they turned arguments used against the Nazis against people who opposed white nationalism.

Hell, they've even made a brave effort at co-opting the concept of egalitarianism, painting themselves as the oppressed underclass.

And all they needed was people like me, insecure people with a head full of cognitive dissonance, to make their arguments look respectable.

See, if white nationalists can't advance their views directly, they'll do it by proxy. Someone with hair, not covered in swastika tattoos.

Someone like me.

I'm a crossdressing liberal bisexual furry with a bunch of ethnically diverse friends. I COULDN'T be advancing a nationalist agenda, right?

White nationalists love it when people like me do their work for them. It's so much more palatable than skinheads and jackboots.

God this is loving hard to write.

I was part of the GG movement for a while. Not that I think GG is actively white nationalist, despite all the other things it is/was/became

But it was that little splinter in my mind that kept me there for so long, the "what if society is trying to contol our viewpoints?"

It stopped me from immediately seeing how toxic a lot of the people I was associating with were.

That's not an excuse, incidentally. I'm not trying to diminish my responsibility for my own actions. I should've known better.

It also didn't help that a lot of the people that opposed GG were and continue to be genuinely dreadful people.

That's a thing. That's always useful for white nationalists and other hate movements - moral failures on the part of the opposition.

White nationalists love to paint any hypocrisy or failing by a specific adversary as hypocrisy or failing of their opposition as a whole.

"This one anti-fascist turned out to be a paedophile, so that means all antifa are paedophiles!"

When the people who you're up against are billious, spiteful and hypocritical, it can make you feel like you're on the side of good.

This is why I'm slightly more cautious than most about the whole "punch a Nazi" thing. Avowed white supremacists? Sure, punch 'em.

But you need to be careful around people who are on the fringes, who are having the same doubts and cognitive dissonance that I was.

That was me, once. And I feel like there's pain in my life that could've been avoided if I felt safe to reach out to someone for help.

I lost a friend over this poo poo. That was @tornewuff. We only recently made up. I wish I'd told him all of this a lot sooner.

I'm glad I had people like @hoodednomad and my age-old schoolfriends Peter and Julian to (verbally) slap some loving sense into me.

And I'm glad I got talking to @HYENAMISERY and reading his Twitter feed. He helped me understand a lot of stuff I didn't understand before.

The thing about all of this is I think I managed to stave off falling headfirst into ethnonationalism because I never WANTED it to be true.

I think a lot of people who get fully into it are overjoyed to have a reason to hate people they already didn't like.

I never wanted any of this bullshit to be true. I was terrified by the possibility that it was, and desperately wanted an out.

One of my oldest friends was an Indian boy called Sanjay. I went to primary school with Muslims and Koreans. I never hated any of them.

That's one of the most toxic things about white nationalism. It can make you have second thoughts about people you love.

And there are some people who, like me, don't want all this hate to be true. They'll do anything for it not to be true. Show them it's not.

I had people there when I needed them, but it was a loving close thing. Not everyone is as lucky as I am. Please, help them.

It was a terrifying loving experience writing this, and if you feel like you can't associate with me anymore, I understand.

I don't want to believe that I hurt someone because of all of this, but if I did, I'm sorry. This is sort of my apology note.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I think I'm going to work out to blow off some of this nervous energy and then cry a little.

Not gonna lie, I was worried coming out with all of this would ruin my reputation in the fandom. But then I felt like it was too important.

People need to know this poo poo. Because there are a hell of a lot of emotionally lost young white guys (and girls, they recruit them too)

(In fact the recruitment of white girls by white supremacists is ugly as sin. They LOVE to bombard them with rape statistics.)

# ? Jun 14, 2017 07:34

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Pope Guilty posted:

I'm not blind-clicking an 8ch link, what is that?

It's the Berkeley-subculture rationalists bitching about each other anonymously. It's amazingly nuts. "What the *gently caress* happened? Remember when Big Yud's OKCupid profile and basilisk meltdown were the most embarrassing things to come out of this bunch?"

Oh, someone emailed me offering a MetaMed document drop for the RationalWiki article. Apparently it was way crazier than the evidence remaining on the web.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 08:10

MikeCrotch: Nov 5, 2011; I AM UNJUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF MY SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE RECIPE

YES, IT IS AN INCREDIBLY SIMPLE DISH

NO, IT IS NOT NORMAL TO USE A PEPPERAMI INSTEAD OF MINCED MEAT

YES, THERE IS TOO MUCH SALT IN MY RECIPE

NO, I WON'T STOP SHARING IT

more like BOLLOCKnese

divabot posted:

Oh, someone emailed me offering a MetaMed document drop for the RationalWiki article. Apparently it was way crazier than the evidence remaining on the web.

You don't say

# ? Jun 14, 2017 08:58

neongrey: Feb 28, 2007; Plaguing your posts with incidental music.

