Not an unreasonable concern about wandering into dark ideologies or not appreciating nuance leading to bad conclusions. It’s also entirely possible I was just reading more into your comments than was intended. I don’t currently have any plans to seek out more of his writing but I’ll be sure to keep our conversation in mind to filter it through if I do (and others should as well).
Was nice to have a respectful and constructive conversation online, thanks again :)
Thanks for the thoughtful reply and suggested reading. Holy shit, paywalls are hardcore now (NYT link dividing the screen space literally in half) but fortunately there was an archive link to eliminate that issue. I was only really interested in knowing the details around Scott Alexander in so far as I didn’t want to be unknowingly spreading messages from Hitler 2.0 or something, but still without having a dog in this fight, I get the impression the ominous dangers implied about the nefarious Rationalists is overselling the reality of the situation.
The way the author/group’s positions are offhandedly portrayed (especially under the Life in the Grey Tribe heading) definitely raise red flags for me, but just opening a couple of the links and reading the content myself I didn’t come away with nearly the same impression of intent. (NOTE: I’m adding the bolding to certain elements)
NYT
The Grey Tribe was characterized by libertarian beliefs, atheism, “vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up,” and “reading lots of blogs,” he wrote. Most significantly, it believed in absolute free speech.
Right away I can envision another “why would you want to silence me? I’m allowed to say anything if this is a free country!” excuse from some jerk online. I read that post on SSC and it has the following before it even begins:
[Content warning: Politics, religion, social justice, spoilers for “The Secret of Father Brown”. This isn’t especially original to me and I don’t claim anything more than to be explaining and rewording things I have heard from a bunch of other people. Unapologetically America-centric because I’m not informed enough to make it otherwise. Try to keep this off Reddit and other similar sorts of things.]
There’s also no hits on “speech”, “absolute”, “censor” in the post. It doesn’t come across to me like someone advocating for the unrestricted right to spread their hateful/harmful ideology. A figure like Elon Musk has made his positions pretty clear about why he (nominally, but not actually) believes in absolute free speech, the Grey Tribe post seems to mostly be a criticism about in-group purity testing and self-censorship.
NYT
He said that affirmative action was difficult to distinguish from “discriminating against white men.”
Again, it’s easy to imagine this is going to be another red pill argument about how giving disenfranchised people an equal shot is really just repressing white people etc. With more of the quote providing context it doesn’t read as that (to me):
You’ve probably heard that memo writer James Damore has sued Google for discrimination against conservative white men. It seems like a complicated case: political discrimination is generally legal but might not be in California (see here), and discriminating against white men seems hard to distinguish from affirmative action and various societywide diversity campaigns universal enough that I assume someone would have noticed before now if they were illegal. […]
That NYT piece was really hung-up on his real name throughout though which to me raises questions about their motivations behind their stated concerns. It would be understandable if this was a scenario where some NGO was masquerading as a single real person, but here I can easily understand why someone would prefer to keep their offline identity de-emphasized.
Re: Reddit
In this area I’m going to willfully stick my head in the sand and ignore completely. I just can’t bring myself to want to wade through that collection of bots, bad-faith users, advertisers etc. to try to separate fact from fiction.
I also have contrarian tendencies and I’m not intending this to be a fight about who’s right/wrong – you’re clearly far more familiar with this author and subject than I am. And again, I sincerely appreciate the follow-up info. I can certainly see how some positions taken or discussed can act like a beacon attracting bad elements, but I also think that is nearly universal whenever there’s people involved - and that it’s possible to interpret virtuous things into a call for evil if predisposed. There’s some truth to dangers of gazing into the abyss and all that, but I also think it’s foolish to be concerned that everyone that reads Catcher in the Rye is going to get bad ideas about presidents, ya know?
I don’t know much about the author and as far as I know haven’t read any of their other work, so while it’s certainly possible they’re pushing some shitty “AI will save us all” techbro agenda, I really don’t feel convinced of that based on that Washington Spectator article or the short paragraphs near the end of the mountain of text preceding it on the Slate Star Codex. There’s a lot of guilt by association implied in the page about TESCREAL but I’m not seeing any alarming smoking guns re: Scott Alexander and his Wikipedia page doesn’t seem to call out any concerning incidents or positions (not to imply all of its content is complete or truthful).
I’m not invested in this enough to try pushing back more but if you want to claim the author is roughly equivalent to an Elon Musk or some red pill monosphere proponent I’d expect more evidence. It’s good to be mindful of sources of info in general though, I agree with the sentiment of “follow those seeking the truth, avoid those claiming to have found it.”
I’d guess it’s largely just a consequence of the Tragedy of the Commons. My favorite example demonstrating the effect I read in Meditations on Moloch:
The Fish Farming Story
As a thought experiment, let’s consider aquaculture (fish farming) in a lake. Imagine a lake with a thousand identical fish farms owned by a thousand competing companies. Each fish farm earns a profit of $1000/month. For a while, all is well.
But each fish farm produces waste, which fouls the water in the lake. Let’s say each fish farm produces enough pollution to lower productivity in the lake by $1/month.
A thousand fish farms produce enough waste to lower productivity by $1000/month, meaning none of the fish farms are making any money. Capitalism to the rescue: someone invents a complex filtering system that removes waste products. It costs $300/month to operate. All fish farms voluntarily install it, the pollution ends, and the fish farms are now making a profit of $700/month – still a respectable sum.
