this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

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Want to wade into the rainbow-ridden 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, and happy 4th July in advance.)

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 7 points 6 days ago (24 children)

I dunno who "Bentham's Bulldog" is, but they live up to their nick and I like the cut of their jib:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ew3chEabxf8YySR5/functional-decision-theory-not-even-wrong-also-wrong

The community is reduced to downvoting, sputtering, and "the real influential philosophers ~~live in Canada~~ are working in industry, not academia":

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ew3chEabxf8YySR5/functional-decision-theory-not-even-wrong-also-wrong?commentId=4CcLDXFkGWGEsgGuu

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 5 days ago (6 children)

And FDT asks: what action would my algorithm outputting make me expect to be the richest if it was settled at the start of time?

[–] Architeuthis@awful.systems 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

FDT is a largely half-assed^1^ attempt at working backwards from "the timeless multidimensional robot god can't blackmail me from the future if I've already made up my mind about stuff, very strongly like" into something more formalistic so Yud can pretend to address roko's basilisk without acknowledging it.

I think there's also some "here's how two robot gods who can perfectly emulate each other might work things out" sprinkled in, but worse than it sounds.

  1. They never got back to the peer reviewers
[–] scruiser@awful.systems 9 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

here’s how two robot gods who can perfectly emulate each other might work things out

Just gotta solve the halting problem, no biggie for a superintelligence or Eliezer.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 6 points 4 days ago

‘ole yuzzie has already solved the halting problem: he can never fucking stop writing

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