/ratanon/ - Rationalists Anonymous

There is already an "EA sucks" thread.

>>14806

>>14841

Is Zach M. Davis/M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake affiliated with Ziz now?

>>14899

Wat. Why would you think that?

>>14910

Sorry, "affiliated with" was too strong a claim, considering the evidence. "Sympathetic to" is more appropriate. He links to sinceriously.fyi from the following recent posts without a disclaimer like "Hey, most of that site is batshit and a known infohazard".

1. https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/jrLkMFd88b4FRMwC6/don-t-double-crux-with-suicide-rock => https://sinceriously.fyi/false-faces/

2. https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/4hLcbXaqudM9wSeor/philosophy-in-the-darkest-timeline-basics-of-the-evolution => https://sinceriously.fyi/social-reality/

3. https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/sXHQ9R5tahiaXEZhR/algorithmic-intent-a-hansonian-generalized-anti-zombie => https://sinceriously.fyi/false-faces/

Zizians.info definitely existed by the time 2 and 3 were published.

>>14841

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https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N4AvpwNs7mZdQESzG/the-dilemma-of-worse-than-death-scenarios

>Methods which may reduce the probability of indefinite worse than death scenarios (in order of effectiveness):

>1. Suicide

>2. Working on AI safety

>3. Thinking of ways of reducing the probability

>Suicide, depending on your theory on personal identity, may make the probability 0. If you believe that there is no difference between copies of you then there may be a possibility of being resurrected in the future however. As we aren't certain about what happens to the observer after death, it is unknown whether death will make worse than death scenarios impossible. I believe there are many ways in which it could reduce the probability, but the key question is: could it increase the probability? An argument against suicide is that it is more likely that people who commit suicide will go to "hell" than those who don't. This is because an entity who creates hell has values which accept suffering, making life a positive concept which should not be discarded. On the other hand, an entity with values related to efilism/antinatalism (philosophies in which suicide is generally accepted) would not create a hell at all. Of course, this is all based on a lot of speculation.

>There is a risk that the suicide attempt will fail and leave you in a disabled state. This could make you more vulnerable when considering indefinite worse than death scenarios. However, I would argue against this disadvantage because the only potential way to evade an entity powerful enough to cause these scenarios would be suicide, which always has a risk of failing.

How accurate is this?

>>13405

Or having vastly lowered testosterone from the ancestral condition.

Which is probably part of being an industrialized modern I guess.

>>13399

Gosh, I do not miss 2018, the year when everyone regretted their body looking too much like their natal sex and not enough like the opposite sex.

>>14879

Large neural differences do not imply magical innate gender identity. Brains of men and women could be significantly different and nevertheless be able to live about as happily in either body and/or gender, with practical differences but no deep wrongness. You don't have to be a blank slatist for that.

Are they actually able to? No clue, but those studies don't look like a slam dunk to me.

>>9739

>Davis is certainly hormonally transitioning, but he's convinced himself he can avoid the social aspect, and that's what he rails against AGPs doing. Dude's not going to pull that off. Having watched other anti-trans type Blanchardian 'eggs' hatch and immediately turn on their former belief system, I'm concerned about the implications of this.

In the end: Davis suffered a mental breakdown, stopped taking hormones, didn't change belief system. The above prediction holds, but only as a conditional.

http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Jun/memoirs-of-my-recent-madness-part-i-the-unanswerable-words/

http://unremediatedgender.space/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/

>>14908

>I am using that quote to mock TheMotte

(This is not to say all of TheMotte is bad or worthless. But I see a gradient of irrationality from SSC comments to old culture war threads to it. It will likely get worse the longer TheMotte exists as a separate community.)

>>14909

Just a fedora-tipper, he also likes to talk about how the Jewish doctrine of transmitting knowledge is fundamentally degenerate because it claims every generation knows less than the last (even worked it into his fanfic)

I think I've seen him dunk more on Judaism than on Christianity

>>14919

Why are South Asians overrepresented and East Asians underrepresented?

>>14920

For South Asians, the ones in the US are disproportionately Brahmins, who have a higher average IQ than lower caste Indians. For East Asians, lower curiosity might be a reason.

https://www.unz.com/jthompson/asians-bright-but-not-curious/

>>9903

>the weight of *lab animals with controlled diets* is also increasing

Is there a good explanation for this yet?

It is surprising that this has not been mentioned yet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenovirus_serotype_36

>>14498

800 kcal/day for like a year

Medium Yud

>>14864

Brilliant!

Did we get couped?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/jfrsbi/made_an_experimental_political_discussion_site/

>>14893

https://politics.lol admin here. I actually honestly didn't know /ratanon/ was still around. I haven't followed 8chan too closely since the original domain was shuttered.

Not trying to compete or anything; just trying to provide a different discussion site with different features and moderation

>>14894

I welcome it, including to the extent that it does compete with /ratanon/.

8kun is not a good website and I'm unwilling to self-host.

>>14893

Who is "we"? To me /r/TheMotte is an outgroup. It's good for them to have their own outgroup board.

>>14875

>LGBT rate is rising.

Is it?

In the west the shift in social attitude must make it hard to find a real effect. Are there any clever cross-region analyses that point at the rate being influenced by something else?

Hijra are presumably cognate with trans women, and they're a little more traditional. Do you know how their rate measures up?

