Want to wade into the sandy 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.)

  • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    hey awful, a Question:

    do any of y’all know if there’s a decent writeup of the rationalist/hanson/thiel pre-history of prediction markets (a la polymarket etc) before they hit the much-heightened popularity of the last ~18mo?

    • froztbyte@awful.systemsEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      and since it’s likely that there is no writeup, I am now already starting with “polymarket site:lesswrong.com”

      we all know the abyss would get upset if I don’t visit enough

    • CinnasVerses@awful.systemsEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      Did you try RationalWiki or the page for Hanson himself? Read it next to Taleb’s The Black Swan patiently explaining to clever but inexperienced young men that you cannot perfectly predict the future just diversify and prepare for different scenarios.

      A lot of rats give Robin Hanson credit for things which are much older (prediction markets for elections are recorded back to the 16th century, The Great Filter was huge in Cold War pop culture). Werner Antweiler at UBC ran a prediction market from 1993 to 2008.