Neoreaction: A Basilisk really is great, you definitely should tackle it soon!

Has anyone checked for kernels of corn growing behind their ears?

Me, about to suggest some actually really good, thought provoking Marvel comics that somehow got made alongside the relentless superhero soap opera: oh wait now isn’t the time, we’re dunking on the AI bro

John McPhee’s so goddamn good, one of the best nonfiction writers out there. The absolute master of nonfiction narrative structure, imho.

And yeah, Deep Time is… a hell of a trip.

Super late response (sorry!), but yeah, history of science is great stuff. And your point about TESCREALS engaging with science fiction over science is entirely spot-on. (Which was me as a teenager. There but for the grace of god go I…)

Btw, if you want to read a FANTASTIC book dealing with people grappling with plate tectonics, John McPhee’s Pulitzer-winning Annals of the Ancient World spans literal decades of interviews with geologists, and you get to start with geologists being deeply skeptical of this newfangled plate tectonics (not dismissive, but not convinced of the breadth of its explanatory power), and work to it being fully accepted science over the course of the book.

Oh geez, just saw this response, feel really bad I missed it- you put a ton of effort into it! (And I’m overwhelmed with work right now, so I can’t reply in the depth it deserves, alas!)

In short, though: Your arguments largely make sense to me, and I’m reasonably persuaded by them! I too also think Kuhn has been treated worse than he deserves- yes, others have surpassed him since, but few of them are as approachable to laymen as he is, and that’s worth something, imho. (I’m also kinder to Jared Diamond than many folks for similar reasons. Yeah, he fucked a lot of stuff up, but he got a lot of laymen- including me, before I started by studies in geology- interested in environmental history, so at the very least he deserves that nod.) And I’d agree that Feyerebend did better than Kuhn! (Maybe not on layman approachability, but he’s not that much tougher than Kuhn- I certainly had no trouble, and I’m a dilettante in philosophy of science.)

Wish I had time for a longer (and very belated) reply, but thanks for the great response!

And is the “beam of pink energy from the future” a reference to Philip K Dick’s Valis, by any chance?

RIP digital drug trip, you were actually pretty cool

It’s like the classic comic “we should improve society somewhat!” “And yet you participate in society!”

• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn

Bit of philosophy of science is a useful bit of immunization against Rationalist bullshit. Maybe not on its own, but it helps.

Seconding, Mismeasure of Man is fantastic.

Ayuuuuuuuup. Movable feast is a great term for it. Even once formerly ostracized groups get permitted into the in-group, their membership is strictly conditional on serving the interests of those closer into the center of the Whiteness construct. Stop being useful, watch how fast the old hate rears its ugly head again.

Fucking giant water and power guzzling data centers, ugh.

I haven’t seen any numbers on how much Sora cost to train, nor how much it costs to run- I can’t help but believe it’s painfully high.

How delightfully ineffective

(Seriously, what has Effective Altruism ever accomplished beyond buying castles?)

As someone who made decent money off that site back in the day, fuck Steemit. Realizing that my earnings came from Korean folks losing their life savings turned me against crypto for life.

Oh gross

As a non-tech person who has zero idea what Urbit is, this is still deeply funny to me.

I’m guessing there’s probably a libertarian bent to this whole thing, somehow?

Solid post, already shared this a few times.

…The vast majority of guys I know who have been in a lot of fights (me included) are quite happy never getting in a fight again? Like, there’s definitely a few weirdos and dudes with anger issues who love fighting, but the shine wears off pretty damn quick for most people, and they’d rather avoid the fight in the first place? I really don’t think real-life arenas and duels would work the way this guy thinks.

(I used to work as a bouncer in a bar, haven’t been in a fight since then, I prefer keeping it that way. Also, fair notice, I wasn’t actually a very good fighter- I was the average-sized, unintimidating bouncer, my job was to head off fights before they happened, so the bigger bouncers and bartenders didn’t have to intervene, and I was good at talking drunks down. I wrestled a decent number of drunks when I had to, but that did not an impressive fighter make, I’d suck at Colosseum fights, lol.)

Hi, I’m John Bierce, cheesy fantasy novelist (both in the sense of writing cheesy books, and in the sense of being full of the literal dairy product), and I was on SneerClub (using various accounts) since around… 2019, 2020? I’ve missed it since it fled Reddit, especially with all the rampant, stupid AI hype and TESCREAL bullshit running rampant right now.