PYF Dark Enlightenment Thinker

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Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Thinky Whale posted:

Wait a minute. I have no idea what MIRI is, but I'm guessing HPMOR is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and judging by the words "friendship" and "alicorn"... is the entirety of the Fiction in his world Harry Potter and My Little Pony fanfic?

I believe the MIRI is the Big Yud's incredibly unproductive research institute.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2015 07:22

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 19:48

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

I'm waiting until one of them goes full Plato's Republic and starts demanding the exile of artists from society.

I already saw one of them describe Qin Shi Huang as someone who "Found a good solution to the problem of destabilizing intellectuals"

Are you loving kidding me. Who looks at Qin and goes 'Yeah, those were excellent ideas?'

# ¿ Jul 17, 2015 02:49

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Tiberius Thyben posted:

Well, Mao Zedong did .

And the whole 'send all the young students to go do hard labor in the mountains' idea didn't work out much better, if I recall.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2015 07:19

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Pope Guilty posted:

I dunno, it seems like everybody who manages a particular sort of job ought to have at least some experience with the reality of it.

It works out a bit worse when you exile them permanently and demand they never return to their education because any kind of college will bring 'bourgeois sentiment'.

I am not an expert in Chinese history, but from what I do know, if it was a policy relating to winning a revolutionary war, Mao was a genius. If it was a policy related to economic and cultural development after the war, he was nuts.

Night10194 has a new favorite as of 07:37 on Jul 17, 2015

# ¿ Jul 17, 2015 07:34

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

The most telling part is that the greatest evil he can imagine is Creationism.

loving nerds.

It's also telling that he can't let himself believe so called 'Elites' might believe in it too. The worship of the upper class among these guys is just precious.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2015 17:40

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Peel posted:

The other thing he credits 'elites' with is knowing how to run an economy, something they've been spectacularly failing at for years.

It is much more comforting to believe the world is well governed by cabals of brilliant men in smokey back rooms than to realize the guys in smokey back rooms patting themselves on the back for running the world have no idea what the gently caress they're doing.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2015 18:30

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

divabot posted:

He probably read this in September 2008 and still had it as a "cached thought". You really have to read it, it helped prime the LW-sphere to love NRx (and has a pile of NRx in the comments).

Oh, LessWrongers on whether or not to use their own made-up pseudophilosophical terms: "Is this really a good reference on common sense vs. cached thought? How does this reference clarify the concept of cached thought? Philosophy is suspect by default."

This is basically the most pathetic thing I've ever read.

I can't tell if he's begging for the scraps so they'll notice him(which if I recall, that's what Yud lives off of, isn't it? Isn't he funded by Peter Thiel?)or it's just the desire for a comforting world where Very Smart People make Very Hard Decisions to fix everything.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2015 21:16

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

This reminds me of the old 'You wake up as Hitler in June of 1942, what do you do?' thing where the LW community immediately saw it as 'how do I win the war' and not 'How do I stop one of the great tragedies of history from doing even more damage'

It never occurs to them, in the slightest, that maybe Eugenics is discredited and useless because of ethical reasons or the fact that it is backed by insane scientific racism poo poo; no, it's all 'Well the principle is sound, how do we get the cattle car trains running on time?'

# ¿ Jul 20, 2015 20:21

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Antivehicular posted:

Why is it always catgirls with these assholes?

They like the idea of thinking of women as animals subservient to them, I imagine.

Also, anime.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 07:34

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Darth Walrus posted:

It's actually a really interesting question because there isn't an easy solution because of the limitations of your role. How far can you go and how in reducing the horror of Nazi Germany and the Second World War before your hideous, backstabbing underlings go 'screw it, need a new Fuhrer, this one's broken'?

Mind you, if you could find a way to quickly and quietly assassinate Himmler to start with, that'd probably give you a good lead before everyone else starts giving you trouble.

