Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Following up on the thread that spawned from my comment yesterday:
https://awful.systems/comment/7777035
(I'm in vacation mode and forgot it was late on Sunday)
I wonder if Habryka, the LWer who posted both there and on Xhitter that "someone should do something about this troublesome page" realized that there would be less pushback if he'd simply coordinated in the background and got the edits in place without forewarning others. Was it intentional to try to pick a fight with Wikipedians?
Maybe instead of worrying about obscure wiki pages, Habryka should reflect why a linkpost titled Racial Dating Preferences and Sexual Racism is on the front page of his precious community now, with 48 karma and 22 comments.
You know, just this once, I am willing to see the "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat" label and be content to leave the bag closed.
Is it praxis when you put theory into inaction?
The wikipedia talk page is some solid sneering material. It's like Habryka and HandofLixue can't imagine any legitimate reason why Wikipedia has the norms it does, and they can't imagine how a neutral Wikipedian could come to write that article about lesswrong.
Eigenbra accurately calling them out...
As to your question:
It seems to be ignorance on Habyrka's part, but judging by the talk page, instead of acknowledging their ignorance of Wikipedia's reasonable policies, they seem to be doubling down.
Following up because the talk page keeps providing good material..
Hand of Lixue keeps trying to throw around the Wikipedia rules like the other editors haven't seen people try to weaponize the rules to push their views many times before.
Looking back on the original lesswrong ~~brigade organizing~~ discussion of how to improve the wikipedia article, someone tried explaining to Habyrka the rules then and they were dismissive.
Yes Habyrka, because you clearly have such a good understanding of the Wikipedia rules and norms...
Also, heavily downvoted on the lesswrong discussion is someone suggesting Wikipedia is irrelevant because LLMs will soon be the standard for "access to ground truth". I guess even lesswrong knows that is bullshit.
Adding onto this chain of thought, does anyone else think the talk page's second top-level comment from non-existent user "habryka" is a bit odd? Especially since after Eigenbra gives it a standard Wikipedian (i.e. unbearably jargon-ridden and a bit pedantic but entirely accurate and reasonable in its substance) reply, new user HandofLixue comes in with:
Kinda reads like they're the same person? I mean Habryka is also active further down the thread so this is almost certainly just my tinfoil hat being too tight and cutting off circulation and/or reading this unfold in bits and pieces rather than putting it all together.
I think they're different people but may be in communication out of band.
edit a search for "HandofLixue" on Google only gives one hit, an old profile on LessWrong now renamed to "The Dao of Bayes":
https://www.lesswrong.com/users/the-dao-of-bayes
Or was it a consequence of the fact that capital-R Rationalists just don't shut up?
Habryka doesn't really know how not to start fights