Such hypotheses are more likely than they seem to be, given the places where they tend to appear (image boards and Alex Jones' content). Scott briefly referred to this issue from the perspective of public image: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/04/respectability-cascades/

We know that male fertility and testosterone levels rapidly declined in recent decades:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-mystery-of-declining-testosterone_b_59fcc5fbe4b0d467d4c224b3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_infertility_crisis

The mainstream narrative, vilifying men and putting constant demands on them, acts like a chronic stressor. Women are choosier than ever, and their revealed preferences keep on favoring precisely what's referred to as "toxic masculinity". This results in even more intrasexual competition and the creation of a male caste system: alpha lovers, beta providers, omega incels. It can't be stopped.

Xenoestrogens are an obvious problem for public health. I'm not sure if they could also result in the major increase of LGBT people in the general population, but there's a huge space for interaction between the endocrine disruptors and cultural shifts (homosexuality is partially heritable, but environmental factors play a major rule). If you're feminized due to exposure to xenoestrogens since the prenatal period, if you're constantly shamed for male heterosexuality in all the subtle ways, and if your chances for a satisfying relationship with a women are minimal, then the likelihood of becoming gay increases. There's nothing edgy about this line of thinking, it doesn't involve any kind of prejudice against the LGBT community, and it doesn't challenge the scientific consensus on how the sexual orientation/preferences are being determined.

Yes, we're doomed. No, there's not enough attention, because conventional mascPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>14875

>If carefully selected sex dimorphism of a species is reduced/ruined, both sexes become less attracted to each other, and this lowers their QoL and fertility.

Lack of attraction between the sexes lowers fertility, but does it lower QoL? Consider a hypothetical world where human males are only attracted to other males and females only to other females, and they weren't dying out because they have the social and physical technology for replacement fertility. Would it be a less happy world? Maybe we are just living in a uniquely unhappy transition period between legacy heterosexually and successor sexualities.

>>14742

It's all about phase changes. Right now, we have solid femininity. Obviously, slime girls are liquid femininity. The brap-fags have theories about what gaseous femininity will look like. And we don't know what plasmic femininity will look like, but I bet it will be hot.

>>14743

n1x?!

satisfying values

recursion

>>14742

>What would posthuman levels of femininity look like?

look at twitter accounts of agp transwomen for a preview.

>>14256

>If you're paying attention

Fortunately I'm not. Close call for human civilization though, I guess.

Very exciting getting to watch firsthand as the various apocalyptic cults struggle for dominance.

Seems like the global plague cult has suffered a setback, with humanity slightly more prepared for pandemics in the coming decades, especially if we get to keep practicing on seasonal covid outbreaks that don't even crack 1 megadeath.

AI cult with a strong showing lately. Spooky new intelligence that appears general, within the domain of "problems that can be specified as text and solved as text". "Intelligence" remains a generous term for now. Other cults praying that enough unknown unknowns are lurking in the future of AI research to give them time to catch up.

Climate collapse cult appears to be biding its time for the moment. Don't worry OP, I'm sure you guys have some great new stuff lined up for us as soon as we have another moment to pay attention.

Nuclear hellfire cult speaking softly but carrying a big stick, looming ever more ominously with the ongoing breakdown of law and order in that one country that controls half the world's stockpile.

Asteroid impact cult, always the contrarian choice, seems to be losing a race against the Gini coefficient as they try to identify a world-ender headed our way. Take too long, and all of us serfs will be able to sit back, laugh, loot assorted commons, and watch as Lord Bezos funds the entire asteroid repulsion project out of pocket to save his own ass.

Truly exciting times. I can't wait to see what happens next. Shame about humanity likely going extinct, though. I guess I was going to be dead for the whole cosmic endowment thing anyway.

>>11270

I honestly thank you for your input. I don't really get the chance to expose this kind of stuff in real life and even if you did not have a lot of information to go on, I'm glad that you responded.

>>11223

Yes. Look to God.

>>11282

*reverse tips fedora

>>11281

You're welcome, anon. I hope it is helpful. I would love to read how things were working out for you in six months.

I am curious how OP's love quest went from here.

>>14794

>If Trump fails to become Caesar Augustus, Scott Alexander will not very long afterwards be killed by those he regards as his friends, unless rescued by those he regards as his enemies.

How long is not very long? When Trump is out of his chair and a Democrat president replaces him the probability of a violent revolution will go down temporarily. Moldbug has been more or less saying this on podcasts.

Does Scott have Antifa friends? If Scott is killed in a cultural revolution, it will be by Antifa and militant SJ people who he recognizes are not his friends. His liberal lefty friends will get the bullet, too.

Hasn't this blown over yet? When is the blog coming back? What should I be reading in the meantime?

>>14837

Scott is gradually leaving his employer and changing his style of working. The blog is moving to Substack.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/09/11/update-on-my-situation/

I'm a bit wary of Substack, especially given how Medium keeps getting worse. I hope he keeps the ability to exit at will.

>Open individualism is the view in the philosophy of self, according to which there exists only one numerically identical subject, who is everyone at all times. It is a theoretical solution to the question of personal identity, being contrasted with empty individualism, the view that personal identities correspond to a fixed pattern that instantaneously disappears with the passage of time, and with closed individualism, the common view that personal identities are particular to subjects and yet survive over time.

Seems suspiciously semantic.

Do you think Gwern is hot IRL?

>>13561

>if gwern were female

Why would you want this?

>>14747

Leaning "no", but wouldn't be surprised either way.