SneerClub

989 readers

1 users here now

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.]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

that time Scott told the rationalists how adderall would turn them into geniuses of finance and even named specific rationalists he thought should get into adderall (slatestarcodex.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

54 comments fedilink hide all child comments

this btw is why we now see some of the TPOT rationalists microdosing street meth as a substitute. also that they're idiots, of course.

somehow this man still has a medical license

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

This is up there with the time that rationalists convinced themselves to get addicted to heroin for productivity or whatever.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34648499

EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they're always right about everything. And from there, you can justify all kinds of terrible things.

I came to the same conclusion after a group of my friends got involved with the local rationalist and EA community, though for a different reason: Their drug habits.

They believed themselves to have a better grasp on human nature and behavior than the average person, and therefore believed they were better at controlling themselves. They also had a deep contrarian bias, which turned into a belief that drugs weren’t actually as bad as the system wanted us to believe.

Combine these two factors and they convinced themselves that they could harness recreational opioid use to improve their lives, but avoid the negative consequences that “normies” suffered by doing it wrong. I remember being at a party where several of them were explaining that they were on opioids right now and tried to use the fact that nothing terrible was happening as proof that they were performing rational drug use.

Long story short, the realities of recreational opioid use caught up with them and they were blind to the warning signs due to their hubris. I intentionally drifted away from that group around that time, so I don’t know what happened to them.

I will never forget how confident they were that addiction is something that only happens to other people, not rationalists like them.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I had opioids (Norco) in the hospital like 3 or so times when I had pancreatitis, and they gave me some to take home just in case. I didn't actually need any at home so left that bottle closed but it took a surprising amount of self control; just because of how good it felt in the hospital.

The stuff is potent and best not messed around with.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

i am simultaneously going "what"-meme and jesus fucking christ and also i'm not actually shocked

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

That thread is gold. Specially love this one where heroin is dismissed because it's not utilitarian enough

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34649954

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you want to prematurely end your stimulant rush, booze, GHB, or ketamine will do that.

Ketamine and booze will absolutely not do that, and for the love of God do not take GHB to cool off a rush, what in God’s name are you thinking, you ludicrous phoney

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are these guys lying about drug use to look cool???

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

“incredibly dangerous drug advice that doesn’t get called out” is practically an orange site specialty at this point. it’s weird that their world-class mods don’t even catch the obvious cases

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

GHB aside I wouldn’t even call it particularly dangerous, it’s just blissfully wrongheaded. Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic, and it does what it says on the tin: it takes however your mind is at that moment and just brutally lops off all the connections you normally anticipate it having with your body and other bits of itself, with various interesting consequences for mind and body both. Alcohol is alcohol, it’ll depress your euphoria to some extent but it is also in itself sugar and obviously will make you drunk on top of the (significant) remaining effects of the stimulant - rather than calm down, you are far more likely to get outrageously mad and try to punch a stranger, poorly, because already the whole point of abusing most stimulants, euphoria aside, is to turn you into the world’s sharpest spoon.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They give programming advice just like they give drug advice, the consequences are just different.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This whole situation is making me so glad I stopped taking drugs and never learned to program

Born too young to be made to learn how to program in school

Born too old to lose my code monkey job to a literal mechanical code monkey in a mutually disastrous management fuckup

Born just in time to burn out on drugs and alcohol and watch the machine revolution from home

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m just cackling at whatever this guy thinks ketamine does when you’re already on speed playing jump rope with the traffic, other than “you will lie face down on the pavement for half an hour and conduct a week long interview with satan between the gap in your eyelids”

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

Ok, yes, he's making it all up to look cool, but the idea of dorky rationalists mixing pills, booze and ket is really, really funny. If you really want to be good at code, you should be drinking and drugging like you're Lemmy in 1971....

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

EA appeals to exactly that kind of really-smart-person who is perfectly capable of convincing themselves that they’re always right about everything. And from there, you can justify all kinds of terrible things.

i'd normally disregard that outright as adderal talking