Oceans Yet to Burn — One thing I really love about you weird internet...

One thing I really love about you weird internet nerds here on Rationalist Tumblr is your lower-than-average level of hypocrisy.

Basically all of you who would be skeptical about granting legitimacy to right-wing vigilantes in the after-effects of politically-motivated vehicular homicide by one of the right’s outgroups are also skeptical about granting legitimacy to left-wing vigilantes in the aftermath of politically-motivated vehicular homicide by one of the left’s outgroups.

You are all doing much better than what I’m seeing on Facebook right now.

the rationalists politics

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poipoipoi-2016

argumate

fluffshy said: How are you not involved? You have acted as the core of my experience of the social side of rationalists for months.

as far as I know the rationalists hang out on Facebook and the SSC comment section and in the Bay Area and at various meetups in cities around the world, which I’m not involved in.

inferentialdistance

The set of Rationalists is defined as such:

Eliezer Yudkowsky is in the set of Rationalists.
Anyone who argues with a member of the set of Rationalists is in the set of Rationalists.

The proof of your membership in the set is left as an exercise for the reader.

Source: argumate the rationalists

kissingerandpals

Anonymous asked:

Its neat to see you interacting with mitigatedchaos since I think of you two as being in completely disparate tumblr circles

kissingerandpals answered:

I’m inside a lot of distinct Tumblr circles apparently. I suppose my dashboard is more of a Venn diagram really.

mitigatedchaos

Used to have more interactions with rationalist Tumblr but if argumate’s not reblogging my posts it just doesn’t happen anymore

~~Really, I think of it as more of a hexagon -~~

I mean yeah. I seem to be drawing in mostly Rationalists and Rat-Adjacents. I’m probably closer to the edges than some of the others. At least I think it counts as that circle. I don’t have, say, e*nationalism or rtri*e following me.

On the other hand, seeing as you terminated your blog and remade it, is Argumate even following you anymore?

the rationalists

mutant-aesthetic

buublack

Is there a name for the genre of tumblr blog that posts interesting and detailed essays about (equally) interesting things but literally every other post is insufferable garbage?

mutant-aesthetic

the rationalists?

mitigatedchaos

@argumate

Source: buublack the rationalists shtpost

We here at the Mitigated Chaos blog like to post good, relatable content that’s in touch with honest working joes, such as attempting to bait rationalists into arguing whether using cybernetics to transform yourself into a fetishized cyborg spider monster is beneficial to the economy.

Truly, this blog has its finger on the pulse of America.

the rationalists shtpost

“You need not fear, captain,” said the man. “We are not Social Justice Warriors, but Discourse Monks from the East.”

The guard captain nodded, and the procession of Rationalists filed into the city.

meta the rationalists discourse shtpost

tanadrin

This pisses me off so, so much. Warning: what follows is not very calm. Probably not very charitable either. I write “fuck” a lot.

Keep reading

mitigatedchaos

< caring about opinions being actually good vs being seen to be good >

Well, there’s your answer right there, isn’t it?

Scott may be the Rightful Caliph (or a contender for the position) within Rationalism and its Adjacency, but outside of our sphere, he has all sorts of markers that are low-status, or are tribal low-status, and he poses a danger to a lot of people that are farming status through toxic takes.

I mean, imagine if Rationalism became the new normal. Sure, this would probably crash a lot of metaphorical trains and the results would be observable in the global GDP, but one of the trains that got crashed would be most of the established Commentariat, their pundits, the outrage-farming, clickbaiting and so on.

New ones would likely develop in the aftermath, because Rationalism doesn’t actually remove all sorts of base human emotions. However, the new ones would be different people.

Scott’s social status is zero sum with these people. His gain is their loss. They’re going to attack, attack, attack. They may not even fully know why they’re doing it.

politics the culture war the rationalists

kissingerandpals-deactivated201

kissingerandpals kissingerandpals

Politics is just a mask for a lot of complex personal problems, huh

argumate

how dare you drag my mother into this discussion of tax policy

earlgraytay

…consider: politics is complex personal problems.

a nation is just a very large group of people. democratic politics is the fine art of getting them to come to some kind of consensus about how they want to live. interpersonal mediation on the grand scale. with guns.

kissingerandpals kissingerandpals

That’s all well and good, but most of these people should probably work on their own lives before they turn to Utopian visions of how the world around them should be different. Especially teenagers on Tumblr.

mitigatedchaos

I’m not sure how much this is about me (considering that my typical post is something along the lines of “Actually, having governments and borders and taxes is Good, and polygamy/cousin marriage is Bad”), and certainly I do have my own matters to work on, buuuut…

Much of the Rationalist Sphere on Tumblr and those around it are neurodivergent in some way, and thus have different natural intuitions sometimes, leading to Weird Politics.

Though I guess also there are teenagers. I do try and put on a reasonable face for teenagers when I know they’re watching. It’s important that people that are looked up to model good behavior. (Conservatives kind-of know this but also have too much threat pattern-matching as if to balance out leftists not having enough.)

the rationalists

Anonymous asked:

Just wrote a script that printed out "Scott is a Neoreactionary" 10000 times. Now we shall finally find out what the platonic ideal form of rightwing-ness is.

You didn’t know?

Scott is already the most powerful Neoreactionary that has ever lived.

Even from within the tenth circle of the seventh star of the dark sun, chained in magical bindings by the Eight Scholars of Justice Eternal, pursued relentlessly by the Harbingers of Anti-Fate, his power leaks through into our world, disguised as “steelmanned” defenses of Liberalism.

