Jiro

Karma: 5,093

Jiro May 26, 2025, 12:57 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Interest In Conflict Is Instrumentally Convergent

do you just dislike the use of the term “might makes right” here?

Your term carries with it an inaccurate connotation.

(And if you didn’t intend that connotation, it doesn’t make sense as a criticism of Superman or a reason to call him evil anyway.)

Jiro May 26, 2025, 12:22 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Interest In Conflict Is Instrumentally Convergent

The point I am making is that “might makes right, and right is this ideology that I have which involves various things that I claim are good” is still “might makes right”. Superman isn’t “in it for himself”, he’s in it for other people—which in fact is much worse.

Central examples of might makes right have many prominent aspects that are absent from what Superman does, even if in some technical sense it’s “might makes right”. Being in it for other people is one of those, but I mentioned several others.

Jiro May 25, 2025, 11:41 PM
2 points
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in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Interest In Conflict Is Instrumentally Convergent

I’m sure that you know quite well that people with power are exceptionally skilled at finding justifications for how they use their power, even if what they’re actually doing is enriching and aggrandizing themselves and suppressing dissent.

But Superman isn’t, in typical Superman stories. Superman just doesn’t do the kind of things that would be done by someone who’s really in it for themselves but is trying to justify it as needed for the greater good. (Subject to the same caveats as you—I’m sure that over 80+ years of comics, someone’s written Superman that way a few times, but that’s unusual.)

You could argue that actual real world people would and that Superman is thus unrealistic, but in terms of “is Superman evil” and “is Superman just using ‘might makes right’”, the answer is no, even if real world people would act differently.

I’m also skeptical of even this much. Not all real people are the same, after all. I could lie like Cade Metz with no consequence other than some disdain, but I have not, in fact, done so.

When do we see Superman exhibit a careful consideration of what steps are reasonable to take to minimize property damage?

Probably most of the time. Few Superman stories show people complaining about the damage Superman causes, and I don’t think that’s because Superman would beat them up. Just because there isn’t a word balloon saying “I must minimize the damage!” doesn’t change this.

Jiro May 25, 2025, 7:37 PM
2 points
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in reply to: Said Achmiz’s comment on: Interest In Conflict Is Instrumentally Convergent

But then result of this is: “With great power comes great moral leeway”.

Which is just “might makes right”.

That doesn’t follow. The result of combining these two things is that with great power comes great moral leeway when doing specific things. He can violate the law by breaking into a home to catch a villain, but he can’t if he just sees someone’s big TV and wants to take it for himself. He doesn’t get moral leeway to do things just because he personally benefits from them, and “might makes right” is typically assumed to include that. Furthermore, he doesn’t get unlimited leeway bounded by people’s ability to stop him, like “might makes right” also assumes. If he has to destroy property to save lives, he can, but he still needs to take reasonable steps to minimize property damage.

(And he only gets moral leeway on a stricter standard than utilitarianism. He can’t steal that TV just because he gets more utility from it than its current owner. He can’t even steal it to sell it, donate the money to charity, and help 100 malaria victims.)

Jiro May 21, 2025, 6:04 AM
2 points
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on: Shortest damn doomsplainer in world history

Computers get smarter. People don’t.

Because asymptotes exist, this doesn’t imply that computers pass humans.

Besides, transhumanist people could get smarter.

Jiro May 21, 2025, 5:45 AM
3 points
−1
in reply to: tslarm’s comment on: Thinking Insect Suffering Is The Biggest Deal In The World Is Surprisingly Intuitive
Since ordinary people don’t think insect suffering matters, if they pick a number that is high enough that it implies the opposite, it presumptively is too high. This doesn’t prove it’s too high, but if they are bad at picking numbers and they picked a number inconsistent with their other beliefs, we should presume that the number isn’t correct, not that the other belief is incorrect.

Jiro May 19, 2025, 11:33 PM
17 points
16
on: Thinking Insect Suffering Is The Biggest Deal In The World Is Surprisingly Intuitive
As I’ve pointed out before, people saying “insects suffer X% as much as humans” or even “there’s a Y% chance that insects are able to suffer” tells you more about the kind of numbers that people pick when picking small numbers, than it tells you about insect suffering. Most people are not good enough at picking appropriately small numbers and just pick something smaller than the numbers they usually see every day. Which isn’t small enough. If they actually picked appropriately sized numbers instead of saying “if there’s even a 1% chance”, you could do the calculations in this article and figure out that insect suffering should be ignored.
What links here?
- Elizabeth's comment on A Very Simple Case For Giving To Shrimp by Bentham's Bulldog (Jun 14, 2025, 6:16 PM; 10 points)

Jiro May 17, 2025, 1:35 AM
2 points
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in reply to: d_el_ez’s comment on: It’s ‘Well, actually...’ all the way down
All conversation requires some common ground. If you actually don’t know what I meant, there’s not much I can do to help you.

(Also, notice that “ordinary sense of” is followed by an explanation? I don’t see why you’d need another explanation after that.)

Jiro May 16, 2025, 5:42 AM
2 points
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in reply to: d_el_ez’s comment on: It’s ‘Well, actually...’ all the way down

The statements “gives” you information but that doesn’t “count” as you “getting” information.

It’s literally true that I got information, but I didn’t get information from it in the ordinary sense of “I parsed his words, and his words said something about X, so now I know the thing about X that is described by his words”.

There’s a difference between the information content of the statement, and the information that may be concluded from the statement in context. For instance, if I ask someone a question and he responds by snoring I may conclude that he is asleep. But I wouldn’t describe that (non-figuratively) as “he told me that he is asleep”. He didn’t tell me that; he told me nothing meaningful, even though I deduced things from it.

