The bulk of political discourse today is purposefully playing telephone with facts in ways that couldn’t be done in the Information Age if people just had the know-how to check for themselves. Comprehending complex sentences is something that can be done by first grade, and comprehending complex concepts and issues is without a doubt something better learned in math than in English, where one learns to obfuscate concepts and issues, and to play to baser emotions. Granted, one also learns to recognize and to defend against these tactics, but it still can’t hold a candle to the “mental gymnastics” referenced above. Do you realize what the world looks like if you’ve got a background in math? Imagine signs reading DANGER: KEEP OUT are planted everywhere, but people purposefully and proudly ignore them, treating it as laughably eccentric to have learned more than half the alphabet, approaching en masse and dragging you with them.
jaimeastorga2000
My own attempt at answering this question was to think for at least 5 minutes of ways in which a society could possibly avoid its people having their hearts broken, and evaluate the solutions on a do want/do not want scale.
The first method would be to never let anybody fall in love again. Either humans would be modified such that they would never feel love again, or they would be isolated such that they could never interact with the appropriate gender (so… straight men with each other, straight women with each other, gay men and lesbian women in single pairs, bisexuals by themselves, etc… if not just isolating everybody individually). This strikes me as completely unacceptable.
The second approach would be to avoid heartbreaks once a person has fallen in love. We consider the cases where a person might have his or her heart broken after that event: the other person might reject them initially, lie to them and string them along until revelation, love them back for a time but eventually stop feeling the same way and leave them, do something that causes first person to leave them while still being in love themselves (cheating, spousal rape, etc...), or be separated from the first person due to circumstances beyond control (death, physical separation due to economic circumstances, etc...). At least, those are all the ways I can think of.
Hopefully, by the time we can seriously talk about eliminating heartbreaks as an implementable policy, the latter will no longer be a serious consideration for people. The case of lying could be taken care of if humans were prevented from lying somehow, either in a specific case (humans can’t lie to their partners while in a relationship/can’t lie when saying “I love you”/some other constrain) or the general case (humans can’t lie at all); I must admit that the former seems to me mildly attractive depending on how it is implemented. To handle the case of people falling out of love, humans could be modified such that they never fall out of love once they have become enamored of someone who loves them back and they have become lovers. This is definitely interesting; I can’t see any immediate objections to that one that aren’t part of the fully general “ick! You are changing me and taking away my free will” reflex. The rejection case could be solved by making it such that people reciprocate love once someone has fallen in love with them, maybe even changing orientations to do so; I don’t really like this one. Comparing it with the last case discussed, the difference seems to be the difference between making a change and preserving a state; I’m not sure this is something I should care about much, so I will consider it more fully later. And the last case… oh, hell, I don’t know. I don’t think taking away the ability to do such things works without also removing the intentions, unless their partner never finds out about them.
The third way would be to let people fall in love, but only with people who would not break their hearts. It seems like creating human imitations who would always love one, a la Failed Utopia #4-2, is one possible venue of attack. It also looks like some ideas from the second set of situations coulde be re-applied with a bit of tweaking...
Aaaand I’m gonna stop there, because I just realized that on top of this, I have to consider all the cases for the polyamorists, too. Jesus Christ, people are complicated; Randall Munroe was right. Sorry if this seems confused, but that’s mostly because it is; this is the first time I have seriously considered the problem. Still, I hope to have contributed something with my post.
Sounds like someone’s beliefs aren’t paying rent.
From desert cliff and mountaintop we trace the wide design,
Strike-slip fault and overthrust and syn and anticline...
We gaze upon creation where erosion makes it known,
And count the countless aeons in the banding of the stone.
Odd, long-vanished creatures and their tracks & shells are found;
Where truth has left its sketches on the slate below the ground.
The patient stone can speak, if we but listen when it talks.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the rocks.There are those who name the stars, who watch the sky by night,
Seeking out the darkest place, to better see the light.
Long ago, when torture broke the remnant of his will,
Galileo recanted, but the Earth is moving still.
High above the mountaintops, where only distance bars,
The truth has left its footprints in the dust between the stars.
We may watch and study or may shudder and deny,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the sky.By stem and root and branch we trace, by feather, fang and fur,
How the living things that are descend from things that were.
The moss, the kelp, the zebrafish, the very mice and flies,
These tiny, humble, wordless things—how shall they tell us lies?
