Really? Hunh. I’d tried very hard to avoid crossing that line. What in particular do you feel makes it so?
and assumes its audience is attracted to women.
I have survey data backing up my anecdotal experience suggesting that the audience generally is attracted to women. :)
The message is mostly ok though, I think.
Good to hear.
The second comic makes a lot of assumptions that I’m not sure are necessarily true,
while the final compact is not terribly original, and, as with all brief compacts, is
needlessly ambigous (how much freedom of property do I have. What does ownership
mean precisely (can I inherit it? Is the only way to obtain it via the exchange of goods?
How far does self defence stretch?)
I could argue about various aspects of this, but that’s not what I’m here to do. (At least, it’s not what I’m trying to be here to do.) I will say that a lot of the ambiguity you refer to can be cleared up by assuming that the terms in question are subculture-specific jargon, with relatively well-defined meanings understood within the target audience, and that once those jargon terms are considered defined, at least some of the areas of ambiguity are deliberate in order to allow different subgroups of the audience to agree with the non-ambiguous parts, to allow ‘fellow travellers’ to cooperate towards their shared goals.
I’m not really sure how I could improve this aspect. Taking the time to define terms the target audience already knows would give me fewer panels in which to describe the new ideas I want to introduce to them. Any advice on broadening the appeal without losing core target interest would be cheerfully accepted.
The final image is nsfw. I appreciate that your survey does show that most of the target audience are attracted to women, but the downside of trying to appeal to the majority is you can alienate the minority. Still, its not the worst approach in the world.
My issue with the second comic is that I’m not sure its about rationality. Are the things in that compact new to your audience? You mention the prisoners dilemma, which is a good way to extrapolate some of those principles, but don’t really argue how one acheives that. I also would argue that applying rationality to morality isn’t actually that interesting for a lay observer, because generally speaking what you’re going to end up with are results which were intuitive to begin with. If you go up to someone and say “hey, you’re a libertarian, you want goal x. Well cognitive bias y is stopping you from acheiving x!” then (I believe) that will be persuasive. If instead, as I feel like you are in the comic, you say “hey, you’re a libertarian, you want goal x. Well rationality leads to desiring x!” You’re just appealing to their ego. After all, most people tend to consider themselves rational, so if you get to an intuitively obvious conclusion using clear thinking not many people are going to impressed
[small note, I’m not saying that getting an intuitive result using clear thinking isn’t useful, but I don’t believe its that persuasive]
Hrm. I’d been using the rule of thumb “swimwear okay, lingerie not okay”. I can see that some workplaces wouldn’t allow even bikinis, but I’m not familiar with the specifics of such codes, or how widespread they might be. Do you have any references to help me determine a better rule of thumb?
Are the things in that compact new to your audience?
I’ve recently exchanged some email with a prominent libertarian authour, and while there are similar sorts of ideas, such as the Covenant of Unanimous Consent , none seem to fill the particular niche this Compact does.
I’m hoping to have a third part written, in which the narrator asks “What would the world look like if libertarianism was a poor social tool to accomplish your goals? What would it look like if it was a good tool?”, drawing heavily from Methods of Rationality’s chapters of Draco questioning blood purism.
It’s not just the type of clothes, it’s the posture and the expression. And if you say that “lingerie not okay”, then “torn lingery with visible nipples” should be even more nsfw, no?
Aha—I now understand where we are seeing different things from the same image. I asked the artist to draw a modified version of a bikini, with a “furry” visual gag that in addition to the usual two human-style mammaries, she also has two pairs of nipples further down.
Ah, right—I don’t think many readers got that, it would have been more visible if the other nipples had prominent breasts.
The “flowery” pattern around the edges of the clothes make it look like lace lingerie, not a bikini (I don’t think I’ve seen bikini with that kind of “crenelated” edges).
Really? Hunh. I’d tried very hard to avoid crossing that line. What in particular do you feel makes it so?
I have survey data backing up my anecdotal experience suggesting that the audience generally is attracted to women. :)
Good to hear.
I could argue about various aspects of this, but that’s not what I’m here to do. (At least, it’s not what I’m trying to be here to do.) I will say that a lot of the ambiguity you refer to can be cleared up by assuming that the terms in question are subculture-specific jargon, with relatively well-defined meanings understood within the target audience, and that once those jargon terms are considered defined, at least some of the areas of ambiguity are deliberate in order to allow different subgroups of the audience to agree with the non-ambiguous parts, to allow ‘fellow travellers’ to cooperate towards their shared goals.
I’m not really sure how I could improve this aspect. Taking the time to define terms the target audience already knows would give me fewer panels in which to describe the new ideas I want to introduce to them. Any advice on broadening the appeal without losing core target interest would be cheerfully accepted.
The final image is nsfw. I appreciate that your survey does show that most of the target audience are attracted to women, but the downside of trying to appeal to the majority is you can alienate the minority. Still, its not the worst approach in the world.
My issue with the second comic is that I’m not sure its about rationality. Are the things in that compact new to your audience? You mention the prisoners dilemma, which is a good way to extrapolate some of those principles, but don’t really argue how one acheives that. I also would argue that applying rationality to morality isn’t actually that interesting for a lay observer, because generally speaking what you’re going to end up with are results which were intuitive to begin with. If you go up to someone and say “hey, you’re a libertarian, you want goal x. Well cognitive bias y is stopping you from acheiving x!” then (I believe) that will be persuasive. If instead, as I feel like you are in the comic, you say “hey, you’re a libertarian, you want goal x. Well rationality leads to desiring x!” You’re just appealing to their ego. After all, most people tend to consider themselves rational, so if you get to an intuitively obvious conclusion using clear thinking not many people are going to impressed
[small note, I’m not saying that getting an intuitive result using clear thinking isn’t useful, but I don’t believe its that persuasive]
Hrm. I’d been using the rule of thumb “swimwear okay, lingerie not okay”. I can see that some workplaces wouldn’t allow even bikinis, but I’m not familiar with the specifics of such codes, or how widespread they might be. Do you have any references to help me determine a better rule of thumb?
I’ve recently exchanged some email with a prominent libertarian authour, and while there are similar sorts of ideas, such as the Covenant of Unanimous Consent , none seem to fill the particular niche this Compact does.
I’m hoping to have a third part written, in which the narrator asks “What would the world look like if libertarianism was a poor social tool to accomplish your goals? What would it look like if it was a good tool?”, drawing heavily from Methods of Rationality’s chapters of Draco questioning blood purism.
It’s not just the type of clothes, it’s the posture and the expression. And if you say that “lingerie not okay”, then “torn lingery with visible nipples” should be even more nsfw, no?
Aha—I now understand where we are seeing different things from the same image. I asked the artist to draw a modified version of a bikini, with a “furry” visual gag that in addition to the usual two human-style mammaries, she also has two pairs of nipples further down.
Ah, right—I don’t think many readers got that, it would have been more visible if the other nipples had prominent breasts.
The “flowery” pattern around the edges of the clothes make it look like lace lingerie, not a bikini (I don’t think I’ve seen bikini with that kind of “crenelated” edges).