this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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Sneerclubbers may recall a recent encounter with "Tracing Woodgrains", née Jack Despain Zhou, the rationalist-infatuated former producer and researcher for "Blocked and Reported", a podcast featuring prominent transphobes Jesse Singal and Katie Herzog.

It turns out he's started a new venture: a "think-tank" called the "Center for Educational Progress." What's this think-tank's focus? Introducing eugenics into educational policy. Of couse they don't put it in those exact words, but that's the goal. The co-founder of the venture is Lillian Tara, former executive director of Pronatalist.org, the outfit run by creepy Harry Potter look-a-likes (and moderately frequent topic in this forum) Simone and Malcolm Collins. According to the anti-racist activist group Hope Not Hate:

The Collinses enlisted Lillian Tara, a pronatalist graduate student at Harvard University. During a call with our undercover reporter, Tara referred three times to her work with the Collinses as eugenics. “I don’t care if you call me a eugenicist,” she said.

Naturally, the CEP is concerned about IQ and want to ensure that mentally superior (read white) individuals don't have their hereditarily-deserved resources unfairly allocated to the poors and the stupids. They have a reading list on the substack, which includes people like Arthur Jensen and LessWrong IQ-fetishist Gwern.

So why are Trace and Lillian doing this now? I suppose they're striking while the iron is hot, probably hoping to get some sweet sweet Thiel-bucks as Elon and his goon-squad do their very best to gut public education.

And more proof for the aphorism: "Scratch a rationalist, find a racist".

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Eugenics? A guy going bald that early?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Lesbionest, there is no better proxy for polygenic fitness than your total word count at lesswrong and acx.

Baldness just makes you more aerodynamic, and in our eugenics enabled charter city/network state/seastead you'll be getting assigned a state sponsored waifu anyway (terms and conditions may apply, like being not unprovably not related to persons of dubious genetic heritage).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Woodgrains and fans are taking a victory lap now for getting Vox to take up one of their anti-diversity memes, claiming that FAA endangered lives by adding a biographical assessment to their application process: https://www.vox.com/politics/399804/trump-dei-democrats-faa

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Vox happens to be downstream of EA money, coincidentally.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

From the US department of not beating those allegations.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

Everything I have read about this guy creeps me out or pisses me off.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ah yes the more leftwing themotte user tracingwoodgrains. They place their windows in really strange places over there.

(For people not up to date on The Lore, he is one of the people who is behind TheSchism, an attempt to create TheMotte (sorry not going to explain that one today) with less rightwing assholes, the result)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's an interesting palette choice on your generated illustrations my guys

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The shit's so ass I can't even.

There's something I like to call "AI tint" which almost all AI images have. It's when there's something so fundamentally wrong with the picture but you can't tell what. You suspect it's AI, so you go looking for obvious flaws to confirm it.

I don't know why AI bros don't see it. Maybe they do but think it's ok?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago (2 children)

At this point it's a cultural signifier. In other words, they know it looks like shit but they are virtue signaling.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Fascism is all about vibes with no underlying structure. AI slop satisfies that specification perfectly.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

In a completely unexpected turn of events this new experiment in mainstreaming eugenics is being currently boosted by siskind.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Wait, you are saying the 'we should create incentives for less people to sterilize themselves' guy is for this? Damn. That is fucked up.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

Oh, but they're just very concerned that American schools are forcing all the children into the same mold, don't you see

gag me with a fucking spoon

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

That is not how you trace woodgrains. That is not how you trace woodgrains at all!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago

creepy Harry Potter look-a-likes (and moderately frequent topic in this forum)

Not by choice!