https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin
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Reliable Sources: @TracingWoodgrains's story about a Wikipedia admin who may be the only man more online than @TracingWoodgrains is (with a brief r/drama cameo!)
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This isn't just stupid, it's painfully stupid. You're an idiot, but worst of all, you don't believe it's important that you can't understand why writing this makes you an idiot. After all, it's just a fact that bitcoin is worth money.
Second, you said something somewhere that made me realize you've got a problem: you don't understand just how many more fascists, white supremacists, and racists are and were present in Scott Alexander's spaces. This was one of the weirdest things I experienced, just how normal the SFBA Rationalist Cult seemed to think the racists were.
So you've got an entire article which establishes that Girard has a bias about the reactionary presence in the SFBA Rationalist Cult. But you don't even notice just how many white supremacists, fascists, and racists you've interacted with. It's more than most online people, dude! You're familiar with them! You are a walking counterexample! You were at a conference with Richard Hanania and yes that's guilt by association because it's only in your dipshit SFBA Rationalist Cult brain that 'guilt by association' is foul play!
You give them a platform, you give them a voice, and you try and pretend that Scott Alexander didn't platform Curtis Yarvin, didn't attempt to package NeoRX talking points for a more moderate audience but ended in just making his place a gathering point for pseudoscientific racism!
If you had an editor who could point you to your biases, maybe you wouldn't essentially just be documenting the person who did a lot to document the racism of your tribe. Too bad!
Girard may have deserved to be banned from editing Wikipedia but you can't even understand Sandifer's work, it's too upper level for your cultist brain. So you just look like an ignorant chump.
You really aren't, and you've lost the respect I had for you. This was a bad piece. You do no reflecting on the difficulty of truth-telling in an online era. The parts of it which are good are parts which prove you're being irrational about your place in all of this (CULTIST DEFENDING THE CULT AGAINST AN AGGRESSOR, sorry but that's the darn truth). The parts of it which are bad are related to your cult's failures.
!followers !metashit
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I think you're guilty of also being r-slurred because you're associating with
@TracingWoodgrains. That's how it works, right?
!metashit does that pan out?
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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I've thought about this a lot, and my conclusion was: I got banned from the SFBA Rationalist Cult centers lmao
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Something
something 
one nazi at the dinner 
table 
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I can't explain the reasons but I can confirm he is deeply r-slurred.
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You're also an idiot.
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Certifiably.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
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I start reading your posts or comments, think to myself "this person is doing a bad and cringe impersonation of a leftoid", look at the username and everytime, without fail, its
@Impassionata
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Moral of the story:
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I read some of your old posts on 'SFBA' discussion groups and they're extra r-slurred in retrospect now that Trump is out of office.
Also worth mentioning that you were banned for, I quote, 'Being a str*ggot.'. I was shocked that they used such language in the ban announcement.
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Impassionata trying so hard to convince us he and
@TracingWoodgrains are different people 
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Thanks for alerting me to this thread I missed so I can give trace an upmarsey
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I gave him a upmarsey, too. Now his article is number one
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Keep yourself safe
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So wait, sincere question, was the guy on wikipedia the 58m-read substack article was about critical of rationality? because if so lmfao holy shit
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That's the extent of your response?
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there's this thing where you at once want to call me a blind idiot who's constantly losing any respect you had for me, and then also for me to treat you as a serious and piercing critic who has meaningful things to say in response
but some cards lose their efficacy the more frequently you play them, and you
you can call the whole bitcoin thing stupid if you'd like, but let's be clear: if Gerard had been saying "Bitcoin will be wildly successful price-wise, but I won't buy it on principle because it's immoral," there would be nothing to smirk at there. he didn't. he's been convinced it will collapse and that every drop is the beginning of the end since it was 1/1000 the price it is now. I don't care a speck about crypto but if someone makes bad predictions about something and then doubles down, that deserves to be noted
& yeah I'm familiar with the online racists etc who get attracted to those spheres, and I spend time and energy pointing out why and how they're bad and wrong for these things, and then log in and see people like you kick and scream and whine as soon as I point out that there are liars and scoundrels and scumbags in your camp, because it's No Fair to spend an article pointing out scummy behavior from someone who's been trying to have his cake and eat it too for a decade
you were never going to like this article, because you hate the bay area rationalist subculture more than almost anyone I know, and it's an article correctly excoriating one of its most ferocious critics, because its most ferocious critics have systematically chosen immoral approaches to their criticism
I am every bit as much a critic of the motte and effective altruism and many of these points as someone like Gerard is, but bc I don't act like a scumbag while I do it many of them still like and respect me and I have potential to improve things in that broad culture.
