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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37941 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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A mod of one of the largest subreddits, /r/BlackPeopleTwitter, just posted a picture supposedly of a recent mod meetup:

https://old.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/1289ba6/in_honor_of_the_anniversary_of_bpt_we_would_like/

In case the post is taken down, this is the image link, though perhaps it'll get wiped too.

The stickied mod comment reads as follows:

trashlikeyourmom

MOD

Comments attacking us for being white are Reverse Racism and will be removed, and may result in a permanent ban.

Where does this community think this falls wrt Poe's Law?

I would say this is 99% serious and 1% satire. If the picture only had three people, then the odds of satire would be more substantive. But with nine, I cannot imagine enough coordination to pull off this hard of a troll.

Further, I would bet my bottom dollar that this cohort are all college educated. I'd throw in a combined five M.A.s.

Which begs the obvious question--how could a group this size and degreed be so oblivious? I'm not saying it's inconceivable that a group of nine non-black redditors decided to manage a black subreddit. But it is inconceivable that the same group would think it smart to advertise that fact. If I'm missing some subtle nuance, do explain. What exactly is the next layer up? Did I miss the memo that it's more fashionable to be post-racial now?

Edit: Yes, I got owned. And yes, I'm glad I didn't post this on Twitter using my real name, thank goodness. But actually though, I had a good laugh that makes the embarrassment here worth it, because it's been a very long time I've been fooled by an April Fool's prank. Kudos to the mods at BPT for having a great sense of humor, and jokes on me for assuming a sub that seriously features a black-only "country club" designation that requires users to submit photos of their black skin to be admitted for participating in highly upvoted threads is capable of poking fun at itself in this fashion. In my defense, it wasn't April 1st when the thread first went up, at least not unless BPT operated on Brazilian time, which means I'm definitely not stupid, you guys!!!

It's April Fools Day. They had the black girl take the picture, that's all.

Which begs the obvious question--how could a group this size and degreed be so oblivious?

Your post has indeed raised such a question, but I'm not sure if it's about the group you're expecting. Then again maybe this subthread is your April Fools' joke on us.

If not, then you should be aware that you've been struck by the overwhelming forces of irony like an unauthorized GPU in Yudkowsky's America.

PS: To whoever is reading this, if for even a second you thought that post was anything but a 100% fake joke, please do not trust your "Bayesian priors" (or whatever ratspeak magic terms that actually just mean assumptions) ever again. Your license has officially been shredded.

Shouldn't vpn be the one seething in this instance? What a bitter response for such an excellent joke.

I'm not sure what you mean by this at all. Am I supposed to be the one who is seething and bitter?

While yes, there are certain clues that suggest this is a joke, I had originally assumed the “MIRI Announces New Death With Dignity Strategy” post on LessWrong was an April fools joke too (this was before DALL-E 2). I guess the first air strike target was the Bayesian evidence value of the calendar reading 4-1.

My assumption at the time was that the date was chosen deliberately, to allow an avenue of retreat/plausible deniability if the piece's reception skewed towards ridicule.

I assumed he thought the situation was bad. It wasn’t until DALL-E 2 a few days later that I realized, “oh, he’s been getting insider information. He thinks we’re doomed doomed.”

I'm not doubting that he believed it, but surely putting out that piece was risky, in that a bad public reaction cascade could have resulted in his and his organisation's credibility tanking and possibly poisoning the well for all attempts to put brakes on AI. ("Alignment"? Lol, you're one of those doomsday sex cultists, aren't you?) This way, if Twitter's predominant reaction were "check out this crazy drivel", they could at least have shouted April Fools, haha, but it is important that we continue working on AI alignment anyway.

April fools. Image is from https://old.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/1200q48/the_miami_nerdfighter_meetup_was_a_success_were/

If you look at the hands of the guy, they look deformed, so I assumed this was an AI-generated picture. This is really the Baudrillardian hyper-reality.

Sounds like an obvious April Fools Day joke.

It is, they pulled the photo from the Nerdfighters subreddit.

The same thing happened with /r/antiwork. These communities are nothing like they let on to be.

Further, I would bet my bottom dollar that this cohort are all college educated. I'd throw in a combined five M.A.s.

Not really. Let's assume that an IQ of 110 is needed to finished college, or about 40% of the general population. Even if these people are in the top 10% of the population by IQ and have a 90% chance of finishing college, to have all 9 finish college would still only be 38%. To get a degree you need your life together. Even if you are smart, illness or other factors can derail that. These people do not come off as being exceptionally stable.

The same thing happened with /r/antiwork. These communities are nothing like they let on to be.

Point of order; /r/antiwork turned out to be exactly what they had let on to be.

This would be true if all the odds were independent, but obviously the odds are not independent. This group isn't pulling at random from the whole population, or even from a certain statistically-distinguished fraction of the population. It's a group of people who congregated around a common interest, and selection effects there can be very powerful indeed.

Also, it's an April Fools joke.

It's easy in hindsight to say it was a joke after many hours have passed and multiple people confirmed it was a joke. When OP made the thread it was no so obvious. If it was obvious, why did he ask?

You realise it's April Fool's Day, right? The odds of this being anything other than satire seem low to me.

At this point it's impossible to tell if anything is a joke anymore

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah

it really was completely easy to tell though. this is like when hbomberguy said

It may be a lie, but the fact I believed it speaks volumes about my enemies, and not me

https://twitter.com/Hbomberguy/status/1423633477543596040

Check the date, at least.

But with nine, I cannot imagine enough coordination to pull off this hard of a troll.

The coordination to find a picture of nine white people?

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