apotheon

Karma: 29

apotheon 2 Dec 2012 15:42 UTC
10 points
in reply to: Technologos’s comment on: Why Real Men Wear Pink
Actual tech/science smart people buy—or build—gadgets because they’re useful or interesting for tinkering. The “middle class” of tech/science buy gadgets because they’re fashionable. The former is perfectly happy having an old example of a gadget if it performs admirably and is not on the edge of the person’s tinkering interests; the latter discards old gadgets and buys new. As a result, you basically get two kinds of early adopters. One is the person who consciously adopts new tech, spending money for status, and the other is the person who acquires new tech sporadically, or builds it from parts, or even invents it, because of a tinkering (aka hacking) urge or a specific functionality need.

Obviously, this is an oversimplification, and the lines are typically not so clearly drawn, but there is a definite unfalsifiability issue for the actual tech/science “upper class” as MichaelVassar suggests. The interesting thing about that, though, is that these people are not doing what they’re doing to stay ahead of the “middle class” Joneses the way the clothing/fashion upper class do things; they’re just doing what intrigues or helps them individually.

In the end, though, a certain amount of style consciousness is necessary to maintaining a tech/science “upper class” status, because people who are too badly unstylish are going to be regarded with disdain even in tech/science circles no matter how smart they are and how interesting their gadgetry, except in the most extreme cases (Hawking, for instance). It helps to write books, of course, especially when your field doesn’t deal with visible gadgetry (e.g. cosmology).

apotheon 2 Dec 2012 0:37 UTC
0 points
in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity
I fail to see how not knowing what someone meant somehow compels you to make up elaborate fantasies about what the person meant, or even excuses it.

. . . and of course nobody ever does anything other than actually cast a vote when strategizing for the future. There’s no way anyone could possibly, say, make the voting part of a grander strategy.

. . . and I suppose you probably think that I think voting is a winning strategy in some way, basically because I pointed out some possible strategies that might seem like a good idea to someone, somewhere, as part of an attempt to remind you that the one-vote-right-now tactic may not be the only reason someone casts a vote.

In short, you assume far too much, then blame me. Good job. That’s certainly rational.

apotheon 21 Nov 2012 7:49 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity
I won’t pretend it’s a great thing to vote if you promise you’ll stop pretending I pretended any such thing, or that I was talking about anything other than comparisons of voting strategies.

The US suffers from a major problem with institutionalizing false dilemmas in politics. Playing the long game as a voter might well involve actions intended to lead to eventual disillusionment in that regard. Whether your time is better spent, in the long run, doing something other than voting (and learning about your voting options) is a somewhat distinct matter.

In short, you suggested that at this time rational voters cannot win by voting, which I took to mean you meant they could not get a winning result in the election in which they vote right now. My response was meant to convey the idea that there are voting strategies which could lead to a win several elections down the line (as part of a larger strategy). You then replied, for some reason, by suggesting that voting is not as useful in general as inventing something—which may be true without in any way contradicting my point.

apotheon 18 Nov 2012 2:46 UTC
0 points
in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity
Don’t forget to take the long game into account.

apotheon 18 Nov 2012 2:46 UTC
2 points
in reply to: khafra’s comment on: Voting is like donating thousands of dollars to charity
You were right when you described “along one dimension” as being simplistic. There are other options than extreme-left, left, centrist, right, and extreme-right (for instance). Engaging in false dilemma reasoning as an excuse to vote for a mainstream candidate with no interest in sending political messages encouraging reform is not particularly rational.

apotheon 15 Nov 2012 17:54 UTC
3 points
in reply to: DaFranker’s comment on: Checklist of Rationality Habits
It’s the “Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from weevils!” tactic. Well . . . maybe not weevils, but not evil either, in this case.

Your objection to the ultimate utility of avoidance doesn’t seem to take the desire to avoid distraction and wasted time even when successfully resisting the biological urges toward relationship-establishing behavior into account. Even if you (for some nonspecific definition of “you”) simply find yourself waylaid for a few minutes by a pretty girl, but ultimately ready to move on, the time spent not only in those few moments but also in thinking about it later on may prove a distraction from other things, regardless of whether you allow yourself to get caught up enough to actively pursue a relationship with her.

apotheon 7 Oct 2012 2:18 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Skill: The Map is Not the Territory
If a stressful day is enough to give you a craving difficult to resist, I think that saying “anything less than complete abstinence has a chance of kickstarting the habit” is a misleading statement of how it works. It might be more accurate to say that every cigarette you have is one cigarette closer to having a habit you need to kick. It seems, in fact, that there’s sort of a gradient of average craving from abstinence all the way up to two packs a day, with variances around those averages. It seems a bit obfuscatory to suggest that “complete abstinence” is the deciding factor, especially when considering the question “When does complete abstinence start? Why doesn’t it start after the next cigarette?” After all, the “real” complete abstinence has already failed, if you had to quit smoking in the first place.

