FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
User ID: 1175
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2hr ago
Bahaha, that was great.
I swear to God I must have watched about an hour of these clips in the past week, and the video you linked features more dialogue from Adam than all the others combined.
But Scott's "thing" puzzles me because it appears that he press his own button most of the time.
He is, at least, self-aware enough to recognise this about himself.
I had my bad cancellation experience before “cancel culture” entered the national scene. But once it did, I found myself over-focusing on cancel culture stories, especially the most outrageous ones (“college students attack white yoga instructor for culturally appropriating ancient Indian practice!”) Looking back, I feel like the attractive aspect of this was bonding with other people who were outraged by the event, and getting to retell the story in a way that ended with “and everyone agreed the woke cancellation mob was in the wrong, and the students apologized to the yoga instructor, and she was reinstated and lived happily ever after.” Or, even if that didn’t happen, getting to retell it in a way that had moral clarity, where no reasonable person was on the side of the cancellers - even if things ended badly for the yoga instructor, I could tell it in a way that ended with “but she was clearly a misunderstood martyr, and this proves the rightness of the anti-woke cause.”
Everyone agrees we’re “addicted to outrage”. I find this phenomenon fascinating, and analogizing it to trauma addiction is the only way I’ve been able to make sense of it.
So suffice it to say I am triggered by social justice. Any mildly confrontational piece of feminist or social justice rhetoric sends me into a panic spiral. When I read the essay this post was based on, I got only about four hours of sleep that night because my mind was racing, trying to figure out whether I was going to get in trouble about it and whether anyone who supported it could hurt me and how I could defend myself against it.
Because my mind doesn’t just let me feel sad for a minute and then move on – no, that would be too easy. It gives me this massive compulsion to “defend myself” against any piece of social justice I see by writing really long and complete rebuttals. Which inevitably attract more social justice people wanting to debate me. And unfortunately, outrage addiction is a very real thing, and I find myself actively seeking out the most horrible social justice memes in order to be horrified by them.
(…also, telling me I’m not allowed to be triggered by my triggers is itself a trigger. Whoever designed the human mind was really kind of a jerk.)
I struggle against this all the time. H.L. Mencken writes “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.” Well, this is my temptation. It requires more willpower than anything else I do in my life – more willpower than it takes for me to get up in the morning and work a ten hour day – to resist the urge to just hoist the black flag and turn into a much less tolerant and compassionate version of Heartiste.
- Highlights from the Comments on Fetishes – an article that really annoyed me, in which he basically accuses any who isn't maximally trans-affirming of being "addicted" to arguing about gender (and he would know, because he's spent years fighting against a similar addiction and mostly winning).
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
14hr ago
I've never really been one for listening to podcasts, but I understand that the now-defunct Cum Town occupies a rarefied stature in the form. I recently stumbled across this YouTube channel where this guy takes short clips from the podcast and makes animations to accompany them, and I have been howling with laughter. A few favourites:
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I haven't, thanks for the recommendation. It's very peculiar how it waxes and wanes: some days I'm hobbling around like an old man, but today I don't feel so much as a twinge of stiffness.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
it was there but it didn't used to be consuming to Scott the way it was for EY.
Isn't that appropriate? ~10 years ago all this stuff was hypothetical. Now it's a technology that hundreds of millions of people use every day.
Not to mention that many of his Golden Age posts were quite explicitly about AI e.g. "Meditations on Moloch" concluded with an argument that superintelligence could be used to help our species finally escape the Molochian traps we've been enshrouded in as long as our species has existed.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
1d ago
I've had intermittent lower back pain for the last seven years. I found this video a few months ago and it was more helpful than any other suggestion I've tried. The exercises only take five-ten minutes to complete, but you do need to be consistent about it.
Scott's response... to be honest, it reminded me of point six here. The world Scott is in is small and homogenous
This is a fair point. Based on people's answers to questions like "does AI pose an existential threat to the human race?", you should not be able to predict their opinions about completely unrelated topics like polyamory, gender ideology and factory farming. But in practice, you can, and with remarkable accuracy.
If I pointed this out to anyone in this Bay Area bubble, they would scoff and say that believing 2+2=4 is heavily correlated with belief in gravity and natural selection: the reason we all have the same opinions about AI, polyamory and gender ideology is because smart people who believe one obviously true thing tend to believe in other obviously true things as well. We're the "reality-based community"!* (Feel free to make your own "rationalist"-themed lawn sign.)
