philsandifer:

reddragdiva:

geosonicgigyas:

mitoticcephalopod:

I feel like reading worm had a much larger effect on me feeling like a part of the tumblr LW group than reading HPMOR.

At the very least, I understand a lot more of the references now.

fun fact I found tumblr LW incidentally, because I was looking for the worm fandom

worm, floornight, the northern caves, cordyceps … i suspect the best rationalist fiction did not come from the diaspora.

@oligopsony, you made the observation that rationalism is most interesting as a literary movement; i would be interested in your thoughts on this matter.

This seems like an excellent place to introduce my claim, recently revised into Neoreaction a Basilisk, that what Yudkowsky basically does is convert Bayes’ theorem to a writing style and then assume that nothing he writes in that style can possibly be wrong.

this is a good description of the philosophical leaps, where if you trace back through the references to references to references you see progressions that go:

1. is not provably philosophically possible
2. is non-negligibly possible
3. is likely
4. is true

without the claim ever being substantiated. the substitution of subjective probabilities for actually proving your fucking claim properly.

neurocybernetics:

reddragdiva:

neurocybernetics:

well actually, neoreactionaries produce highly valuable insights worthy of consideration, such as ‘black people are dumb‘

AHEM i think you are NEGLECTING such IMPORTANT contributions as urbit

oh shit. fuck. i can believe i’ve overlooked this. moldbug’s owned me so hard on my very own blog

urbit: the bean water royalty of operating systems functions

geosonicgigyas:

mitoticcephalopod:

I feel like reading worm had a much larger effect on me feeling like a part of the tumblr LW group than reading HPMOR.

At the very least, I understand a lot more of the references now.

fun fact I found tumblr LW incidentally, because I was looking for the worm fandom

worm, floornight, the northern caves, cordyceps … i suspect the best rationalist fiction did not come from the diaspora.

@oligopsony, you made the observation that rationalism is most interesting as a literary movement; i would be interested in your thoughts on this matter.

memory-of-amalgamy:

froborr:

roachpatrol:

roachpatrol:

prokopetz:

writebastard:

prokopetz:

Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles, tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they don’t really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit space-magic countermeasures out of their arses - but they’re as likely as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn’t actually happen to anyone else; it’s literally just Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.

So to everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.

Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don’t realise that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They’re just like “yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience”.

THE ONLY REASON SCOTTY IS CHIEF ENGINEER INSTEAD OF SOMEONE FROM A SPECIES WITH A HIGHER TECHNOLOGICAL APTITUDE IS BECAUSE EVERYONE FROM THOSE SPECIES TOOK ONE LOOK AT THE ENTERPRISE’S ENGINE ROOM AND RAN AWAY SCREAMING

vulcan science academy: why do you need another warp core

humans: we’re going to plug two of them together and see if we go twice as fast

vsa: last time we gave you a warp core you threw it into a sun to see if the sun would go twice as fast

humans: hahaha yeah

humans: it did tho

vsa: IT EXPLODED

humans: it exploded twice as fast

I love this. Especially because of how well it plays with my headcanon that the Federation does so much better against the Borg than anyone else because beating the Borg with military tactics is nigh-impossible, but beating them with wacky superscience shenanigans works as long as they’re unique wacky superscience shenanigans.

this is basically canon tho actually, like at one point in DS9 a Vorta actually quips about “the famous Starfleet engineers who can turn rocks into replicators”

“fucking tinkers”

humans are Leet

gilliananderslam:

The date is 15764.56 star years or The Frozen Season of the 3rd cycle of the White Sun. Men rule everything because the patriarchy is still here in the year of our grey alien lord 10,562 A.D. It’s a dangerous time and all the women are spending every waking moment dodging rapists. There is Unrest, and things are on the brink of Change.

But there is hope, because our Special Boy is here. He’s white because everyone’s white except for people who are Brown but theyre in The East or on Outer Desert Planet so its fine its not racist. He has a natural talent for everything, including but not limited to: magic, taming dragons, Fighting, Guns, learning, being fuckign cool and right All the time. If the natives are good at something, our Special Boy will be better and smarter at it in a week’s time. He is Chosen.

Come.… follow our Special Boy as he navigates the Unrest, becoming a Special Man in the process. He will pass all the trials of manhood; fuckign killing a guy, knowing the sweet soft sex touch of a Woman, and finally, making a Tough War Decision. Now he is a griseled man gazing wearily at his responsibilities, heavy with the burden of Power.

Stay tuned for the next book in the series of 54 fucking books where our Special Man quests to defeat the Evil while boning a Cool Loyal Beautiful Fight Woman who will eventually have his baby sometime before she dies tragically. This book will be out in 13 years, and each following book will be released by the decade.

Other books by this author:

-This wild idea wanted to do in this story but couldn’t because it got too popular and my publisher wouldn’t let me so now it’s in This Other Book

-Here are other books I wrote that weren’t as successful but please still buy them

neurocybernetics:

well actually, neoreactionaries produce highly valuable insights worthy of consideration, such as ‘black people are dumb‘

AHEM i think you are NEGLECTING such IMPORTANT contributions as urbit

quoms:

quoms:

the best/worst possible outcome of the 2016 republican primaries is thousands of trump supporters bringing open carry firearms into a brokered convention

Though a tactical failure, the Quicken Loans Arena Putsch achieved the long-term strategic goals of bringing militant Trumpists into the center of mainstream conservative discourse and giving them a platform from which to espouse their views. It is further notable for having irreparably tarnished the good name of America’s then-largest online mortgage lender, which saw its profits enter a period of sustained decline despite a strong housing market and otherwise positive external indicators.[7]

newwavenova:

newwavenova:

newwavenova:

There seems to be a huge overlap between being an Ancap and being an MRA.

I made this diagram to illustrate my point:

Shit-tier discourse is actually the 9th circle of discourse hell.

disexplications:

argumate:

alkthash:

37q:

i love seeing social scientists or humanities scholars use BCE instead of BC because its still. fucking. using Christianity as the standard, “common” reference point. using CE (”common era”) and BCE (”before common era”) instead of AD (Anno Domini, “the year of our lord”) or BC (”before christ”) with the exact same time parameters and epoch changes absolutely nothing. its like when people use afab and amab when they really just want to use female or male. like, this is the epitome of what “politically correct” actually means, where we change terminology but refer to the exact same fucking shitty thing.

Or, if we want to be less of a downer, it’s picking your battles and inching things forward to what you want. Not sexy, but a lot more practical.

and surely if CE/BCE is not good enough, nothing would be good enough, because any new epoch would have to be defined in terms of the old epoch!

it’s unescapable! unless we sever all ties with previous studies of history

If we really wanted a neutral point of reference, we’d put Year 0 at the earliest historical event with a definitely known year, which would probably be a solar eclipse (although I’ve read contradictory things about which eclipse it would be).

geologists started using BP (Before Present)

then of course they had to redefine “present” as 1950 AD

therefore scientifically speaking WE ARE RIGHT NOW LIVING IN THE FUUUTUUURE

IT’S JUST SCIENCE

i shall note of course that the same 1950 = 0 scale is used in scientology for “after dianetics” WELCOME TO THE YEAR A.D. 66, THAT’S AFTER DIANETICS DON’T YOU KNOW