5 ms·

>In a year of historic ironies, here’s another one: that it was the decent, reasonable, and well-meaning Cade Metz, rather than any of the SneerClubbers Okay s

>In a year of historic ironies, here’s another one: that it was the decent, reasonable, and well-meaning Cade Metz, rather than any of the SneerClubbers Okay so what's with the obsession with a niche subreddit whose sole purpose is to dunk on rationalists/SSCers who talk too often about the IQ of black people. I mean it's not like Aaronson is himself an HBD blogger. I kind of like Aaronson but his online anxiety is really getting the better of his judgement.

waterhouse 6y ago
To treat this in good faith, I point to here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200313231227/https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200313231227/https://slatestar... "A subreddit devoted to insulting and mocking me personally and Culture War thread participants in general got started; it now has over 2,000 readers." That is SneerClub. "Some people found my real name and started posting it on Twitter. Some people made entire accounts devoted to doxxing me in Twitter discussions whenever an opportunity came up. A few people just messaged me letting me know they knew my real name and reminding me that they could do this if they wanted to. Some people started messaging my real-life friends, telling them to stop being friends with me because I supported racists and sexists and Nazis. Somebody posted a monetary reward for information that could be used to discredit me. One person called the clinic where I worked, pretended to be a patient, and tried to get me fired. ... I had a nervous breakdown. It wasn’t even that bad a nervous breakdown. I was able to keep working through it. I just sort of broke off all human contact for a couple of weeks and stayed in my room freaking out instead. ... The first few [subreddit mods] I approached were positive; some had similar experiences to mine; one admitted that even though he personally was not involved with the CW thread and only dealt with other parts of the subreddit, he taught at a college and felt like his job would not be safe so long as the subreddit and CW thread were affiliated. Apparently the problem was bigger than just me, and other people had been dealing with it in silence."
- throwaway4666 6y ago
  There's no evidence that any of the things mentioned came from SneerClub. As far as I know the original doxxing came from some alt-right dude with mental issues on tumblr who thought he was shadowbanned and posted in response to a SA reblog on tumblr 'Care to comment, Scott Alexander [Real Surname], working at [Actual clinic] in [Actual location]?' to which SA replied with 'No one's shadowbanned, you're banned for doxxing me though'. This is all relatively easy to look up and check. SneerClub was always ever about venting about rationalists when the dumb speculation about evopsych and the IQ of black people went out of hand, and people who have attempted to doxx Scott on there have been banned. (Doxxing people at all is against the rules of reddit anyway.) Yes, it's a circlejerk subreddit, yes it's petty etc. But it's not the evil den of terrorists rationalists think it is.
  - danharaj 6y ago
    If one were to examine that subreddit at this moment it would appear that the mods are very strongly against Scott Alexander being doxxed by a reporter and are also handing out bans for anyone gloating about this.
- tptacek 6y ago
  It is odd seeing someone who blogged under their real name, who released one of their best-known pieces of public writing under their real name, talk as if their real name was somehow discovered through sleuthing. I want to be careful how I respond to this but, let's just say, the amount of Google elaboration required to penetrate the veil of protective secrecy this person has created for themselves is not... uh... significant.
  - mundo 6y ago