The less charitable explanation is that the Bay Area has become an ideological echo chamber, and that this is bad. A lack of viewpoint diversity will probably hurt the AI doomer movement in the long run, in ways that ironically mirror what's going to happen to future LLMs. With so much content (text, images, videos, music) on the internet now being AI-generated, the next generation of LLMs will be heavily trained on content which is itself AI-generated, resulting in incestuous artefacts and mode collapse. Similarly, the opportunity for novel, creative solutions is massively curtailed if everyone is reading the same articles, donating to the same candidates, attending the same house parties and fucking (literally) the same people.**
Scott complains about the way Pinker characterises the AI doomers as a "cult" who recite the "catechism" of their creed. Comparing group X to a religion or a cult is indeed a cheap way to make that group seem ridiculous, and the fact that so many AI doomers have similar ideas and concerns could well be evidence of independent convergence as opposed to top-down indoctrination. But leaving AI aside – surely Scott would agree that for people in this space who live in the Bay Area, there is a catechism, right? There are opinions unrelated to AI that you're expected to hold, opinions you're expected not to hold, and expressing those in the latter group will land you in hot water. I'm not persuaded that a genuinely brilliant AI researcher with novel ideas about how to improve alignment (but unorthodox opinions about gender ideology, which he makes no effort to hide) would be welcome in the Bay Area, and I think that should be cause for concern for anyone who's worried about AI as an existential risk. If nothing else, it makes you seem unserious, in the same way that buying up seafront property makes people reasonably question how serious you are about rising sea levels. "AI IS GOING TO KILL US ALL, ANYONE WITH A MODICUM OF CODING SKILL SHOULD DROP EVERYTHING AND HELP OUT (those exclusively in favour of monogamous relationships need not apply)" is not a good look.
"What – just because AI will kill us all, we have to stop caring about shrimp welfare and throw our trans comrades under the bus?" Part of me wants to say yeschad.jpg. Another part of me says: look, you guys are the ones saying that any intelligent agent with a goal would organically converge on the sub-goal of self-preservation, natural selection be damned. You can't advocate for trans rights if you're dead. So either you don't really think AI will kill us all, or you'd better start holding your nose and tolerating the presence of talented, creative individuals with whom you disagree.
*I'm sure Scott found it suspicious that, in 2020, support for lockdowns was so heavily correlated with support for ignoring those lockdowns to attend BLM protests – but he finds the same phenomenon unremarkable when it afflicts his in-group. The speck in your brother's eye, the plank in yours etc.
**There was an article in the Washington Post where someone is quoted as saying "All of the Zoomers that work for me are bisexual, and all of them have long covid. I’ll believe long covid is real when someone who is not bisexual has it." I saw a post on Substack the other day which edited it to read "I'll believe AI poses a threat to the human race when someone who hasn't had sex with Aella says so."
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
This was probably the best post of Scott's that I've read so far this year. I don't know if that's testament to how good this post was, or how far he's fallen since his peak. I also don't even bother reading many of his new posts anymore. I'm also not a paid subscriber, so maybe the really good stuff is hidden behind the paywall.
I agree with Scott that many of Pinker's arguments as to why superintelligence will never happen seem rather facile, and often exhibit isolated demands for rigour.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
I did my first set of squats in several weeks yesterday evening, after doing something to my back and not wanting to be hobbling on my wedding day. I'm thinking I may need to invest in a snugger-fitting belt.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
What did your friends make of your missus (and vice versa)?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
2d ago
New Year's resolution check-in:
- Posted my twenty-second blog post on Sunday, a review of Silent Hill 2 expanded from this comment.
- Went to the gym three times last week (only cardio), and again last night. I can deadlift 1.82x my bodyweight, squat 1.33x and bench press 0.82x.
- Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?
It's a fair point. The iconography of horror movies is a goldmine for game developers, but that doesn't necessarily translate into frightening gameplay. The games I listed above were exclusively ones which made me feel scared (even if only intermittently), as opposed to fun games which were marketed as horror but which never induced feelings of fear or dread. The inaptly named F.E.A.R. is an entertaining shooter, but at no point while playing it did I feel scared, not even during the bits where it was aping The Ring. I haven't played Dead Space to completion, but don't remember finding it scary.
"Telltale's The Walking Dead" (especially the first season) was a masterpiece of story telling but didn't really feel like a horror game despite the classic literal and metaphorical monsters.
I know what you mean, but were the TV show and comic even horror? I was under the impression they were both more like post-apocalyptic dramas in a zombie setting.
The "Doom" games have you following demons to hell and back, but with such over-the-top action that the games hardly even suggest that you should fear the demons rather than vice-versa.
My understanding is that Doom 3 is the major exception to this, although I haven't played it.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
Books
Admittedly I don't read a lot of horror, but I'm curious about people's recommendations.
- HP Lovecraft: In particular "The Rats in the Walls", maybe the scariest short story I've ever read.
- The Shining: I read this as a child and remember enjoying it.
Films
I want to focus on lesser-known entries here. Alien, Psycho, The Thing, The Silence of the Lambs, The Exorcist etc. are established classics and need not be mentioned.
- Cure: One of the best psychological horror films I've ever seen. A bit of a slow-burn, but becomes unexpectedly terrifying at the halfway point.
- Perfect Blue: Terrifying, and perhaps even more topical now than it was on release.
- Kill List: A clever film that starts off like a crime thriller (in the vein of Danny Dyer, The Long Good Friday and so on) but modulates into something very different.
- The Descent: Perhaps the most purely frightening film ever to come out of the UK. Shame that the developing doomed characters scenes at the start are bad even by the standard of slasher films.
- Session 9: In my view, a sorely underrated psychological horror which benefits from being filmed in an actual abandoned mental asylum. The early-generation digital camerawork looks a bit cheap and the characters are kind of underwritten, but it's second to none as far as atmosphere goes.
