Jane Street has an interesting cachet in at least my nerd circles because they require everyone they hire to learn Ocaml[1]. It would not surprise me if they are fash-adjacent, but only because I believe everyone in Wall Street is fash-adjacent.
[1] I think - maybe it’s only the technical staff
Schrödinger’s essay except the cat is always dead
Does it matter, though?
This was a great essay.
He wanted Nazi Germany with Milton Friedman, he’ll get Argentina without a USA to bail it out.
I particularly agree with the point about the style being much more science-y than I’d expected, in a way that surely filters out large swathes of people. I’m assuming “people who are completely clueless about science and are unable to follow technical arguments” are just not the target audience. To crudely oversimplify, I think the target audience is 120+ IQ people, not 100 IQ people.
I haven’t read the damn book and I never will, but I have a hard time imagining there’s any modern science that can’t be explained to 100IQ smoothbrains, assuming the author is good enough.
deep down they realize that as soon as the machines become superintelligent they’ll realize how fucked up humans are and decide it’s a net postive to delete us
I think it’s a very “edgy teenager” thing to say, regardless of what cultural or political tribe this mental teenager pledges allegiance to.
JFC man, stop digging
An update, a Concerned Citizen furrows their brow and Has Questions on how this was handled, about a week later
https://lobste.rs/s/zoirhl/appealing_ban_user_friendlysock
A predictable shitshow erupts, which leads to the creator of Anubis quitting the site, along with a few others.
At least I get more entries in my “lobste.rs assholes” list.
Worth noting is this text from the mod (https://lobste.rs/s/zoirhl/appealing_ban_user_friendlysock#c_6prapm)
This pattern was that every couple years there’d be a long string of cruel, dismissive, or discouraging comments. Not necessarily wrong, not outright abusive, not spam, not any one over the line, but all of them… just endless “ugh, this guy again?” and other users, more or less quietly, leaving rather than deal with it. This final comment called out in the modlog is one more example. The entire goal of the rhetoric is that it’s not explicit, it’s not outright libelous, it doesn’t even take personal responsibility for holding the opinion of the smear it insinuates. It’s deniable out of context, whether the missing context is the author’s writing history or the missing context is the old bigotry that trans people are pedophiles.
I’m not missing that context. The only thing I’m missing is the charity to think that somehow this time it’s different, that after a decade, this time it will the last time would be the last time I have to explain that this is a community where everybody’s going to be treated with some basic dignity. The other mods suggested the idea of a public apology but that didn’t work out, and absent a persuasive reason to expect this pattern wouldn’t continue, this ban stands.
yeah sorry I had the username (“friendlysock”) in a first draft then forgot to add it
good riddance to bad rubbish
tbf being able to write thousand word long blog posts and using phrases like “good and important” is part of his job description
lobste.rs just banned an 11 year old account with almost 5,000 comments and 45k karma for being a transphobic jerk. No muss, no fuss, no apologetic blogpost where the user could defend themselves and rile up the masses.
That’s how you do it, people.
edit I have now skimmed the comments where banned use Said can explain himself, and he’s using his last efforts to nobly defend himself, thanking his admirers, and generally projecting an image of a man wrongly accused.
j/k he’s doubling down on being a dick.
Funniest are all the commenters loudly complaining about this decision and threatening/promising to delete their accounts.
Those examples are the Ingroup. We are the Outgroup.
We live in an era of unprecedented passport checks, visa quotas, and detention centers, a world that regulates human movement more tightly than at any other point in history.
Uh… internal passports anyone?
Rest of post is ok.
Granted, I played a bit fast and loose with the term ancient. “Long-running” is better.
This is in the running for most LW comment ever.
We Lutherans have confirmation too, I’ll have you know![1]
Here in heathen People’s Socialist Kingdom of Sweden it’s mostly an occasion to awkwardly flirt with the appropriate sex on church away camps and get a lot of presents. But I was quite impressed by my nieces’, organized by a very woke archbishopric. Another neice got to go to Assizi!
[1] I’m confirmed but very much lapsed