this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
29 points (100.0% liked)

TechTakes

2327 readers
46 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Want to wade into the snowy 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.

(December's finally arrived, and the run-up to Christmas has begun. Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Guy does a terrible job explaining literally anything. Why, when trying to explain all the SA based drama, does he choose to create an analogy where the former employee is heavily implied to have murdered his wife?

S/o to cinnaverses for mixing it up in there.

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Damn, I missed this and now the comment is deleted. Do you happen to remember what he said?

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I believe he was trying to explain why it looked like MIRI had paid money out to an alleged sexual abuser. The analogy was constructed something like this:

  1. A and B work at a company C
  2. A has conflict with B.
  3. C decides to fire B.
  4. unrelated to 1, 2, or 3, B has a wife D, who dies in mysterious circumstances, leading A to strongly believe that B killed D.
  5. The police, E, perform an investigation and decide not to pursue a case against B
  6. C pays out B's severance, unrelated to 2, 4, or 5.

Don't blame me or how I remembered this if this doesn't make sense.

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Additionally he said something to the effect of I don't blame you for not knowing this, it wasn't effectively communicated to the media like it's no big deal, which isn't really helping to beat the allegations of don't ask don't tell policies about SA in rat related orgs.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 2 points 1 day ago

Can confirm. This was like if the pope walked into an r/atheism meetup and showed his texts saying "dw bro, I'll just move you to a different diocese, btw this totally isn't about the allegations wink wink"

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Nah, salary stuff is private", starting to think this sort of stuff is an idea introduced to protect capital and nobody else.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I was teasing this out in my head to try come up with a good sneer. First thought: for an organisation that tries to appeal to EAs, you’d think that they would do a good job of being transparent about why so much money is being spent on someone with such low output. But immediate rebuttal: the whole point of the TESCREAL cult shit is that yud get free tuocs because he’s the chosen one to solve alignment.

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 5 points 1 week ago

Was thinking more about how the radical, dont fall to biasses think for yourself and cone here to really learn to think (so we can stop the paperclipmachine and resurrect the dead) defend a half million dollars salary with a 'thats private'.

But that is the same conclusion. The prophet must be protected.

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Cinnas

The Rolling Stone article is a bit odd (it appears to tell the story of the ex-employee who created Miricult twice, the first time without names and the second naming the accuser) but I trust them that MIRI did pay the accuser. Rolling Stone are a serious news organization which can be sued.

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I think Rolling Stone was worried about getting sued and omitted Helm's name in the first draft (or something like that).

I know who the alleged victim was, and I think there probably was a crime and blackmail payments but the alleged victim didn't want to come forward for a number of reasons (among other things, he's still part of the rationalist community and has faced a lot of harassment from the public after an unrelated newspaper article outed him as being trans). I'd also point out that the only person that miricult directly accused of statutory rape was one of Yudkowsky's employees rather than Yudkowsky himself. That being said, the journalist who wrote the Rolling Stone article claims she got a copy of the police report Helm filed and only Yudkowsky was named.

Even if miricult was total bullshit I'm confident that the alleged victim was lying about not being exploited by other rationalists; a few years later he and a couple of other people posted accounts of being sexually abused by a rationalist (unrelated to miricult) and it led to the abuser being ostracized from the rationalist community.

Anyways I know a lot more about this but I'd rather not discuss the details on a publicly viewable forum to protect the privacy of the people involved.

[–] CinnasVerses@awful.systems 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I agree that its gross to discuss a lot of this in public, and that underage sex is often an ethical grey area. I had no idea that the person who accused BD of pushing him into substance use and extreme BDSM scenarios is also the person who allegedly had sex underage with a MIRI staffer while living in a Rationalist group home.

[–] GorillasAreForEating@awful.systems 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Ziz's blog had posts that revealed his identity and mentioned some of the BD stuff, once I found them it was just a matter of putting two and two together, so to speak