SneerClub

Just sneering at a couple of comments, mostly the first.

This situation is best modeled by conflict theory, not mistake theory.

I thought rationalists were supposed to be strict mistake theorists (in their own terms). Seeing someone here essentially say, "Their opposition to us can't be resolved simply, just like how issues in the world are complex and not simple mistakes," when they actually believe (as any good liberal/nxr would) that any societal issue is a simple mistake to be corrected is... weird.

Since that does not seem likely to be the sort of answer you’re looking for though, if I wanted to bridge the inferential gap with a hypothetical Sneer Clubber who genuinely cared about truth, or indeed about anything other than status (which they do not)

This is the finest copium. Pure, uncut. Yes, I'm here to "boost my status" by collecting internet points. Everyone knows my name and keeps track of how cool I am. I don't sleep in a hotel and I own triples of every classic car. Triples makes it safe.

If you think that the conventional way to approach the world is usually right, the rationalist community will seem unusually stupid. We ignore all this free wisdom lying around and try to reinvent the wheel! If the conventional wisdom is correct, then concerns about the world changing, whether due to AI or any other reason, are pointless. If they were important, conventional wisdom would already be talking about them.

Hey, don't try to position yourselves as the plucky underdog/maverick here. That's a culture war move, and you aren't allowed to do that!

/r/SneerClub users are not the sort of entities with whom you can have that conversation. You might as well ask a group of chimpanzees why they're throwing shit at you.

LW talking to us would be more like this: a group of chimpanzees is throwing shit at some LWers. The LWers ask the chimps why. The chimps explain, using everyday language and concepts, that they think the worldview of the LWers is wrong and skewed in weird directions, and that any time someone tries to explain this, the chimps are met with condescension and the accusation that they can't understand the LWers because they are chimps. So in protest, the chimps explain they throw shit. The LWers shrug and say they can't understand what the chimps are saying, because they are chimps and chimps can't speak human language. The chimps continue to throw shit.

I think Sneer Club understands the Less Wrong worldview well enough. They just happen to reject it.

Least wrong LWer.

I would also tell them that it’s possible to actually understand things. Most people seem to go through life on rote, seemingly not recognizing when something doesn’t make sense because they don’t expect anything to make sense.

Oh my god could you sound any more flushable.

Just fuck yourself. Everybody is thinking all of the fucking time, everybody has blindspots, stop being so insufferable.

They're so obsessed with this narrative that keeps them ahead of the curve, guess what ex gifted kids? Other people catch up, you're not competing with 4 year olds anymore.

What would you say to them, to plant the seed of changing their mindset from their current one?

making this - aka pilling - your specific goal, rather than something you would hope for as a side-effect of your sentiment, is a rookie mistake.

first comment,

If the conventional wisdom is correct, Bayesianism is potentially wrong (it’s not part of the Standard Approach to Life), and [certainly useless] [...]

what was actually said:

the abandonment of interpretation in favor of a naïve approach to statistical [analysis] certainly skews the game from the outset in favor of a belief that data is intrinsically quantitative—self-evident, value neutral, and observer-independent. This [belief excludes] the possibilities of conceiving data as qualitative, co-dependently constituted. (Drucker, Johanna. 2011. “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display.”)

the latter isn't even claiming that the bayesian (statistical analysis) is "useless" but that it "skews the game [...] in favor of a belief". the very framing is a misconstrual of the nature of the debate.

My god some spectacularly bad takes on here. The top-rated one is just bananas-level stupid:

While there may be a substantial worldview gap, I suspect the much larger difference is that most Sneer Clubbers are looking to boost their status by trying to bully anyone who looks like a vulnerable target, and being different, as LessWrong is, is enough to qualify.

Yes, that's right. I spend my time boosting my status by (checks notes) commenting on the internet.

Also, lol @ this exchange: SneerClubMod:

I mod the subreddit, I’m aware of the history of the sidebar quote[\n] Your interpretation of why we did that is incorrect

LWer:

Then why did you do that?

SneerClubMod

Because it’s a funny example of Yudkowsky’s persecution complex, and therefore an amusing ironic self-appellation

How do they not read this and self-reflect? Oh, that's right, they're in a cult.

If the conventional wisdom is correct, Bayesianism is potentially wrong (it’s not part of the Standard Approach to Life), and certainly useless: why try to learn through probability theory when tradition can tell you everything you need to know much faster?

Oh, you say you're a Bayesian? Name all 46,656 varieties.

I think Sneer Club understands the Less Wrong worldview well enough. They just happen to reject it.

One of the few comments that actually make sense to me here.

When I was a teenager, I read every novel by Isaac Asimov, including those that I could only find in second-hand bookshops (A Whiff of Death, Murder at the ABA and The End of Eternity). I read most of his short fiction, too; I didn't hunt down the ephemera that had never been anthologized, but I did visit the archive at the Boston University Library and find the movie plot outline that he wrote at the request of Paul McCartney. On the nonfiction side, to mention only the thickest books. I read his Chronology of Science and Discovery in sixth grade, and I followed it up with Asimov's Chronology of the World and his two-volume guides to Shakespeare and the Bible both.

It's not that I fail to understand where LessWrong is coming from. It's that I actually grew up to become a scientist.