We are kin to beasts; no other answer can we bring.
The truth has left its fingerprints on every living thing.
Remember, should you have to choose between them in the strife,
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote life.And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.~Catherine Faber, The Word of God
Science isn’t just a job, it’s a means of determining truth. Methods of determining truth that aren’t trustworthy in the laboratory don’t become trustworthy when you leave it. There is no doctrine of applying scientific methodology to every aspect of one’s life, you either follow trustworthy methods of investigation or you don’t, and “follow trustworthy methods of investigation” is the core of science.
~Desertopa, TVTropes Forum
For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.
~René Descartes, Discourse on the Method
There are 3 possible interpretations of the boy-Felthorne conversation. One is taking it at face value, one is thinking of it with Felthorne as the boy and Snape as the girl, and one is having Snape in the role of the boy and Lily in the role of the girl. Snape was using the face value conversation as a front for talking about the third one, but Felthorne misrepresented it as the second one, and once Snape realized that (presumably by using legilimency, since he catches Felthorne’s gaze) he made it clear that it wasn’t the case (though he did hint that he was really talking about himself by mentioning that the “boy” in question was in her potions class).
The boy in the face value conversation probably doesn’t exist, since there would be no point bringing him to Felthorne’s attention minutes before she is going to be obliviated (and it would be too much of a coincidence to have three real life situations correspond to each other instead of just two).
Only if your name is Bertrand Russell.
I didn’t catch the meaning of the grandparent until I read your comment, then I re-read it and the implication hit me in the face. Thank you for making me realize that it was supposed to be cringe inducing.
Introduction to Game Theory (Links)
I recall being taught them (as in, the teacher said “these are the 4 elements: earth, fire, wind, and water” and had us each make a full page drawing to plaster on the wall; no mention that it was an antiquated Greek model or anything) in kindergarten and/or elementary school in Peru. Aether was also mentioned as the 5th element, but it was handwaved as being too advanced for us or something. Frankly, I don’t think they had any idea what the hell they were talking about; somebody just told them that those were the elements and they passed it on.
This is a good question for gaining insight into the way spells work, and it seems like an easy one to investigate—one just needs to shoot several spells at another person through a bunch of shields made of different materials and of varying thicknesses, then check if any patterns emerge. If Harry’s not too busy, he should look into it.
Just in Main? I think this belongs in a professional science-fiction publication that accepts reprints. It’s really high quality, and the inferential distance is short enough to an SF fan.
God is nowhere treated worse than by the natural scientists who believe in him. Materialists simply explain the facts, without making use of such phrases, they do this first when importunate pious believers try to force God upon them, and then they answer curtly, either like Laplace: Sire, je n’avais pas, etc., or more rudely in the manner of the Dutch merchants who, when German commercial travellers press their shoddy goods on them, are accustomed to turn them away with the words: Ik kan die zaken niet gebruiken [I have no use for the things] and that is the end of the matter: But what God has had to suffer at the hands of his defenders! In the history of modern natural science, God is treated by his defenders as Frederick William III was treated by his generals and officials in the Jena campaign. One division of the army after another lays down its arms, one fortress after another capitulates before the march of science, until at last the whole infinite realm of nature is conquered by science, and there is no place left in it for the Creator. Newton still allowed Him the “first impulse” but forbade Him any further interference ’in his solar system. Father Secchi bows Him out of the solar system altogether, with all canonical honours it is true, but none the less categorically for all that, and he only allows Him a creative act as regards the primordial nebula. And so in all spheres. In biology, his last great Don Quixote, Agassiz, even ascribes positive nonsense to Him; He is supposed to have created not only the actual animals but also abstract animals, the fish as such! And finally Tyndall totally forbids Him any entry into nature and relegates Him to the world of emotional processes, only admitting Him because, after all, there must be somebody who knows more about all these things (nature) than John Tyndall! What a distance from the old God – the Creator of heaven and earth, the maintainer of all things – without whom not a hair can fall from the head!
~Frederick Engels, Notes and Fragments for Dialectics of Nature
I like the “Humans are insane” series of threads.