It's why it's an interesting hypothetical; Hitler is the one on whom all blame ended up being cast but the Nazi system was enormous and many, many people were complicit, so the question of how much a Hitler who suddenly changed objectives (due to time travel or the GREAT RACE OF YITH stealing his mind or whatever) could actually do to stop it is a good way to explore the wider abuses of the system instead of the simple idea that it was one really evil fucker that did everything (which is not to say Hitler wasn't incredibly complicit in his crimes, just that the net is wider than one rear end in a top hat with a sill mustache). It would be a good vehicle for exploring the general failings of the Great Man theory of history by examining how much influence even the ostensibly most powerful individual could have against the inertia of what had already been set in motion and built support structures.

But to LW, the point is obviously to use delicious, magical science to build DER FLIEDERTIGER so it won't get stuck in the Russian mud or make a moon base.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2015 18:04

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

GIANT OUIJA BOARD posted:

Also lol at reading Calvin & Hobbes and Encyclopedia Brown as a kid being a sign of genius.

When I was in first grade I tried to convince the school library to buy Calvin and Hobbes books because 'Calvin uses lots of big words!'

It was a lovely comic strip that still holds up as a good work of humor and visual art, it's certainly a good thing for a kid or adult to enjoy, but it's certainly no sign of genius.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 19:01

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

neonnoodle posted:

It's a sign of the genius of Bill Watterson. And if the LW clowns read it more carefully, they might notice the irreverent, satirical tone that Watterson took toward Calvin's despotic personality.

Oh, yes. I meant in the reader. Bill Watterson had a great deal of integrity as an artist and reading his writing about his work, was basically always striving to find new ways to grow and keep making his creative output more interesting.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2015 19:11

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Honestly, it's somewhat weird to me that NRx has grown in popularity with singularitarians, because what the gently caress are IQ differences and traditional hierarchical structures going to matter when the nerdrapture happens and everyone is a space god?

They don't think everyone will be a spacegod. They think THEY will be and then will have their chance for vengeance on all the people who didn't help build the Overlord or laughed at them for being so terrified of death they spent tens of thousands on cryonics. Just look at Yud's infinite torture AI. It's the same sort of thinking: "One day, the golden age will come and I'll get everything I deserved, while all the people I hate will be at my mercy."

You see the same thinking in some of the fundamentalist Christians when they talk about the Rapture, and there's a noticeable glee in their voice about how all their enemies will be going straight to hell to suffer forever.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2015 15:30

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Parallel Paraplegic posted:

What is with these people and their self-proclaimed "child prodigy" status?

It's the last time someone told them how special they were, it's easy enough to see.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 05:28

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

coyo7e posted:

It's one of those little things that show your privilege. When I first went to college to study software engineering, it was a big shock to me to suddenly no longer be the smartest kid in the room, and it took smoe gettnig used to the idea that I was really just average like almost everybody. Most of my classmates never seemed to figure that out, though.

I outright failed at science because it turns out that while I'm really good at recalling facts and narratives (which is why I redirected into history/religious studies) I can't remember visuals and Calc 3 is a giant loving wall for me. Learning that you can't do certain things or aren't talented at everything is a part of growing up.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2015 20:04

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

A White Guy posted:

Most NRx types couldn't fellatiate Hayek any harder. They're the kind of people who look at the Larry Summer's World Bank memo and see completely reasonable ethical thinking.

Larry Summers is very close to a real world supervillain, especially around 1991. Wasn't that shithead one of the big architects of that 'shock therapy' policy that demanded absolutely everything in Russia be privatized as fast as possible post Soviet Union?

# ¿ Aug 14, 2015 20:28

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Tiberius Thyben posted:

I've mentioned it before, but I love that this whole thing is just Italian Futurism again. Being able to count all the recurring themes in their idiocy makes me feel like all the time I spent studying it wasn't wasted after all.

What was Italian Futurism?

# ¿ Aug 24, 2015 03:34

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Klaus88 posted:

Basically Warhammer and Warhammer 40k then?

75% of nerdy fiction, really. All of which was ~~stolen~~ inspired those things.

# ¿ Aug 24, 2015 04:43

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

SurreptitiousMuffin posted:

I see you've discovered John C. Wright

http://www.scifiwright.com/2013/11/saving-science-fiction-from-strong-female-characters-part-1/

Ever notice how many of the more reactionary sci-fi authors are just staggeringly unimaginative?

