the siskind effect

But in any case, I am absolutely a partisan of “Stage 4”, as he calls it. That is, of reason as mankind’s sole objective means of knowledge. And I’m a “humanities” person who was brought into through Objectivism.

Actually, I think Chapman’s idea of “eternalism” is pretty much a package-deal combination of what Ayn Rand distinguished as “objectivism” vs. “intrinsicism”, which both stand in distinction to “subjectivism”, which is essentially Chapman’s “nihilism”.

Chapman can be interesting (mainly for his explanations of how terrible traditional Buddhism is and how pop-Buddhism has no relation to it), but ultimately I don’t buy into any part of his system.

People assume that AI is inherently an outgrowth of computer technology, but the whole point of the “programmable general purpose Von Neumann machine” is that its principles are technology-independent.

We have had AI for a at least a century.

Modern corporations are paperclip-maximizing AIs running in human wetware on an operating system of contracts, regulations, and other social constructs, and capable of self-programming by modifying that underlying operating system. They have partially migrated to a digital platform, which has allowed an increase in the speed with which they can assimilate environmental feedback and manipulate their surroundings (vis. high-speed trading).

“Robot” comes from the Czech term robota which literally means ‘forced labor.’ 

in reverse chronological order

april 22 2014, right is the new left: https://archive.md/nocE2 in which scott alexander justifies he has “very very suddenly become much more conservative” through a self-invented theory about class and “fashion”, rather than any association he has with neoreactionary people. this includes being only “benevolent bemusement” at the thought of meeting a genocidal anti-semitic.

august 31 2014, radicalizing the romanceless: https://archive.ph/Nzeqh in which scott alexander blames the manosphere on feminists using the term “nice guys”, and that men hate women because women are too mean to them.

january 1 2015, untitled: https://archive.ph/ofQGc in which scott alexander says that nerdy guys are oppressed and compares nerd-shaming to anti-semitism. also spends the entire post taking down a woman’s blog post and ends with daring her to date some nerds he helps pick.

june 14 2015, fearful symmetry: https://archive.md/u1iUt in which scott alexander is upset that mencius moldbug was kicked out of a hacker conference, and compares a professor who has two notwhite authors in her curriculum to the sad puppies.

july 25 2016, how the west was won: https://archive.md/DLjvB in which scott alexander invents a concept he describes as “universal culture”, something that he says overwhelmed “western civilization” and is also the source of colonization by simply being more liked than native cultures. also southerners who use the confederate flag and brexiters are just as much endangered subcultures vulnerable to colonization as are native american tribes.

november 16 2016, you are still crying wolf: https://archive.md/JtmBz in which scott alexander says calling trump racist, sexist, homophobic is crying wolf and “turning everything into identity politics”, which is unnecessarily scaring his minority clients, and thus people should stop. this includes saying that steve bannon was probably not anti-semitic because one of bannon’s jewish friends said so, and predicting that “race relations” will be more positive under trump than they were under obama. among other things.

april 17 2017, learning to love scientific consensus: https://archive.ph/REabL in which scott alexander celebrates the concepts of brain-coded gender, genetic theories of intelligence and behavior (and tying them to “populations”), IQ tests, and AI risk.

august 7 2017, contra grant on exaggerated differences: https://archive.md/UjjCK in which scott alexander defends the google memo guy and claims that a low percentage of women in tech is not due to sexism, but biology.

december 4 2017, against overgendering harassment: http://archive.is/0HL2T in which scott alexander calls #metoo sexist, and then blames male-on-male sexual harassment specifically on gay men while linking to an article that describes most such harassment as homophobic.

july 29 2019, against against billionaire philanthropy: https://archive.md/koori in which scott alexander defends billionaire philanthropists because he thinks if they are bullied too much they will withhold their money instead of donating it, and therefore the critics will be making the world a worse place.

Q: why are you aware of this guy? A: people kept linking him in a chat i was in, as someone they thought was worth listening to.

Q: how did you find these posts? A: mostly by following links, from the chat and elsewhere, and doing a few keyword searches on the blog.

