• 20 Posts
  • 537 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: August 13th, 2023
  • sc_griffith@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 30th March 2025English
    14·
    2 days ago

    I used to think transhumanism was very cool because escaping the misery of physical existence would be great. for one thing, I’m trans, and my experience with my body as such has always been that it is my torturer and I am its victim. transhumanism to my understanding promised the liberation of hundreds of millions from actual oppression.

    then I found out there was literally no reason to expect mind uploading or any variation thereof to be possible. and when you think about what else transhumanism is, there’s nothing to get excited about. these people don’t have any ideas or cogent analysis, just a powerful desire to evade limitations. it’s inevitable that to the extent they cohere they’re a cult: they’re a variety of sovereign citizen

  • sc_griffith@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 16th March 2025English
    8·
    12 days ago

    I agree. you’ve got a community built around a right wing coded topic, using the same sources and with the same delusions as their parent community, but they’re mixing and matching bits of ideology and cooking up a left wing variant. it’s incoherent but that doesn’t seem to bother them

    I always find this sort of wild swing across the spectrum fascinating. for example a lot of hardcore TERFs still think of themselves as genuine feminists even though anyone in those circles has for some time now been building the fourth reich. or the fact that there’s a left wing GameStop cult subreddit. when I see these things I have to conclude that no ideology makes you immune to any other ideology

  • sc_griffith@awful.systemstoTechTakes@awful.systems•Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 16th March 2025English
    10·
    12 days ago

    stumbled across an ai doomer subreddit, /r/controlproblem. small by reddit standards, 32k subscribers which I think translates to less activity than here.

    if you haven’t looked at it lately, reddit is still mostly pretty lib with rabid far right pockets. but after luigi and the trump inauguration it seems to have swung left significantly, and in particular the site is boiling over with hatred for billionaires.

    the interesting bit about this subreddit is that it follows this trend. for example

    Why Billionaires Will Not Survive an AGI Extinction Event: As a follow up to my previous essays, of varying degree in popularity, I would now like to present an essay I hope we can all get behind - how billionaires die just like the rest of us in the face of an AGI induced human extinction... I would encourage anyone who would like to offer a critique or comment to read the full essay before doing so. I appreciate engagement, and while engaging with people who have only skimmed the sample here on Reddit can sometimes lead to interesting points, more often than not, it results in surface-level critiques that I’ve already addressed in the essay. I’m really here to connect with like-minded individuals and receive a deeper critique of the issues I raise - something that can only be done by those who have actually read the whole thing... Throughout history, the ultra-wealthy have insulated themselves from catastrophe. Whether it’s natural disasters, economic collapse, or even nuclear war, billionaires believe that their resources—private bunkers, fortified islands, and elite security forces—will allow them to survive when the rest of the world falls apart. In most cases, they are right. However, an artificial general intelligence (AGI) extinction event is different. AGI does not play by human rules. It does not negotiate, respect wealth, or leave room for survival. If it determines that humanity is an obstacle to its goals, it will eliminate us—swiftly, efficiently, and with absolute certainty. Unlike other threats, there will be no escape, no last refuge, and no survivors.

    or the comments under this

    Under Trump, AI Scientists Are Told to Remove ‘Ideological Bias’ From Powerful Models A directive from the National Institute of Standards and Technology eliminates mention of “AI safety” and “AI fairness.”

    comments include "So no more patriarchy?" and "This tracks with the ideological rejection of western values by the Heritage Foundation's P2025 and their Dark Enlightenment ideals. Makes perfect sense that their orders directly reflect Yarvin's attacks on the "Cathedral". "

    or the comments on a post about how elon has turned out to be a huge piece of shit because he’s a ketamine addict

    comments include "Cults, or to put it more nicely all-consuming social movements, can also revamp personality in a fairly short period of time. I've watched it happen to people going both far right and far left, and with more traditional cults, and it looks very similar in its effect on the person. And one of ketamine's effects is to make people suggestible; I think some kind of cult indoctrination wave happened in silicon valley during the pandemic's combo of social isolation, political radicalism, and ketamine use in SV." and "I can think of another fascist who used amphetamines, hormones and sedatives."

    mostly though they’re engaging in the traditional rationalist pastime of giving each other anxiety

    cartoon. a man and a woman in bed. the man looks haggard and is sitting on the edge of the bed, saying "How can you think about that with everything that's going on in the field of AI?"

    Comment from EnigmaticDoom: Yeah it can feel that way sometime... but knowing we probably have such a small amount of time left. You should be trying to enjoy every little sip left that you got rather than stressing ~