I eagerly await the most rational toothpaste thread.
I think it has been mentioned before, but it bears repeating, please don’t use “most rational” in titles. Just ask for the best programming language and describe your needs.
Let’s break it down, shall we? The comment contains the following three things:
A joke insinuating “rational programming” is the same as “rational toothpaste”. No claim is made explicitly, so no rebuttal can be made. This is pure dark arts if you ask me.
Negative instruction: Don’t do this. No attempt to explain why.
Positive instruction: Do that instead. Again, no attempt to explain why.
And you think this is more rational than the detailed, respectful, intelligent comments made by people who actually thought about the questions for five minutes and shared their expertise?
I’m appalled.
Maybe it’s obvious to you that having “most rational X” in the title is stupid. And to be honest in hindsight it seems a bit silly to me as well, now that I have explicitly thought about the reasons for it. But it wasn’t obvious when I wrote it, and it surely isn’t self-evident to everybody.
I’m not against setting up norms and rules, and yes they are gonna change on people, and yes people need to be humiliated from time to time for breaking them flagrantly, but it’s simply unfair to make humiliating jokes in retaliation for breaking them when there is no actual reason for the person to have known about the norm’s existence.
Note that Konkvistador didn’t even have a link to a top level post to substantiate the claim that this norm exists, just “I think this has been mentioned before”—am I supposed to read every comment on LessWrong to see what norms I’m supposed to be following?
Hmm, I guess people that follow most of the discussions here might be overestimating how much “community lore” others are aware of (or they may mistake “opinions shared by a few posters” for “community lore”).
I share your surprise that the grandparent was so positively received. It was briefly at −1, since I was the first to encounter the comment and I thought it was inane, obnoxious and wrong, without being sufficiently wrong that it could get any points for clever irony or humor.
I think it has been mentioned before, but it bears repeating, please don’t use “most rational” in titles.
I haven’t seen this advice before. A link would be appreciated.
Edit: The post has been retitled to “what is the best programming language”. My main reason for doing so is to avoid confusion as well as dilution of the meaning of the word “rational”—which should probably be reserved for specific contexts (e.g. avoiding cognitive biases) rather than used as a catch-all for “most optimal” and so forth.
Just ask for the best programming language and describe your needs.
My needs? Well I am already moderately skilled at a dozen or so languages, including Python, SQL, and Forth. My first scripting language was Perl and my first GUI language was REALBasic, which was essentially Visual Basic for the Mac.
Why did I go into Forth? Well, I wanted some down and dirty understanding of what the heck is actually going on in a computer. And I couldn’t stick with C long enough to get that for some reason. Now I’ve done things like creating my own string manipulation functions (by concatenating other functions and primitives). I’m not sure I could have got that from Python.
On the other hand, now when I look at C code slinging pointers and char arrays around it makes perfect sense, and I can also visualize linked lists and other data structures. As a newbie though I remember it was all extremely confusing.
I linked to the post itself because more than one of the comments were about using “rational” in the titles of posts, and I also thought the content of the post was relevant to understanding that discussion.
Labeling it off topic was an overreaction on my part. It was clear to me that you were talking about the comments.
Nonetheless, it seems kind of silly (in an insulting and childish way) for someone to portray the topic “most rational programming language” as essentially equal with “rational wart removal”, which is the most parsimonious interpretation of your comment, and which I must therefore rebut since you did not bother to clarify.
There are multiple levels on which programming languages can be rational—they can teach rationality skills, they can help you make money for rational causes, and so forth. Wart removal is far more specific and a much more clear-cut case of dilution of the term.
I have substituted “best” in the title in the interests of preventing dilution, but this still seems to me to be a step above and beyond what I am required by linguistic politeness and the demands of clarity to take—programming and rationality really are related in ways beyond the superficial “rational = best” kind of way.
That’s the kindest interpretation you could think of? I’m a bit bothered that I have to specify I wasn’t trying to be a dick in this specific situation. No, I wasn’t trying to be mean to you. It looked like you wanted to see situations similar to yours, so I showed you the first one to came to mind (which of course was the most extreme one), and I assumed you wouldn’t think I was implying they were equal.
“Rational” is so frequently used as a contentless word that, if I were to have a comment keyword blacklist, it’d be number two on there, right after “status”, perhaps followed by “downvote me”. Unless you’re talking meta (as in the parent comment), I strongly recommend trying to figure out what you actually mean, and use that word. “Rationality” ain’t the goal.
if I were to have a comment keyword blacklist, it’d be number two on there, right after “status”
I strongly recommend trying to figure out what you actually mean, and use that word.
Usually when I say status I actually mean status. It’s a valid, coherent and useful abstraction. Reducing all uses of the term to component parts would require writing paragraphs or essays all over the place and in general be a stupid thing to do.
As evidenced by the presence of “downvote me” on the list, my problem with each term is not necessarily the same.
Briefly, I expect people talking about status to be worrying about trivialities, providing facile explanations, or stopping at an overabstraction while thinking they understand a complex issue.
I expect people requesting downvotes to be A) nutty, possibly conspiracy theorists, and B) over-concerned with the karma system.
I eagerly await the most rational toothpaste thread.
I think it has been mentioned before, but it bears repeating, please don’t use “most rational” in titles. Just ask for the best programming language and describe your needs.
Upvoted for being the most rational comment in this thread.
Snark isn’t the same as rationality.
Let’s break it down, shall we? The comment contains the following three things:
A joke insinuating “rational programming” is the same as “rational toothpaste”. No claim is made explicitly, so no rebuttal can be made. This is pure dark arts if you ask me.