# ¿ Aug 24, 2015 20:48

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cingulate posted:

In further can't-stop-looking-at-the-car-wreck news, I've, against better judgement, skimmed over another chapter of Harry Potter Likes Reading D&D Rulebooks But Not Play D&D With His "Friends". Specifically the parts about brain evolution. Turns out Yud is not an evolutionary neurobiologist!
Considering that's actually within my area of expertise, does anyone even remotely care about what I think is dumb about Yud's take on this?

I am always up for hearing about the dumb poo poo Yud writes. Dude is fascinatingly stupid to me.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2015 21:30

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Just wait until you read what the guy thinks passes for clever manipulation. If his story wasn't so insanely dull it'd be a great unintentional comedy.

"I am manipulating you, but I am so clever you will ignore that I just outright said I was trying bald-facedly to manipulate you." "Wow! How clever and subtle! He is a dangerous manipulator!"

# ¿ Aug 28, 2015 21:53

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Laserjet 4P posted:

Perhaps I'm missing something here but criticizing as in "I am seriously reading all this poo poo" Harry Potter fanfic written by a stunted manchild whose main talent is sucking sociopath venture capitalist dick

why the gently caress is this different from other poo poo fanfic

Because it's one of the main tools of spreading his cult. He wrote it specifically to try to attract its audience to his weird singularity cult.

As a result, it's also a fascinating window into his weird beliefs.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2015 22:13

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Woolie Wool posted:

But the AI will create a pocket universe for us because uh space magic! *waves hands frantically*

That's literally what Big Yud says. "I don't know how but the AI will do magic that lets me have everything I want."

# ¿ Sep 6, 2015 19:41

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Silver2195 posted:

I assumed it came from neoreactionaries from Protestant or secular backgrounds seeing Catholicism as mysterious and forbidden.

I can't help but suspect a fair amount has to do with the tendency of these types to love Warhammer 40k, too.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2015 05:34

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Woolie Wool posted:

One thing is for sure, that 40k, which was a pretty thin body of work to begin with and only really useful for cheap amusement, has indeed been reduced to signifiers. It's just like...these are the absolute worst signifiers imaginable. The entire 40k universe was designed ON PURPOSE to be utterly repellent. It's like willingly identifying yourself with Deathshead from The New Order or something. Yeah man, I stand for a psychopath who grins while he sucks a helpless man's brain and rips his spine out, that's who I want to be in life.

It just blows my mind, even if you're a Nazi, to unironically identify with the Imperium and its imagery. This stuff was designed to be literally worse than Hitler, the worst way of life that Games Workshop could possibly come up with. This is what they identify with. I mean, I guess I could understand if it was the Space Marines, but this seems more like poo poo like the state apparatus and their crazy religion, and that's just...no no no no!

Read a 40k thread and you'll see people say it's all justified, Hard Men Making Hard Choices is super in with general nerd culture right now and it's awful.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2015 04:58

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Woolie Wool posted:

I didn't say they don't value people at all, just that they put whatever things they're attached to above human concerns. That's the root of things like Hard Men Making Hard Decisions. You don't have to be a sociopath for an attachment to things to blind you to the concerns of other people.

I mean some of it is also the cheapest way to make a character look conflicted and heroic is to have them make Hard Choices and a lot of genre writing is very lazy.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2015 06:01

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Klaus88 posted:

White hip-hop and rap should be prosecuted as a crime against humanity.

I like 40k for the orks because they're hilarious, and the Imperial guard, because when conditions are right, they can also be hilarious. Plus they're the most screwed "regular army guys in a sci-fi setting" ever and that appeals me. Finally, I have a weakness for fascist imagery, as my avatar allures to. Why do the dumb asses and jag offs occasionally have to look ?

I asked this in one of the WWII Game Threads and someone gave me a pretty great answer: It's designed by armchair generals for armchair generals to look cool on parade and have huge numbers on paper, that's why.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2015 17:36

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Nessus posted:

Welcome... to somethingawful dot com.

If Yud isn't one of these folks or at least in the neighboring territory, how'd he get on their magic cards, anyway?

A lot of his followers are, he shares a number of opinions with them, and his sugardaddy Peter Thiel is a fellow traveler at the very least?

