bgrah449

Karma: 426

bgrah449 27 Mar 2010 14:55 UTC
0 points
on: It’s not like anything to be a bat
This argument would have to apply to people who were born completely blind, or completely deaf. Just imagine that all humans are echolocation-deaf/blind.

bgrah449 24 Feb 2010 19:21 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych
I’ll have to take your word on how it would bother you, but I think a crucial difference is that in the instance of the cute salt shaker, the instinct is to protect—notice that the word used, “cruel,” is dependent upon how it’s received by the anthropomorphized salt shaker. If I tell the soup, “You’re too cold and have too high a potato-to-clam ratio!”—is it seen as cruel or mean? It seems more like it’s seen as, like you said, hostile—a statement more about my feelings in intent than the “feelings” of the salt shaker in consequence.

I also understand that I may be putting too much emphasis on your particular words, inferring precision where none was intended, so if that’s the case, let me know. But I think in the case of the cute object, I would be seen as a “bully,” whereas in the case of the soup or the painting, I’d be seen as generally unpleasant and critical. To the extent that there’s a victim with the un-cute objects, it’s the person who values them—I have insulted their taste. This is as opposed to the cute object, where the victim is the object itself.

bgrah449 24 Feb 2010 17:33 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych
My point is that it’s perceived as nasty and cruel at all, rather than bizarre or slightly rude or honest. Imagine it was an excessively large salt shaker—say, several feet tall. And faced it and said, “You’re worthless because you’re too large to be useful.” People would give me a quizzical look, like, what’s wrong with this guy? But the instinct wouldn’t be to protect the large salt shaker.

bgrah449 24 Feb 2010 15:40 UTC
11 points
in reply to: Blueberry’s comment on: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych
I actually included that because of exactly that response from various girls about objects like hotel shampoo bottles, Japanese candies, a very small salt-shaker, a tiny spoon, etc. It usually goes something like, “Look at that salt shaker; it’s so cute.” And then I look at the salt shaker and say, “You’re worthless because you’re too small to be useful.” And the girl will go, “Don’t say that!” and then immediately grabs the salt shaker.

One time I drew pictures on a piece of scratchpaper in such a way that when a Japanese candy was placed in the middle of it, it looked like I had the candy strung up by chains and was being tortured via electric shock. My co-worker snatched the candy and still hasn’t eaten it; it’s still in her desk.

bgrah449 24 Feb 2010 5:05 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Blueberry’s comment on: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych
tl;dr: Cuteness is the word that we use when we want something to experience a feeling of safety or otherwise be more confident than we think they would feel without special effort to make them feel that way.

Thanks for expanding. I want to throw out a warning that we’re treading dangerously close to the foul line, but I think we’re still in-bounds.

Using the word “cute” sarcastically is a very different use of the word with a completely different meaning.

I understand the general point that words can have different meanings, and I’m open to the possibility that I’m falling victim to the typical mind fallacy. I don’t have any alternate meanings suggested yet, so I’m going to try to preemptively defend my definition below.

