Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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.
Last week's thread
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
OK to start us off how about some Simulation Hypothesis crankery I found posted on ActivityPub: Do we live in a computer simulation? (Article), The second law of infodynamics and its implications for the simulated universe hypothesis (PDF)
Someone who's actually good at physics could do a better job of sneering at this than me, but I mean but look at this:
This feels like quackery but I can't find a goal...
There it is.
Edit: oh God it's worse than I thought
The web design almost makes me nostalgic for geocities fan pages. The citations that include himself ~10 times and the greatest hits of the last 50 years of physics, biology, and computer science, and Baudrillard of course. The journal of which this author is the lead editor and which includes the phrase "information as the fifth state of matter" in the scope description.
Oh God the deeper I dig the weirder it gets. Trying to confirm whether the Information Physics Institute is legit at all and found their list of members, one of whom listed their relevant expertise as "Writer, Roleplayer, Singer, Actor, Gamer". Another lists "Hyperspace and machine elves". One very honestly simply says "N/A"
I am not making this up.
The Gmail address also lends the whole thing an air of authority. Like, you've already paid for the domain, guys.
OK this membe list experience is just 👨🍳😗👌
Perfect. No notes.
the terrible tryfecta
Still a bit sad we are not doing nano anymore.
You see, nano is real now and boring
But things being real doesn't stop the cranks. See quantum.
Quantum superpredicting machines are not real, and that's what they're about. Nano- has lots of uninteresting bs like ultraefficient fluorescent things, but nanomachines are not and that was interesting to them (until they got bored)
Wait for AI and Crypto 2.0 to burn out, we'll get there
Sadly it seems the next one is gonna be Quantum.