. . . but that’s kind of off the topic of the worksheet example.

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 23:59 UTC
2 points
in reply to: MixedNuts’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
. . . or maybe it’s just the manifestation of Impostor Syndrome.

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 23:49 UTC
2 points
on: Taking “correlation does not imply causation” back from the internet
Key to Memetic Value:

Make sure the landing page is simple, to the point, with no necessary scrolling to get the entire message in a matter of only a few moments, and without clutter. Perhaps include a simple, clear diagram—but that’s not necessary, as long as you have a simple, brief textual explanation that dominates the page. Include a small number of obvious links to other pages on your site for additional information if you want to go into greater detail. If you want to include links to off-site resources, they should probably be collected on a single page other than the main page, unless you do not intend to ever have more than one off-site link for such information. Make sure the page is still clear and quickly absorbed by visitors even with JavaScript and CSS turned off in the browser. Whatever you do, don’t use Flash, Java, or any kind of animation or video on the main page. None.

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 14:33 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Rain’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
Thanks. That is an entertaining read.

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 14:30 UTC
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
It depends on your ability to come up with an alternate force-multiplier to the offered weapon to establish some kind of tactical superiority. If you quickly come up with one, or are at least confident of your ability to do so, the smart move is to induce the others to deal with each other first, then attack the winner from a position of strength after he has been weakened by the initial exchange with his first opponent. Otherwise, pick up the offered weapon; then the ideal strategy is still probably to see if you can get the other two to attack each other before coming after you, perhaps acting as though your only reason for picking up the weapon is to be a “coward” who wishes to avoid a fight altogether—because, of course, the other two are unlikely to go after the more dangerous opponent first, even though collaborating to eliminate the primary threat before attempting to finish off a (hopefully) weakened remaining foe is probably the winning strategy for them.

Of course, the real smart move, if you can get everyone in on it, might be to ensure that all three of you collaborate in a surprise attack on the Joker after giving him the impression he’s safe by pretending to initially target each other. That’s pretty damned unlikely to happen, though, given the level of trust most likely needed to achieve that kind of alliance without cluing in the Joker and getting yourself killed by him instead of the other two.

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 14:18 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Rain’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
That guy was a scary motherfucker in the Winter War. I don’t remember whether the Wikipedia article you linked mentions it, but I seem to recall that a reporter asked him once how he got to be such a good shot, and he said “Practice.”

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 14:16 UTC
0 points
in reply to: arundelo’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
I phrased my query based on the fact that the moment I start trying to judge by anything other than ordinal position in the survey, myriad possibilities of roughly equal potential suitability come to mind. My first thought was that lower on the list is better, but (like you) I ran into a problem with the “other weapon” option being at the bottom, then I noticed that the “hunting rifle” option came later than the “assault rifle” option which seemed inconsistent with popular understandings of terms like “assault rifle”, then I thought about the fact that gun control advocates rate “hunting rifles” as less dangerous than both “assault weapons” (which of course include technically termed assault rifles and handguns of all sorts including “pistols”), and next I realized. . . .

. . . so I just fell back on mentioning the first-blush ordinal guess (in case by “higher level” the querent meant more pacifistic ideas or something like that) and the “any other ordering” contrast to make my question simpler.

tl;dr summary: Yeah, I thought lower made more sense in some respects, but had second (and third, and more) thoughts as you did, so I just simplified the question.

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 14:10 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Rain’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
A major incentive in the design of the combat rifle was a cost-benefit analysis in terms of the expenses involved in the training, equipping, and potential resource loss of soldiers. Better-trained soldiers outfitted with larger-cartridge battle rifles—even when they are semi-auto only and not select fire rifles, like the M1 Garand—are more individually effective, for instance, than assault rifles. On the other hand, fielding such more highly trained, effectively equipped soldiers is much more expensive and a greater loss to aggregate military power when they die in the field than the same of less highly-trained, more lightly equipped soldiers. That is, someone who can make full use of a battle rifle out to its ideal engagement range and issued such a rifle is significantly more effective in the field than someone whose skills do not extend past the ideal engagement range for an assault rifle issued such a rifle—but the former is more expensive, both to deploy and to lose in combat, than warranted by the increase of individual effectiveness, if you treat the value of the soldier’s life as nonexistent and only regard the soldier as being equivalent in value to equipment.

Of course, this thinking also tends to undervalue the often substantial value of the exceptional case of a single soldier who can account for a far higher number of lesser-trained, lesser-equipped enemy soldiers from longer ranges, because the capability to reliably perform under such circumstances is essentially prohibited by the strategic decision to issue assault rifles by default and only provide combat and marksmanship training out to around 350 meters to the general run of soldiers. It’s the classical mistake of focusing on the statistical averages to the exclusion of considering the sometimes overriding value of the exceptional case.