I want to test this hypothesis with a visualization experiment. I don’t expect it will take longer than about 2 minutes to do all of the visualizations. This is the scene I want you to imagine: the person, animal, or object is standing or sitting, whichever can be expected of it. If it’s a person, he or she has a blank, unsmiling, neutral, unaggressive facial expression. If it’s an animal, its face is similarly at rest. It’s facing either Data or Spock (take your pick). Imagine Data or Spock saying the sentence out loud to the person, animal, or object.
- 52″ plasma television set—It’s flipping through many channels, previewing each one for about a second; someone is channel-surfing. “You will be replaced by better, cheaper technology in less than a year.”
- Baby—“You would test very low on an IQ test. You will continue to be a net resource drain for several years.”
- Sexiest person alive—Doesn’t matter who or what gender—this person is desired greatly, and desired primarily for their ability to satisfy you, personally, sexually. Take a minute and picture this person facing Data or Spock. “Your opinion isn’t respected in virtually any matter; people agree with it out of hope they’ll be able to sleep with you.”
- Bunny—“In a year’s time, you will be harvested and your muscles will be cooked in a soup.”
- Cute boy or girl—Crucially, “cute” describes a particular type of attractive person. Imagine a person you would describe as cute, but not a person who is attractive who could not be described as cute. For me (and some others), “attractive but not cute” is a category that includes “hot,” for example. If the word “cute” is a synoynm for “attractive” with perfect overlap, skip this question and note it below. If you imagined a girl: “You are valued for your womb and your abilities as a nanny. Men will want you for a wife but will consistently lust after other women for their sexual satisfaction.” If you imagined a boy: “Women will tolerate your lovemaking, but you will be valued for your patience and because your timidity makes women around you feel outgoing, bold, and charismatic.”
- Hyena—“You will never have the opportunity to reproduce.”
- Tiny shampoo bottle—Imagine a small carnation-pink shampoo bottle, perhaps 2 inches tall. It has a white, spherical cap. The spherical cap has a very small, intricate, carnation-pink ribbon affixed atop it, as if it were a Christmas gift. “Throw this bottle away; its small volume makes it effectively worthless as a shampoo container.”
- An old man—Imagine an old man who could be perceived as “cute.” Perhaps an old man, short, 90 years old, who walks very slowly, bringing his elderly wife, of roughly the same build, a plate with a sandwich on it, and he’s torn the crust off the sandwich because he knows his wife doesn’t like it. His hair is combed impeccably over his bald spot. His pants aren’t long enough for his legs; they’re “highwaters.” After he sits next to her, he pats her knee. Now imagine this old man facing Data or Spock. “Your wife is still hiding love letters in her closet from her boyfriend before you, who left her. She still reads them and has never been as satisfied since marrying you.”
- A creepy old man—Leering, sexually active. “You give women the creeps, so you won’t have sex again between now and when you die.”
Did some of these statements seem meaner than others? Did any of these make you want to say to Data or Spock, “Don’t say that!” or “You’re going to hurt his/its feelings”? If so, which?

My hypothesis is that the following visualizations will incite, in the typical person, either slight anger at Data or Spock, an instinct to reassure the object at which the unpretty truth is directed, or in some other way some protective behavior, such as an urge to refute the hypothesis especially emphatically for that particular visualization, more than the others: baby, bunny, cute boy/girl, tiny shampoo bottle, old man. My hypothesis is that the following incited either zero emotional response or a non-negative emotional response: TV, sexy person, hyena, creepy old man.

bgrah449 24 Feb 2010 3:03 UTC
2 points
on: Open Thread: February 2010, part 2
I just failed the Wason selection task. Does anyone know any other similarly devilish problems?

bgrah449 23 Feb 2010 1:33 UTC
−7 points
in reply to: Clippy’s comment on: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych
This is the moment when Clippy jumped the shark.

bgrah449 22 Feb 2010 21:11 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych
Her real name is Carmen Sandiego.

bgrah449 22 Feb 2010 15:46 UTC
12 points
on: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych
It seems very oversimplified to say, “We think babies are cute because we have to.” “Cuteness” casts a pretty wide net when you start thinking of all the things we say are “cute.” A sample list of things I’ve heard described as cute:
- Babies
- Bunnies
- Targets of sexual attraction
- Small consumer goods, such as tiny containers of shampoo, small forks, etc.
- Some old men
- Targets of sarcastic comments (“That’s real cute, but .. ”)
It seems like we reserve the word for “things that are vulnerable/harmless/ineffective and don’t realize it, which then triggers an urge to keep the thing’s inaccurate self-perceptions about its own effectiveness intact.”

bgrah449 20 Feb 2010 0:30 UTC
0 points
in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: Things You Can’t Countersignal
You can barely signal humility, though.

Study: Making decisions makes you tired

bgrah44919 Feb 2010 20:27 UTC

31 points

6 comments1 min readLW link

bgrah449 19 Feb 2010 17:36 UTC
−8 points
on: Med Patient Social Networks Are Better Scientific Institutions
If this gets promoted, it will make an interesting case study in what it takes for a completely off-topic link reference to get promoted.

bgrah449 19 Feb 2010 0:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Leafy’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Out of curiosity, are you an actuary?

bgrah449 18 Feb 2010 4:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open Thread: February 2010, part 2
Doesn’t that work for math proofs, too?

bgrah449 18 Feb 2010 4:00 UTC
0 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Open Thread: February 2010, part 2
You really think puns are “the formula” for making jokes? You think hunter-gatherers were making puns before they were telling funny stories?

bgrah449 18 Feb 2010 3:04 UTC
0 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Open Thread: February 2010, part 2
Puns are a hard fit, I admit. I especially have a hard time with them because they don’t produce laughter in me; I have a hard time recognizing them as humor unless they’re presented in the same way as other jokes, or pre-identified as jokes.

