Want to wade into the snowy surf of the abyss? 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 so 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.)
Part of what makes the RatFic version of this so weird imo is that despite being ostensibly rooted in relatively low-hanging fruit (e.g. what if we industrialized this pre modern setting, what if we rationally looked at the rules of this magic system, etc.) nobody other than the protagonist has ever thought about these things and even once the protagonist starts demonstrating some real world-conquering results (benevolently, of course) nobody ever really seems to want to copy their successes. Part of what made the actual industrial revolution unfold the way it did was because of the ensuing arms race of it. In addition to causing the lines on various economist's charts to go nearly vertical this also basically culminated in the first world war, which seems like the kind of event that they should be aware of. But of course in RatFic it seems like anyone who can't be talked around to joining up with our protagonist is too weak or woke or stupid to actually pose a threat to the Glorious March of Rational Progress.
Once you commit to the idea that only your main characters have ever tried to study magic scientifically, you're locked in to making all the rest of the magical world into dullards. (Really, no other eleven-year-olds were ever into computer programming, chemistry sets, exotic marine animals, outer space, or dinosaurs?) Or, to look at it another way, the only way you can find the premise plausible is if you're already inclined to dismiss most of humanity as "NPCs".
Being the kind of writer I am, whenever this comes up I am tempted to suggest ways it could have been done better. But, first, I am not glazing the work of Rowling, even indirectly, no way, no how. Fuck her for all the pain she has wrought, and fuck the whole LessWrong crew for tacitly accepting it. Second, HPMoR was cult shit all along, not meant to teach science but to sow distrust of scientists under the glossy sheen of being able to name the six quarks.
The premise kind of does work in a setting like Harry Potter, the wizarding world is insular enough that a clever kid could bring in some new ideas. The problem is Eliezer wanted to throw in too many shortcuts. Its not enough for creativity with transmutations to give the protagonist a small edge, transmutation is made into the ultimate all-purpose spell so the protagonist can exploit it easier. The protagonist isn't just moderately better at Patronus with some muggle psychology, his patronus can kill dementors. And the philosopher's stone is changed into some ancient atlantean super-magic, because fuck wizards ever inventing anything, and also instead of some moderate rate of its typical mythological powers it is super transmutation.
Rowling went mask off transphobe in 2018, HPMOR finished in 2015. So I won't blame Eliezer for not picking a different fandom at the time. Eliezer has actually said moderately supportive comments, including of using people's preferred pronouns (we've mocked another lesswronger for writing long screeds complaining about this). In general, I think the average lesswrong attitude towards trans people is better than the average American's attitude... but that is because the bar is in hell. But yeah I've seen plenty of shitty takes towards trans people on lesswrong.
Yep. And it didn't even stick to its premise of "try to do science to magic and compare muggle scientifically gained knowledge to magic" and instead went into some Ender's game pastiche followed by Death Note style "I know you know I know" plotting, then Harry gets handed all the magical power handed to him at the end of the story thanks to Dumbledore following some insane combination of prophecy.
I was never on twitter. Can you point me to a concise list of what Rowling said and when she said it?
Most social media posts and online news stories just talk around what she said.
This article is where I was getting the 2018 date from: https://theweek.com/feature/1020838/jk-rowlings-transphobia-controversy-a-complete-timeline
And since in that 2018 incident Rowling was trying to backpedal/downplay it, I assume before that she was keeping the mask firmly on.
I forgot that she published novels alluding to anti-trans tropes under a male penname! Sorry Joanne "Robert Galbraith" Rowling, facts don't care about your feelings.
The thread for collecting HPMoR sneers linked to this timeline, but it's paywalled now:
https://www.vox.com/culture/23622610/jk-rowling-transphobic-statements-timeline-history-controversy
To be clear, I don't care about Yud picking the fandom he did at the time (apart from the cheapness of "playing on easy mode" and the blatant attempt to ride popularity for propagating his cult shit). What strikes me is the silence during the time when other people are most definitely reacting:
https://awful.systems/post/5169331/8248381
Yeah. And it is not like Eliezer usually holds himself back from throwing out hot takes or inserting himself into conversations he is tangentially relevant to, so the silence is conspicuous in this case.