Every word uttered in his true form converts ten children to the principles of sidereal nationalism. It is through only his whispers that the one known as Moldbug came to Awakeness. His mere gaze shatters all known forms of modernity.

He cannot stop, and he cannot be stopped.

It was the breaking of the fifth seal, causing parts of our world to come unmoored from Time, which allowed me to enter the past and spread my message of darkness.

shtpost politics the rationalists chronofelony augmented reality break anons asks

bambamramfan

everything-narrative

I feel like I’m the most “AFA/classical anarchist/radical socialist/murder the 1%’ers and topple their thrones” of all the tumblr rationalists/lesswrong diaspora…

Everywhere I look are libertarians aka greywashed neo-liberalists. And I appreciate that US is a lot different from Denmark, but I have yet to hear a solid refutation of Medications on Moloch.

ilzolende ilzolende

Things which aren’t really refutations, but may be relevant: If you think that things, while in many ways bad, are mostly getting better, and most potential bad futures are bad in either apolitical ways (or in the case of nuclear war generic instability ways), you’ll probably think that the current status quo shouldn’t be altered very much. As far as I can tell, the standard rationalist EA position is “things are mostly improving, the obvious improvements look more like ‘make more malaria nets’ than ‘bloody revolution now’, and everyone in a first-world country is baaasically the 1% anyway”.

I’d be willing to discuss this more if you like, but I’m not really sure where to start.

Edit: Also, as far as I can tell, I am not the only person with the vague uncharitable impression that “the left” is mostly “a scary threatening group that is weirdly powerful in all the IRL communities that I tend to end up interacting with”.

everything-narrative

That seems like a good way of characterizing the situation, actually.

What I feel that I guess most others don’t, is the fact that we’re playing 1930′s musical fascism chairs again. Denmark, as you might know, was under Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1945, and it is still very much a facet of our cultural identity.

While it is true that things are mostly going forwards, I feel that shrugging and focusing on malaria nets commits what I like to call the “Karkat Vantas’ predeterminism fallacy:”

CCG: EVERYBODY, DID YOU HEAR THAT?? SUPERFUTURE VRISKA HAS AN IMPORTANT LIFE LESSON FOR US ALL.
CCG: WE DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT OUR PRESENT RESPONSIBILIES AND OBLIGATIONS!
CCG: BECAUSE AS IT TURNS OUT, IN THE FUTURE ALL THAT STUFF ALREADY HAPPENED. WE’RE OFF THE FUCKING HOOK!

Basically, the reason why it is getting better is that people are fighting!

And one of the things to fight for, is civil rights and liberties, and welfare, and protection of the weak, and your right to party.

So, yeah. You can save a lot of lives right now by donating to fight malaria; but if you play the apolitical game and hope for the best, Plato already schooled you on what is going to happen:

The price good men pay for indifference in public affairs, is to be ruled by tyrants.

That is, roughly, my position.

PS. Notice how “things are mostly improving, the obvious improvements look more like … than …” is one of those dangerous snow-clone type sentences. I could use that argument against malaria as well, urging people to invest in… Greenpeace campaigns against animal abuse, to name a particularly nasty example.

bambamramfan

I appreciate your attempt at synthesis, but as a factual matter I do not think things are getting better primarily because of the efforts of activists we are sympathetic to. Whatever improvement there is in the human condition, is coming from many disparate sources.

However, I do think you hit upon the very important question that a lot of reformist vs radical discussions can reduce to: do you think things are getting better?

I can admit there are some compelling reasons to feel things are getting better. Whig History says they’ve been getting better for hundreds of years, and this should continue. We have more technology to aid us than ever before. As an aggregate matter, lives over the entire world are in a better material position than ever before. If you think the current (liberal capitalist) system is stable, then there’s a lot of reason to go with the Alexandrian stance of improve, iterate, and don’t fuck things up. The radicals are just wrong then.

… The issue is that the radicals don’t think things are getting better. As you point out we may be on the verge of a fascist takeover (perhaps leading to World War), which is probably a result of decades of neoliberal inequality heightening. I’m not sure the immediate political situation of the rise of far-right parties is the only problem, but it’s suggestive of the many problems that out of control inequality will continue to throw out until everything collapses.

And of course, if you’re willing to look outside “post Renaissance Western Europe” there are many times in human history when civilizations took prolonged steps backwards, both in terms of technology and respect for human rights. “Ever forward” is not guaranteed in the human condition.

Zizek lays out the main theme of his book dealing with the response needed to “postmodern” capitalism: “The underlying premise of the present book is a simple one: the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its ‘four riders of the apocalypse’ are comprised by the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions.”

Maybe you think that’s nonsense, but it’s a belief structure people can attach to. And under that logic, changing the fundamental rules of our society (not being certain what will replace them) is entirely reasonable.

mitigatedchaos

One need only look at previous Leftist revolutions without adequately-tested plans for society afterwards, as well as prior predictions of total system collapse by Leftists to see that this probably isn’t the greatest idea. One can even see that the Capitalists did better on the environment than the Communists, even despite their systemic design towards resource consumption. So while radicals may think this is a good viewpoint, I think it’s pretty easy to conclude that without an adequately planned and tested system already prepared for after The Revolution, a revolution will just kill a whole bunch of people and significantly damage the economy without improving governance at all or helping the environment very much. Also a revolution is not going to install mere social democracy, since it has to be sufficiently radical just to be effectively carried out.

Source: everything-narrative politics communism

ranma-official

theonion:
“SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass....

Source: theonion queue

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

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