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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 9th November 2025 (awful.systems)

submitted 2 days ago by BlueMonday1984@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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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.)

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[–] scruiser@awful.systems 4 points 15 hours ago

I couldn't even make it through this one, he just kept repeating himself with the most absurd parody strawman he could manage.

This isn't the only obnoxiously heavy handed "parable" he's written recently: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dHLdf8SB8oW5L27gg/on-fleshling-safety-a-debate-by-klurl-and-trapaucius

Even the lesswronger's are kind of questioning the point:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dHLdf8SB8oW5L27gg/on-fleshling-safety-a-debate-by-klurl-and-trapaucius?commentId=BhePfCvbGaNauDqfz

I enjoyed this, but don't think there are many people left who can be convinced by Ayn-Rand length explanatory dialogues in a science-fiction guise who aren't already on board with the argument.

A dialogue that references Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, no less. But honestly Lem was a lot more terse and concise in making his points. I agree this is probably not very relevant to any discourse at this point (especially here on LW, where everyone would be familiar with the arguments anyway).

And: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3q8uu2k6AfaLAupvL/the-tale-of-the-top-tier-intellect?commentId=oHdfZkiKKffqSbTya

Reading this felt like watching someone kick a dead horse for 30 straight minutes, except at the 21st minute the guy forgets for a second that he needs to kick the horse, turns to the camera and makes a couple really good jokes. (The bit where they try and fail to change the topic reminded me of the "who reads this stuff" bit in HPMOR, one of the finest bits you ever wrote in my opinion.) Then the guy remembers himself, resumes kicking the horse and it continues in that manner until the end.

Who does he think he's convincing? Numerous skeptical lesswrong posts have described why general intelligence is not like chess-playing and world-conquering/optimizing is not like a chess game. Even among his core audience this parable isn't convincing. But instead he's stuck on repeating poor analogies (and getting details wrong about the thing he is using for analogies, he messed up some details about chess playing!).