Negative instruction: Don’t do this. No attempt to explain why.
Positive instruction: Do that instead. Again, no attempt to explain why.
And you think this is more rational than the detailed, respectful, intelligent comments made by people who actually thought about the questions for five minutes and shared their expertise?
I’m appalled.
Maybe it’s obvious to you that having “most rational X” in the title is stupid. And to be honest in hindsight it seems a bit silly to me as well, now that I have explicitly thought about the reasons for it. But it wasn’t obvious when I wrote it, and it surely isn’t self-evident to everybody.
I’m not against setting up norms and rules, and yes they are gonna change on people, and yes people need to be humiliated from time to time for breaking them flagrantly, but it’s simply unfair to make humiliating jokes in retaliation for breaking them when there is no actual reason for the person to have known about the norm’s existence.
Note that Konkvistador didn’t even have a link to a top level post to substantiate the claim that this norm exists, just “I think this has been mentioned before”—am I supposed to read every comment on LessWrong to see what norms I’m supposed to be following?
Give me a break!
Rational is a frequently used but unfortunately more and more meaningless applause light on LessWrong.
Hmm, I guess people that follow most of the discussions here might be overestimating how much “community lore” others are aware of (or they may mistake “opinions shared by a few posters” for “community lore”).
For prior discussions of this see here:
or here:
Most people seem to have liked the suggestion to use “optimal” instead.
Forgive my ignorance; so what is the most rational form of humor?
Note: Both of these comments are jokes and were intended to be funny, not snarky punishments for norm-breaking.
It turns out to be fart jokes. I have an elegant proof of this, but it is too long to fit in a comment.
Louis C.K. was deconstructing why farts are funny on the daily show the other day:
They come out of your ass.
They make a trumpet noise.
etc
Argh, I can’t believe that went completely over my head in both cases. Now that you’ve added the italics around “most rational” I can see it.
I share your surprise that the grandparent was so positively received. It was briefly at −1, since I was the first to encounter the comment and I thought it was inane, obnoxious and wrong, without being sufficiently wrong that it could get any points for clever irony or humor.
Mind you I upvoted Konk’s actual comment.
By popular demand.
I haven’t seen this advice before. A link would be appreciated.
Edit: The post has been retitled to “what is the best programming language”. My main reason for doing so is to avoid confusion as well as dilution of the meaning of the word “rational”—which should probably be reserved for specific contexts (e.g. avoiding cognitive biases) rather than used as a catch-all for “most optimal” and so forth.
My needs? Well I am already moderately skilled at a dozen or so languages, including Python, SQL, and Forth. My first scripting language was Perl and my first GUI language was REALBasic, which was essentially Visual Basic for the Mac.
Why did I go into Forth? Well, I wanted some down and dirty understanding of what the heck is actually going on in a computer. And I couldn’t stick with C long enough to get that for some reason. Now I’ve done things like creating my own string manipulation functions (by concatenating other functions and primitives). I’m not sure I could have got that from Python.
On the other hand, now when I look at C code slinging pointers and char arrays around it makes perfect sense, and I can also visualize linked lists and other data structures. As a newbie though I remember it was all extremely confusing.
Behold, rational wart removal
Um, that seems off topic. I do see some vaguely on topic comments in the replies… maybe you meant to link to one of them?
I linked to the post itself because more than one of the comments were about using “rational” in the titles of posts, and I also thought the content of the post was relevant to understanding that discussion.
Labeling it off topic was an overreaction on my part. It was clear to me that you were talking about the comments.
Nonetheless, it seems kind of silly (in an insulting and childish way) for someone to portray the topic “most rational programming language” as essentially equal with “rational wart removal”, which is the most parsimonious interpretation of your comment, and which I must therefore rebut since you did not bother to clarify.
There are multiple levels on which programming languages can be rational—they can teach rationality skills, they can help you make money for rational causes, and so forth. Wart removal is far more specific and a much more clear-cut case of dilution of the term.
I have substituted “best” in the title in the interests of preventing dilution, but this still seems to me to be a step above and beyond what I am required by linguistic politeness and the demands of clarity to take—programming and rationality really are related in ways beyond the superficial “rational = best” kind of way.
That’s the kindest interpretation you could think of? I’m a bit bothered that I have to specify I wasn’t trying to be a dick in this specific situation. No, I wasn’t trying to be mean to you. It looked like you wanted to see situations similar to yours, so I showed you the first one to came to mind (which of course was the most extreme one), and I assumed you wouldn’t think I was implying they were equal.
“Rational” is so frequently used as a contentless word that, if I were to have a comment keyword blacklist, it’d be number two on there, right after “status”, perhaps followed by “downvote me”. Unless you’re talking meta (as in the parent comment), I strongly recommend trying to figure out what you actually mean, and use that word. “Rationality” ain’t the goal.
Usually when I say status I actually mean status. It’s a valid, coherent and useful abstraction. Reducing all uses of the term to component parts would require writing paragraphs or essays all over the place and in general be a stupid thing to do.
As evidenced by the presence of “downvote me” on the list, my problem with each term is not necessarily the same.
Briefly, I expect people talking about status to be worrying about trivialities, providing facile explanations, or stopping at an overabstraction while thinking they understand a complex issue.
I expect people requesting downvotes to be A) nutty, possibly conspiracy theorists, and B) over-concerned with the karma system.
It is certainly a word that I have seen used as a curiosity stopper.