But one farmer (let’s call him Steve) gets tired of spending the money to operate his filter. Now one fish farm worth of waste is polluting the lake, lowering productivity by $1. Steve earns $999 profit, and everyone else earns $699 profit.
Everyone else sees Steve is much more profitable than they are, because he’s not spending the maintenance costs on his filter. They disconnect their filters too.
Once four hundred people disconnect their filters, Steve is earning $600/month – less than he would be if he and everyone else had kept their filters on! And the poor virtuous filter users are only making $300. Steve goes around to everyone, saying “Wait! We all need to make a voluntary pact to use filters! Otherwise, everyone’s productivity goes down.”
Everyone agrees with him, and they all sign the Filter Pact, except one person who is sort of a jerk. Let’s call him Mike. Now everyone is back using filters again, except Mike. Mike earns $999/month, and everyone else earns $699/month. Slowly, people start thinking they too should be getting big bucks like Mike, and disconnect their filter for $300 extra profit…
A self-interested person never has any incentive to use a filter. A self-interested person has some incentive to sign a pact to make everyone use a filter, but in many cases has a stronger incentive to wait for everyone else to sign such a pact but opt out himself. This can lead to an undesirable equilibrium in which no one will sign such a pact.
Until it’s more profitable to do the right thing it’s likely we’ll continue doing nothing, if not outright exacerbating things, just so we can get ours before it’s all gone.
I actually just finished it, wish there were more episodes. There was a lot more humor than I was expecting which really helped to offset the depressing aspects. Yeah, I really can’t imagine the government supporting the show aside from it portraying the US as an absolutely dominating force.
From a casting angle I think it’s kinda funny Jarhead had a Sarsgaard and Generation Kill had a Skarsgård. I also kept thinking the Rolling Stone writer (Lee Tergesen) looked like a relative of John Michael Higgins.
Thanks for the reminder to watch that series. I liked The Wire and We Own This City by David Simon so I’m assuming it is a more thoughtful show than the title and imagery suggests.
Definitely a carefully constructed and insightful post intended for humans to engage with.
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Maybe if the US Army had cooperated it wouldn’t have been so terrible! At least it provides a chance to see Phil Hartman.
And rarely you get to see gems like this from the movie Sgt. Bilko (1996):
Guess What Happened Next?
He fixes the cable?
Just a heads up, this is another spam account pushing a garbage website. @[email protected] [<-now banned] & @[email protected] are both newly created accounts linking only to this site.
The disclaimer on the website states [emphasis added]:
All the information on this website – https://infoterkiniviral.com – is published in good faith and for general information purpose only. infoterkiniviral.com does not make any warranties about the completeness, reliability and accuracy of this information. Any action you take upon the information you find on this website (detiknewsone.com), is strictly at your own risk. detiknewsone.com will not be liable for any losses and/or damages in connection with the use of our website.
Why the sudden switch in address names? Why is the contact us page just a gmail account and no additional info or even a generic web form? Unlike the other sections, the “about” page isn’t in English at all.
@[email protected]
Totally legitimate user,
You only link to central24 so I have to assume you have some connection to it; its/your publisher is listed as ZwadTech but the footer link (zwadtech.com) doesn’t resolve and general web searches for that term only returns the central24 website. Where do you source your information for your totally legitimate articles? I noticed there aren’t any authors listed.
Why is this domain only linked to by newly created accounts (4+ of which have been banned)?
@[email protected]
Totally legitimate user,
You only link to central24 so I have to assume you have some connection to it; its/your publisher is listed as ZwadTech but the footer link (zwadtech.com) doesn’t resolve and general web searches for that term only returns the central24 website. Where do you source your information for your totally legitimate articles? I noticed there aren’t any authors listed.
Why is this domain only linked to by newly created accounts (4+ of which have been banned)?
There’s a great (and short) video about encryption back-doors by CGP Grey: “Should all locks have keys? Phones, Castles, Encryption, and You.” (Piped link).
“No matter how much we might wish it, there’s no way to build a digital lock that only angels can open and demons cannot. Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant of the mathematics or less of an angel than they appear.”
EDIT: I still hate you Piped bot.
@[email protected]
Totally legitimate user,
You only link to central24 so I have to assume you have some connection to it; its/your publisher is listed as ZwadTech but the footer link (zwadtech.com) doesn’t resolve and general web searches for that term only returns the central24 website. Where do you source your information for your totally legitimate articles? I noticed there aren’t any authors listed.
Why is this domain only linked to by newly created accounts (3+ of which have been banned)?
Can’t speak for the veracity, but I’ve got two magnets with the following:
Average income = $1,601.00
Loaf of bread = $.08
Gallon of gas = $.10
Gallon of milk = $.45
New car = $625.00
New house = $5,972.00
Average income = $4,650.00
Loaf of bread = $.19
Gallon of gas = $.24
Gallon of milk = $1.01
New car = $2,155.00
New house = $11,975.00
I don’t know if the functionality exists yet for the mods/admins, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume any links pointing to that domain are coming from bots/spammers and the accounts should just be automatically banned. I first saw that site linked to about 2 days ago from variations on the username “johnson”, then from a (new) account named debbie, and today from kelvinwashington to worldnews and now here.
It’s all clickbait ad-laden garbage and it’s getting tiresome having to report each instance of it.
*pique :)
Not the point of the video at all but I didn’t see any clips from The Boat That Rocked (2009) (Pirate Radio in the US) and just wanted to give a shout-out for the film. I wouldn’t say it was a particularly special role or performance from P.S.H. but I just never see that movie mentioned and it initially flew under the radar for me.