so yes,
is and will remain the most useful response to your article. Gerard and co behave in scummy ways and you as a persistent critic of rationalist culture are incapable of sitting back and saying "yeah actually that's a lot of scummy behavior that should be criticized" and so instead you come around and whine that I'm Not Living Up To Your Hopes And Dreams For Me
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But that other comment has all that I really want to say. Let's look at you.
Someone was wrong on the Internet, and TracingWoodgrains holds a grudge. Dispensing justice: you're just running a hitpiece. That's fine but the bitcoin is a weak hit. But I already knew you wouldn't understand why.
You have never recognized that Trumpism/MAGA is fascism. A movement based on xenophobia, jingoism, lies, and glorifying violence while assaulting the very notion of truth itself. You were easy prey for the fascist movement because of your skepticism of journ*lism, but when you pick up the pen you go after... David Girard? Because he hurt your tribe's feelings.
Oh Trace honey sweetie I'm worse than this. I don't even afford them hatred. I have contempt for them. I am indifferent to them.
They're just a big fricking target that's presently wrong about the fascism. My only real move is convincing Scott Alexander to drop his shitty Trump impersonation and pay attention to the civil war that's developing because THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS NOW FASCIST: IT HAS ENDORSED A NARRATIVE OF 'ALTERNATIVE FACTS.'
So I'm playing cold but you're playing aggrieved.
So 1) you're a scumbag. This is a scumbag article. It's not well written, you aren't clean, you provide a little bit of melancholic reflection on what you share with Girard which is some of the better parts of it, but you're now a muckraker, this is what muckraking is, you just can't do this kind of work and stay 'excellent' or whatever it is you're trying to approach, and 2) so improve that broad culture already instead of turning your lens on a critic who is safely ensconced in their sneerclub.
I don't know if you remember but I think sneerclub is pathetic ex-rationalist cult deprogramming. I don't respect them. I also think that they're right about the weak idiocy of the SFBA Rationalist Cult and I'd rather have Sneerclub than your twitter followers, indulged, as they are, in the denial of the fascist movement on US soil.
Yeah well like I said I think Girard deserved to be kicked out of Wikipedia and Sneerclubbers who stay there find their faces get stuck that way.
But at least the community I moderated wasn't the one that platformed fascists during a fascist resurgence. At least Girard can correctly identify the enemies of our civilization: the people who would have us burn down our cathedrals and instate a reality tv star as king over us all.
How's /r/theschism going?
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it's absolutely a hit piece, as things go, but those can be done with honor. My Bryan Johnson article is similar. I worked to be fair, thorough, and honest throughout my article. Yes, it's a negative article written about someone I'm not fond of; it's a story that demanded to be told and I was the one equipped to tell it. If someone is a live player actively working to harm the reputations of others, as both Bryan Johnson and Gerard were/are, it is wholly appropriate to write with intent to examine and counter their attempts at information control.
The stories I write are stories nobody else will write. I have gone through, for example, the backstory of a furry beach punch, the history of /r/antiwork, a breakup between a rich tech dude and his ex-fiancee, a feud within effective altruism, the FAA hiring scandal, and now this. This is the one I personally was closest to, but each follows the same pattern of taking a close, serious look at a story I was uniquely positioned to address well. I dive into obscure niches and pull the value I find out of them, and nobody at all pays attention to me (or should pay attention to me) for overviews of the biggest news of any given day.
I do recall your impression of Sneerclub--but you say you think Gerard deserved to be kicked out of Wikipedia, which he hasn't been, and you condemn my efforts to bring light to his approach.
/r/theschism is going very well, though it's quiet as always. It's a thoughtful place full of people I respect having reflective discussions. I remain, as ever, very fond of it.
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You're a terrible listener, you know. Don't confuse knowledge with caring. I care about stopping fascism. Knowledge about rats is just a toxic byproduct of that crusade.
What pisses me off about you is you play these weak gotchas without really understanding me. And I guess you don't have to understand me, so long as you admit you'd rather be smug and shitty.
