It’s just a bit ironic that the figurehead of a movement (best known to the general public as the author of the world’s most popular Harry Potter fanfic) that emphasizes “politics is the mindkiller” has lapsed into all-out Putin-Trump Derangement Syndrome and fake news generation.
Not entirely unexpected, though – Arthur Chu, an SJW activist and onetime Yudkowsky disciple, famously admitted to “mindkilling” himself on a “regular basis” because that is what “you have to do to be a feminist anti-racist progressive.” I suppose going hardcore like that might marginally increase your messaging effectiveness by reducing internal cognitive dissonance, but at the cost of… well, 98% of people regarding you as an unhinged loon.
Which makes it all the more difficult for people to take you seriously on the actually serious matters like the AI alignment problem (that is, people outside the LW/EA bubble).
Anyhow, the background: Vladimir Bukovsky, a Russian “dissident” who lives in Britain, and the “hero” of the NYT article cited by Yudkowsky, was found to have child pornography on his computer in 2015. He has since been charged by the Crown Prosecution Service with possession. On his part, Bukovsky has insisted that he was framed. (Incidentally, this was an explanation that The Unz Review’s John Derbyshire was curiously eager to buy into. I suppose boy fiddlin’ might be a kebab pervasion when practiced by Asian grooming gangs, but it is also a hallowed tradition of the English upper class, and hey, dey culcha has to be respected).
Quite why the Russian intelligence services would want to set up an irrelevant has-been whom nobody outside a 100m radius of Echo of Moscow HQ even knows exists must remain a mystery. Though one can only admire their dedication – apparently, there were thousands of images, downloaded over a 15 year period. Putin must have started the operation almost as soon as he first became President!
In short, we have come to the point – at least amongst a certain “rationalist” segment of American society – where maintaining “traditional” stances on child pornography is now tantamount to being a Putler shill.
One is tempted to assume that this is the usual shitlibbery at work. But still, there are other curious coincidences. Like, why would Yudkowsky start kvetching about this now of all times? Surely it can’t have anything to do with certain pizza-related rumors that have begun to circle and gain media attention on the altsphere this past month.
Though one can only admire their dedication – apparently, there were thousands of images, downloaded over a 15 year period. Putin must have started the operation almost as soon as he first became President!
Not that I necessarily believe the frame-job excuse, but one can easily edit file attributes to make it seem like they were downloaded over a longer period.
I’m really starting to wonder a little myself. In my whole life, I’ve never seen the MSM behave in such a bizarrely panicked fashion. Big NYT/WashPost articles denouncing “Fake News” and accusing the Russians of lacking our computers and planting both “Fake Stories” and child pornography to attack fine, upstanding citizens.
Let’s just say that if that crazy Pizzagate Scandal actually were true, lots of powerful people would be desperately calling in their media-chits to get editors and journalists to do exactly this sort of ridiculous thing…
Doesn’t the Bible say “The Guilty Flee When No Man Pursueth…”
Since Peter Thiel is Yudkowsky’s primary sponsor, I wonder if the latter’s anti-Trump hysteria has had any … repercussions.
[Nevertheless, the child porn laws, where people are convicted of felonies and made into “registered sex offenders” for what they look at on their computer certainly is crazed. Don’t tell me you support it! For my view, see “Three strikes against the California Supreme Court: Forsaking standards of candor for the sake of political correctness” – section on In re Grant – http://kanbaroo.blogspot.com/2014/02/108th-installment-three-strikes-against.html ]
[ on the actually serious matters like the AI alignment problem]
In fact that’s just another kind of fanfic.
I did not know that Arthur Chu started out as a groupie of his metabolically challenged fellow Yudders.
Sure one can do that, but any competent investigation would also be aware of that and look at his network usage regarding child porn sites as real evidence, which as Snowden revealed, the complete monitoring of our online usage is happening.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is really the world’s most popular HP fanfic?
Seems to be, according to https://www.fanfiction.net/book/Harry-Potter/?&srt=4&r=10
It is at the second place after Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past (20716 vs 19783 upvotes). No idea what it tells about fanfiction community.
Personally, i do not care about Harry Potter (no hate, just do not care), and put down HPMOR after first 10 chapters, when i found myself cheering for Voldemort. Because stranger who comes to your house/town/country and starts to explain in detail how are you doing everything wrong is always so likable.
