Thanks for the info, will link this comment on reddit as well. Edited both posts, and yeah I just knew of both book/game projects and was going via that, used the humble link first that is why WCK came out on top and not UNRWA.

Gonna repost a bit from comment I left on reddit:

Read swlabrs reply first btw.

Anyway, something useful perhaps, the World Central Kitchen seems to help out with the famine so donating to them might be useful, see comment below. Donate to the UNRWA organisation instead. Not comfortable donating on a link provided by a random user (smart!), or want something to show for your donation, the current Humble book bundle is donating to the WCK (do not forget to adjust the sliders) and you get a nice collection of Martha Wells books (The Murderbot saga is great). Or buy the play for peace bundle which is donating to the UNRWA USA, and get a shitton of games and other stuff. (All links are affiliate free from my end, I know there is a system setup for Humble stuff, but I don’t use that).

E: buying the last one is also a fun way to boost yourself into Spiders Georg levels of video game ownership. So you could do it for that joke alone. Just to claim you own ~300 videogames.

While this is close to ‘look at what you made me do territory’. We would sneer a lot less at him if he didn’t blame us for everything. ‘people who sneer made covid worse’ (not the direct quote) for example was just silly, and if you look at the reaction of sneerclub at the time also not in the realm of reality. (But yes he will just say he said sneer by which he didn’t mean sneerclub but people like us in general. Which is obv not a thing I fully agree with, but good motte/bailey).

It also is interesting, as Scott compared to the others we sneer at never really seems to break containment so to speak. I have seen people talk about Aella on bsky for example, Scott Alexander, Eliezer, lesswrong, EA, etc all come up. But Scott almost never does. (Yes, the ‘untitled’ affair was public, but that was a decade ago, and 6 months before r/sneerclub was created (and long before I joined) and also the whole broaden influence thing as you mentioned). And after all why should he, he is just a random professor, the only reason he is relevant for the broader picture is that he agrees with the AI doom stuff, and he gives the LW people some level of prestige (the only times I have brought him up is because he confirmed that Yarvin spends time personally emailing prestigious people like him but that is about Moldy). He is prob the only one whos sneering is just contained to sneerclub/awful.systems (which is why he should stop reading sc, he prob should also ignore more blog comments and emails (block Yarvin’s email Scott, do it!)).

you’re living in a cyberpunk novel

A hyperreal simulacrum!

And I don’t think it is bad to setup things that you like, like the google voice thing. It sounds fun (this is what tech should do dammit, and it could do it, no need to make it less reliable, more unethical, and more planet wrecking). Don’t think you should feel bad about that tbh. And I don’t think it that google betrayed its assistant, it is more google betrays its users and the people who create these smaller programs. See how they treated google reader, or wave, or plus or everything which doesn’t gather a large enough userbase for them to just let it simmer on, on maintenance. While I don’t think you should feel compassion for the program, the other users and the people developing this (or who have developed this) are real, and it sucks for them to see this creation be tossed away.

Not that feeling compassion for inanimate things isn’t completely normal. Don’t think you should feel bad about that either as long as you get on some level it is silly and don’t try to marry your computer (and even then, if people are happy and not hurting anybody it overwrites almost all concerns I have). So yeah, the erring seems like a good conclusion. Even if I don’t share it myself at times, and can be mean to inanimate objects/chatbots (I really hope that ‘how can we help you’ chatprompt after my dad got scammed was a chatbot, and not somebody being held hostage in Asia), I’m sympathetic to people saying how you treat those objects is also how you will eventually treat people you feel are below you. (or even the silly ‘If machines become sentient that is how you would treat them’ stuff. I don’t believe in the IF yet, but it is a thing to keep in mind, see also how we treat animals).

Sidenote: Totally forgot Ellis existed, had really hoped he would be able to mend the problems he had caused, but when I checked how that ended up (a while back) seems he didn’t keep to their promises and the women had given up on him.

Eliezer came from the extropian newsgroups/mailinglists iirc. So it is quite connected.

Not worthy of a third post imho, but Scott made the trilogy post: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9108 where he is subtlety walking back his insane, proudly kid killing claim to the more reasonable, Israel needs to defeat hamas, claim.

For a man angry about his detractors being intellectually dishonest(**), this is very typical:

Incredibly, commenters on Peter Woit’s blog then blamed me for this antisemitic image, mistakenly imagining that I’d created it myself, and then used their false assumption as further proof of my mental illness

For context, it was an AI slop image, and he named it after Woit, and didn’t provide any details from the email itself. While the whole affair is quite a good reason to at least put this persons name/email out there imho.

But also:

I’m even grateful, in a way, to SneerClub, and to Woit and his minions. I’m grateful to them for so dramatically confirming that I’m not delusional: some portion of the world really is out to get me. I probably overestimated their power, but not their malevolence. […]

His ability to lack self-awareness and reading skills remains bad. The power thing was partially in his first blogpost already, where he realized the ‘manhaters’ were just a small group. And the latter makes no sense unless you hold the random cartoon guy (who nobody here or at Woit expressed support for) as the consensus, and actual sc people, or fans of Peter.

The last part is just nuts, whole bit of Rationalization why he is actually justified, and will change the world. Not realizing everyone was horrified because he created a thought experiment to justify a genocide:

Reading the SneerClubbers’ armchair diagnoses of my severe mental illness, paranoia, persecution complex, grandiosity, etc. etc. I had the following thought, paraphrasing Shaw:

Yes, they’re absolutely right that psychologically well-adjusted people generally do figure out how to adapt themselves to the reigning morality of their social environment—as indicated by the Asch conformity test, the Milgram electric-shock experiment, and the other classics of social psychology.