I don't tell you these things because I'm desperate to avoid being seen as someone obsessed with rats you know, because if I cared about that I would stop writing about rats. It's just a price I pay?
As a draft, it's suitable. You just really need an editor. It doesn't have to be me! But you got fricking shitty and arrogant once you had a few ten thousand twitter followers. Your essay needed polish. It wasn't very good. Even here people that weren't me are saying this. I never attacked your right to write this, only the fact that you wrote this essay and not a much better one.
Whatever, topic banned for Scott? Is that what the hammer came down on him for? I don't have your grudge against Gerard, I don't care about him, and if you were capable of acknowledging his successful hits on the SFBA Rationalist Cult you might have my interest in his unfair manipulation. But sorry giving material to Sandifer and then citing Sandifer isn't something that bothers me overmuch because I lived Scott Alexander's neoreactionary beige and I'm just happy someone told the truth about him and his merry band of political idiots.
I would happily count myself one of his merry band of political idiots if he could just acknowledge the fascism.
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Needing an editor, I buy completely. As for getting obnoxious and arrogant -- I try not to, but I've certainly lost my temper with you a couple of times. I don't think that particularly changed before versus after I became well-known. You have a lot to say to me, sometimes quite harsh, and I try to return directness for directness.
As for understanding -- you're fascinated in a trainwreck sort of way by Scott Alexander and the rationalists, and you are more focused than anyone I know on the idea that Trumpism is a fascist movement that all must stop. That's -- not that difficult to understand, really.
If you define "successful hits" as damaging reputation, then yes, Gerard had successful hits on the rationalists. The way he accomplished them was overtly dishonorable in a way that should be understood and countered. As for a grudge against him, I'll freely cop to that; if someone was eager to look for ways to damage your reputation in public I don't imagine you'd be terribly keen on them either. Gerard picked a fight with me; I provided the context people needed to understand that fight and in doing so forestalled -- or at least substantially changed the nature of -- future threats in that regard. I was not, and am not, interested in him landing successful hits on me.
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And I appreciate that. It's when you are inaccurate that I get annoyed.
Your rephrasing above is much better. But I want you to understand something: it's not universally true, but it is a generally true thing that movements have exactly the reputation they deserve.
I don't think you understand just how much rude jeering I got from Scott Alexander's supposedly civil commentariat.
I just had to take the 'reputation' hit.
Ultimately the pathetic thing about the SFBA Rationalist Cult is that they believed they were better, more civil, more rational, more fair, than any other group of people. But they were exactly the heckling hyenas to me.
So what I want you to understand is you don't get to have the reputation you want. The SFBA Rationalist Cult does not get to have its own reputation, and its insistence on its own narrative of superiority is precisely the narcissism that makes it a cult instead of a gathering of like-minded individuals.
So what I mean when I say that Gerard lands hits on Rationalists and that bothers you is you think you can correct the record.
But -- and this might seem like a digression -- the SFBA Rationalist Cult shit the bed on fascism. You yourself have admitted that Trump is dangerous without using the word 'fascism.' You seem to still believe that something will stop him. An entire portion of our political reality is living in the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from him and we're now veering towards violence.
He was always violent.
Gerard may not be perfect but his crimes are comparably less stupid than those of the SFBA Rationalist Cult.
It's like this: there's record of a strong evil Artificial Intelligence in history. And a bunch of people in 2016 said: strong AGI has found a home in Trumpism.
And the educated people were able to say: this is in fact the evil force we have seen before.
And your tribe ignored it. And it's documented that your tribe ignored it.
And you're more upset at Gerard for documenting your tribe than you are at your tribe's failure.
That's sad. That's pathetic. That's your problem.
It's not more complicated than: Trumpism is and always was fascism. Scott Alexander's "You Are Still Calling Wolf" damaged your tribe.
So you're suffering from a lack of perspective on 'reputation hits.' What I meant was less about reputation and more about simple truth. The simple truth of Gerard is pathetic, sure.
But the simple truth of critics of the SFBARC is far more darning.
I had hoped that when I arrived at Rationalist territory, in 2016, that I was arriving at a place which took its vows seriously. You should want the reputation hits you have earned, but as long as you think you haven't them, as long as you try and correct the record instead of investigating how it is that this record came to be, you are merely another instance of EY's childish narcissism.
When did you care more about reputation than the fact that Gerard might actually have a point?