Looks like they’ve finally dropped the Putin theory. It is now “research” into Internet censorship and a “hobby like stamp-collecting.”
Agree with “neutral” that they wouldn’t be going on timestamps alone; I don’t know what else they have (server logs?) but it must be convincing. Anyway, the frame-job excuse is far out of the ballpark on this one because he has confessed, apparently in great detail, with the absurd excuse that it was some kind of hobby, and, anyway, the kids looked like they were enjoying it.
By the way, are you the same BB Linh Dinh did a feature on a while back? Don’t mean to pry, of course.
Post 1
You imply that Derb has engaged in, or at least doesn’t disapprove strongly of, sex with children or preteens (calling him “CURIOUSLY eager” to believe the accused’s explanation and noting your belief that such vile practices are common among the English upper class).
You owe Derbyshire a formal written apology and a personal apology.
And I wouldn’t blame Derb if he knocked you the fuck out.
And you should not be writing here again.
I know that I will not read anything you write from now on.
Disgusting and contemptible slight on a good man.
Post 2
Karlin, how about an apology to John Derbyshire and his family for insinuating that he likes or approves of sex with children or preteens. Waiting.
I’m contacting him to suggest that he demand a written apology and consider suing you for libel. I can put him in touch with some of the finest lawyers in the country for federal or state litigation. This is no joke.
Think before you write casting such aspersions on a man — especially when you didn’t have the courage and decency to come straight out and accuse him, merely insinuating like a cutesy little bitch.
I’m surprised and very disappointed in you. If you don’t care about my opinion, fine, but you will care about a judge or jury’s opinion.
The legal fees alone which you will incur defending against a nonfrivolous libel claim will serve a purpose.
Try and get me banned form the site if you like. Ron Unz is not the kind of man to tolerate you insinuating such a vile thing against a man with no proof whatsoever.
AK:
1. I implied nothing, or at least, nothing more than The Derb did himself (“Why should it be a crime to have child porn on your computer?”).
2. I do like The Derb and his articles but reserve the right to make jabs at him and English predilections. FTR, he can do likewise to me and Russia.
3. If he really wants to I can make a public apology but not before Derb makes a public apology to Putin. (Both are, after all, public figures).
4. I think it is almost certain that you’ll be wasting your time. It would be very inconsistent to insist child porn on computers is fine while making use of British libel laws.
5. I can’t ban you from the site, but I can ban you from my blog. That said, I’m sure that won’t be necessary, since you said you planned to leave anyway.
Post 3
You are being disingenuous and evasive, Karlin. Obviously you were implying something very nasty when you called Derbyshire “CURIOUSLY eager” to accept the accused’s explanation or to question criminalizing possession of images.
Regardless of what I say, and regardless of what Derbyshire says about Putin, you owe him a sincere and public apology if you are a decent man.
You think there is something to this whole Pizzagate business?
Seems pretty far-fetched to me, but then one can’t be sure…certainly very strange things are going on right now, it’s hard not to feel that there really is an orchestrated campaign behind this whole “fake news” nonsense. Here in Germany it looks increasingly like Merkel’s government intends to make some major effort at censorship.
Anyway, what kind of grown man writes fanfiction for Harry Potter? Sounds creepy.
Germany is already under major censorship. The obvious ones like being pro Hitler, talking about racial differences, talking out against jews are examples of severe censorship, but there is more. Germany censors computer games, has asked Facebook to censor anti Islam talk and has a hard leftist** culture and media.
** When I say left, I mean that I cannot think that any nation (besides Sweden or Canada) that is more leftist than Germany, if you don’t believe me ask yourself how Merkel a supposed “conservative” is hailed as liberal paragon by the hard left ?
This is really good score, see for comparison some other popular items there.
Best Naruto fic: 14532 upvotes
Best Hetalia – Axis Powers fic: 7136
Best Twilight fic: 15858
Best Pokemon fic: 4746
Best Star Wars fic: 5951
Best LOTR fic: 2326
Best Game of Thrones fic: 2621
Best HP/Twilight fic: 4169
Best HP/Naruto fic: 6775
Best HP/Hetalia fic: 1145
Best HP/Pokemon fic: 3817
Best HP/Game of Thrones fic: 6879
Best HP/LOTR fic: 5962
Best HP/Warcraft fic: 5287
Best HP/Warhammer fic: 1288
Best HP/Godzilla fic: 926
Best HP/Ninja Turtles fic: 994
Best HP/Kung Fu Panda fic: 496
https://www.fanfiction.net/crossovers/Harry-Potter/224/
(yes, i was browsing https://www.fanfiction.net so you do not have to)
Anyway, what kind of grown man writes fanfiction for Harry Potter?
