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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2864 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 2, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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You don't have to read it. I often don't, beyond skimming through for posts that show more consideration than simple partisan reaction. If it feels like I've read enough and there's twice as much again left to go I collapse the thread.

Discussions here would be stale without two sides, which is what makes your own presence here worthwhile as someone who often brings a measure of balance to gendered topics, so I encourage you to consider staying on.

For me, discussion here became stale when Russian propaganda began to be seriously debated. I just can't take it seriously; it's like being at a pool party where someone poured that mythical urine-indicator dye and seeing exactly how many people are pissing in the proverbial water.

  • -12

If you don't mind me asking, how did you even find this place? This site is a quarantine site to contain the often toxic political discussions that would otherwise happen elsewhere, and the people who enter the quarantine tend to be those of us who enjoy such things for whatever reason. The site isn't really advertised anywhere, and so usually the only people who come here are the proverbial pissing in the water club.

Coming here and complaining that there are too many bad political takes feels like signing up for a poker strategy forum and complaining that they talk about and glorify gambling an unhealthy amount - arguably not wrong, but how did you even get there?

I read that famous Harry Potter fanfiction by Yud and slippery sloped all the way here.

Now I'm really curious what did the intermediate parts of the slope looked like for you. The usual parts of the slope contain interminable debates about AI doom, but your question asking what an LLM is isn't compatible with you coming from that part of the slope, which means you must have taken a different and more interesting path.

If you're up for it, I'd like to know which of the following 20 obscure terms you've encountered.

  1. Paperclipping
  2. Shrimp welfare
  3. Dath Ilan
  4. Egregore
  5. Great Filter
  6. TPOT
  7. Moloch
  8. RaDVaC
  9. Futarchy
  10. Vampire castle dynamics
  11. Seeing Like a State
  12. Metamour
  13. Yeerk Ma'ar
  14. Motte and Bailey
  15. Bayesian
  16. Embryo selection
  17. PEPFAR
  18. The crystal sphere surrounding the world
  19. Seasteading
  20. Hyperstition

For your statistics, I...

  • Understand: 1, 5, 7, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 19.
  • Certain I've encountered, but I'd have to look up to be sure: 4, 17

All but 8/10/12/13. 18 might have a rationalist meaning I'm not familiar with, though, and I think recognise Yeerk as being an Animorphs reference.

1234567911141516171920

1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20. Very curious to know what the others mean.

9: This is rule by dickgirl the "put your money where your mouth is" voting scheme. You buy votes based on what you think will make the polity better, and if it does (by some metric or aggregation of metrics), you get richer. Keep guessing wrong, and you get poorer.

The problems with that are obvious when you think about it for 5 seconds (being that you can just abuse the definition of those metrics and that you can just outright buy laws if you have the cash to do it), but it's an idea.

3: Eliezers utopia/if everyone understood Im right world

12: Your polyamorous partners other partner

6: "This part of Twitter," where postrationalists like eigenrobot hang out.

9.I think this has something to do with a system of government that operates using market-based predictions of the future in some way, but I don't remember exactly.

18: Read Unsong. I mean, read it all, but just the page linked should suffice to understand 18.

I mean, read it all

I read like the first chapter and gave up. Scott's fiction style is something I can only take in small doses.

Ahhhh, I have read Unsong, completely forgot about that plot point. I was planning to re-read it this year anyway.

Some are a bit shaky, but pretty sure I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.

What are vampire castle dynamics?

I never actually read the essay, but it's a reference to Mark Fisher's Exiting the Vampire Castle.

More comments

For me: Understand: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.

Have heard, but don't remember exact meaning (but maybe approximate): 9, 11, 20.

For me, the NYT article doxxing Scott->SSC->themotte. But I also read through a ton of LessWrong stuff along the way, and then HPMOR and Unsong.

To contribute to your statistics: 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12?, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

I read the Harry Potter fanfiction, I looked up the author and got to LessWrong, I read a lot of LessWrong, found Scott Alexander who mentioned Jordan Peterson. Looked up Jordan Peterson and found RationalWiki. RationalWiki led to SneerClub, which led to the Motte on reddit, and then I followed the Motte off reddit. Motte and Bailey, Bayesian and Embryo selection are the only three I know.

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity. Your posts make a lot more sense in the context of the RationalWiki -> SneerClub -> Motte path.

That’s how they got me, too…

So now that you know what realpolitik is, how confident are you in your ability to distinguish it from Russian propaganda?

That's not my problem. My problem is I think Russian propaganda is a pretty boring topic to debate about and I can't take it seriously. I don't know how else to say it without accidentally coasting into "boo outgroup" territory.

  • -10

So you don't like hearing people talk about the Ukraine war at all? Nobody is forcing you to read it of course, but it's been a pretty major topic of discussion on here for a number of years.

No, I don’t like hearing obvious Russian propaganda talking points. I agree it’s been a topic discussed before, but there’s talking about the Ukraine war and there’s regurgitating Russian propaganda and I think the latter is happening and it is just a huge intellectual turn-off for me. I don’t think you can have discussions about it; it’s like debating at a geography debate club and suddenly the topic changed from the relevance of tectonic shifts to if the Earth is flat. Even if the conversation changes topic, the shock is still resounding for me.

My point earlier was that the realpolitik perspective is indistinguishable from the Russian propaganada, for me anyways. Continuing to fight a war you can't win is just not a good idea, even though invading your neighbours is not a nice thing to do.

So Russian propaganda says "Russia Stronk -- Ukraine can't win and should give up before we crush them" -- how do you tell the difference between this and a complicated analysis of military strength arriving at the same conclusion? (which is basically my position on this, despite not being a Russian propagandist -- I do read with interest (for example) Dean's complicated analyses showing that Ukraine might win in the end; I just don't think they are correct)

Probably the majority of the 'realpolitik' posts are bent on avoiding the stating of plain facts such as that 'Russia is a totalitarian state that invaded a democracy'. If they could actually bite the bullet and describe reality as is, while also advocating that Ukraine should surrender (or all but), that would be an honest realpolitik position, but it's no coincidence that they also want to blame Ukraine and empathise with Russia. That is not realpolitik at all but moral justification.

Probably the majority of the 'realpolitik' posts are bent on avoiding the stating of plain facts such as that 'Russia is a totalitarian state that invaded a democracy'.

I have no problem with this, but would tend not to include it in a realpolitik post because it's exactly the kind of thing that's irrelevant in a realpolitik framework.

If you find no constructive avenue for conversation with your opposites here, leaving is indeed the correct choice. May you fair well wherever your travels take you.

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