Humans are pretty close to immune to memetic viral attacks. In other cultures, memetic attacks are devastating weapons of war, that are carefully researched in hidden facilities where the researchers go through daily psychological analysis to keep the attack from escaping- and occasionally it does anyway, and they have to vaporize the sector. Humans use them to sell hamburgers. Human memetics is the flat-out most advanced in the universe, and they don’t even have clinical immortality yet. Individual humans can make memetic attacks untrained.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Humans
I want to respond to that, but I am too amused by the idea of LW actually being composed of a bunch of AIs roleplaying as humans. That would certainly explain some things...
Can somebody explain to me why Harry was so into House points before Azkaban recalibrated his sense of perspective? It makes sense why most people seek them; you take several dozen kids, split them up into different groups, and soon enough you hear them talking about how they can’t let those Gryffindor jerkasses win the House Cup and so on. But it seems to me like you need to identify with your House to an unhealthy degree to take so much pleasure in earning points for it. Hermione obviously has that problem (cf. her speech about House Ravenclaw in ch. 34), but I would have expected Harry to avoid falling into such an obvious trap.
Note that Draco never seems interested in getting house points (as far as I can remember, anyways), so I guess his Slytherin education allowed him to see what the Ravenclaws missed: House Points are just one of those totally useless things you use to incentivize people into desired behaviors without having to give them any real, costly rewards. Like employee of the month awards, and military medals, and lesswrong kar-
...
Nevermind, I think I get it now.
(But seriously, karma at least has an individual tracking component that allows one to gain status in the community; is there anything about house points that would win Hermione or Harry more status than they would if they just kept getting good grades in class, answering questions correctly, and saving victims from bullies?)
At present, 150 of the 270 comments are children of Bakkot’s comment, arguing about infanticide. It seems obvious to me that we ought to seriously discourage promoting discussion on ideas in introduction threads, and instead point people to open threads / a primer on writing discussion posts.
Another possible solution is to have new introduction treads on a more regular basis. Say, monthly, like quotes threads, or as they fill up, like MoR threads.
Thermodynamic Jurisdiction: This curse causes its victims to become addicted to the inert corpses of dead plants and animals. They are forced to consume them near-constantly, and are unable to go without them for a single day before experiencing withdrawal symptoms. So dependent are they upon these unholy carcasses that a regime of 3 daily dosages is considered normal among sufferers.
This habit is incredibly expensive in the long run; many poor souls, needing a steady supply of this so called “foodstuff” to deal with their affliction, have been led to sell themselves into virtual slavery as a means of procuring it. Such a practice is sometimes referred by the euphemism of “earning the daily bread”.
Cyclical Unconsciousness: Beings affected by this curse are said to fall comatose on a regular basis, a condition that last for several hours. While in this state they are not only defenseless, but also emit a loud, rhythmical noise that gives away their location to their enemies and is unpleasant to their allies. They are furthermore often tormented by horrifying visions; hallucinations of such vividity that they leave their unconscious state panting and screaming in fear.
Worst of all, though, is the fact that those cursed are guaranteed to waste a third of their lives doing nothing but staying still, thus being forced to wonder what great things they might have accomplished in their time had their productivity not been sabotaged in such a devastating manner.
Continuous Combustion: One of the worst curses known to man, Continuous Combustion causes a need for its victims to be forever submerged in a specific substance of particular chemical composition in order to live. While so embraced, the afflicted may be said to live almost normal lives, but when removed from their protective environment death is sure to follow in a matter of minutes, and even the strongest among them can barely last a little over a quarter of an hour before he must return to the gaseous mixture he is so reliant upon.
Even when the cursed have managed to achieve such feats as walking on other celestial bodies, it has only been by carrying with them specially engineered suits designed to maintain the space around them hospitable to their existence; a sad reminder of the impairment that will follow them until the end of their days.
The Succubus’s Allure: People placed under this curse feel a strong compulsion to engage in coitus despite not trying to conceive a child. As such, not only do they expend energy and time in a completely unnecessary activity, but they must also navigate a host of social, legal, and moral obstacles in order to find willing partners with whom to relieve their urges. Worse, they must also beware of the biological calamities that plague those who have succumbed to the Allure and spread from person to person during the act of fornication.
The only saving grace available to those suffering of these symptoms is that their pain may be relieved by a crude simulation of the sexual act which is much easier to deal with than the aforementioned carnal quest; but this is small consolation indeed, for those who find themselves resorting to such measures incur a status loss among their peers which varies as a direct function of their age.