But that joke has status built into it, as well—for example, it’s not funny to say “star-mangled spanner sounds like star-spangled banner.”

Personally, I call these “Bob Hope Humor,” which is when people laugh to demonstrate that they “get” the joke, not because it actually tickles them.

bgrah449 17 Feb 2010 22:18 UTC
1 point
in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Hayekian Prediction Markets?
taw’s question-wrapped-in-barbed wire is how you keep wealth level despite killing people, since presumably those people were adding to the economy by both producing and consuming goods.

bgrah449 17 Feb 2010 21:49 UTC
4 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread: February 2010, part 2
I have spent a great deal of time thinking about humor, and I’ve arrived at a place somewhat close to yours. Humor is how we pass on lessons about status and fitness, and we do that using pattern recognition. I heard a comedian describe comedy by saying, “It’s always funny when someone falls down. The question is, is it still funny if you push them?” He said for a smaller group of the population, it is. Every joke has a person being displayed as not fit—even if we have to take an object, or an abstraction, and anthropomorphize it. This is the butt of the joke. The more butts of a joke there are, the funnier the joke is—i.e., a single butt will not be that funny, but if there are several butts of a joke, or if a single person is the butt of several layers of the joke, it will be seen as funnier. The most common form of this is when the goals of the butt of a joke is divorced from their results.

Joke 1: This is funny because Jeremy displays a lack of fitness by not being able to properly process the phrase “on TV.” This has one butt—Jeremy.

Joke 2: This joke has two butts. One is the muffin, which is being declared unfit for being bald. The other is the comedian’s character, who is being displayed as needlessly paranoid toward a benign object (a muffin).

Joke 3: This joke isn’t that funny when displayed in text form—the comedy is in the performances, where both conversation participants are butts of the joke for arguing so intensely over something so petty.

Joke 4: The butt of this joke is the traditional joke it’s mocking.

As for your outsiders’ behavior:

New student asks for both cream and lemon: Displays he is unfit by not understanding the purpose of what he’s asking for.

New employee swears and makes racist comments: This isn’t funny in person, but it is funny if a few conditions are met. The first condition is that you’re sufficiently removed from it (i.e., watching it on TV): Imminent threats aren’t funny because this isn’t a status lesson, but a status competition. The second condition is that it must be demonstrated how this makes the person unfit. For example, if the new employee is making these comments because she thinks they demonstrate her social savvy, that starts becoming more funny again (notice Michael Scott in The Office). Or, imagine the new employee has Tourette syndrome and is actually a very sweet girl, who constantly apologizes after making obscene statements. This also would elicit laughs.

If the guy sitting behind you starts grunting and moaning: The threat is too imminent, but if you remove the worrying aspect of it, this is ripe for a punchline. Once again, you have to demonstrate how he is unfit. Perhaps he says, “I’m trying to communicate secretly in Morse Code—grunts are dots, moans are dashes.”

EDIT / ADDENDUM: This also explains why humor is so tied up in culture—you don’t know the purpose of certain cultural habits. Until you intuitively grasp their purpose, you will have a hard time understanding why certain violations of them are funny.

For example, take the Simpsons episode where Homer’s pet lobster dies and he’s weeping as he eats it. In between bouts of loud, wailing grief, he sobs out comments like, “Pass the salt.” This would be hard to understand for cultures that don’t express grief like Western culture does.

bgrah449 17 Feb 2010 17:25 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Morendil’s comment on: Open Thread: February 2010, part 2
I think so, but it’s important to identify the time at which it became predictable—for example, you could only predict that you were painting yourself into a corner just prior to when you made the last brushstroke that made the strip(s) of paint covering the exit path too wide to jump over. This seems hard.

Also, you’d have to know what your utility function was going to be in the future to know that some event was even worth predicting. This seems hard, too.

bgrah449 16 Feb 2010 18:17 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Morendil’s comment on: Open Thread: February 2010, part 2
Thanks! I won’t be able to do the work required on this right now, but will later tonight.

bgrah449

Study: Mak­ing de­ci­sions makes you tired

Study: Making decisions makes you tired