I went to an LW meetup once or twice. With one exception the people there seemed less competent and fun than my university friends, work colleagues, or extended family, though possibly more competent than my non-university friends.
lmm
Karma: 1,633
It absolutely could be. But we’ve seen no evidence that distinguishes such a scenario from the big bang theory, and so we prefer it by Occam’s razor.
I’d say it’s not so much following rules as being productive. The value of capitalism is that embezzlement, bribery and the like are less often the most personally profitable course than they are under other systems.
Or maybe today’s men just have less interest in staying and fighting. I mean what you say is plausible but it’s a long way from proving “they can’t possibly be refugees because the majority are men”.
75% of the refugees are men. So either they feel that the places they’re leaving are safe for women and children, or their main motivation isn’t escaping danger.
Or the danger is severe enough that they’re fleeing alone, more effectively than women and children do?
The ship
I didn’t like Ancillary Justice so much FWIW—I didn’t find the culture so compelling, and the lead’s morality was jarring to me (she seemed less like someone who was seeing the flaws in the culture she was raised in and more like someone who had always instinctively had a western liberal morality that they’d been suppressing to fit in).
Do you have a view on The January Dancer? I loved that—modern space opera, with some interesting cultures, but also a compelling plot on the sci-fi side.
Another tranche of shows watched with my group, though they don’t really end up as recommendations:
Blood Blockade Battlefront: Started with some fun action, and a very cool-looking setting, but decayed rapidly—the plot arc it tried to set up towards the end was just dull. Avoid
Knights of Sidonia (season 2): Shifts much more towards the harem antics than the serious sci-fi; also some massive power inflation which could easily have been thematic but… isn’t. I greatly enjoyed it, but only recommended to people who enjoy light comedy/romance.
Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works: Had its moments, and definitely has the production values; when it’s good, it’s very good. But massively wordy (arguably too faithful an adaptation), slow and self-indulgent. Again only for fans of the genre.
Kyousougiga: This I do recommend. A show that respects the viewer’s intelligence; the depths are there if you want to peer into them, but it keeps things interesting—or at least active—on the surface level too. And it’s got some wonderfully creative visuals.
Your Lie in April: Romance/melodrama, done reasonably well, and with beautiful visuals and sound—I particularly like the fact that this show is willing to make you sit and listen to a musical performance for minutes at a time. But has no ambition beyond its genre; you know whether you’re the target audience for this or not.
Madoka Rebellion: Fun for fans, but far too self-indulgent for anyone else. The plot is awkward and undermines some of the series. I enjoyed seeing beloved characters at play, and there’s one very fun fight, but it’s all fanservice.
They didn’t check your name against your email. You needed a university email but you could, and people did, use a fake name with it, even an obviously fake one.
That would be a poor use of human time. If we don’t want mass downvoting, remove the ability to do it.
With Google+ it’s also quite easy to register an account under a fake name which wasn’t true with facebook in the initial days.
That’s simply wrong, at least if we’re talking about the early days of Google+. I was on both in their early days and there were more fake names for longer on Facebook.
No. That’s one of the few parts with content. It’s not worth the hundreds of pages of tedium that come before.
That wasn’t the insight. Google+ did more real identity than Facebook.
I’d say Zuckerberg’s crucial insight was “people will still use a social website even if you don’t let them customise the look of their page”.
What’s the point of comparison? Our best political theorists have not managed to make good societies. Look at real wages over the last few decades.
Did it succeed? I know I find it thoroughly unconvincing.
Unless the appearance (or the result of it) is what you value.
This seems obviously false. Am I missing something?
Not being able to name birds for an ornithologist would be like a physicist not being able to say whether an electron and a positron are the same thing or not.
Did you deliberately pick this example, where Feynman speculated that they might be the same thing?
Names are useful as shorthand for a bundle of properties—but only once you know the actual bundle of properties. I sometimes think science should be taught with the examples first, and only given the name once students have identified the concept.
It’s a bluff to make us think Yudkowsky cares about things like human happiness rather than what’s right. Don’t be fooled!
Many stories I’ve seen of lottery winners lost the money quickly through bad investments and/or developed major life issues (divorce, drug addiction).