ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
16hr ago
How have you been doing @Southkraut?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
16hr ago
Finally back on my feet!
Most of the incremental changes I was talking about in the past weeks were about crawling websites. I suppose it makes sense, but I was surprised how many anti-bot measures there are, and then even more surprised how many of them you can make go away, if you just say "bro, I'm just using CURL, can you please let me something about your website".
Last week I was working on navigating through Twitter, so loading older tweets from a profile, and loading replies to a selected Tweet. Went pretty smooth and I think I should be able to start working on the UI soon, which is when I'll finally be able to show something off.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
18hr ago
The bantu populations were already in South Africa, just not in the western half.
"Just"? If you paste South Africa into Europe it stretches from Estonia to the western border of Germany and Austria
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
21hr ago
This is just about recognizing the distinctions between different ideologies that are in fact distinct. It’s not about anything else.
If it makes it any better, I'll grant that the way Hlynka himself was phrasing his thesis wasn't quite bulletproof, but what Hlynkaists try to argue is that he's not crazy, and is pointing at something real. I get that the idea that the KKK is in thrall to Rousseau might be a bit of a tall order, but I think it's possible to argue (and that others have already made good arguments to that effect), that they and the Woke both an identifiable root cause pinnable to the Enlightenment or thereabouts.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
An absolute masterpiece. Watch it, if you didn't.
Greer packages it more carefully, reminding his readership that the tatted-up MMA guy podcast-ranting about 5G giving him cancer is not a historical part of the Right; the Right needn't tribalistically defend his antisocial behavior.
We apparently graduated from "you guys are a bunch of dum-dums that need to be led by elite human capital", and moved on to "you guys are the elite human capital, why don't you cut loose the dum-dums?". Much like with other entries in the genre of "advice for my enemies", I'll have to ask you to go first.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
The more fringe right-wingers commonly dunk on this sort of lifestyle conservatism, noting that it poses a natural limit to how far they can go
It's not about how far you can go, it's about where you can go. Another common criticism - "progressives driving the speed limit" - implies they'll take you to the exact same place, just slower.
I'd also say the target of the fringe's ire aren't the normies themselves, as much as the establishment leading them.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Sorry, I mostly missed this conversation, so I have nothing to add beyond what FC, and Dean already said, I just want to say that:
This is concerning
Good. I've been mumbling about the utter failure of the Rationalist movement for a while, and as the others I'm pretty sure it extends to the entirety of the Enlightenment, including it's right-wing parts. Between @FCfromSSC's heroic efforts, @hydroacetylene, @Dean, and @ControlsFreak doing their part, it only warms my hear that more and more people are picking up the mantle of Hlynkaism, and that it's getting big enough to concern you.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Embezzling funds sounds like something that should be relatively easy to tell if someone did it, or is being railroaded, so I'll wait for the opinion of our local Frenchmen (I think we have at least one), before forming mine.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
Yeah, I'll +1 on this. Permabans seem unnecessary, and even stranger in light of the old "a permaban is no more than 1 year long, ackshully" rule, that we used to have, but dispensed with for some reason.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
I was surprised ymeshkout is even a mod. You can see how active he was after the move offsite here. And the post you linked to (without context, for some reason) is in response of a mod who declared said activity to be harrasment in the first place!
Because that comment never came up in the discussion.
Neither did the ones you linked to, that's not an excuse.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
Unofficially it looks like he may have been banned for breaking with the rationalist consensus on race and IQ. A week before he got banned he alluded to having been threatened with a ban if he didn't "bend the knee"
Yeah, because all the moderators are massive HBDers, to the point they won't tolerate dissent. I like a good conspiracy theory, but come up with one that makes some sense.
Also, why don't you link the post that actually got him banned?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
It's funny how the right played right into this.
What do you mean? Studios have been blaming istophobic comments from muh toxic fandom, regardless of how people were actually behaving for the better part of the decade now.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
I definitely would have campaigned on his behalf if I was here
I'm not sure if there was much to campaign for. As much as I wish he was still around, he basically pulled a suicide by cop.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
The thing is, if they really believed this, than the motte is all that there should be. No one outside of a DSD condition should even be considered for a gender dysphoria diagnosis. Like I said in the other comment, I don't think even truscum would let that fly.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
Medicine is hard, and answers to important medical questions can't fit in the length of a tweet. I have a phd in machine learning, so I'm confident I could form an opinion on your questions if I tried really hard and read a bunch of papers and thought about the problem for a week. But I don't care to do that, and so at some point I have to trust other people's judgements.
Well, we might run into a problem here, because I don't care much for credentials, but I respect a sincerely held belief. If you don't really want to put your name on the argument for puberty blockers, just poke holes in the arguments against them (but never, ever, for them), I don't know how far we're gonna get, but let's give it a go.
Part of the parachute study's point is that RCTs are not enough! And you are placing too much faith in RCTs! It's very easy to design a RCT that "looks good from the outside" but has a fatal flaw that makes it not applicable to the real world.
Right, but are you going to tell me that the absence of randomization in controls is going to make the exact same study better? Like, I get that RCT might not be the be-all end-all, or that in some context might not be practically achievable, but you can't beat down any and all skepticism with "the science is settled, chud" type arguments (which is exactly what was happening in the case of transgender care for many years, even if you weren't doing it personally), and retreat to "ho hum, it's so nuanced" when people point out the poor quality of your studies.
