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This is a really over the top one sided presentation. The thread being mourned was continually full of really shockingly horrible stuff. Straight faced technob

by nullc 8y ago

This is a really over the top one sided presentation. The thread being mourned was continually full of really shockingly horrible stuff. Straight faced technobabble laden arguments for genocide and such. A reliable go-to for "oh-shit,-humanity-is-screwed" porn. It was impossible to tell how much of it was actually awful people earnestly advancing awful ideas vs screwed up performance art with people intentionally posting the worst stuff they could think of just for shock value or to mock the fact that participants there responded so embarrassingly to so much of it. ... but I don't think that is a defense of it at all, it's an indictment. I had previously believed (and people who knew Scott personally lead me to believe...) that the thread was created as a tarpit for trolls and people with absurdly repugnant views to waste each others time in a place where other people could ignore it-- rather than these discussions invading every other thread and making them useless to the majority of people who want nothing to do with that stuff-- who feel they morally can't just sit and pretend its okay to advance horrible policies but also don't want to waste their lives rehashing ethical arguments that most people considered settled a century ago. The "designated crap thread" approach is sometimes more effective than punting the sources outright (and also less harmful to false positives)... This post strongly indicates otherwise and is causing me a vertigo inducing shift in how I perceive the author and his community. I couldn't be more disappointed. And I'm only left hoping that the support of that toxicity expressed in Scott's post is an emotional retaliation to the despicable harassment he reported experiencing ... rather than an earnest position. I feel like a lot of the HN commentary is essentially unrelated to the actual 'event' -- The 'deplatforming' trend is concerning... but that doesn't really tell us much about this particular venue. Especially since it continues to exist and hasn't in fact, been subject to deplatforming or anything similar. The connection only goes in so far as some of the same pressures probably exists, but I would be a lot more interested in hearing what went on behind some actual major deplatforming incidents. (Medium killing gab.ai's post explaining why they didn't believe their actions supported hate crimes would be an interesting candidate, since it was a meta-deplatforming, so doubly removed from most pragmatic tradeoffs...)

nullc 8y ago
A post I once read by a thoughtful author said, > There’s an unfortunate corollary to this, which is that if you try to create a libertarian paradise, you will attract three deeply virtuous people with a strong committment to the principle of universal freedom, plus millions of scoundrels. I don't know what has caused the loss of that kind of insight now, but I hope its found again in the future.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  My apologies if I’m spoiling your subtlety, but it was Scott Alexander (of the linked post) who said that.
wbxrs 8y ago
Given that your comment is contrary to what the submitted post says and what all comments here say, some proof would be appropriate. You are using strong words.
barrkel 8y ago
My sampling of the posts linked in the article seem to indicate otherwise. What is your evidence?
- striking 8y ago
  Here's one that seems to sum it up pretty well. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_23_2018/e31i8i3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/cult... is a 2-part comment advocating for > Mandatory abortions of the congenitally ill. > Removal of tax incentives for homosexual marriages > Corporal or capital punishment for adultery. > Mental illness/having mental health medication prescribed disqualifying voting. > Paid sterilisation (i.e., trading your fecundity for a basic income). > National genotyping and IQ scoring as part of using any sort of public health subsidisation and education. > Allowing insurers more room to discriminate on any quality they wish, including genotype, education, and IQ (i.e., no more disparate impact or genetic discrimination laws at all). > La Sierra-style physical education in whatever public schools there are. > Removal of all protected classes/free segregation (as mentioned above). > Restructuring of "Free Speech" rights to include the "Right to Hate." And so on. Basically all of the most awful things a human being could compile into a bullet pointed list, with absolutely no explanation of why any of these things would have a positive impact on the world. The second part of the comment literally just contains these, verbatim, as bullets. These are the kinds of things one would advocate for if he wanted racism to be allowed (with a couple of other weird random points that most certainly trample on the rights of other groups). You'd have to completely ignore the rights of so many people to think arguing for any of these even approximates rational thought. One may argue that it is acceptable to merely permit this kind of thing, in the hopes that light may find it and disinfect it. But this particular comment is blessed as a "quality contribution" by the moderators here https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_23_2018/e31i8i3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/cult.... So I dunno. Is this objectionable enough for you?
  - chipsa 8y ago
    1. Your first link is broke, as it merely takes you to the Quality Contribution round up. 2. It was the second part of said two part comment that advocated any of that, which was not well voted, and provided no support for anything in there. 3. The quality contribution round up ends up being anything that anyone reports to the moderators as a quality contribution, with little discrimination on the part of the moderators. 4. Sometimes it's not the post itself that's the quality, but the responses to it that provide the quality conversation.
ethics_gradient 8y ago
Thank you for being one of the few commenters on this thread who point out the HBD streak on that thread. The insistence that that is not reactionary has been a strong undercurrent in that forum, and so when people from there talk about the weirdness of that thread, I hope more people notice that it's not about uh, weird music or humor. It's about an obsession with race and genes that easily goes into very dark territory.

