I.
To understand “beep-boopism” as I will describe it here you first must understand rationalist tumblr. To describe rationalist tumblr, otherwise known as the Tumblr Academic Freedom Club, would be far outside the scope of this account. If you are unfamiliar with it, I would encourage you to investigate the literature for yourself.
As people have pointed out, the practice of criticizing the overly analytical by comparing them to robots certainly has a long history, and in fact the term “beep boop” has likely been used many times before in this context. Here my aim is merely to give an account of the history of the term as it intersects with rationalist tumblr. The entire controversy certainly has relevance within a wider cultural context, but it is also worth noting that rationalist tumblr is quite idiosyncratic.
II.
As far as I know, the first time “beep boop” entered The Discourse was in a post by perversesheaf, a member of the hallowed tradition of rationalist-critical denizens of rationalist tumblr. (It is a much commented-upon phenomenon that the surest way to be accepted into rationalist tumblr’s ranks is to get a tumblr and begin criticizing it, a mark of the high value placed on contrarianism.) Unfortunately perversesheaf has since deactivated their blog, making it more difficult to investigate the origins of the beep-boopism debate. However, if I recall correctly it began with a post claiming that jealousy is weird by comparing it to bowling. It would be odd to be jealous that your partner had gone bowling with someone else, the logic went, and it is similarly odd to be jealous if your partner has sex with other people.
The discussion continued when thesublemon posted an essay by former tumblr user moteinthedark titled “Aesthetics are moral judgments.” This drew criticism from perversesheaf, who wrote “The author is very intelligent, writes well, yet fundamentally misconceives a basic aspect of the human experience. It sets off the exact same alarm bells the “How is sex different from bowling?” conversation did.” Tumblr user ogingat, an ally of perversesheaf, agreed with the criticism and added to it by criticizing moteinthedark’s use of mathematical metaphors.
This prompted a reaction from ozymandias271, who replied in an evenhanded tone defending the use of metaphor. However, their next post on the subject was less evenhanded: they wrote “beep boop rationalists are robots! It’s funny because a quarter of rationalists are autistic” and tagged it #vagueblogging. This post was criticized by tumblr users such as prophecyformula, who responded “beep boop highly autistic communities might have some systematic epistemological problems related to the high prevalence of autism.” Most notably, it began an argument with perversesheaf.
In this case, “beep boop” is used to mean something adjacent to “autistic.” Or maybe “people who have a hard time understanding things that normal people grasp intuitively.” The specialness of sex is certainly something that most people believe in intuitively, but many rationalists find odd. Aesthetic judgments are another example of this, as most people have an intuitive sense of aesthetics that is different from what is described in moteinthedark’s post.
(Not long after the argument began, ozymandias271 posted that their strongly negative reaction was due in part to their “~~tragic backstory”, in part to defensiveness of their friend moteinthedark, and in part to a depressive episode. For their part, perversesheaf and ogingat both deactivated the next day, finding tumblr an suboptimal place to conduct The Discourse.)
III.
Two months later, on September 24, “beep boop” made its return, in a response severnayazemlya wrote to an ask. An anon asked him for empirical evidence of his claims of the harms likely to result from immigration. He responded that the visible effects of immigration, particularly the societal decay it causes, are hard to quantify. He wrote in a clear criticism of tendencies in the rationalist community, “Number fetishism won’t get you very far here … There’s plenty of empirical evidence … but it’s not the sort of thing a beep boop can process, which means beep-boopism is epistemically harmful.”
The meaning of “beep boop” here seems slightly different than in the previous case. It refers less to a lack of understanding of neurotypical experiences and social norms, and more to an overreliance on statistics, the quantifiable, and the scientific establishment in forming opinions.
On September 26, nostalgebraist wrote “So excited for “beep-boopism” to become the next hot undefined-except-by-extension-and-connotation mystery term on my dash”. It received a smattering of likes and proved to be quite prescient, as nostalgebraist acknowledged two days later with his reblog, “the prophecy … has been fulfilled …”.
The discourse on beep-boopism took off around 9 am PST on September 28, when veronicastraszh made a post with the title “Beepy Boopy Veronica Style.” What she wrote seems to have little connection to the severnayazemlya post and is instead more reminiscent of the original argument between perversesheaf and ozymandias271. She describes beep-boopism as “hyper logic and hyper detachment … refusing to get caught up in the cult of social stigma.” Her main criticism of beep-boopism is that it is important not to dismiss social subtleties, as this can lead to things like people refusing to acknowledge sexism.
Tumblr user davidsevera, best known for his frequent jokes but increasingly considered a valuable contributor to the political Discourse as well, wrote another popular post on the issue three hours later, around 12 pm PST. His post focused on the issue brought up by severnayazemlya. He criticized opponents of beep-boopism as engaging in their own error, “Plausible Narrativism.”
Tumblr user queenshulamit, known romantic associate of nostalgebraist and fellow advocate for “nicencess” and “reasonableness,” wrote around 4 pm PST that “having a srs opinion on beepboopgate is compulsory now,” in an indication of how quickly and how far the controversy had spread. (The appelation #beepboopgate references previous controversies in the group known as rationalist tumblr or the Tumblr Academic Freedom Club. Most notable among these controversies are #prettygate, #speckgate, and the perhaps most notorious (and certainly most similar to #beepboopgate) #neotenygate. Unfortunately there is no space in this treatment to do them justice.) Her opinion was the the word “beepboop” was conflating several things, which was certainly correct: she named “basing opinions on numbers, being sutistic[sic]/autistic cousin, and disregard for social norms.” (One might call these the severnayazemlya, ozymandias271, and veronicastraszh definitions respectively.)
IV.
An interesting aspect of #beepboopgate as opposed to similar previous scandals is how much of the discourse occurred at the meta level. The original flare-up in July was entirely on the object-level, and the discussion on severnayazemlya’s September 24 post was object-level as well. However, people began discussing it as a controversy before it was a controversy (i.e. nostalgebraist) and as soon as the real controversy began, much of the discourse consisted of pattern-matching it to previous incidents and making jokes.
This is an unfortunately incomplete tumblr historical document here reproduced in its entirety.
It seems polite to tag those mentioned, sorry if I’m missing someone but people change usernames a lot:
@thesublemon @cptsdcarlosdevil @nostalgebraist @veronicastraszh @davidsevera @birdblogwhichisforbirds
