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 youāll 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 cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
Yud:
Itās Aella.
Aella in the comments: Iām just an uwu smol bean who never learned how citations work
I think she would be willing to learn how to cite things, not sure whether she wants to learn why just surveying people is not the best way to find the truth. Pretty sure that her interest in trans people is not purely scientific.
Transphobia from Aella? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
That post does sound like she thinks race and sex determine mathematical ability a la James Damore, Larry Summers, or Charles Murray and other backwards Americans.
Woman good at science? Must have a man brain. Send tweet.
Oops forgot to be weird about jews lemme amend that white jews can also be smart even if they have girl brains.
not a single serious person in that thread lol. also is rationalist castleās isp blocking scihub? weird that that libertarian crowd didnāt hear about it
Why am I getting James Somerton flashbacks
She canāt tell the difference between āthe people who wrote the paperā and āthe group that runs the website that hosts a copy of the abstract of the paperā. This speaks to a plentiful lack of curiosity. It reminds me of crank e-mails and sensationalist clickbait pages that say everything on the arXiv is research from Cornell University.
yeah and Iām a brain surgeon because sometimes when I pick my nose I go a little too deep
second take from me. Hereās the full tweet:
Iām going to read this as a joke because he didnāt end it with a period, and he is secretly beefing with aella
Yud, Aella and Hossenfelder make me want to defend modern academic institutions. Granted, thatās not nearly as impressive as Scott Aaronson getting me to sympathize with a cop, but itās still an achievement.
Aella already has better credentials than EY
How briefly do you have to attend college to still be this clueless about how citations work?
well itāll become apparent during first attempts at writing a paper that requires them, but it can be a very long time if subject is dense enough
Ah more anti-intellectualism from the proto cult leader.
This does mean, as the standards are so low, that we all have a phd on Rationalism.
Ahh the missing period, an even worse tone indicator compared to /hj (youtube).
Both follow-up tweets end in periods, so I guess he transitioned to being completely serious 1/3 of the way through? Or maybe a missing period means a joke, a present period means heās serious, and partial periodization means that heās typing with one hand.
Glad I clicked the link, I was pretty sure hj meant handjob.
I am still avoiding YouTube, so I guess āhjā will mean handjob forever.
Itās clearly meant to mean /HalleluJah
Science!
As background: the Kaufmann report that prompted all this is a load of absolute garbage. As discussed fairly extensively on social media (example).
As for Aellaās addition: oh god why did I read this?
The methodology was apparently running a āBig Kink Surveyā which was ātrending on TikTokā and had āvery good SEOā. I suppose this is the right data needed to draw conclusions about what rate 14 year olds are transgender.
The whole this is also full of weird gender essentialism (I never want to read the word ābiofemalesā again).
But donāt worry sheās very pro trans (JK Rowling sense):
Which is why she wants to make a massive reach and be concerned that maybe trans people are getting too much healthcare:
ā¦ Nevermind that her data doesnāt even touch on stuff like rate of HRT, or regret rate; these āconcernsā are all pulled out of thin air.
Like dear cis people are you OK? Is society not transphobic enough for you? :'(
Are you worried that if a teenager is allowed to explore their gender a little that it will cause a bunch of precocious little cis girls to accidentally glance at a vial of testosterone the wrong way and grow a fantastic beard overnight?
When I started estrogen (later than I should have and fuck you Idaho) I was absolutely 100% sure that it was the right thing to try, and that Iād stop if I didnāt like it. Never looked back (estrogen is tasty and I encourage everyone to try it at least once), and I had years before there was much you could call permanent.
But of course itās not the āpermanent changes to bodiesā that made me a 6ft tall amazonian beauty that people like Aella are concerned about. āWhat if we accidentally trans one of the cis??ā fundamentally assumes it is OK to accidentally withhold critical medicine from countless trans people just to be āsafeā.
They always like to dress up these statements as medical concern. But it shines through that, despite whatever the person may express otherwise, deep down they think being trans is not really acceptable. Maybe partially acceptable at best, but should be avoided if possible. Very similar thought model to classics like āoh Iām fine with gay people, but what if my child sees two men holding hands and then wants to try it too??ā
cursed thought
ā¦is that yud for āsheās refused to fuck meā?
cursed corollary to Poe's Law
Yud being secretly contemptuous of Aella is indistinguishable from Yud being horny for Aella
Many such cases
Iām not sure her work is any worse than the average psychology paper that ends up in a magazine rack, but I am not signing up for her Substack to see. And āno worse than the average psychology paperā is not high praise.