    You're looking at the wrong side of the veil. Yes, it's trivial to find his real name if you know of his blog, but it's not easy to find his blog by searching his real name.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      No, it's straightforwardly evident from a search of his real name. And, again: one of his best-known standalone pieces was originally published under that name.
      - neonate 6y ago
        What piece was that? Just curious as I have no idea.
        jefftk 6y ago
        I'm not sure which one tptacek was thinking of, but https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/efficient-charity-do-unto-others/ https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/efficient-charity... (a cross-post, which now says "Scott Alexander") comes to mind for me.
        tptacek 6y ago
        Not that one. I'm uncomfortable sharing, though honestly I would have a hard time articulating why, since my whole point is: this guy's identity is not a secret.
ve55 6y ago
Scott Aaronson has a great reply to a question that directly answers what you're asking, I will quote it below in full and link to it: >Would you say that you, personally, have ever experienced true free will? And if so in what situation(s)? I would say that I exerted the “maximum amount of free will” (at least, the maximum that I’ve experienced) in those rare cases when I did something not because the people around me wanted or expected me to do it, or because it was the natural thing to do for someone in my situation, but simply because I wanted to and damn what people around me thought. Here are some examples: – In 1994, when I pushed my parents and the administrators at Hong Kong International School to let me start skipping grades. – In 1996, when I left home at age 15, to attend a program at Clarkson University that I’d literally learned about from a mass-mailed brochure. – In 2000, when I set up a website called “In Defense of NaderTrading” to try to prevent the election of George W. Bush. (Had I exerted my free will some more, and gotten more attention for the site, maybe we would’ve gotten just 539 more vote-swaps in Florida…) – In 2001, when I dropped everything else I was doing to work on a ridiculously ambitious problem, one that even Andris Ambainis hadn’t solved: namely, lower-bounding the quantum query complexity of distinguishing 1-to-1 from 2-to-1 functions – In 2002, when I decided to waste a month building a huge zoo of complexity classes, and another month reading and reviewing Stephen Wolfram’s book (despite being a totally unknown grad student) – In 2005, when I started a blog called (of all things) “Shtetl-Optimized” – In 2006, when I asked my boss, Ray Laflamme at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, if I could teach a crazy course called “Quantum Computing Since Democritus” – In 2009, when I spent a whole weekend in a difficult, contentious, incredibly personal email exchange with some postdoc in Princeton who I barely knew, then accepted her invitation to take the train there to continue arguing in person. (Over the next 3 years, that postdoc would become my girlfriend, fiancee, wife, then mother of my first child.) With these examples in mind, I can finally explain something that seems to have perplexed many people: namely, why I reacted to SneerClub and its fellow travelers, not merely as some annoying nobodies shitposting on social media, but as an existential threat, a coronavirus of the mind. And this despite the fact that, at least 3/4 of the time, I’m politically closer to the sneerers than to those they attack. The reason is that, with laser precision, the sneerers target the urge to “exercise one’s free will.” Like, they spend hours perfecting and refining mental kryptonite against the impulses of nerds like me to say what they’re thinking or do what they want, and damn the disapproval or the quizzical looks of those around them. The sneerers’ worldview, even when one happens to agree with them, is poisonous to the little hothouse flower of nerdian freedom that led to almost everything that was good in my life. Source: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4684#comment-1833463 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4684#comment-1833463