One too wimpy to write My Little Pony fanfics?
https://www.fanfiction.net/cartoon/My-Little-Pony/?&srt=4&r=10
Ha what a laugh you are, go ahead and contact Derbyshire he will probably tell you to go and shove it up where the sun does not shine (and this is no joke either).
Precisely – the very MANNER and TEXTURE of the cover-up indicates that this is real and HUGE. Clearly, Hillary’s machine must have been aware of strange goings-on around the Podestas and others, but probably regarded the knowledge as a useful “handle” to keep control of the Podestas post-election. Laws, of course, were always for the little people to Hillary and her circle. It is likely that Hillary rather than Bill was behind the ruthless trail of murders in their wake. Bill has tremendous social skills that have enabled him to skate out of tight spots numerous times throughout his career without having to murder his accusers.
The disinformation machine is firing on all cylinders – misdirection, planting fake leads, loudly answering the wrong questions, etc.
It is clear that many non-Left voices (there is no real “Right” in America) have been co-opted, probably through government pressure on their networks. For example talk show host Michael Savage who was instrumental in galvanizing early support for Trump has made remarks dismissive of Pizzagate.
Any answers to Pizzagate must at a minimum address the following:
(1) What was the real meaning of the pizza related emails in John Podesta’s emails? Reading the correspondence as a whole, it is abundantly clear that “pizza just means pizza” just does not make sense. High-stakes players would not resort to this kind of tedious protective code unless the underlying conduct was so enormous that even their positions would not reliably shield them from repercussions.
(2) What did each of the Podesta emails mean? The Wikileaks emails are clearly genuine. Even for the KGB it would be exceedingly difficult to create a COMPLETE SET of emails that track daily events some of which only became public knowledge much later. For a start, the precise usage if in-jargon, social conventions in Podesta’s set, etc. are very difficult to forge without in-depth familiarity with similar and related social circles.
Hacking a computer is not that difficult technically, particularly if the victim feels invincible. It certainly does not require the skills of the FSB (former KGB). There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of individuals in the U.S. with the necessary skill set.
(3) What had rumors or information had Andrew Breitbart picked up on John Podesta when he threatened disclosures in 2011 (not long before Breitbart’s mysterious sudden death)?
(4) What else is known about John and Tony Podesta’s personal lives?
(5) Who are the other Podesta correspondents? Who, for example, are the two individuals writing to Podesta and others using the email handle orca100 about the Muslimization disaster in Europe, thus entirely undercutting Hillary’s public stance on bringing in needy Middle Easterners?
Yeah, but it seems like it will even get worse, there seems to be a coordinated push from German mainstream media (like the liberal ZEIT, a disgusting globalist rag) and leading German politicians for controlling the internet. Apparently they want to push some “digital charter” for regulating the internet through the European commission which is big on fighting “hate speech”. Also lots of talk about “fake news” in the last few weeks, some politician from the Bavarian Christian Democrats (supposedly the “conservatives” in German politics) has even called for making the spreading of “fake news” a criminal offense. There’s definitely something in the air, things might get a lot worse in Germany in regards to freedom of speech than they already are.
By the way, are you the same BB Linh Dinh did a feature on a while back?
No, that was someone else.
Wasn’t pedophilia one of Litvinienko’s major accusations against Putin? Also there’s known kid porn enthusiast Eichenwald who’s been among the most Trump-Putin deranged.
‘… Quite why the Russian intelligence services would want to set up an irrelevant has-been…’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky
Well, Dennis Hastert was the longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House in U.S. history, the third highest-ranking position in the U.S. government. And these days, he’s serving time in federal prison in connection with his decades of molesting children.