MikeCrotch posted:

You don't say

no, please say

# ? Jun 14, 2017 09:04

Cavelcade: Dec 9, 2015; I'm actually a boy!

neongrey posted:

no, please say

# ? Jun 14, 2017 09:06

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

MikeCrotch posted:

You don't say

I know right

I mean, all startups are literally a process of working out what the gently caress business you're actually in, so incompetence and Kafkaesque weirdness is normal. (Silicon Valley is a documentary, in the sense that Dilbert was when it was good.) But the Bayesian evidence is that rationalists will bring the quality crazy to the table.

(Reminder that Zvi Mowshowitz. MetaMed co-founder and professional Magic: The Gathering player, is worried about Roko's basilisk.)

# ? Jun 14, 2017 09:59

Shame Boy: Mar 2, 2010

GlassElephant posted:

I'm a crossdressing liberal bisexual furry with a bunch of ethnically diverse friends. I COULDN'T be advancing a nationalist agenda, right?

Really buried the lede here buddy

# ? Jun 14, 2017 14:28

SHY NUDIST GRRL: Feb 15, 2011; Communism will help more white people than anyone else. Any equal measures unfairly provide less to minority populations just because there's less of them. Democracy is truly the tyranny of the mob.

Dongsturm posted:

Is there a story thread? I want to hear all about terrible nerds doing terrible things. This thread is not enough

One of the vendors got banned from tournament conventions because her son was stealing cards for her to sell.
There's always some story about someone getting mugged at knife point by some thirty year old dude for their decks.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 15:48

Slime: Jan 3, 2007

divabot posted:

I know right

I mean, all startups are literally a process of working out what the gently caress business you're actually in, so incompetence and Kafkaesque weirdness is normal. (Silicon Valley is a documentary, in the sense that Dilbert was when it was good.) But the Bayesian evidence is that rationalists will bring the quality crazy to the table.

(Reminder that Zvi Mowshowitz. MetaMed co-founder and professional Magic: The Gathering player, is worried about Roko's basilisk.)

Dilbert was never good.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 16:34

Shame Boy: Mar 2, 2010

Slime posted:

Dilbert was never good.

I liked the Dilbert cartoon when I watched it (which was years after it was actually on the air) but then again that was during the period of my life where I was briefly addicted to huffing ether so I might be biased.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 17:29

Grace Baiting: Jul 20, 2012; Audi famam illius;
Cucurrit quaeque
Tetigit destruens.

I've heard that the Dilbert TV show was made to be good by the studio over the objections of Scott Adams, and then that same studio went on to make Futurama later.

Although I assume divabot was referring to the Dilbert comic, and specifically to the early period when Adams was much closer to the corporate engineering culture that Dilbert intends to satirize. I think this period was also largely before he built up too much of whatever cult of personality he has on his newsletters, books, longtime newspaper readership, etc. I do have a bit of nostalgia for some of those earlier Dilbert strips, but :lol:

if I'm gonna spend the time to verify that nostalgia! For now I'm keeping it safely compartmentalized away from the harsh light of reality.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 21:28

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Grace Baiting posted:

Although I assume divabot was referring to the Dilbert comic, and specifically to the early period when Adams was much closer to the corporate engineering culture that Dilbert intends to satirize. I think this period was also largely before he built up too much of whatever cult of personality he has on his newsletters, books, longtime newspaper readership, etc. I do have a bit of nostalgia for some of those earlier Dilbert strips, but if I'm gonna spend the time to verify that nostalgia! For now I'm keeping it safely compartmentalized away from the harsh light of reality.

yep, basically the 1990s when he was either actually working in an office or was still in recovery from working in an office.

It's great for him that he's a well-off cartoonist now, 'cos gently caress office jobs. But that's why the comic reads like it''s been on autopilot all this millennium, 'cos it has. Here is the last good Dilbert comic, on the day of the millennium. My dayjob had a vendor actually do this to us, and we just sent a copy of this comic to our account manager. That's what I mean by documentary.

The TV show was fun and I liked it, but something about it said it just wasn't hit material, and so it proved. Also felt significantly different to the comic.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 22:11

BobHoward: Feb 13, 2012; The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull

I remember one of the Scott Adams prefaces to a Dilbert collection book saying he didn't have to invent many of the jokes and plot lines in Dilbert on his own because he just used tales of office idiocy sent to him by fans. Like, he started out writing the strip based on his own office space experiences, but once he became a full time cartoonist he just kinda went with fan suggestions.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 22:15

Space Poodle: Nov 11, 2007

I remember, once upon a time, Dilbert dated a model named Bonita who was a walking skeleton that lived off of saltines and the moisture in the air.

Now I am guessing that even suggesting that models can be "too thin" would land him hate mail from gamergators about enabling the fatties.

