Want to wade into the sandy surf of the abyss? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)

Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

  • gerikson@awful.systemsEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    Guys, it’s a problem that GenPop thinks “AI” is useless, because that means they will deny the inevitable coming existence of the Evil Robot God and make it harder to stop it

    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/W2dTrfTsGtFiwG5hM/origins-and-dangers-of-future-ai-capability-denial

    The whole thing has to be read to be believed. But there are some fun nuggets:

    • saying that an evil robot god is coming is Rational. Doubting that is a conspiracy theory
    • slagging flat-earthers on LW is truly the pot calling the kettle black
    • “I can imagine a world where AI becomes extremely good at flipping burgers or driving cars well before it learns how to write software or detect cancer. In that case, I think it’s a lot harder to deny its achievements. But in our world, a lot of AI’s greatest achievements take context to understand, like protein folding or playing board games.” - yeah sure buddy all the pro board game players are quaking in their boots
    • rook@awful.systemsEnglish
      5·
      14 hours ago

      I can imagine a world where AI becomes extremely good at flipping burgers or driving cars well before it learns how to write software or […] protein folding or playing board games

      That’s because despite Moravec’s paradox being noted down in the 80s (y’know, the last ai winter) there’s still a certain kind of asshole who thinks that flipping burgers is an easy task performed by stupid people but playing go is somehow the height of human intellect, despite 40+ years of evidence to the contrary.

    • aio@awful.systemsEnglish
      4·
      16 hours ago

      Well, it is true that computer programs have far surpassed humans in board games. They are very well suited for it. It just has nothing to do with the hypothesized abilities of future “AI” as rationalists conceive them.

    • sansruse@awful.systemsEnglish
      8·
      20 hours ago

      i’m only at the beginning, but this already stuck out to me:

      It would be extremely bad if many people come to believe this: arguments about existential risk mostly rely on the assumption that AI is capable, so they fall flat for people who don’t agree with that. I think we should be emphasizing the core capability of AI more and talking about x-risks less.

      “Guys we need to pump this bubble Rational Stock Appreciation Trend more, the plebs are starting to think it’s all bullshit!!”