The American Revolutionary War was essentially won by the exceptional cases, after all (discounting, for the moment, additional factors such as French assistance).

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 13:59 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Rain’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
Okay, thanks.

I “voted” for the “I own an assault rifle” option. Given common ideas of what what constitutes a “hunting rifle” (though an AR-15 is one of the “varmint hunting” rifles of choice), I do not own a “hunting rifle”, but I own at least one of every other category of weapon mentioned. There are at least two caveats that apply to my case, and one more that probably applies to the way you phrased things.

The first caveat for my specific case is that, technically, an assault rifle is defined as a select fire (has a switch or other way to toggle between firing “semi-auto”, or one shot per trigger pull, and “full-auto” aka “automatic”, or more than one shot per trigger pull) combat rifle that fires an intermediate or carbine cartridge. What I own is a semi-auto (that is, not select fire and not full-auto) AR-15 -- what mainstream media dimwits and politicians who hate scary black firearms often call an “assault weapon”—which is not technically an assault rifle, though the US military’s M16 is a family of assault rifle variants of the AR-15. All AR-15s, including the various M16 variants, fire 5.56x45mm or .223 Remington cartridges (the two cartridge types are close enough to identical than they are essentially interchangeable), an intermediate cartridge.

The second caveat for my specific case is that civilian AR-15s are among the most favored “varmint hunting” rifles available—used for hunting medium-smallish animals often regarded as pests, such as coyotes and rabbits.

Putting both of these conditions together, I selected “assault rifle” because I thought you would probably mean a semi-auto AR-15 rifle with a high-capacity magazine to fall within that category, and probably consider “hunting rifle” to include things more like high-power bolt action rifles with wooden stocks. More on that next.

For the more general caveat about phrasing, a hunting rifle is in many cases going to qualify as “bigger” than an assault rifle by any technical standard. By definition (as already mentioned), an assault rifle is a select fire rifle, usually with a barrel 20 inches or shorter, that fires an intermediate or carbine cartridge. What most people think of as “hunting rifles” are often longer-barrel semi-auto or single-action rifles (bolt action being a common case) that fire a high-power cartridge, making them typically longer than assault rifles and chambered for a bigger cartridge than assault rifles (.30-06 and .308 Winchester being common examples of such high power cartridges, both with a military battle rifle origin -- .308 as the roughly identical 7.62x51mm cartridge). Because they are not as intensively designed for compactness and convenient carrying over long distances as assault rifles, such big game “hunting rifles” are often also heavier and, in some respects, bulkier than assault rifles, even ignoring barrel length. I rather suspect you would have intended the explicitly military-oriented design of assault rifles to qualify as being “higher level” than the “hunting rifle”, though.

I could go on about the definitions of terms like “assault rifle”, “combat rifle”, and “battle rifle”; the history and common uses of the various cartridges and rifles mentioned; and other somewhat-related matters, but the things I already explained comprise the stuff I think directly relevant to this specific survey.

I know this is a lot more than called for by the specific informal survey here, but I thought it might be worthwhile to explain some of my hesitations over answering the survey, how I arrived at the choice I did, and (by application of the information contained in my babbling) how to make such a question more precise in the future.

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 13:18 UTC
0 points
on: Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm *New Place*
What happened? I got up early, went to the Bean Cycle, and it’s now 07:15 with no Evelyn (or anyone else I recognize). At this point, I plan to finish my coffee, go home, and figure out a plan for how to avoid being the only person at a meetup someone else organized in the future. A plan for an experiment comes to mind. . . .

apotheon 4 Oct 2012 13:12 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Rain’s comment on: Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012
I’m looking at this list, and I do not know how to identify what you consider the “highest level”. If I had to judge by position, it would seem that “I own a combat knife or other melee implement” trumps “I own a pistol”, “I own a hunting rifle”, and “I own an assault rifle”. Is that correct?

apotheon 2 Oct 2012 23:56 UTC
0 points
on: Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Thursday 7pm *New Place*
Let’s see if I can get up early enough for this. . . .

apotheon 21 Nov 2007 20:10 UTC
4 points
on: Semantic Stopsigns
“What distinguishes a semantic stopsign is failure to consider the obvious next question.”

I disagree. The distinguishing event is a refusal (not just a failure) to consider it, for reasons other than something like “I don’t have the time right now.” One cannot ask all questions in an average 70+ year lifetime, so one picks which avenues of questioning to pursue most fervently. Sometimes, one simply has to say “I choose to avoid thinking too much about what came before the big bang, because I have to spend more time thinking about the logical origin of ethics. That’s more important to me.”

A semantic stopsign is not marked by your failure to think past it, but by the belief in its inviolability as a rule of the road of thought.