domain:novum.substack.com
Tomato
10m ago
At the risk of endlessly repeating myself: the media has done its job of detecting a potential counter elite (rationalists et al.), figured out what its sin is (spooky eich-bee-dee racism) and is now just churning out hit pieces to marginalize any organization that might come out of it.
I think this is giving “rationalists et al.” way too much credit. They aren’t a potential counter elite that’s a threat to the real elite. The media writes about them out of anthropological curiosity, in the same way they write about isolated tribes in the Amazon. Like there was a big NYT article about rationalist date-me-docs and the tone was the same, “ha ha aren’t these people weird and interesting” that underlies all these pieces.
Of course the tone is more negative now after SBF. But sorry, yes, if a guy in your movement does an enormous fraud, has a high-profile trial, and goes to jail, your movement attracts negative attention. But this isn’t tearing down a threatening counter-elite, this is an anthropological piece about how that weird Amazonian tribe that turned on its neighbors is still being weird.
gattsuru
15m ago
And the denouement. There is a video of at least part of the knock-and-announce. Can we see it? Not yet, at least.
((Of particular concern is that Little Rock uses sometimes uses MVR to distinguish its car-based cameras. If the prosecutor's summary is doing so as well, it's not clear what, if anything, that camera would actually have seen.))
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
23m ago
And I disagree. If you assume performative equates to insincere, then my original comment doesn't even make sense. Austin progressives are absolutely sincere in their beliefs. They are also incredibly focused on their appearance of being super progressive, even to the point where they will pass local ordinances that are counterproductive (e.g. the various ongoing homeless policies) or that are clearly intended to be overturned by the state.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
42m ago
You know, I'd think that I'd have gotten accustomed to this sort of thing by now, but the specifics are still galling:
In March 2015, the New York Times announced that it had hired Khan on a short-term contract, and that he would write for them about once a month.[12] The Times wrote he is "a science blogger and a doctoral candidate in genomics and genetics at the University of California, Davis. He writes about evolution, genetics, religion, politics and philosophy."[12] The same day the Times announced hiring Khan, Gawker published an opinion piece written by J.K Trotter, who noted that Khan also wrote blogs for Taki's Magazine, an online publication "founded in 2007 by Taki Theodoracopulos, the flamboyantly racist Greek."[13] As a result of Khan's history of writing for controversial publications, the Times removed him as a regular periodic contributor, but stated they remain "open to consideration of submissions from him" in the op-Ed pages.[14] The Times did not specifically mention the part of Khan's work they found uncomfortable,[15] and he wrote two op-eds for the paper before they ended his contract.[16]
Never mind that the Times should be fine with having a writer on staff that has written something controversial, the stated reason here for him getting dropped isn't even that he wrote something controversial, it is just literally guilty by association. Is he a badthinker? Oh, most definitely by these standards, but his detractors don't even need to figure out why, because it's enough that he wrote blogs for a site founded by a flamboyantly racist Greek.
At the risk of endlessly repeating myself: the media has done its job of detecting a potential counter elite (rationalists et al.), figured out what its sin is (spooky eich-bee-dee racism) and is now just churning out hit pieces to marginalize any organization that might come out of it.
It's their job to do this. And SBF is such a convenient easy target to attack both the cryptosphere and the grey tribe that I'm starting to wonder if his rise wasn't an op. He did have super suspicious establishment ties after all.
Though what hits me here isn't that, but how mundane the crime of the undesirable nerds is now. Accusations of racism have so lost power that it almost seems laughable to lob them at people who barely even qualify. Like really, they'reis going to appeal to 90s colorblind liberalism in 2024? What a joke.
Not that it has to make any sense or have any relationship to the truth of course, the article only means "here are a bunch of enemies which aren't so miserable we can ignore them, so go fuck with them".
Dean
1hr ago
You don’t think Azov’s high status in Ukraine converts new entrants into true believers in the Nazi stuff?
No, I don't. I've seen no evidence that Azov ever had true believers in the Nazi stuff, let alone converted new entrants into it,
I mean, obviously they’re not full bore Nazis. But they do seem to be racist ultranationalists, which is close enough for government work.
That government work being the Russian state-driven propaganda narrative claiming they are full-bore Nazis, and expecting others to go along with it on 'close enough' grounds that are not, in fact, close enough.
There are a lot of racist ultranationalists in the worlds. Equating them with Nazis or would-be-Nazis-if-empowered is a facile understanding of the Nazis as a polity and an ideology.
The counterpoint of this is that the is a Nazi-cosplayer at a table and 10 other people sitting there, then you have a table with 0 Nazis. And if someone comes along and points and shouts 'Nazi', you still have 0 Nazis.
Nazi is as Nazi does, not as Nazi dresses or Nazi-accused. Belief otherwise may be somewhat common sentiment among some people, but these are generally the same people who similarly mis-used 'fascist', and they are just as wrong even if their numbers do allow them to appeal to the bandwagon fallacy.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
The judge seems to have only done the equivalent of a preliminary injunction; the ouster may yet prevail.