waterhouse 6y ago

To treat this in good faith, I point to here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200313231227/https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200313231227/https://slatestar... "A subreddit devoted to insulting and mocking me personally and Culture War thread participants in general got started; it now has over 2,000 readers." That is SneerClub. "Some people found my real name and started posting it on Twitter. Some people made entire accounts devoted to doxxing me in Twitter discussions whenever an opportunity came up. A few people just messaged me letting me know they knew my real name and reminding me that they could do this if they wanted to. Some people started messaging my real-life friends, telling them to stop being friends with me because I supported racists and sexists and Nazis. Somebody posted a monetary reward for information that could be used to discredit me. One person called the clinic where I worked, pretended to be a patient, and tried to get me fired. ... I had a nervous breakdown. It wasn’t even that bad a nervous breakdown. I was able to keep working through it. I just sort of broke off all human contact for a couple of weeks and stayed in my room freaking out instead. ... The first few [subreddit mods] I approached were positive; some had similar experiences to mine; one admitted that even though he personally was not involved with the CW thread and only dealt with other parts of the subreddit, he taught at a college and felt like his job would not be safe so long as the subreddit and CW thread were affiliated. Apparently the problem was bigger than just me, and other people had been dealing with it in silence."

throwaway4666 6y ago
There's no evidence that any of the things mentioned came from SneerClub. As far as I know the original doxxing came from some alt-right dude with mental issues on tumblr who thought he was shadowbanned and posted in response to a SA reblog on tumblr 'Care to comment, Scott Alexander [Real Surname], working at [Actual clinic] in [Actual location]?' to which SA replied with 'No one's shadowbanned, you're banned for doxxing me though'. This is all relatively easy to look up and check. SneerClub was always ever about venting about rationalists when the dumb speculation about evopsych and the IQ of black people went out of hand, and people who have attempted to doxx Scott on there have been banned. (Doxxing people at all is against the rules of reddit anyway.) Yes, it's a circlejerk subreddit, yes it's petty etc. But it's not the evil den of terrorists rationalists think it is.
- danharaj 6y ago
  If one were to examine that subreddit at this moment it would appear that the mods are very strongly against Scott Alexander being doxxed by a reporter and are also handing out bans for anyone gloating about this.
tptacek 6y ago
It is odd seeing someone who blogged under their real name, who released one of their best-known pieces of public writing under their real name, talk as if their real name was somehow discovered through sleuthing. I want to be careful how I respond to this but, let's just say, the amount of Google elaboration required to penetrate the veil of protective secrecy this person has created for themselves is not... uh... significant.
- mundo 6y ago
  You're looking at the wrong side of the veil. Yes, it's trivial to find his real name if you know of his blog, but it's not easy to find his blog by searching his real name.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    No, it's straightforwardly evident from a search of his real name. And, again: one of his best-known standalone pieces was originally published under that name.
    - neonate 6y ago
      What piece was that? Just curious as I have no idea.
      - jefftk 6y ago
        I'm not sure which one tptacek was thinking of, but https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/efficient-charity-do-unto-others/ https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/efficient-charity... (a cross-post, which now says "Scott Alexander") comes to mind for me.
        tptacek 6y ago
        Not that one. I'm uncomfortable sharing, though honestly I would have a hard time articulating why, since my whole point is: this guy's identity is not a secret.

ve55 6y ago

Scott Aaronson has a great reply to a question that directly answers what you're asking, I will quote it below in full and link to it: >Would you say that you, personally, have ever experienced true free will? And if so in what situation(s)? I would say that I exerted the “maximum amount of free will” (at least, the maximum that I’ve experienced) in those rare cases when I did something not because the people around me wanted or expected me to do it, or because it was the natural thing to do for someone in my situation, but simply because I wanted to and damn what people around me thought. Here are some examples: – In 1994, when I pushed my parents and the administrators at Hong Kong International School to let me start skipping grades. – In 1996, when I left home at age 15, to attend a program at Clarkson University that I’d literally learned about from a mass-mailed brochure. – In 2000, when I set up a website called “In Defense of NaderTrading” to try to prevent the election of George W. Bush. (Had I exerted my free will some more, and gotten more attention for the site, maybe we would’ve gotten just 539 more vote-swaps in Florida…) – In 2001, when I dropped everything else I was doing to work on a ridiculously ambitious problem, one that even Andris Ambainis hadn’t solved: namely, lower-bounding the quantum query complexity of distinguishing 1-to-1 from 2-to-1 functions – In 2002, when I decided to waste a month building a huge zoo of complexity classes, and another month reading and reviewing Stephen Wolfram’s book (despite being a totally unknown grad student) – In 2005, when I started a blog called (of all things) “Shtetl-Optimized” – In 2006, when I asked my boss, Ray Laflamme at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, if I could teach a crazy course called “Quantum Computing Since Democritus” – In 2009, when I spent a whole weekend in a difficult, contentious, incredibly personal email exchange with some postdoc in Princeton who I barely knew, then accepted her invitation to take the train there to continue arguing in person. (Over the next 3 years, that postdoc would become my girlfriend, fiancee, wife, then mother of my first child.) With these examples in mind, I can finally explain something that seems to have perplexed many people: namely, why I reacted to SneerClub and its fellow travelers, not merely as some annoying nobodies shitposting on social media, but as an existential threat, a coronavirus of the mind. And this despite the fact that, at least 3/4 of the time, I’m politically closer to the sneerers than to those they attack. The reason is that, with laser precision, the sneerers target the urge to “exercise one’s free will.” Like, they spend hours perfecting and refining mental kryptonite against the impulses of nerds like me to say what they’re thinking or do what they want, and damn the disapproval or the quizzical looks of those around them. The sneerers’ worldview, even when one happens to agree with them, is poisonous to the little hothouse flower of nerdian freedom that led to almost everything that was good in my life. Source: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4684#comment-1833463 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4684#comment-1833463