I keep linking to that old blogpost about prescribing Lupron to autists, because I never got a good answer for it. Somehow it was clear as day that it's quack medicine back in 2006, and only hardcore libertarians ever dreamt of arguing that maybe we should let people try it if they want, but now doctors are prescribing the same drug to the children of often unwilling parents, with absolutely no evidence (by their own admission), and we're supposed to just roll with it?
No matter what the methods are of an experiment, you can't get around having to sit down carefully and examine all of the assumptions.
I'm happy to, and I believe that if you do that, the entire edifice falls apart. Not just puberty blockers, but the entire concept of "gender dysphoria" as a diagnosis.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
You're overstating the importance of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in medical research.
So does this mean Ivermectin was actually great, and all the critics were Ivermectinophobes? Or do we, in fact, have some ways to judge the quality of studies, and know for a fact that the absence of certain design features tends to mean a study's finding will tend to be overturned, if done properly?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
Sure, some of them made grumbling noises over Palestine, all of them were 100% all-in for Biden in 2020, and most of them were still dutifully campaigning for the Democrats in 2024.
Correct, still didin't look if I'll find the reviews (and am leaning pessimistic, I'm guessing Alabama's AG who wrote that document would already have them, if they were uncoverable). Sorry if there was any confusion.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
Good news, with your attitude, you are not alone.
Sure, because this includes most people. Pretty sure it even includes you (I dunno, would you teach your children to be transphobic if someone came up with some galaxy-brained study that it adds a few QALYs to their life?).
Of course, if you want to convince the grey tribe specifically, just stating that obviously blood is sacred or puberty blockers are evil.
Funnily enough, it's the pro trans side that fits better with the groups you mentioned. They have - by their own admission - no evidence that puberty blockers improve the outcomes for children / adolescents.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
I think that there are plenty of medical interventions which can not be opted out after the fact.
Sure. No one is saying you cannot do irreversible medical procedures, just that their effects have to be justified by the effects on the patient's health, and that the patient has to be aware of their irreversibility, and the effects. None of these conditions are met for puberty blockers. Their use was so far justified by their supposed reversibility, and sold as "buying time to think".
Generally, it is fine to study such interventions -- even randomized -- if you keep within the overton window of standard practices or have good reason to believe that your treatment will lead to a better outcome for patients.
I don't think "overton window" is a valid argument, it just means a bunch of people agreed it's a good idea. In my opinion they should have good reasons to think something is a good idea, so that leaves us only with the last criterion you cited, which currently is unfulfilled.
In a world where the blockers exist, a doctor who withholds them is taking the responsibility for letting puberty happen -- just as a doctor who withholds antibiotics to let an infection kill a MAID patient is not very different from one who uses barbiturates instead.
The difference here is that in the case of an infection, you're dealing with an unhealthy body, one that is veritably under assault by foreign organisms. In the case of puberty blockers you're intervening in a perfectly healthy body, hoping to achieve purely psychological benefits. I don't think we do that very often in medicine, especially for minors.
Both puberty blockers and puberty have failure modes such as suicides.
I don't think puberty causes suicide, and I'm pretty sure neither do puberty blockers for that matter.
If and when they can be used to gain QALYs is an empirical question
It was in this case as well, but somehow the doctor had his license suspended. None of the defenders of trans medicine were bothered, some even actively campaigned for it.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
I don't think even the truscum believe the issue is with the endocrine system, genitals, or the organs constituting secondary sex characteristics. Maybe they'd go for brain differences or something.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
No one, and I mean absolutely no one, among trans activists believes there is an underlying issue with a trans person's endocrine system, genitals, or breasts. If for no other reason, then because it could be used for diagnosis and gatekeeping.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5d ago
the sort of animal rights extremist who breaks into a politician's home would consider them contemptible sell-outs.
Sure, in the same way American leftists consider the Democrats sell-outs, and then dutifully campaign for them.
I don't follow the AI developments terribly closely, and I'm probably missing a few IQ points to be able to read all the latest papers on the subjects like Dase does, so I could be misremembering / misunderstanding something, but from what I heard capital 'R' Rationalism has had very little to do with it, beyond maybe inspiring some of the actual researchers and business leaders.
Yud had a whole institute devoted to studying AI, and he came up with nothing practical. From what I heard, the way the current batch of AIs work has nothing to do it with what he was predicting, he just went "ah yes, this is exactly what I've been talking about all these years" after the fact.
As for building god, I think I heard that story before, and I believe it's proper ending involves striking the GPU cluster with a warhammer, followed by several strikes with a shortsword. Memes aside, it's a horrible idea, and if it's successful it will inevitably be used to enslave us.
In any case when I bring up rationalism's failure, I usually mean it's broader promises of transcending tribalism, systematized winning, raising the sanity waterline, and making sense of the world. In all of these, it has failed utterly.
It makes sense, because my feelings toward rationalism and transhumanism are quite similar. Irreconcilable value differences are irreconcilable, though funnily enough mist transhumanists, yourself included, seem like decent blokes.
Yeah, that ban was pretty much at his own request. Wish it wasn't permanent though.
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