No_one
1hr ago
Razib Khan is a journalist who got kicked out of the NYT because he wrote for some "paleoconservative" magazine. This matters only if you think that failing the NYT ideological purity test is some kind of fatal character flaw.
He's not a journalist, never went to journalism school, never (except for the 4 hours when it looked like he'd write columns for NYT) worked for a newspaper- he studied genetics, worked in population genomics and then something to do with the cat genome.
He's been writing a lot but I'm not sure if he's quit his day job to concentrate fully on writing. In any case, given the reputation journalists have, and that he has a substack with a number of excellent essays it's unfair to describe him as 'journalist'. Writer, maybe.
Anyway: in particular, 'The Wolf at History's Door" is a must-read essay for anyone unfamiliar with early human history or very late prehistory.
do_something
1hr ago
not only there (or in fiction broadly defined) - glorious victory is always more glorious if enemy was strong and you can explain more excesses if enemy is stronger
do_something
1hr ago
Though with extremely rare exceptions it was "this ethnicity/religion/nationality/etc is subhuman", not "All Slavs are subhuman".
do_something
1hr ago
The Germans wanting to exterminate everyone who isn't German trope simply isn't true either.
Well, they wanted to also enslave Slavs that were not planned to be exterminated. And assimilate some of them (Volksdeutsche, Goralvolk etc).
And they were not planning to expand German empire worldwide, they had no plans to invade and conquer say Japan AFAIK. They were not so delusional to plan extermination of USA population on grounds of not being German.
Not that it would make things for Poles/Ukrainians/Russians/etc better if Germans would win WW II.
The Germans weren't uniquely evil or brutal.
Large part of that is more-or-less hidden dual standards. Like with Russia right now large part of anger stems "but in Europe you are not allowed to do that".
(insert that 4chan post about toilet and kitchen here)
Also, there was vision that after WW I we learned better and we will have peace in Europe. France dropping bombs on Lisbon in September 2024 and killing 200 people would not be uniquely evil or brutal either. But I expect that outcry would be massive and far larger than what is triggered by far worse things in Africa. Mostly due to higher expectations.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
1hr ago
The first season anyway; IMHO it took a big step down when Jennifer Coolidge joined the show, though a lot of that may be that I find Coolidge so unattractive I don't want to see her on my screen.
Botond173
1hr ago
It bears mentioning here that the Nazis did in fact incorporate two Slavic nation states, namely Croatia and Slovakia, into the Axis alliance.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
2hr ago
... or maybe they'll take the edgelord route. Homelander goes off the deep end and wipes every Arab nation (plus Iran) off the map. Fade to black, silent credit-crawl.
Thoroughlygruntled
2hr ago
Yeah, there's certainly something to be said about the frugal lifestyle as an excellent PR strategy. I wonder how many billions in business Warren Buffett has gotten out of the fact that he lives in an ordinary house.
If you think about it that way, the whole opportunity cost of frugality argument completely flips on its head. A reputation for ostentatious personal frugality and self-restraint is a very valuable asset for a man who manages other people's money for a living, while a few extra bedrooms and an infinity pool seem like trivial frivolities in comparison.
quiet_NaN
2hr ago
Another day, another Guardian hit job.
The title reads "Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back"
Take a moment to form a hypothesis about what kind of group this could be. The KKK? Some fringe right-wingers? An Israeli lobby group?
Turns out their target of the day is Lightcone Infrastructure. Lightcone is running lesswrong, which is a grandparent of themotte.
I personally have only heard of lightcone in context of TracingWoodgrains' writings on the Nonlinear investigation conducted by Ben Pace and Oliver Habryka. (TIL that this is a name different from the handle of a former motte mod. In my defense, I did not read a lot from either of them. Blame my racist brain.)
Of course Trace's critique could not be more different from what the Guardian writes about lightcone.
They start off by linking the NYT article on Scott Alexander. I think it is the one where they tried to doxx him. Apparently the NYT does not like my adblocker or something, the only think I get (besides a picture which indicates that the NYT designers have way too much time on their hand) is the text "Silicon Valley’s Safe Space -- Slate Star Codex was a window into the psyche of many tech leaders building our collective future. Then it disappeared." -- I guess that is one way to phrase it. Of course, the Guardian gleefully doxxes Scott again, not that anyone cares (but it's the thought that counts).
Robin Hanson is apparently misogynistic. From the linked article, I would say it is either being tone-deaf or intentionally courting controversy. He even has sympathy for incels. The nerve of that man!
Apparently they found no dirt on Eliezer, which to me seems like a failure of investigative journalism. EY has written a lot more than the six lines Cardinal Richelieu would have required.
Then they come to the "extreme figures" present at Manifest 2024.
Jonathan Anomaly is apparently pro eugenics. Never heard of him. However, given that anything from "select embryos which do not have a genetic disease" to "encourage smart and successful people to have kids" can be called eugenics, and given that the article would cite the most damning quotation, I will assume that he is not a Nazi.
