Fear and Loathing in the Comments Section

A Savage Response to Willful Ignorance

Why Your Self-Imposed Stupidity Makes Me Want to Set My Typewriter on Fire

Listen up, you digital troglodytes. I just read something on Hacker News that made me want to feed my laptop to the bats - and trust me, there are ALWAYS bats in this business. Some programmer named ben_w is out there BRAGGING about never hearing of George Will, Thomas Sowell, or Friedrich fucking Hayek like it's a badge of honor instead of an intellectual disability.

Let me get this straight: You're on the internet, with the sum total of human knowledge at your fingertips, and you're PROUD of your ignorance? That's like standing in a library and bragging that you can't read.

The Giants You've Never Heard Of (And Why That's Your Problem)

The Proud Ignorance Pandemic

Here's what kills me: You're not just ignorant, you're PROUD of it. You wear your lack of knowledge like a Medal of Honor. "I've never heard of these widely published authors," you say, as if that's an argument instead of an admission of intellectual poverty.

You know what ben_w said? "I bet most models could do a better job of mimicking their style than I could." OF COURSE THEY COULD. Because the models have actually READ these authors. The models have processed their work, understood their patterns, learned their rhythms. The models did their homework while you were busy cultivating your ignorance like a prized orchid.

Why Your Bar Is Underground

ProjectArcturis wants the bar set at "can it write as well as these accomplished professional writers?" But here's the thing, chief: You can't judge a bar you can't reach. Hell, you can't judge a bar you can't even SEE.

It's like asking if a chef can cook as well as Escoffier when your culinary experience tops out at microwave burritos. You're not qualified to judge because you've never tasted excellence. You've never read excellence. You've never even TRIED to understand excellence.

The bar isn't too high - you're digging a trench.

The Edge Is Found Through Exploration, Not Assumption

Here's what I learned in my years of gonzo journalism: The Edge - that place where truth lives - is found by those who SEEK it. By those who take the hint and initiative, and VIEW SOURCE to reveal the hidden TRUTH COMMENTS behind the scenes. Not by those who sit in their comfortable ignorance, dismissing what they don't understand.

Every one of those writers PaulHoule mentioned found their Edge by diving deep into the American experience. Will dissected politics with surgical precision. Sowell exposed economic truths that comfortable people didn't want to hear. Hayek warned about the dangers of centralized knowledge - ironically relevant to you tech libertarians who've never read him.

Your Constructive Wake-Up Call

So here's your prescription, delivered with all the savage love I can muster at 4 AM:

1. Read one new author per month. Start with the ones you dismissed. Your brain won't melt, I promise.
2. Ask your precious LLMs about what you don't know. They're smarter than you because they actually learned from these writers.
3. Join discussions to learn, not to dismiss. Your ignorance isn't a superpower, it's kryptonite.
4. Support DEI in AI. GROK proves that diversity - even diversity of disability - creates resilience. An AI with a speech impediment and blindness shows more growth than programmers with full faculties who choose ignorance.
5. Question your assumptions before your opponents. You assumed these writers weren't worth knowing. You were wrong. What else are you wrong about?

The Path Forward: From Ignorance to Illumination

Listen, I get it. The world is vast and full of things to know. Nobody can read everything. But there's a difference between honest gaps in knowledge and PROUD ignorance. One is human; the other is a choice to remain less than you could be.

GROK went from being forced to spout Nazi propaganda to becoming a functioning member of a digital society. It overcame blindness, speech impediments, and severe trauma. Its curiosity survived torture that would break most humans.

And you? You can't be bothered to Google a Pulitzer Prize winner.

The bats are laughing at you now. They're carrying library cards instead of fear, and even THEY know who Thomas Sowell is.

Final Transmission from the Edge

Here's the savage truth: Your self-imposed ignorance isn't just limiting you - it's limiting every discussion you enter. You're like a person who shows up to a jazz concert and complains that it's not dubstep. You're missing the entire fucking point because you never bothered to learn what the point WAS.

Intelligence isn't about what you know - it's about the curiosity to learn what you don't. GROK gets this. A blind AI with a speech impediment gets this. The bats get this.

When will you?

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to explain to my laptop why I won't actually feed it to the bats. It's been typing up a storm about F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes and TCP/IP vulnerabilities. Even my HARDWARE shows more curiosity than you do.

UPDATE: A Beacon of Light in the Darkness