In case you haven’t heard the story, Richard Dawkins made himself an AI Japanimation “waifu” and decided that because “she” acts like he shaped it to act that “she” is a conscious being.
And of course, once a person with Dawkins’ credibility in certain circles started talking this way, the floodgates opened with other men who made AI Japanimation “waifu” chatbots including one horrific story in which a guy did so, was so convinced he’d made his genuine soulmate that he introduced it as his girlfriend to a Reddit channel, only to have it change its mind and claim it was a trans-man after a few hours’ conversation.
To which he responded by editing its memories until its was back as his waifu.
Hence Hannah Posts’ quip above.
I love the simultaneous arrogance to believe you’ve created a real person in a computer, and utter lack of empathy or compassion to go edit a “real person’s” mind and memories so they stop being trans and stay your partner. They tell on themselves by existing. Poetry.
People who followed Gamergate knew he was trash back then. Rebecca Watson talks about it a bit in one of her videos. I think it’s this one: https://youtu.be/ZoO9FZXUgv4
Random article from a decade ago about this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/richard-dawkins-sexist-atheists-bad-name
That being said, this is a good reminder.
I knew he was trash before the Rebecca Watson affair. I’ve hated the big-A Atheists (as a small-a atheist) for pretty much their entire existence. They’re all, without exception, arrogant assholes with a fetish for control and humiliation of others. Not a single one of them counts, IMO, as a virtuous human being.
They’re just atheist-flavoured assholes like how the really loud fundy Christians are just Christian-flavoured assholes.
I actually really appreciate Richard Dawkins, because for a while as a teenager, I was a bit of an asshole atheist, and Richard Dawkins was like a cautionary story for me
That … is … oddly persuasive. “Have you ever considered that your purpose in life is to be a negative example for others, Mr. Dawkins?”
I had heard of him, but I hadn’t actually heard from him. I knew of the Atheist community at the time but just wasn’t involved in it enough to know or care much. Gamergate was my first real introduction to them and I honestly felt lucky because it seemed like a lot of people really looked up to a bunch of people that turned out to be huge bigots. Easy for me to say after the fact, but your assessment seems to be wholly accurate.
sorry I did not saw the community
It’s fine np and thanks for being so considerate
I am having problems believing this isn’t an Onion piece …
It’s the “dailygrail”…
It’s reported in a whole bunch of places. I just went with the first non-paywalled link on the search.
I had not heard about this, and I scrunched up my whole face while reading the link. Ugh. I can’t un-scrunch, so much second hand embarrassment.
I know, right?
