Collectivist

joined 1 year ago
[–] Collectivist@awful.systems -4 points 1 month ago

Well naive bayesianism, as practiced by the rationalists. Bayesianism itself can be reformed to get rid of most its problems, though I've yet to see a good solution for the absent-minded driver problem.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 4 points 1 month ago

This is another example of the dangers of wealth inequality. A lot of EAs tried to start a youtube channel (e.g.), but the only one that could get funded was this one, the one promoting bitcoins and charter cities. Now this is the largest EA channel, attracting more of those types and signalling clearly that if you want to succeed in EA you gotta please the capitalist funders.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 3 points 2 months ago

I read the article, not a single mention of things like the research on stereotype threat in chess. I wish rationalists would crack open a sociology book at some point in their lives. They're so interested in social phenomena, but while Less Wrong has a tag for psychology (with 287 posts), history (245 posts), and economics (462 posts), they seem unwilling to look at sociology for explanations, with it not even having a tag on LW.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 21 points 3 months ago (3 children)

How do you find these things? How do you read these things? I'm starting to worry about your health David; such a continuous stream of highly concentrated horseshit can't be good for you.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This could be a sex thing or maybe they want young blood for their blood transfusions. Maybe they saw Marx's criticism that capitalists were akin to vampires, sucking the metaphorical blood out of the poor, and thought to themselves: he's right, we should take their literal blood too.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Some EAs have tried to make an "EA case" for cryonics, and I just want someone to comment on it: "But couldn't you safe many more people by using that money to buy malaria bednets, or vaccines, or almost anything else?"

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 6 points 6 months ago

Yeah, I didn't say he only makes those videos, just that he makes a lot of them

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 12 points 6 months ago (2 children)

This guy has like a billion videos that are just some variation of "Here's a tech bro startup making a gadgetbahn and here's why it wouldn't work and trains are a thousand times better". Great that it exists, but since these startups never learn from others' mistakes and thus keep making the same missteps over and over and over again, it makes the videos very samey after a while. Not sure what I would do in his position.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 0 points 6 months ago (3 children)

He wanted to be the foundation, but he was scaffolding

That's a good quote, did you come up with that? I for one would be ecstatic to be the scaffolding of a research field.

 

In his original post he said:

4: Related, breaking news: A popular Substack claims that COVID didn’t happen at all, and that both “lab leak” and “natural origins” are part of the higher-level conspiracy to distract people from the fact that there was never a virus in the first place.

He later edited the post to add:

I wonder if I could even more Substack likes if I one-upped them with a theory that lockdowns never even happened, and it was just one of those Berenstein Bear or Mandela Effect things where everyone has a false memory.

So now it's ironic, and therefore not harmful to spread the conspiracy theory to his large audience.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I have a tremendously large skull (like XXL hats) - maybe that's why I can still do some basic math after the testosterone brain poison during puberty? [...] Now I'm looking at tech billionaires. Mostly lo-T looking men. Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos were big & bald but seem to have pretty big skulls to compensate

Mark phrenology off your bingo cards, Foppington's law strikes again:

Once bigotry or self-loathing permeate a given community, it is only a matter of time before deep metaphysical significance is assigned to the shape of human skulls.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Wait they had Peter's arguments and sources before the debate? And they're blaming the format? Having your challenger's material before the debate, while they don't have yours is basically a guaranteed win. You have his material, take it with you to the debate and just prepare answers in advance so you don't lose $100K! Who gave these idiots a $100K?

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