This record of refusal to acknowledge or understand Trumpism as fascism, after the xenophobic movement, after the glorification of violence, after January 6th, is a record of mostly white men who did well in school and are constantly pulling the authoritarian deference to 'teacher.' If you can prove to 'teacher' that Gerard is unfair, then you will have cleared your reputation.
But you deserve your reputation. And it's a good thing that Gerard gave the SFBA Rationalist Cult its reputation. And one of the best things I ever wrote was "White people can't dance" because that spread the reputation of Scott Alexander's space as one infested with white supremacists and fascists, because Scott Alexander deliberately infested himself for science.
The lingering infestation in you remains.
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Good job bobby, here's a star
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That's better. I always assumed you brushed off the insults. Certainly you know better than most why they're necessary.
Or do you?
You have never really understood me, you know. And I don't have hopes or dreams for you. Maybe the only thing you are to me now is the moderator who saw it all happen.
See I don't have nearly the grudge against the SFBA Rationalist Cult as you might think. Resentment? Sure.
But ultimately they are and have always been a means to an end for me.
Moderates don't want to believe in fascism. Fascism is one of those corrupting forces. I didn't understand just how... different the fascism would be this time. I think there is something to this notion that nothing happens the same way twice, that fascism of the 1930s isn't the same as fascism of 2016.
And in 2016... I knew the moderates wouldn't want to believe.
So I picked a moderate political hole and I pointed to the fascist signs as they ahappened. I pointed to the fascists as they came out of the woodgrains. You never really understood what it meant for me to understand that Scott Alexander invited them in, did you?
He said: I want to grow my audience. Neoreactionaries are an audience. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
So you were there, Trace, when discourse failed. The goal of the fascists wasn't just to air their vile viewpoints, though they did do that.
They also spread ambiguity. Put a little bit of spin on it, just question some straightforward narrative.
The SFBA Rationalist Cult was always full of easy marks: that's how they got into a cult. Far from being a good place to make sure moderates saw the fascism, it became an anthropological exhibit, a living breathing testament to the stupidity of intellect.
And the goal is just to get the non-fascists doing the nazi disco dance party moves. Trump calls for Russian assistance on national TV? It was a joke.
Trump openly admires authoritarian despots? It's just playing diplomacy.
Trump threatens to lock up his political opponents? He's just joking. But shouldn't he lock up criminals?
Trump, you're thinking, did not actually lock up Clinton. You confuse obedience to what the fascist demiurge can get away with with non-fascism.
In 2016 a xenophobic movement glorifying violence against journ*lists comes to power united behind an authoritarian strongman type. This person can't turn a democratic republic into his personal autocracy overnight, but he can fire people who investigate his misdeeds.
2020 happens.
And up until January 6th I might have said: perhaps I'm just seeing a fascist because I want to see a fascist. He won't really do anything untowards.
Trace: he showed us what he was on January 6th.
Genocide isn't complicated, Trace: it's part of our genetic heritage, the monstrous form of human social organism: gather around a human and kill. It's not that hard to understand, moderates just don't want to understand it. Fascism is just the addition of the military industrial complex to authoritarian purges. Murder monkey hate spirals giving orders to kill the brown people.
So you have a bunch of dissident right shitheads who want to believe that Trump isn't what leftwing people have been saying he was for 8 years? Get real. You have to get real, Trace.
That's what's pathetic about your fixation on Girard. I said he deserved to be defrocked from his Wikipedia priesthood, didn't I?
Compared to Scott Alexander, Girard's crimes are minor and irrelevant and you're small and petty for focusing on them.
Trump got shot today. Because civil war is inevitable once he's running because he will lose and then he will fight again because he already did. Our court system failed to handle him. Frankly I think the cause is down to: boomer political will isn't there because of a truly bizarre mass senescence.
But once civil war is inevitable, civil war will be fought. Trump doesn't get to be president again after January 6th and if you disagree with that? Frick you, get the frick out of my America. There can be no negotiating with people who believe Trump can be president again.
Believe it or not I don't think he can win: people like me are about to get
REALLY
LOUD.
And I will not see my country fall to a boomer fascist.
You can help or you can whine.
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not reading your substack
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That's a whole lot of words
to tell me you're a cute twink.
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You're an idiot.
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Heck yeah! I want you and
@TracingWoodgrains in spandex outfits wrestling in the midst of Spokane 
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Agree.
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