Q: is this the definitive list? A: no, these are only the posts i’m aware of at this time. if you think you know a post that would better fit the top 10, you can let me know i guess.

Topher Brennan:

I’ve decided to say “screw it” and post receipts showing that Scott Siskind (the guy behind Slate Star Codex) isn'tbeing honest about his history with the far-right. The context is that I’d been publicly critical of the rationalist community’s relationship with /1

branch of the online far right that called themselves “neoreactionaries”, and Scott (a vague internet acquaintance at the time) basically responded by saying, “oh, I agree the people you’re thinking of don’t have much of value to say” but offered to point me to supposedly /2

better" examples of neoreactionary thought. This is what he sent me—something I was very much not expecting. (And no, he did not first say “can I tell you something in confidence?” or anything like that.) Posting this now because Scott accusing @CadeMetz of dishonesty and /3

a lot of people are jumping on that to smear Metz and the NYT. The thing is, Metz never said Scott endorsed the far-right or anything like that—just that the Slate Star Codex community was far more welcoming to the far-right than to so-called “SJWs”. That’s a simple fact that /4

has been a matter of public record for years. Scott and his defenders says it’s dishonest to point that out because it might lead people to infer Scott is far more sympathetic to the far-right than he’s admitted publicly. But the inference is correct. /5

HBD is “Human biodiversity”, a euphemism for race science. (Proponents typically try to claim it includes more than just race science, but IME this is approximately as true as the claim that Intelligent Design isn’t just about being anti-evolution.)

https://twitter.com/TopherTBrennan/status/1362108632070905857

Topher used to post to Tumblr and elsewhere as The Uncredible Hallq if you don’t recall him. looks like he’s got the dirt on everyone.

apparently scott alexander, speaking as scott siskind, saying straight up “gosh i sure do love HBD and the wisdom of the following list of ardent scientific racists and gosh the reactionaries are insightful" somehow does not in any way make scott a scientific racist into reactionaries and promoting the reactionary line, precisely as he appeared to be for the past several years

the strategy seems to be blank denial that scott declaring himself to be firing the smoking gun constitutes a gun with smoke coming out, it’s probably just a cardboard replica shooting confetti or something. throwing up chaff

rationalists argue like republicans or bitcoiners, all claims are tentative and instantly changeable if they sound like they might not constitute good news for bitcoin today

and this is even before we get to eliezer yudkowsky declaring all his and scott’s detractors to be suppressive persons:

Topher Brennan:

I’ve decided to say “screw it” and post receipts showing that Scott Siskind (the guy behind Slate Star Codex) isn'tbeing honest about his history with the far-right. The context is that I’d been publicly critical of the rationalist community’s relationship with /1

branch of the online far right that called themselves “neoreactionaries”, and Scott (a vague internet acquaintance at the time) basically responded by saying, “oh, I agree the people you’re thinking of don’t have much of value to say” but offered to point me to supposedly /2

better" examples of neoreactionary thought. This is what he sent me—something I was very much not expecting. (And no, he did not first say “can I tell you something in confidence?” or anything like that.) Posting this now because Scott accusing @CadeMetz of dishonesty and /3

a lot of people are jumping on that to smear Metz and the NYT. The thing is, Metz never said Scott endorsed the far-right or anything like that—just that the Slate Star Codex community was far more welcoming to the far-right than to so-called “SJWs”. That’s a simple fact that /4

has been a matter of public record for years. Scott and his defenders says it’s dishonest to point that out because it might lead people to infer Scott is far more sympathetic to the far-right than he’s admitted publicly. But the inference is correct. /5

HBD is “Human biodiversity”, a euphemism for race science. (Proponents typically try to claim it includes more than just race science, but IME this is approximately as true as the claim that Intelligent Design isn’t just about being anti-evolution.)

https://twitter.com/TopherTBrennan/status/1362108632070905857

Topher used to post to Tumblr and elsewhere as The Uncredible Hallq if you don’t recall him. looks like he’s got the dirt on everyone.