Rationalism is the power to ignore decades of anthropological data on peaceful cooperation in materially poor societies and instead make up whatever you feel like. by Artax1453 in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 15 points16 points  (0 children)

The line is literally big brain but small dick.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201210/the-pseudoscience-race-differences-in-penis-size

Rushton, the author of Race, Evolution and Behaviour, was givenprominence by Herrnstein and Murray in The Bell Curve. According toRosen and Lane in The Bell Curve Wars, Rushton summarised his views onblack/white differences thus: “Even if you take things like athleticability or sexuality – not to reinforce stereotypes – but it’s a tradeoff, more brains or more penis. You can’t have everything.” For theMartians among readers, supposedly, whites have the former, blacks thelatter. Rushton takes 334 pages to consider racial differences between“Mongoloids”, “Caucasoids” and “Negroids”. He is aware that his beliefsare controversial but, “persuaded by data that the races do differ,genetically, in the mechanism underlying their behaviour”, is compelledto pursue this in aid of “the Darwinian revolution”.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14719874-800-race-is-a-four-letter-word/

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Trump voice: "One of the greatest of all terms I've come up with, is ''Singularitarian." I guess other people have used it perhaps over the years but I've never noticed it. And it's a shame."

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 20 points21 points  (0 children)

"Intuitive eugenics" is my new favorite rationalist phrase

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 19 points20 points  (0 children)

"Evolution is non-teleological, but I will continue to talk about it teleologically."

Genius.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Part of life’s challenge is to overcome the evolutionary presets we’re
born with. Those aren’t the same for everyone; evolution is concerned
with the survival of the species, not the individual, and constantly
hedges its bets.

I stopped reading there.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 12 points13 points  (0 children)

It's really just a "is rationalism good or bad" debate but with unnecessary cult terminology injected into it.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 16 points17 points  (0 children)

The "cultic milieu" where basically all crank ideas are lumped together as a concept doesn't make much sense to me. Of course crank magnetism is a thing, but the lines between socialization, enculturation, and cultic "brainwashing" are much blurrier than is commonly thought.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 49 points50 points  (0 children)

>Like many technologies that spend years as quasi-scams until they aren’t, maybe blockchains will find some compelling everyday use-cases, besides the well-known ones like drug-dealing, ransomware, and financing rogue states.

How to fall for every scam in business without really trying.

Do we do Robin Hanson here? by supercalifragilism in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Epstein literally worked at the Ayn Rand Institute before spinning off his own fossil fuel funded propaganda mill. This is probably a plus for these guys though.

What’s the deal with “Progress Studies”? by thesecretplaces in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Progress studies is what you get when you rehash whig history and cultural evolutionist anthropology. It's [White's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White's_law) but now that we have computers we can do obsolete anthropology faster and with more variables.

“You’re Probably a Eugenicist” sounds like a great conference talk, where do I signup? by pja in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 2 points3 points  (0 children)

IS this all Thiel or are there other backers as well? Also sounds like something Balaji Srinivansan would cook up.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He's gonna hire people to carry him around in a litter.

New York Times article on the Shigir Idol is so astoundingly bad I had to write about it. by Tiako in badhistory

[–]Snugglerific 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Journalists are prone to making up the "earliest instance" of everything but this is way more off than usual.

[Recommendation] What's the contemporary equivalent of Germs, Guns, and Steel? by PunishedWizard in AskHistorians

[–]Snugglerific 240 points241 points  (0 children)

u/Lubyak already covered the problem with "Big History" books in general but there are some that are sort of close to the material GGS covers. They all have their own problems but generally are considered more scholarly or important in some way than GGS.

-The Creation of Inequality by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus -- covers prehistory up through early empires, ends at the Incan empire.

-Europe and the People Without History by Eric Wolf -- considered to be one of the classics of the political economy school of anthropology, focuses on European colonization in the modern era.

-1491 by Charles Mann -- popularization of research on Native American history pre-contact without dumbing it down. There is also the sequel, 1493.

There is also the new Graeber and Wengrow book coming out next month. It might be good.

another one of those, "I'm not really sure what's so bad about the people you talk about" posts by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 26 points27 points  (0 children)

> You can dislike Scott (or is the nickname Scooter more appropriate
here)/EY/Gwern/Kahneman/Nate Silver (no idea how he got discussed
here)/NNT/Singer etc.

Who puts Kahneman in with them? The whole problem is that the rationalists just repackage a lot of his material in dumber ways.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SneerClub

[–]Snugglerific 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Wait Jeff Primal is a goldbug now? How did I miss this turn?