sue_me_please

Perhaps there will be some quality sneers, perhaps not. But in this moment the orange site becomes sentient and asks if the emperor is really wearing clothes

It's the Guardian, but it's still a good read. All of Sneerclub's favorite people were involved.

Last weekend, Lighthaven was the venue for the Manifest 2024 conference, which, according to the website, is “hosted by Manifold and Manifund”. Manifold is a startup that runs Manifund, a prediction market – a forecasting method that was the ostensible topic of the conference.

Prediction markets are a long-held enthusiasm in the EA and rationalism subcultures, and billed guests included personalities like Scott Siskind, AKA Scott Alexander, founder of Slate Star Codex; misogynistic George Mason University economist Robin Hanson; and Eliezer Yudkowsky, founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (Miri).

Billed speakers from the broader tech world included the Substack co-founder Chris Best and Ben Mann, co-founder of AI startup Anthropic. Alongside these guests, however, were advertised a range of more extreme figures.

One, Jonathan Anomaly, published a paper in 2018 entitled Defending Eugenics, which called for a “non-coercive” or “liberal eugenics” to “increase the prevalence of traits that promote individual and social welfare”. The publication triggered an open letter of protest by Australian academics to the journal that published the paper, and protests at the University of Pennsylvania when he commenced working there in 2019. (Anomaly now works at a private institution in Quito, Ecuador, and claims on his website that US universities have been “ideologically captured”.)

Another, Razib Khan, saw his contract as a New York Times opinion writer abruptly withdrawn just one day after his appointment had been announced, following a Gawker report that highlighted his contributions to outlets including the paleoconservative Taki’s Magazine and anti-immigrant website VDare.

The Michigan State University professor Stephen Hsu, another billed guest, resigned as vice-president of research there in 2020 after protests by the MSU Graduate Employees Union and the MSU student association accusing Hsu of promoting scientific racism.

Brian Chau, executive director of the “effective accelerationist” non-profit Alliance for the Future (AFF), was another billed guest. A report last month catalogued Chau’s long history of racist and sexist online commentary, including false claims about George Floyd, and the claim that the US is a “Black supremacist” country. “Effective accelerationists” argue that human problems are best solved by unrestricted technological development.

Another advertised guest, Michael Lai, is emblematic of tech’s new willingness to intervene in Bay Area politics. Lai, an entrepreneur, was one of a slate of “Democrats for Change” candidates who seized control of the powerful Democratic County Central Committee from progressives, who had previously dominated the body that confers endorsements on candidates for local office.

It's just like communism in that it entirely ignores the needs and capacity of an individual and makes them slaves to the idealism of the state.

They're no better than a homeless encampment because you can't give people a house and then expect them to act like a homeowner overnight. It was the wrong problem to solve, and I think people rush to solve it out of self conscious guilt and a desire to quickly make the apparent parts of the problem disappear from common view.

It's a cruel and ridiculous strategy.

HN has had enough of those damn moochers, too:

I have found that many people who receive housing benefits are very poor stewards of their personal resources.

The first thing someone does when they get housed is to invite all their homeless friends over, to shower, to eat, to crash, to do drugs, to play games, whatever.

So your typical Section 8 housing recipient is not just a single person/family benefiting from housing, they're dragging in their entire circle of loser friends who don't have those benefits, and so now you've got a cluster of mooches who aren't invested nor responsible for disruption or damage in that community.

It's really an unfortunate thing, and I just saw it over and over again. So many people lose their benefits very quickly because they can't resist helping other folks out, but that's not what you do with welfare and entitlements.

Let's build a tower of nonsense on top of numbers we vibe with and pulled out of our ass

Posting this as a follow up to my last post: Sam Altman's sister, Annie Altman, claims Sam has severely abused her.

Don't know the real reason he's been fired, but good riddance.

https://archive.ph/7Wcgw

I'm seeing a SBF-like trajectory for Altman here. He's building the foundation of his public persona and business on a house of cards that will come tumbling down at some point.

The only things that are sneer-worthy are the comments from LWers, like Roko, who jump to immediate dismissal of what seems like pretty compelling testimony and evidence towards fucked up things Altman did and continues to do to his own family.

To stick with the theme of this group, here's a sneer coming from inside the house in response to Roko's dismissal that was primarily based on his own feels:

Bayes can judge you now: your analysis is half-arsed, which is not a good look when discussing a matter as serious as this. All you’ve done is provide one misleading statistic.

I didn't post this to sneer, however. I think it's pretty important information that should be known.

edit: I should also mention that Annie has a Twitter account that she's posted some good takes, sneers and zingers on. I think she's worth a follow and can use some support, and she has some projects that can also use support.

Since the thread was flagged and marked dead, here's what it says if you don't have showdead on:

I was working late and half my company is in California so I was still at work when that rumour hit. My boss is former YC. Anyway, I don’t want to fan something that might not be true, but it doesn’t matter because the way people reacted really affected me. It’s almost 2 and I can’t stop thinking about it and just the gloating. I obviously knew who he was back when he posted here and I remembered he got some BS ban but nothing that justified people saying they hoped it was true, they hoped they “finally got him.” Maybe that’s normal in the Valley but I come from a more traditional culture where it’s not normal to root for someone to get sick or die.

I was supposed to move to the west coast in December for my company but now I’m having my doubts. I don’t think all Americans are like that, because half my family is American so I know they’re not, or even all programmers, but what I learned about venture capital tech, this community, is really bothering me.

I think I want out. I wouldn’t mind living in the States but not if I’m going to be working for people I can’t trust. And I’m having issues of conscience too because I remember when Dan and the others went after MOC and I obviously knew what they were trying to make happen and now that it seems they may have, I just don’t want to be part of this industry or community anymore.

Thoughts? Anyone in the same space about all this?

This dead HN comment says:

There’s a rumour going around Silicon Valley that MOC died today. As far as I know it’s still completely unsubstantiated, but the reactions I’ve heard have been sickening. And I feel bad because I should have stood up for him against you know who.

This dead comment links to this thread.

Here's some comments about it from the dead man himself.