Just like I know that snoring people are often asleep, I know that people who complain about “chemicals” often like organic food. That doesn’t mean that either snores or statements about chemicals have any meaningful information.

Jiro May 16, 2025, 2:01 AM
2 points
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in reply to: d_el_ez’s comment on: It’s ‘Well, actually...’ all the way down
Just the fact this person makes low-information statements about a particular subject gives me information about what he thinks. But I wouldn’t count that as getting information from those statements.

Jiro May 14, 2025, 3:50 PM
2 points
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in reply to: d_el_ez’s comment on: It’s ‘Well, actually...’ all the way down
I don’t think “additive” is acceptable. It has the same problems. The point is that the original statement isn’t communicating anything. I pointed out that it is no better than other statements that don’t communicate anything.

Jiro May 13, 2025, 1:57 PM
3 points
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in reply to: d_el_ez’s comment on: It’s ‘Well, actually...’ all the way down
In practice, the meta is that they are confused and don’t have a coherent idea of things they don’t want in their food, except for superficial elements like having long names or being something they heard mentioned on Youtube. You could start questoning them about the details of things they don’t like, but 1) you’ll just end up telling them that long names and Youtube are a bad reason to avoid something and 2) their original statement about chemicals didn’t communicate anything useful.

It isn’t wrong to ask them for details of what they don’t like, but they could have just as well started by saying “I don’t like bad food additives” and you could have said exactly the same thing. The OP is pretending that “I don’t like chemicals” says more than it actually does.

Jiro May 9, 2025, 3:13 PM
2 points
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in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Which journalists would you give quotes to? [one journalist per comment, agree vote for trustworthy]

The title question is a proxy for the thing I mean:

I think Cade Metz fails to qualify for those things. I don’t think he is trustworthy, quotes accurately, or is truth seeking. And I certainly wouldn’t give him any quotes.

Jiro May 9, 2025, 6:07 AM
2 points
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in reply to: d_el_ez’s comment on: It’s ‘Well, actually...’ all the way down
If they’re just using the word “chemical” as an arbitrary word for “bad substance”, you have the situation I already described: the word isn’t communicating anything useful.

But in practice, someone who claims that they don’t want chemicals in their food probably doesn’t just mean “harmful substances”. They probably mean that they have some criteria for what counts as a harmful substance, and that these criteria are based on traits of things that are commonly called chemicals. When you tell them “wait, water and salt are chemicals”, what you’re really doing is forcing them to state those criteria so you can contest them (and so they can become aware that that’s what they’re using).

Jiro May 9, 2025, 5:53 AM
2 points
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in reply to: d_el_ez’s comment on: It’s ‘Well, actually...’ all the way down

So don’t use the definition if it’s useless.

It’s not just the definition that’s useless. The phrase itself becomes useless, because if the only way to know what they mean is by asking “do you mean X”, the original statement about not wanting chemicals in their food fails to communicate anything useful.

Jiro May 9, 2025, 5:34 AM
7 points
1
in reply to: Shankar Sivarajan’s comment on: Which journalists would you give quotes to? [one journalist per comment, agree vote for trustworthy]
I’m pretty sure that would not disqualify most people.

Note that it’s not being upset that’s the problem, it’s being selectively upset.

Also, as a man, I can’t get social status by claiming I’ve cried myself to sleep anyway.

Jiro May 8, 2025, 8:34 PM
2 points
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in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: It’s ‘Well, actually...’ all the way down
But that definition becomes useless if it isn’t legible. The Boubas don’t want chemicals in their food. If “chemical” means “harmful substance that I don’t know how to specify”, it’s useless to say that they don’t want chemicals in their food—how are they going to even deetermine that the food contains “chemicals” by their standard?

Also, the fact that they are even using the existing word “chemical” and not some phrase like “harmful chemical” implies that their definition has something to do with the characteristics of things called by the existing word, such as unfamiliar and long names. This is, of course, not a logical necessity, but people in the real world think this way, so it’s a good bet.

Jiro May 8, 2025, 8:17 PM
3 points
2
in reply to: Rafael Harth’s comment on: Which journalists would you give quotes to? [one journalist per comment, agree vote for trustworthy]
Kelsey selectively got upset to the point of crying herself to sleep over something, and posted calls to action with the implication that since she was so emotionally distraught it was callous not to act, but she only did this when it was politically expedient to do so.

I think that this is a bit more than just “didn’t write”. It’s “didn’t write when previously it was so urgent and horrible she was crying herself to sleep over it”. The more urgent that she claims it is, and the more distraught she claims to be, the more the significance of ignoring it when it’s done by a politician she likes. At least, she’s disqualified under “Are they truth seeking?”

Jiro May 8, 2025, 5:15 AM
15 points
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in reply to: Nathan Young’s comment on: Which journalists would you give quotes to? [one journalist per comment, agree vote for trustworthy]
Are you sure?

Jiro May 6, 2025, 6:39 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Nina Panickssery’s comment on: Nina Panickssery’s Shortform
Any rule about when to give advice has to be robust to people going on and on to lecture you about Jesus because they truly and sincerely want to keep you out of Hell. (Or lecture about veganism, or EA, or politics.)
More generally, social rules about good manners have to apply to everyone—both to people with correct beliefs and to people with incorrect ones. Just like not letting the police break into everyone’s houses catches fewer criminals (when the police are right), but protects innocent people (when the police are wrong), not giving advice helps fewer people (when the advice giver is right), but saves people from arrogant know it alls and meme plagues (when the advice giver is wrong).