# ¿ Sep 18, 2015 05:47

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I think my other favorite bit of Roman reaction to early Christianity is that, because there were a ton of Messianic sects around and many of them preached violent rebellion (while what we have claims Jesus did not, he still disrupted the Temple during Passover and that's probably why he was arrested in a time of tensions, too) there's the time when Paul gets grabbed by the Romans and the commander is like 'Wait, are you absolutely sure you're not that other Messiah guy, the one with the armed rebellion operating out of Egypt? Seriously? You're just...huh. Okay, we can let you go, then?'

At which point Paul claims his right as roman citizen to be sent to Rome for trial, cleverly expecting a free trip to Rome so he can missionary. Unfortunately, when he arrives, it's at a time of one of the sporadic persecutions of this weird mystery cult and so he gets executed.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2015 18:05

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Goddamn, AC even had seasteaders, didn't it? With the weirdo norwegian pirate guy.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2015 17:32

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

The Vosgian Beast posted:

http://thefutureprimaeval.net/the-tragedy-of-light/

Everything, everyday, everything; anime.
Lookin' at a nigga fleshed up like anime,
Lookin' like death note, chop it till your down throat,-Anime by Soulja Boy

"Suppose our king was greedy! He'd obviously take long-term policies to rationally maximize long-term gain."

That's not how greed works. Even assuming stupid poo poo like the Laffer Curve would work out. I think this person talking about how absolute monarchy and ultimate power actually make for good governance may have rather ill considered opinions! :downs:

# ¿ Sep 24, 2015 17:35

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Merdifex posted:

It's amusing to think that apparently the only true outcome of rationalism to these people is you becoming a fascist and an unapologetic bigot.

It's not being a fascist! It's being a Hard Man making the Hard Choices other people are just afraid to make, like their favorite edgy anime/videogame character.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2015 18:55

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Cingulate posted:

What's with the amateurish, colloquial style? I can admittedly not even imagine an actual professor writing like this.

I've seen it before. I had an anti-vaxer professor who wrote a lot like that in a class on the anthropology of science and technology. Also another in a course on the US up to 1865. Some professors think a 'jokey' and casual style will endear them to students.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2015 16:32

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

There is something inherently funny, though, about someone with one hand saying religion is for fools and dupes and with the other warning you the robot devil will download your soul into cyberhell if you don't tithe.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2015 19:27

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Silver2195 posted:

Why do people keep saying this, as though the Basilisk was Yudkowsky's idea?

It's not the Basilisk. It's his conclusion with it. Namely 'Donate to my ~~church~~ RESEARCH INSTITUTE to prevent this!'

# ¿ Sep 29, 2015 20:31

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Woolie Wool posted:

A lot of these "rational" creeds and mantras and reasoning schemes seem to be ways to defeat the sanity checks your brain uses to warn you if the implications of your train of thought are absurd or morally reprehensible. You're mindkilled when your conscience steps in to try to keep you from reasoning your way up your own rear end.

Most of these 'rational' creeds are fig-leafs on a bunch of already-discounted racial and gender theories or ways to justify prejudice. How often do you hear Islamophobic shitheads sneer that Islam 'never had an Enlightenment like us'?

# ¿ Sep 29, 2015 20:56

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Didn't the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising end really, really badly? I see it mentioned by the pro-gun guys all the time but didn't the rebels lose horribly while doing almost no damage in a massive human tragedy?

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 05:53

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Oh, I know that much, hence referring to it as a massive human tragedy. They had absolutely no choice. I just mean, didn't they barely even inconvenience their attackers? As in, it's not a very good example of 'And then brave civilians with guns defeated the army' like the pro-gun types like to cite it as.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 05:58

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Patrick Spens posted:

I mean, they held out longer than France. That's not so bad.

I think I was getting the two uprisings confused or something. Also the numbers I remembered were the numbers the Germans gave and, you know, never trust German casualty figures from WWII, particularly not ones that are all 'Yes this event did absolutely nothing to our invincible army.'

# ¿ Oct 3, 2015 07:26

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 19:48

Night10194: Feb 13, 2012; We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Why the hell would conservatives be attracted to the whole pony thing? I've seen that crazy 'my little national socialist pony' or whatever and I just don't get why they want those two things to mix.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2015 19:23

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