- Obsession: You don't need me to tell you this movie is good, but of all the newly released films I saw this year (among them Die My Love, Hamnet and Late Fame) I still think it's the best.
- The Others: An old-fashioned ghost story that doesn't get enough love.
- Audition: I could see this landing in my top ten films of any kind. Not for the faint of heart.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
Video games
- Silent Hill 2 (original, not remake): As reviewed here. The undisputed masterpiece of psychological horror, not to mention perhaps the best story ever told in the medium.
- Resident Evil:
- Resident Evil REmake: The GameCube remake of the first game, later ported to Windows. Brilliant.
- Resident Evil 4: For GameCube, PS2 and just about every other console going. Changed the way third-person shooters would play for literally decades. So many quotable lines.
- Resident Evil 7: Successfully switched up the formula by moving to first-person. Wonderfully creepy and atmospheric.
- Manhunt: As reviewed here. A remarkable fusion of stealth and survival horror, from the people behind Grand Theft Auto.
- Alien Isolation: Successfully translates the vibe of the original 1979 film into a first-person stealth context. I knew from the first ten minutes of playing it that I would be coming back for more, and I wasn't wrong.
- SOMA: My wife and I started a playthrough of this last night (her first, my second). The best game set in an underwater base ever made except for that other one.
- Condemned: Criminal Origins: I used to play this once a year. Terrifying, with some of the most brutally realistic first-person melee combat I've ever seen.
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent: Finished it once, a long time ago, and remember enjoying it. Tempted to try The Bunker this year.
- Outlast: Terrifying, and spawned innumerable imitators.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
3d ago
As it's now Spooky Season '26, I wonder if you folks would be interested in sharing what your favourite works of horror media are. I'll get the ball rolling in the sub-threads below.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
Agreed, I was using "explain the difference between mean, median and mode" as a metonym for "have a basic understanding of fundamental statistical concepts".
I cannot believe how facile the basis for this claim is.
It's embarrassing that so many progressive journalists uncritically reported such an obviously spurious finding. But what really alarms me is that it wouldn't surprise me if the level of numerical or statistical aptitude among the journos at the NYT, the BBC etc. was so remedial that they literally wouldn't understand why this finding was spurious.
No one who is unable to define the differences between "mean", "median" and "mode" should be working as a journalist. (Okay, fine, you can be a film or literary critic. If you're reporting on the news, you need to understand stats. Your opinions should not be taken seriously if you don't.)
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
But the right has its own version of a USAID conspiracy theory: that closing USAID somehow killed leftism in South Africa.
Since USAID was shut down, seven countries in Latin America...
Was that meant to be South America?
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
4d ago
That's usually referred to as "self-harm", which is strictly synonymous, but "self-abuse" has a very different connotation.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
5d ago
About one-third of the way through The Story of the Lost Child.
FtttG
Gheobhaidh mé bás ar an gcnoc seo.
5d ago
So "gentleman" either means
- An adult male who was born into a gentry family.
- An adult male who comports himself as one would expect someone born into a gentry family would, regardless of whether he was born into a gentry family or not.
More or less?
There's a certain kind of American who calls himself "Irish" because he has a single Irish great-great-great-grandparent. He likes nothing more than donning a green scarf, drinking "Guinness"* on "St. Patty's Day" and greeting his friends with a cheery "Top o' the morning to ye!". Some Irish musicians have realised how potentially lucrative this demographic is, and started recording trad-infused folk music with lyrics about drinkin', fightin' and ridin' (delivered in a comically thick Irish brogue which bears no resemblance to the singer's actual speaking voice), intended to pop up in "Irish"-Americans' Spotify playlists alongside the Dropkick Murphys and other purveyors of plastic Paddyism. I find the tradslop produced by acts like The Scratch, Kingfishr and Amble uniformly execrable, and their whole approach rather cynical. I mean, there's a museum in Dublin whose entire marketing schtick is based on the idea that there's more to Irish people than whiskey and spuds, and they're so aggressive about it that it goes full circle and becomes full-blown oikophobic – and yet, listening to these bands sort of makes me feel how black Americans supposedly felt about Louis Armstrong appealing to white audiences by puttin' on and deliberately playing up negative black stereotypes.
Yesterday I discovered that this business model is so lucrative that even the bots are getting in on it. A colleague of mine showed me this very bawdy song which came up on her TikTok, and something about it seemed extremely off: the "fiddle" is clearly a synthesised instrument, it's billed as a "live" recording but sounds impossibly crisp and clear (and doesn't specify in what venue, or even city, it was performed in), no videos or photos of the band are anywhere to be found, and the artwork for the single is blatantly AI-generated (note that the word "the" appears twice at the top of the image, a howler I thought would have been stamped out a few generations of LLM ago – and what does "The Foxhole" have to do with anything?). There is no way this band actually exists.
People sometimes derisively refer to Irish trad as "diddly-eye" music. We've now reached the era of diddly-AI. If it puts The Scratch and co. out of business, I'll consider it a blessing.
*If it wasn't brewed with water from the Liffey, it's not Guinness.
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