(2020-02-12) Rival Voices Fuck It We Ball On Rats Postrats Metarats Nrx What Distinguishes And Generated Them

Rival Voices: Fuck it, we ball: on rats, postrats, metarats, nrx what distinguishes and generated them. As some of you know I’ve recently (yesterday) had a small spat with the putanumonit guy.

After the spat, in a DM, I managed to get my thoughts in order about what unites post-rats and makes them differ from rats and, as bonus, the theory also explains metarats and the conversion of some to nrx and to the sneerclub.

This thesis shows how ambient meaning can be encoded in a work of literature, above and beyond the truth-value of the propositions in that work.

it is informative of the author’s worldview. Of how it is like that the world feels to them, of the what-it’s-like to be them, in the world.

So I’m trying to make the point that you can conceptually separate a work’s content from its vibe.

Given that, and that EY’s has a body of work, his work can be separated into two parts: (1) content, and (2) vibe.

I’d claim that the vibe can be summed up with one word: “disembodied”.

I originally used ‘traumatised’ and ‘autistic’ instead of “disembodied” but people objected to those so I’m using this instead.

I don’t think they picked it up from the work but I do think they were attracted to the work because it matches and validates their vibe

The content is an add-on, a superficial sign of group belonging.

This makes sense of why the content is evidently not in their minds - they say all the right words but then are riddled with problems of ‘akrasia’ and their inability to do the ‘utility-maximising thing’.

As a bonus this neatly explains why they’re so attracted to Eliezer’s fiction. Because it is the pure distillation of what they want in the first place, because it is pure vibe.

Part 2 is the kind of objections you can have to Eliezer’s work and what those originated.

The objections to the latter, to its vibe, its mood, its aesthetics, give you the post-rats. They don’t deny Eliezer’s content, but they very much deny his vibe.

and an attention to aesthetics, since that is what was being disregarded

There is no coherent doctrine.

This is why postrats aren’t a coherent group and why postrat is just an umbrella term.

You can also have objections to content. In content Eliezer’s work fails in two ways: first, it pretends that it is not a philosophy - but instead the truth. Secondly, it pretends that it is not a politics - but instead the truth.

Critiques of it as a philosophy have their higher exponent in David Chapman. Chapman claims

you need to study how reasonableness actually works in the world, hence, ethnomethodology. The people that accept this critique call themselves meta-rational as in, they study where and how, in which specific contexts and with what background work rationality in the limited defined scope of the sequences can work.

Critiques of it as a politics comes both from the left and from the right.