ivan: Someone just told me… “well… having their food
labeled as GMO makes them uncomfortable like having sex with a
trans person”
>.<
[18:10]
whaaat?
That seems pretty plausible.
Not particularly backed intuitive dislike.
I mean, conditional on uncomfortability of both.
Algo: makes sense. both are unnatural and deceptive
gwern: Both are?
[18:13]
Algo: yeah, one is a monstrous abortion pretending to be
its opposite and deluding the eye thanks to the latest scientific
techniques, and the other is a weird fruit
gwern, “deceptive” is a pretty terrible word to use
for trans people.
gwern, what a disgusting thing to say.
[18:14]
startling: more or less disgusting than a GMO fruit rotting for a
week?
inquiring minds need to know!
And it wasn’t even an isolated incident:
also all of my anger toward drethelin is completely gone
[20:54]
startling: maybe he started estrogen supplementation
gwern, okay?
startling: we won’t judge him for it. well, maybe you won’t, I find trannies really creepy
There wasn’t even the possibility that it was some bizarre form of “off-color humor”. Gwern admitted it himself:
I realize that, which is why I avoid anything to do with transexuals on LW: I won’t defend my feelings since I know perfectly well that objectively there is no reason to dislike such people, but my feelings exist anyway and mean that anything I might write on the topic is fruit of a poisoned tree.
IRC, on the other hand, is ephemeral and officially not publicly logged so I don’t put as much of a filter on my stream of consciousness.
So this looks pretty nasty and is frankly disappointing. But he’s acknowledged the irrational aspect of it and hasn’t brought the statements himself to LW. Moreover, as Gwern correctly notes, IRC is a medium where people are often lacking any substantial filter. The proper response would be for Gwern to just avoid discussing these issues (which in fact he says he does). In any event, I fail to see how this comments mandate “reparations”. If people on IRC want to appropriately rebuke him when he says this sort knee-jerk stupid shit when it comes up, that makes sense. The connection this has to SI or CFAR is pretty minimal.
The link JoachimSchipper refers to shows gwern being pretty clearly evil.
And it wasn’t even an isolated incident:
There wasn’t even the possibility that it was some bizarre form of “off-color humor”. Gwern admitted it himself:
So this looks pretty nasty and is frankly disappointing. But he’s acknowledged the irrational aspect of it and hasn’t brought the statements himself to LW. Moreover, as Gwern correctly notes, IRC is a medium where people are often lacking any substantial filter. The proper response would be for Gwern to just avoid discussing these issues (which in fact he says he does). In any event, I fail to see how this comments mandate “reparations”. If people on IRC want to appropriately rebuke him when he says this sort knee-jerk stupid shit when it comes up, that makes sense. The connection this has to SI or CFAR is pretty minimal.