It takes someone psychologically troubled, in one way or another, to persist in trying to adapt the reigning morality of their social environment to themselves.

If so, however, this suggests that all the moral progress of humanity depends on psychologically troubled people—a realization for which I’m deeply grateful.

this bit opens up so much questions, remarks and is just silly in some ways. Yes people who are dissatisfied will push for change, why is this a revelation? But do they have the power? Is it justified? Jared Taylor(*) also pushes for a changed morality system, but I wouldn’t consider that desirable. It also leaves out that people will push for change because they just want to profit from it. Which is likely a lot bigger driver of change see the libertarian ls pushing for less regulations, because the dumb and distracted deserve to be scammed.

Anyway we got called out twice!

*: a white nationalist piece of shit who from what I heard is notable because compared to his peers he isnt a raging anti-Semite. At least not openly. **: Edit: as nobody mentioned the whole ‘Peter is intellectually dishonest’ affair, I have to say one thing. Peter is imho not intellectually dishonest for leaving out that the people who tie their children on the traintrack could stop at any time. The people who don’t mention this just don’t think it is a convincing argument. Yes people who take hostages could release the hostages at any time, still no reason to shoot through the hostages. Derail the trolley! The way Russia dealt with the Opera hostage crisis was considered bad for a reason (I hope I don’t have to point out that the hostage takers also were in the wrong here). Forgot who it was who mentioned it here, but the whole ‘I would be glad to not flip the switch’ is one of the fucked up parts, it would scar people for life to make that choice.

Another edit: While thinking I realized the whole disgusting email thing is also partially due to the asshole filter effect of Scott closing his comments (which was smart tbh, he just should have told the people emailing him to fuck off): https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1209794.html. Left a hopefully thoughtful comment (I looked at it just from the comments closing aspect and not with the further conflict in mind, as I have not begun to think about that, and don’t want to think about it in context of what Scott wrote in his first blog post) about this on Peters blog. Not sure if he will let it through the moderation (and it is fine if he doesn’t, and I doubt he will as he seemingly just closed the comments and went on vacation, have a good one Peter, apologies that your blog became a battleground over this). But I thought the concept was important enough as an idea to share, and also explains why you get the more shitty people to try and react when you go ‘please don’t react to here’. A thing we should also be aware of how the drive by commenters (which was worse on reddit) tend to be the sediment of the crop.

Indeed great piece, good to document the older history of that stuff as well.

Out: ‘getting paid in exposure’

In: ‘when you are done, just send your invoice to chatgpt’

Such sofisticated methods, and then they drop crypto miners.

No somebody else. Hyperreal simulacrum is a bit of a different concept I think. Because that supersedes reality, this is just a weird sort of nostalgia.

I must admit I stole that partially from somebody else who mentioned the idea. Which also had me go ‘indeed, that is a good word’

It is not sabotage if they are helping you not commit to a long term strategy that is detrimental to the company.

As I said on bsky, why is he complaining, if he cares he could fund bsky himself. Bsky could name an office wing after him, give his kids legacy admissions, give him a shoutout in every video they make.

(While my tone is mocking here, I actually dont think these things are bad (except the legacy admissions obv), and he should be a patron. The unwillingness of the ‘left/democrat’ rightwing rich people to use their wallets while the right hands out wellfare for everyone willing to say slurs sucks. Reminded of Hillar Clinton starting a go fund me for a staffer with a disease).

https://awful.systems/post/5168673/8320254 a third name has hit the towers.

Ow really? Tell me more.

Sorry that was mean.

I mean to say I’m aware of this, I know he isn’t and that Trump should not be allowed a third term, it was intended as a dark joke and to portray my dislike of the people pushing both people.

E: but yes, sorry for wasting your time being snarky while you honestly tried to help.

Ow really? Tell me more.

Democratic presidential nominee (E: this is a dark joke) for 2028 (vs trump of course) Newsom is doing a bit of ironic memecoin corruption. So many blueanon people are going to lose money if he goes along with this.

I really hope he is going to use this as a ‘use the controversy to reveal the corruption of the system’ style thing (in .nl a tv-show did this where they made a gameshow in which people who needed a new kidney could get one, as a ruse to spread awareness to ask for more donors and everybody participating was informed of this from the start (led to 12k new donors at least)). But I really doubt it.

Yeah, it is also sad the culture warriors are not aware they are mad about this sort of crapitalism. They think the hominization of the builds is due to the woke, and not because the mother company owns the building/land of the franchise and this no slanted roofs bit (see https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:66rbia7w4vcwiszfppfv3r2e/bafkreiacsurup26wigvedpedf44rodrwzzebfcytzdglb2bh6wjh6brbsa@jpeg), increases resale value. Just companies looking for more and more minimal minimal viable product.

Also important to note on the image, looks like the new style ones are not all real. Some of the details look off which makes me suspect it is AI generated. Esp the pizza hut one.

Mentioned it on bsky, more externalizing of the costs of their product. And due to vpns will not even work in a lot of cases. (And also prob gdpr illegal).

E: A big reason why this kind of stuff is in there and prob very hard to get rid of is places like alt.suicide.holiday which have been online for ages, and are from what I can tell not considered bad places by the experts.

Various indicators have been in the ‘crash incoming’ for years now. And keeping in that state for longer than normal. Which is making me feel (spurred by Talebs thinking that you either have regular small crashes or irregular catastrophic big ones. which he wrote thinking we were already in the latter era) like we are in big trouble. But it doesn’t seem to be crashing. And even the authoritarian bs isnt pushing us into the crash territory.

Doesnt help that sex workers seem the be doing badly for a while now. Which is imho always a nice informal indicator.