this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
10 points (100.0% liked)

SneerClub

1183 readers
33 users here now

Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

See our twin at Reddit

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
blakestacey@awful.systems
dgerard@awful.systems
self@awful.systems
10
Vaccinations in Book/Article Form, Part II (awful.systems)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
NSFW 18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Its been a good minute since the last thread like this, and with the techno-fascist dystopia being unleashed through the Trump administration, it felt like the time was right to bring this back.

Anyways, this is mostly the same idea as before - find books (or articles) that come down upon the superficial TESCREAL version of cool things like a ton of scientific bricks.

Gonna start this thread off with a few random examples I've already found:

  • The questions ChatGPT shouldn’t answer (Elizabeth Lopatto) - Goes heavily into OpenAI's non-existent understanding of ethics, with a paragraph noting AI's links to LessWrong and effective altruism. (EDIT: Originally said "non-existent understanding of physics" - thanks to @blakestacey for catching that)

  • The Fake Nerd Boys of Silicon Valley (Lyta Gold) - A deep dive into Silicon Valley's fundamental misunderstanding of sci-fi. Not directly about TESCREAL, but still works wonders against it IMO.

  • "Main character syndrome" (Anna Gotlib) - Whilst primarily a critique of the titular phenomenon, it does also use longtermism/effective altruism as an example of such.

  • Questioning AI resource list - Exactly what it says on the tin.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

One area where I don't know of good recommendations is theoretical computer science. I am not sure what to suggest that would accessibly teach topics like algorithmic/Kolmogorov information theory without sliding downhill into "we can automate the scientific method" crankery. Or, perhaps, which teaches the relevant concepts clearly and solidly enough to make it obvious that LW use of them is crankery.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 2 points 3 days ago

Here is a comment by corbin with relevant recommendations:

Gödel makes everyone weep. For tears of joy, my top pick is still Doug Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, which is suitable for undergraduates. Another strong classic is Raymond Smullyan's To Mock a Mockingbird. Both of these dead-trees are worth it; I personally find myself cracking them open regularly for citations, quotes, and insights. For tears of frustration, the best way to fully understand the numerical machinery is Peter Smith's An Introduction to Gödel's Theorems, freely available online. These books are still receiving new editions, but any edition should suffice. If the goal is merely to ensure that the student can diagonalize, then the student can directly read Bill Lawvere's 1968 paper Diagonal arguments & Cartesian closed categories with undergraduate category theory, but in any case they should also read Noson Yanofsky's 2003 expository paper A universal approach to self-referential paradoxes, incompleteness & fixed points. The easiest options are at the beginning of the paragraph and the hardest ones are at the end; nonetheless any option will cover Cantor, Russell, Gödel, Turing, Tarski, and the essentials of diagonalization.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 3 points 5 months ago

On that note, I would recommend perusing Underwood Dudley's Mathematical Cranks, not so much for the details of any math topic like trisecting an angle, but for the tone and psychology of the crank letters.

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 3 points 1 week ago

An anti-recommendation from another thread:

Having now refreshed my vague memories of the Feynman Lectures on Computation, I wouldn't recommend them as a first introduction to Turing machines and the halting problem. They're overburdened with detail: You can tell that Feynman was gleeful over figuring out how to make a Turing machine that tests parentheses for balance, but for many readers, it'll get in the way of the point. Comparing his discussion of the halting problem to the one in The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, for example, the latter is cleaner without losing anything that a first encounter would need. Feynman's lecture is more like a lecture from the second week of a course, missing the first week.