by nullc 8y ago

nullc 8y ago

A post I once read by a thoughtful author said, > There’s an unfortunate corollary to this, which is that if you try to create a libertarian paradise, you will attract three deeply virtuous people with a strong committment to the principle of universal freedom, plus millions of scoundrels. I don't know what has caused the loss of that kind of insight now, but I hope its found again in the future.

commandlinefan 8y ago
My apologies if I’m spoiling your subtlety, but it was Scott Alexander (of the linked post) who said that.

wbxrs 8y ago

Given that your comment is contrary to what the submitted post says and what all comments here say, some proof would be appropriate. You are using strong words.

barrkel 8y ago

My sampling of the posts linked in the article seem to indicate otherwise. What is your evidence?

striking 8y ago
Here's one that seems to sum it up pretty well. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_23_2018/e31i8i3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/cult... is a 2-part comment advocating for > Mandatory abortions of the congenitally ill. > Removal of tax incentives for homosexual marriages > Corporal or capital punishment for adultery. > Mental illness/having mental health medication prescribed disqualifying voting. > Paid sterilisation (i.e., trading your fecundity for a basic income). > National genotyping and IQ scoring as part of using any sort of public health subsidisation and education. > Allowing insurers more room to discriminate on any quality they wish, including genotype, education, and IQ (i.e., no more disparate impact or genetic discrimination laws at all). > La Sierra-style physical education in whatever public schools there are. > Removal of all protected classes/free segregation (as mentioned above). > Restructuring of "Free Speech" rights to include the "Right to Hate." And so on. Basically all of the most awful things a human being could compile into a bullet pointed list, with absolutely no explanation of why any of these things would have a positive impact on the world. The second part of the comment literally just contains these, verbatim, as bullets. These are the kinds of things one would advocate for if he wanted racism to be allowed (with a couple of other weird random points that most certainly trample on the rights of other groups). You'd have to completely ignore the rights of so many people to think arguing for any of these even approximates rational thought. One may argue that it is acceptable to merely permit this kind of thing, in the hopes that light may find it and disinfect it. But this particular comment is blessed as a "quality contribution" by the moderators here https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_july_23_2018/e31i8i3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9174vt/cult.... So I dunno. Is this objectionable enough for you?
- chipsa 8y ago
  1. Your first link is broke, as it merely takes you to the Quality Contribution round up. 2. It was the second part of said two part comment that advocated any of that, which was not well voted, and provided no support for anything in there. 3. The quality contribution round up ends up being anything that anyone reports to the moderators as a quality contribution, with little discrimination on the part of the moderators. 4. Sometimes it's not the post itself that's the quality, but the responses to it that provide the quality conversation.

ethics_gradient 8y ago

Thank you for being one of the few commenters on this thread who point out the HBD streak on that thread. The insistence that that is not reactionary has been a strong undercurrent in that forum, and so when people from there talk about the weirdness of that thread, I hope more people notice that it's not about uh, weird music or humor. It's about an obsession with race and genes that easily goes into very dark territory.