# ? Jun 14, 2017 23:22

BENGHAZI 2: Oct 13, 2007; by Cyrano4747

ate all the Oreos posted:

I liked the Dilbert cartoon when I watched it (which was years after it was actually on the air) but then again that was during the period of my life where I was briefly addicted to huffing ether so I might be biased.

that show is actually no poo poo dope

whats metamed

# ? Jun 14, 2017 23:43

Qwertycoatl: Dec 31, 2008

BENGHAZI 2 posted:

whats metamed

If you had a medical problem that doctors couldn't help with, you could pay a lot of money to metamed who would google your symptoms and apply ~rationality~ to create a custom medical report for you.

It failed, luckily because people didn't want this rather than because they killed someone.

# ? Jun 15, 2017 06:53

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Qwertycoatl posted:

If you had a medical problem that doctors couldn't help with, you could pay a lot of money to metamed who would google your symptoms and apply ~rationality~ to create a custom medical report for you.

It failed, luckily because people didn't want this rather than because they killed someone.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/MetaMed

also WHAT FUCKER BOUGHT ME THIS AVATAR

shall i keep it or replace it with Team Rocket because Pokemon is the only good anime

decisions decisions what would Bayes do

# ? Jun 15, 2017 08:31

SolTerrasa: Sep 2, 2011

divabot posted:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/MetaMed

also WHAT FUCKER BOUGHT ME THIS AVATAR

shall i keep it or replace it with Team Rocket because Pokemon is the only good anime

decisions decisions what would Bayes do

Obviously replace it, since it's been scientifically determined by an official level ten Bayesian judomaster that anime is the optimal media form

# ? Jun 15, 2017 09:15

Relevant Tangent: Nov 18, 2016; Tangentially Relevant

divabot posted:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/MetaMed

also WHAT FUCKER BOUGHT ME THIS AVATAR

shall i keep it or replace it with Team Rocket because Pokemon is the only good anime

decisions decisions what would Bayes do

Look at the idiots perverting his work with obvious disdain and contempt?

# ? Jun 15, 2017 10:10

BENGHAZI 2: Oct 13, 2007; by Cyrano4747

Qwertycoatl posted:

If you had a medical problem that doctors couldn't help with, you could pay a lot of money to metamed who would google your symptoms and apply ~rationality~ to create a custom medical report for you.

It failed, luckily because people didn't want this rather than because they killed someone.

Sounds exactly like something a magic player would think up

# ? Jun 15, 2017 12:17

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

divabot posted:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/MetaMed

quote:

"We can save lots and lots and lots of lives," Vassar said (if mostly moneyed ones at first). "But it's the signal � it's the 'Hey! Reason works!' � that matters. It's not really about medicine."

One of the first things I learned in formal logic was modus tollens -- and yet these kings of reason ('reason') don't seem able to apply it to their own ridiculous enterprise.

# ? Jun 15, 2017 13:37

Slime: Jan 3, 2007

potatocubed posted:

One of the first things I learned in formal logic was modus tollens -- and yet these kings of reason ('reason') don't seem able to apply it to their own ridiculous enterprise.

If a dark enlightment thinker is smart, he will apply logic.
Dark enlightment thinkers cannot apply logic, therefore he is not smart.

# ? Jun 15, 2017 15:49

ikanreed: Sep 25, 2009; I honestly I have no idea who cannibal[SIC] is and I do not know why I should know.

syq dude, just syq!

Can I inject my barely related opinion here?

There's a plague of "smart" people on the internet abusing the word logic to mean "thing I find convincing" and if we could force half those idiots to formalize their deductions into actual logic, we'd all be spared so much grief.

This annoying tendency universally coincides with people spotting formal fallacies in informal arguments as if it proves a point.

This is not limited to DE types, but DE types exemplify it.

# ? Jun 15, 2017 17:33

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

ikanreed posted:

Can I inject my barely related opinion here?

There's a plague of "smart" people on the internet abusing the word logic to mean "thing I find convincing" and if we could force half those idiots to formalize their deductions into actual logic, we'd all be spared so much grief.

This annoying tendency universally coincides with people spotting formal fallacies in informal arguments as if it proves a point.

This is not limited to DE types, but DE types exemplify it.

In this case it pretty clearly applies. Vassar intended this as the public test of LW rationality, that would show them all!! And it sure did.

edit: man I hate that avatar so much already. Well played, profligate goon.

# ? Jun 15, 2017 17:35

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 8, 2024 21:57

ikanreed: Sep 25, 2009; I honestly I have no idea who cannibal[SIC] is and I do not know why I should know.

syq dude, just syq!

divabot posted:

In this case it pretty clearly applies. Vassar intended this as the public test of LW rationality, that would show them all!! And it sure did.

edit: man I hate that avatar so much already. Well played, profligate goon.

Imagine if their core philosophy involved treating everything as a natural experiment that could invalidate hypotheses

# ? Jun 15, 2017 17:50

The Something Awful Forums > Main > Post Your Favorite: Carefully Curated > PYF Dark Enlightenment Thinker

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