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Stubsack: Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 29th June 2025 (awful.systems)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? 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 soo 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.)

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[–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The wikipedia talk page is some solid sneering material. It's like Habryka and HandofLixue can't imagine any legitimate reason why Wikipedia has the norms it does, and they can't imagine how a neutral Wikipedian could come to write that article about lesswrong.

Eigenbra accurately calling them out...

"I also didn't call for any particular edits". You literally pointed to two sentences that you wanted edited.

Your twitter post also goes against Wikipedia practices by casting WP:ASPERSIONS. I can't speak for any of the other editors, but I can say I have never read nor edited RationalWiki, so you might be a little paranoid in that regard.

As to your question:

Was it intentional to try to pick a fight with Wikipedians?

It seems to be ignorance on Habyrka's part, but judging by the talk page, instead of acknowledging their ignorance of Wikipedia's reasonable policies, they seem to be doubling down.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Following up because the talk page keeps providing good material..

    Hand of Lixue keeps trying to throw around the Wikipedia rules like the other editors haven't seen people try to weaponize the rules to push their views many times before.

    Particularly for the unflattering descriptions I included, I made sure they reflect the general view in multiple sources, which is why they might have multiple citations attached. Unfortunately, that has now led to complaints about overcitation from @Hand of Lixue. You can't win with some people...

    Looking back on the original lesswrong brigade organizing discussion of how to improve the wikipedia article, someone tried explaining to Habyrka the rules then and they were dismissive.

    I don’t think it counts as canvassing in the relevant sense, as I didn’t express any specific opinion on how the article should be edited.

    Yes Habyrka, because you clearly have such a good understanding of the Wikipedia rules and norms...

    Also, heavily downvoted on the lesswrong discussion is someone suggesting Wikipedia is irrelevant because LLMs will soon be the standard for "access to ground truth". I guess even lesswrong knows that is bullshit.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Adding onto this chain of thought, does anyone else think the talk page's second top-level comment from non-existent user "habryka" is a bit odd? Especially since after Eigenbra gives it a standard Wikipedian (i.e. unbearably jargon-ridden and a bit pedantic but entirely accurate and reasonable in its substance) reply, new user HandofLixue comes in with:

    ABOUT ME You seem to have me confused with Habryka - I did not make any Twitter post about this. Nonetheless, you have reverted MY edits...

    Kinda reads like they're the same person? I mean Habryka is also active further down the thread so this is almost certainly just my tinfoil hat being too tight and cutting off circulation and/or reading this unfold in bits and pieces rather than putting it all together.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    I think they're different people but may be in communication out of band.

    edit a search for "HandofLixue" on Google only gives one hit, an old profile on LessWrong now renamed to "The Dao of Bayes":

    https://www.lesswrong.com/users/the-dao-of-bayes

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Amazing how both accounts refuse to directly answer the 'are you involved in LW/SSC' question, but work around that question so much (and get so defensive) that they are very suspicious.

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