Razib Khan is a journalist who got kicked out of the NYT because he wrote for some "paleoconservative" magazine. This matters only if you think that failing the NYT ideological purity test is some kind of fatal character flaw.
I vaguely recall Stephen Hsu being discussed on slatestarcodex and from what I remember my conclusion was that he got cancelled for a lack of ideological purity -- calling for research into increasing human intelligence is not acceptable, and talking about race differences is even less acceptable.
Brian Chau is apparently an e/acc and thus probably the most controversial person from my personal point of view. But then, engaging in honest discussion with advocates of other positions is generally a good thing, so if Lighthaven is more inclusive than Aella's birthday party, I am kinda fine with it.
Of course, the narrative would not be complete without the specter of antisemitism, here in the form of a quote "[Hsu is] often been a bridge between fairly explicit racist and antisemitic people [...]". I think the rationalist community is a bad place for antisemites for the same reason why the marathon Olympics are a bad place for white supremacists.
In the end, the plug for this story -- lightcone having received money from SBF -- has no bearing on the bulk of the article, which is about how icky these ratsphere nerds are. It does not matter if SBF donated to the Save Drowning Puppies Foundation or to the Feed Puppies to Alligators Alliance -- either the donations can be kept or not.
freemcflurry
2hr ago
Imo they get played up in fiction because it's more exciting if the good guys might lose, so people get the impression that it was an evenly matched fight even though it wasn't.
Thoroughlygruntled
2hr ago
Must be all those hard r's Romney's been slinging that give him that jawline. #cancelmitt
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
2hr ago
I've already irrevocably sprinkled hundreds of tidbits of personally identifiable information on the internet, forgive me for not putting something that could literally be used for picking me out of a crowd there too haha.
But if you can get it in 3 guesses without cheating by being exceedingly vague, I'll reward your efforts by DMing you the answer ;)
In other words, every aspect of a man's life, from his career to his hobbies to his body, must be optimized for attracting women, and it is no one's fault but his own if he fails.
But that just isn’t true. Tons of normal men have girlfriends of the same class, social status and hotness. The average 23 year old woman in a relationship is dating a man her age or perhaps one or two years older. He’s unlikely to be particularly rich or successful; he is probably about as hot as she is. What is unbalanced about that?
Most young women aren’t interested in dating a 35 year old guy at 23. They’re interested in dating a 23-25 year old guy at 23, who likely doesn’t have a great deal of money, and who is probably pretty similar to them on all the usual axes. If you missed the boat because you were a loser at 23 that’s sad, but no moreso than a woman who missed the boat and might now deal with infertility or the greater difficulty of finding a good husband in her thirties. That’s life.
I remain entirely unconvinced that it is hugely difficult for an average young man to find a girlfriend that is looks matched (which in America usually means fat) and of approximately the same social status (we can include relative chastity here) and class. I think the obesity crisis has made most people ugly, such that fat people aren’t attracted to each other, and that many people think they deserve more than they can get.
in the futile hope that he will commit.
At 29, most women I know married or are soon to marry the boyfriend they had in their early/mid 20s. The minor improvement in income/wealth from marrying an ugly older dude with means just isn’t worth it for most young women.
I think AAA vidya simply mirror the gradual enshittification that has already set in their siblings in other creative media like blockbuster movies or popular comics, e.g. Modern Warfare 2 was the last Call of Duty game I ever played and I'm okay with letting it stay that way. The increasing penetration of DEI/political bullshit didn't help too although in my opinion it's not the main driver, the real culprit seems to be either filthy casuals settling into the hobby or people legitimately becoming allergic to difficulty - at some point challenge in vidya became something you seek out in specific niches (insert dank souls meme here) instead of being the default waterline of competence videogames expect from the player.
Lest I be too cranky, there are definitely some "casual" quality of life features I really can't imagine games without nowadays (I'm too used to autosaves/automaps and really don't miss undocumented features/mechanics, I try not be a google gamer) so the influence is not entirely negative, but it's a thin line to walk, one man's welcome challenge is another man's carpal tunnel syndrome. The winning move imo is to present a wide "range" of challenge within a single game to cast as wide a net as possible, but that's understandably a pretty big ask and few games pull that off - mainly rogueli[k|t]es which often have a flexible difficulty system, or sprawling autism simulators like Path of Exile that are huge enough to accommodate many different playstyles (make goofy ahh builds and shit items actually work, renounce sleep and push uber pinnacles within 2 days of league start, literally just sit in your hideout and trade all day until you can steamroll the game through sheer economic power, etc.)
Personally I hope think AAA gaming is a lost cause, take the indiepill or go full weeb, you won't regret it either way. You might have to do basic research with indies though, since those seem to be either absolutely neutral without a whiff of idpol or entirely woke and wearing it proudly on its sleeve, there's like no in-between.
I find it's easy to clock from the state of the luggage/person. Clean luggage: going to/from airport/hotel/etc. Dirty luggage: hobo. Dirty luggage but looks young and healthy: backpacker/festival/punk type.
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