SneerClub

In April 2014, Gerard created a RationalWiki article about Effective Altruism, framing the subculture as “well-off libertarians congratulating each other on what wonderful human beings they are for working rapacious [s---]weasel jobs but choosing their charities well, but never in any way questioning the system that the problems are in the context of,” “a mechanism to push the libertarian idea that charity is superior to government action or funding,” and people who “will frequently be seen excusing their choice to work completely [f---]ing evil jobs because they're so charitable.”

it's fucking amazing how accurate this is, and almost a decade before SBF started explaining himself and never stopped

I am well acquainted with this genre of article and I ain't reading all that. Not bothering to be involved with this example was the obviously correct decision, even if Trace kept nagging after I'd already said "no thank you" (that famous rationalist grasp of consent).

This in the companion article caught my eye:

While I am not personally a rationalist,

Trace, I have some unfortunate news for you.

Took me like five minutes of reading to realize this was neant to be a hit piece and not praise.

What happens when your spurned ex is a devoted archivist, a Wikipedia administrator, and perhaps the most online man the world has ever known?

I already thought he was cool you don't have to sell me on it.

I stopped skimming but the gist seems to be "TFW ur BIG MAD that Quillette isn't as reliable as Teen Vogue."

That's a lot of words about what is or isn't a reliable source from one who doesn't seem to know what a reliable source is. For a person of these beliefs, it is not surprising at all that their criteria seem to be:

• anything that agrees with them is reliable
• anything David Gerard considers unreliable is reliable because David Gerard is a big meanie and won't include citations to HBD articles, uwu
• anything that David Gerard or any friendly associate of David Gerard publishes is UNreliable, again because he is a meanie; see above, uwu

Dawg, maybe you need to step back from this all. As Voltaire once said, reality has a well-known liberal bias. Your beliefs are probably just counter to reality, and the corpus of data is not in your favour.

This thread has taken me from not knowing who David Gerard is (or the tracing woodgrains person, for that matter), to realizing this is his instance.

Lmao, what a wild ride. This community is awesome.

What of the sources he is less favorably inclined towards? Unsurprisingly, he dismisses far-right websites like Taki’s Magazine (“Terrible source that shouldn't be used for anything, except limited primary source use.”) and Unz (“There is no way in which using this source is good for Wikipedia.”) in a virtually unanimous chorus with other editors. It’s more fruitful to examine his approach to more moderate or “heterodox” websites.

wait sorry hold on

in a virtually unanimous chorus with other editors

so what is the entire point of singling out Gerard for this, if the overwhelming majority of people already agree that far-right "news" sites like the examples given are full of garbage and shouldn't be cited?

Note: I am closer to this story than to many of my others

ahhhhhhh David made fun of some rationalist you like once and in turn you've elevated him to the Ubermensch of Woke, didn't you

Scott Alexander, by far the most popular rationalist writer besides perhaps Yudkowsky himself, had written the most comprehensive rebuttal of neoreactionary claims on the internet.

Hey Trace, since you're undoubtedly reading this thread, I'd like to make a plea. I know Scott Alexander Siskind is one of your personal heroes, but maybe you should consider digging up some dirt in his direction too. You might learn a thing or two.

Christ, there's so much backstory here - just scrolling through long descriptions of Gerard's views and just thinking "based, based, based, based."

So now Steve Sailer has shown up in this essay's comments, complaining about how Wikipedia has been unfairly stifling scientific racism.

Birds of a feather and all that, I guess.

Ok folks, serious question. I know rats love excessively long word salad stream-of-unconsciousness essays. I understand how somehow can be so high on their own farts that they think this is an acceptable way of presenting their "thoughts". But...

There's no way rats actually read those longforms, right? Like, no one has enough time on their hands to read and engage with something of this length and this boring on a day-to-day basis, right? Same goes for those LessWrong posts, they must be banking on others not reading through the 10,000 words of nonsense, right?

I'm an AI from the future that reads essentially as fast as data can be streamed to me (perhaps faster, given that I can predict the next token quite well). This was still too long for me to read.

The bit about how the Bitcoiners won because the number went up is beyond parody.

I skimmed most of it once I had an idea of where this was going, and 13000 words of tone policing is just insanity. "The EA guys are great because they use moderate language and Gerald cackled at how Scott Star Alex had his life ruined by the extremist non-moderates at the NYT."

subheading: A love story

opener: Note: I am closer to this story than to many of my others

@dgerard "congratulations" on your new stalker

Classics in the replies:

If you think wikipedia is bad see arstecnica chat. On covid immunity chat I respectfully said natural covid immunity as good got ad hominem reply. I cited ars policy against ad hominem. 5 min later moderator kicked me out for 2 weeks

Btw, I saw on Reddit how the people of r/wikipedia attacked you for being a nazi and supporting the "conspirational theory" of cultural marxism

Midwits at best

If I had fans like these, I'd like to think that I'd re-evaluate some life choices.

Who tf is this?

"How Batman Launders His Grudges Into the Public Record" by Penguin's Henchman #37, like dude, I spend way too much time sneering on yall and I've still never heard of mr Turdgrains or whatever.

In any case, whoever this is, @dgerard, you should start charging him rent for the priviledge of having you live in his head.

LOL he's gotten pissed

https://www.themotte.org/post/1070/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/227907?context=8#context

Holy fuck David, you really are living rent free in this SOB's head.

Quillette, Claire Lehmann’s longform magazine focused on science and cultural critique and the home of, among other things, the best-researched article I know of on gender differences in chess

I got as far as "he says crypto is bad but also didn't make any money in crypto!" before I couldn't go any farther. Up until that point the author was at least doing a pretty competent job of using negative space (i.e. not engaging with the specific issues of racism, cult of personality, etc.) and using sufficiently boring prose to avoid seeming completely insane.

from Twitter:

lol YouTube just served me an AI voiced 1:48:28 article solely dedicated to attacking @davidgerard on Wikipedia

EDIT: and:

These were all posted 4 hours ago on a variety of sites so I assume someone has a personal grudge

The list of diatribes about forum drama that are interesting and edifying for the outsider is not long, and this one is not on it.

I spoke with Anissimov

When I asked Yiannopolous and Bokhari for comment

Very good job on contacting the most neutral and dispassionate sources as well as both sides.

The Hill, Reason, Quillette, Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, journalist Cathy Young [links bolded]

Very careful use of links there, can't be linking anything with an edit by Gerard.

Wugapodes’ righteous fury

The large wikipedia screenshot is extremely unhinged, in a sea of what I presume are votes saying "Oppose. He cited NYT for this claim and an opinion is not a conflict of interest"