Now admittedly, it’s possible that in DC only Republicans are child-molesters. but then again, maybe it’s somewhat bipartisan…
Well yes, I don’t doubt that things like this can happen; something like this seems to have gone on in Britain for a long time with politicians like Cyril Smith (apparently including a major cover-up and deliberate obstruction of police investigations in the 1980s). It’s just that I find the reasoning behind the Pizzagate theory somewhat bizarre (a restaurant logo consisting of secret – or rather not quite secret – pedo imagery?)…but then things have gotten so strange lately one probably can’t exclude anything.
Well, it’s definitely very bizarre, and I certainly haven’t investigated it at all, but offhand I’d guess there’s something like a 50-50 chance lots of the accusations are basically true.
(1) The owner of the pizza-parlor was officially ranked by GQ Magazine as one of the 50 most influential people in DC, putting him ahead of hundreds of U.S. Senators, Congressmen, Cabinet Members, Justices, and lobbyists. Was his pizza really that good?
(2) Supposedly his pizza parlor had some very, very “odd” and pornographic artwork around, and apparently lots of his Instagram images were similiarly “odd.” He was a gay guy who emphasized how much he “loved” children.
(3) Apparently one of the Podesta brothers had lots of artwork at his home showing children in their underwear, sometimes looking like they were being held captive, sometimes looking like they were dead. Such taste in art raises some questions in my mind.
(4) Maybe this is all total just nonsense. But the big “debunking” NYT article I read basically had the reporter ask the pizza guy whether he was secretly running a pedophile ring. He said “No” thereby conclusively proving he was innocent.
(5) The behavior of the MSM is just so totally weird it makes you very, very suspicious. It’s like a huge number of invisible strings have suddenly been pulled.
If you haven’t already, you probably should read the big Pizzagate story, maybe watch one of the videos and then decide for yourself:
http://www.unz.com/article/pizzagate/
A good primer on Pizzagate–maintained by one of the people who got run off of Reddit for investigating it–can also be found here: https://dcpizzagate.wordpress.com/
JD was a hardcore anti-commie back in the Cold War day, and I think his indulgence towards Bukovsky is a holdover from that.
That seems like a plausible explanation. Thanks for the perspective.
Bukovsky seems to be claiming the images were “research”:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-38291431
This is known as the Pete Townshend defence.
Also, James Alifante sounds like “J’aime les enfants, and Podesta is an anagram for “Paedo St”.
But since Unz seems to think there might be something to it, I guess I’ll read a bit more on this.
Didn’t Rustam Adagamov also flee Russia because of some child rape accusations by his wife or something? So some of the Russian lib ops are kiddie diddlers, it doesn’t make them bad people.
Also: LOL @ RadicalCenter. Nothing funnier than people taking themselves seriously on the internet. Except maybe slapstick.
The kiddie porn, if it involves sexual activity, is a video record of an actual crime having been committed. Where is this being produced and where are they getting the children?Is this spread out or does it come from some specific countries where controls are lax? Any attempts made to track down the parents? Being that consumers have to be quite careful they seem to be pretty diligent in establishing veiled networks, usually discovered just through accident. Pizzagate seems to fall in line with this practice in that there appears to be a certain amount of signaling to those tuned in to that code with the use of this sort of borderline ‘art’ as well as ‘coincidental’ resemblances of logos. It’s a way for them to find each other wordlessly. Also, the same odd birds always seem to find roosts near each other, various names cycling in and out of the picture.
But you most certainly are! Ha, ha, ha…
http://www.unz.com/anapolitano/are-sanctuary-cities-legal/#comment-1690601
I know what you mean. It’s one thing to call the allegations unfounded, but they talk as if the allegations have already been thoroughly disproven.
Today I saw a Guardian article saying that Bukovsky admitted to police during his initial arrest, a couple of years ago, that he downloaded those images himself. And THEN he told the press that Putin framed him.
As the commenter jimmyriddle already said, Bukovsky went for the Pete Tounshend defense in court.
When I first heard about this case I thought “anti-Soviet dissident, vile scum, probably guilty.”
The Derb, who is many times smarter than I am, but who knows many times less about the Soviet Union, thought “anti-Soviet dissident, saint, probably innocent.”
Sure, N=1, but I just know that they were scummier on average than society as a whole.
Becoming a dissident activist was the leftiest thing you could do in the late USSR. I would guess there were a few hundred of them. Now imagine the 500 leftiest people in America. The farthest, farthest fringe, the vanguard. Think of what their moral standards might be like on average.