Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
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User ID: 102
Academia vs. racist memes
A new paper in Evolutionary Human Sciences has been making rounds.
Memeing Scientific Racism: The Digital Reframing of Racialist Ideologies – “examines how racialised memes circulating on X revive scientific racism”.
The most intriguing feature of the paper is the way its subject of study is presented. Though the aim is to dissect bigoted memes online with Science, the author deemed it inappropriate to grant her readers direct access to the offending material. The four case-study memes are “presented exclusively through schematic reconstructions created using standard image-editing tools, including limited AI-assisted transformations”, bringing to mind some SCP Foundation containment protocol for high-caliber memetic hazards.
I’m certain that the author believes she is doing genuine research investigating a pressing problem, so that’s the angle I'll consider it from. As far as its scientific value goes, my feelings are mixed. Though the author clearly did a lot of legwork collecting nearly 70 memes, and namedrops things from the Dark Enlightenment and human biodiversity to effective altruism, and genuinely attempts to figure out what makes memes compelling and facilitates their spread, the analysis of the memes seems incomplete.
One of the case studies, a meme that was circulating since 2018, originally features a crude outline of a man drawn in soyjack tradition saying:
“I'm sorry your daughter was raped by a retarded cannibal, but we need him for the football team”
The rhetorical thrust, as I see it, is to contrast some of the more shallow sounding supposed benefits of mass migration with its most lurid observed effects.
(In February this year a big account, owned by an actual left winger with real-life clout and bearing a striking resemblance to the meme character made this post:
“The migration policies of Reform and Restore Britain would destroy football throughout the UK. Have those planning to vote for them thought about that?”
Which is an interesting case of prophetic hyperstition)
" Ethically modified" version of the meme in the paper turns the man into a simpler, more friendly looking figure changing the text to:
“I'm sorry
[text removed]
but we need him for the football team”
And here's what the author has to say about it:
“The soyjak example in Figure 2 (M60)...addresses a father whose daughter has been “raped by a retarded cannibal,” yet insists that the perpetrator must be protected for the sake of a football team.”
“The soyjak stands in for a caricatured progressive whose commitments conflict with self-preservation”
“…racial typology of the hypersexual, predatory, uncontrollable Black male”
Though this goes in the right direction, nothing reflects comprehension of the joke, of what the meme tries to convey.
Refraining from including the original memes is a serious self-imposed limitation. She could talk about how the slovenly scribbled caricature (edit: come to think of it, the visual style of these kinds of memes might well merit actual artistic investigation) serves to dehumanize open border supporters, and a grotesque crime is juxtaposed to a relatively marginal example of benefits of mass migration (which are, of course, countless) as a tool of propaganda.
Though the image of the author frowning and making notes as she browses racist jokes on Twitter brings me joy, this paper appears methodologically limited, and more research into the threat of racist memes online is likely required.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
7d ago
We should encourage Israelis to forget about their ancestral homeland and resettle in Florida
I floated even more ambitious plan couple years back:
https://www.themotte.org/post/705/israelgaza-megathread-1/147305?context=8#context
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
10d ago
My own experience with McCarthy was brief and memorable, though not in a good way.
I made a point of finishing the first chapter of Blood Meridian, but I was nearly immediately overwhelmed with the urge to grab the pen, typewriter, keyboard or whatever it was he produced this with and whack him over the head with it.
Simply atrocious.
It is a curious area to explore. What would be the distinctive features of these beings? Intelligence, beauty, longevity is just something I'd want for myself, or at least my descendants.
Where this really gets interesting is specialization. Reaction speed and sheer strength that would be impractical in daily life. Or pushing certain cognitive architectures beyond their natural frontiers. A mind with zero interest in navel-gazing, no need for openness, no cognition detached from practical applications. Turbo-autism.
A thing that finds satisfaction in the execution of its function, that experiences the completion of a task as its own reward.
Whatever the intended role, you don't want to give this type of creature too much ambition or imagination.
If you insist on creation of what is essentially your peer, more thought is needed for alignment.
The best bet is to have these satellite species love us the way we love cats or dogs.
As a side-effect, this could limit evolutionary drift of the human species (at least in appearance) that would otherwise get supercharged after genetic engineering reaches maturity because you don't want to stray too far from what these helpers would recognize as "human", and lose the mandate of heaven.
Though I'm not sure if this would solve it for good. Assume you secured their loyalty, but what would this be expressed as? Human love and affection for a dog often ends up with an appointment to cut his balls off.
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
4mo ago
talked with Chomsky about racial intelligence differences
Now this is slightly interesting. "at least some of them know what they're doing and are just lying" is a thought that doesn't normally cross my mind not because it's not true, but because it's pointless to speculate about. I just provisionally assume that any given 'anti-racist' is a true believer in universal humanity. But of course they aren't. The "lore" after all, is fairly accessible for someone reasonably intelligent and curious.
I wonder how this looks from inside their own heads. Brave holders of esoteric truths vigilantly guarding the demos from dangerous knowledge?
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
6mo ago
I appreciate this idea on some level, but must speak out against because
- People without "divine spark" just invisibly existing around me is kind of horrifying
- Confusion and just bad reasoning is a better explanation (I mean, look at OP's other takes in the same post)
Exotic_cetacean
Aesthetics over ethics
11mo ago
I'm not sure I understand what would it mean exactly for qualia to be physical. Isn't it like...obviously something fundamentally distinct?
Mainstream secular stance of "conscious states trace material configurations" feels more like soft-dualism where the mind part plays the junior role, but it's still there
The full paper is in open access. Direct link to the PDF
Excerpt towards the end, page 22:
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