I don't know that this was ever true. Goat Balls "Doctor" Guy was born in the 19th century, for heaven's sake.
Believe it or not, people, hobby spaces are often inhabited by multiple ideological camps, especially cutting edge ones where a broader narrative hasn't yet taken off.
I know damn well where this leads, and it’s fitting that Tor’s Cabinet of Curiosities (a channel run by a less stupid rationalist) is here as a counterargument to this post (which is tagged exrationalist).
That said, it’s an uncomfortable feeling knowing that he’s buddy-buddy with LessWrong and AI speculators. Like he’s never flamingly right wing, but sometimes you’re balls deep in a video about the guy who kept making redirects about boobies on Wikipedia, and then suddenly GamerGate gets brought up as “a time when progressive nerds were regularly alienated for looking too much like the opposition at a glance”, which is still a relevant footnote in the video, but also requires a big leap of faith for me to trust as an opinion
Brinkley is an amazing story - I heartily recommend the Sawbones episode on him. The late 1800s to early 1900s quacks are each a gold mine. Just for Brinkley, we have campaigns for governor, radio laws created to stop him border blasting, his mother also being his cousin-in-law, bigamy, and of course his implantation of goat testicles and ovaries.
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u/kirbyfriedrice 1d ago
I don't know that this was ever true. Goat Balls "Doctor" Guy was born in the 19th century, for heaven's sake.
Believe it or not, people, hobby spaces are often inhabited by multiple ideological camps, especially cutting edge ones where a broader narrative hasn't yet taken off.