Agreeing With Stalin in Ways That Exhibit Generally Rationalist Principles — LessWrong
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> It was not the sight of Mitchum that made him sit still in horror. It was the realization that there was no one he could call to expose this thing…

content warning: Zack Davis. so of course this is merely the intro to Zack’s unquenchable outrage at Yudkowsky using the pronouns that someone wants to be called by

  • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
    25·
    9 months ago

    “It was bad that the New York Times called Scott a racist, because he’s a racist but in a way that makes it correct to be racist.”

    • Amoeba_Girl@awful.systemsEnglish
      27·
      9 months ago

      oh holy shit I was only a handful of paragraphs in but he literally says that!!!

      So The New York Times implicitly accuses us of being racists, like Charles Murray, and instead of pointing out that being a racist like Charles Murray is the obviously correct position that sensible people will tend to reach in the course of being sensible, we disingenuously deny everything.

      one point for (pseudo)intellectual honesty i guess!

      • slopjockey@awful.systemsEnglish
        10·
        9 months ago

        I wanted to see what kind of person would defend Scott, but disparage Murray so…

        ctrl-f “Murray” read quote related ctrl-w

        I almost don’t want to know what motte the author has set up to make Murray’s hereditarianism seem “obviously correct” and “sensible”. Are we supposed to ignore the cross burning and constant race science posting on twitter?

      • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
        8·
        9 months ago

        This circuitous, n-tuple negative tenor pervades the whole piece. It’s first and foremost frustrating, but after that just sad.

          • 200fifty@awful.systemsEnglish
            14·
            9 months ago

            Everything about Zack is sad.

            I have to say, if you look past the, well, you know, stuff, he’s actually pretty decent at injecting pathos into the posts about his personal life. His writing does a good job bringing you into his extremely depressing/self-loathing inner world – you really feel for the guy, or at least I do. That said, it’s this exact effect which makes me think he is probably not perceiving things as lucidly as he thinks he is. Depression can feel like clarity, but that’s no way to live.

              • swlabr@awful.systemsEnglish
                11·
                9 months ago

                Y’all have nailed how I felt reading this. You have this fellow who has constructed a cognitive process to self-harm at every juncture. Whenever there is an opportunity to believe in something that could bring them joy or closure etc., they head in the opposite direction because of some tenet they think is “correct” or “obvious” even though said tenet usually has a paper-thin justification. Davis is haunted by an Imp of the perverse; that imp is named Yudkowsky.