Spyke

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you just hate me because my IQ is sooo high

Techbro was originally used to describe the type of men who made it difficult for women in tech, then somewhere along the line the general public realized the same dudes were also making it difficult for lots if people in lots of places.

If tech folks never actually acted like frat bros, the bro appellation never would have happened. I've worked in offices with Kegs cor crissakes.

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Effective Altruists: look, we *tried* to invite nice people as well as the huge racists we knew were huge racists when we invited them. What? Exclude the racists? But they're so *interesting!*

Fails to list SlateScott as a controversial guest.

Also, did he just use a bang path to refer to a racist dude's Twitter persona? Seeing old school lore adopted by these mutants gives me heartburn.

Oh, and that bit at the end disclaiming it as an EA event despite it clearly being an EA event is classic "decoupler" (or, if you like, responsibility avoider.)

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rationalists discuss: does testosterone make you stupid?

His initial premise is so damned stupid that there's probably nothing to salvage so I'm not reading it. He gives zero credence to the idea that whatever metric he grabbed for men should be a linear correlation to IQ might... not be? Then ploughs on with an explanation that allows him to do Trans discourse. Fuck off with that.

Here's an alternate theory: you only know about out trans folks. Trans folks will only come out if they think they're likely to not be beaten to death. Therefore you will see more trans folks at IT jobs and fewer at construction sites, because IT workers sit in chairs all day and many couldn't beat someone to death even if they tried. Plus having lots of money helps insulate you from the risk of ending up living on the fucking street. Seriously if this guy just thought about it for like ten seconds he'd realize his data was skewed.

Also, anyone who's ever experienced being a teenage boy probably understands exactly how dumb Testosterone makes you firsthand, complete with specific stories.

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Nonlinear seem to think this post replying to the accusations about them will make them look like the heroes

Also this:

Have you ever made a social gaff? Does the idea of somebody exclusively looking for and publishing negative things about you make you feel uneasy? Terrified?

(spooky hands)

I actually played this game with some of my friends to see how easy it was. I tried to say only true things but in a way that made them look like villains. It was terrifyingly easy. Even for one of my oldest friends, who is one of the more universally-liked EAs, I could make him sound like a terrifying creep.

📸 🤨

I could do this for any EA org. I know of so many conflicts in EA that if somebody pulled a Ben Pace on, it would explode in a similar fashion.

🤔

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if LessWrong bans insufferable twats just because they make everyone miserable, who's next?? *me??????*

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You show up, you put a ton of effort into a post, and at the end the comment section will tear apart some random thing that isn’t load bearing for your argument, isn’t something you consider particularly important, and whose discussion doesn’t illuminate what you are trying to communicate

Man if only LW posters knew how to use the delete key to shorten their posts to only the load bearing parts, which they consider particularly important and who's discussion illuminates what they were trying communicate. Alas.

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Nonlinear seem to think this post replying to the accusations about them will make them look like the heroes

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I wish you were joking but they literally say this in the post:

At that hourly rate, he spent perhaps ~$130,000 of Lightcone donors’ money on [investigating us]. But it’s more than that. When you factor in our time, plus hundreds/thousands of comments across all the posts, it’s plausible Ben’s negligence cost EA millions of dollars of lost productivity. If his accusations were true, that could have potentially been a worthwhile use of time - it's just that they aren't, and so that productivity is actually destroyed. [...]

Even if it was just $1 million, that wipes out the yearly contribution of 200 hardworking earn-to-givers who sacrificed, scrimped and saved to donate $5,000 this year.

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Aella and company want to put GM bacteria in your mouth

Ok, read their actual pitch. Lmao they think that a one time introduction of a GMO bacteria strain is going to 'just work' because they've also GMO'd it to outcompete other bacteria?

There's a reason we aren't running our cars on yeast-produced gasoline. No matter how awesome your tuned microbe is, it's still subject to mutation and natural selection. If your beneficial changes aren't actually helping it survive, they will not be conserved. And those 'competitive' changes you jacked it up with to make sure it dominates the environment? Well, that might end up horizontally transferred into something you don't like.

About the right amount of 'we humans are smarter than dumb biology' metal-fetishism I'd expect from the folks concerned.

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Help me you're my only hope https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/matt-yglesias-considered-as-the-nietzschean

Some right-wingers have responded to the piece, but their responses are mostly “but I like being bad and cruel” - which seems to prove Bulldog’s point.

I think we can do better - that it’s possible to make a case against “slave morality” that doesn’t rely on being pro-badness and cruelty.

Fuck me, you're making me read Slatescott again. I can't wait to see how he will case for badness and cruelty without relying on being pro badness and cruelty.

Skimmed a bit up to the discussion of architecture not being as impressive nowadays or something.

Ok here we go:

Tate has, in some sense, many good qualities. He’s strong, athletic, and motivated. He earned tens of millions of dollars through hustle and hard work. He’s charismatic and compelling and, before his arrest, was one of the Internet’s most iconic influencers. I think master morality has to approve of all these things.

"Hustle and hard work"? That's what we're gonna call being a sex trafficker?

Hand tipped here:

I would like to end up with an overall negative view of Tate. And if I do a simple calculation, (virtues - vices), then it seems like if his nonmoral virtues were strong enough, they could overcome the moral vices. If Tate was a really really good kickboxer, he might still end up in the black. It seems much more intuitive to say that no amount of nonmoral virtues can make up for his moral vices. But now we’re back at the full slave moralist package again! Some “compromise”!

If we accept that there are some vices that cannot be made up for by virtues, we might need to cancel someone. People might need to be held responsible for the things they do. So Scott cannot accept it. There has to be a way to let the baddies in as long as they're actually doing important work.

You can argue “master morality is about being strong and good; slave morality is just about preserving your pathetic little feelings”. But most of life is people’s pathetic little feelings. People have proven over and over again that their decisions - about what to do, what to buy, who to vote for, even what to die for - depend more on what lets them feel dignity and self-respect than on any purely material considerations.

Slight of hand: now slave morality is all about feelings and master morality is about material needs. What the heck? We established that slave morality was based on the idea that masters inflicting real hardships on their peasants was bad, didn't we? You could make the same argument about Scott morality (as described above) because the objective would be to allow you to feel good about supporting people who do bad things as long as they also do good things.

And speaking of slight of hand, this is going to be my pull quote:

Hanania is terrible at being right-wing.