MugaSofer

Karma: 762

MugaSofer 3 Apr 2014 20:47 UTC
45 points
on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
So after reading the comments, I showed this to a friend of mine to check if it would come across the way I expected to a (borderline) non-LWer. It was more or less what I expected … my interjections are in brackets.

It’s long, give me a few minutes … Hmm. My initial reaction is “this guy sounds like a colossal prick”.

[heh, I thought it might be.]

A greater work of masturbatory, self-important bullcrap I have not read in some time. Like, it’s clear he’s an intelligent guy, but not nearly as intelligent as he imagines himself.

[I mean, I’ve read his (non-technical) work, so I’m almost as impressed with him as he is...]

He has some good ideas [although I personally think the house-cables are dumb] but he wraps them up in a load of entitlement and self-importance and impracticality. Like instead of saying “you know, the medical profession would be better served by being organised like this” he says “if I’d be in charge then we would have organised the medical profession in a way better way like 50 years ago and anyone who disagrees with me is a bumbling idiot”.

Perhaps he’s slightly more polite than that

And he’s shooting himself in the foot, because after reading that, mostly I just want to take him aside and explain to him how much his writing is going to make people hate him and want to slap him.

[oh, in fairness, he doesn’t usually write like that. I assume this was his way of using some random ideas he hadn’t written about because no-one will implement them this century.]

The thought of “huh, that’s a good idea for organising diagnosis and treatment” is secondary and that’s impressive because I’m more than a little pissed off at my doctor right now.

This is even more pronounced than the reaction of many commenters, as you’d expect. Definitely still room for improvement there, Eliezer!

MugaSofer 23 May 2013 9:26 UTC
44 points
on: Open thread, May 17-31 2013
Hey, not sure where else to put this:

I just logged back on after a brief absence from the site (a few days) to find I seem to have been genuinely karmassassinated. As far as I can tell, every comment I ever made has been downvoted, which was apparently enough to put me from 1200+ karma to −80 (although oddly, the “last 30 days” thingy claims I only got −148 karma; maybe it’s maxed out?)

I understand it’s possible to check who downvoted comments? It was probably a generically-named sockpupuppet, I guess, but still.

EDIT: great, I apparently need to wait 8 minutes because I already commented. Did not know low karma did that.
What links here?
- Risto_Saarelma's comment on Open Thread, September 30 - October 6, 2013 by Scott Garrabrant (30 Sep 2013 7:40 UTC; 7 points)

MugaSofer 2 Sep 2013 20:44 UTC
38 points
in reply to: Risto_Saarelma’s comment on: Rationality Quotes September 2013
“One of the penalties for not ruling the world is that it gets ruled by other people.”—clearly superior quote

MugaSofer 24 Nov 2013 19:52 UTC
31 points
on: 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Surveyed, including bonus. Only just remembered to comment.

I see the logic, but did think that the Prisoner’s Dilemma question was overly complicated—possibly leading to some participants not making the connection to their beliefs about How To Behave In Prisoner’s Dilemmas (well, I see now from below that it led to at least one.)

I have no idea if this is a good or bad thing.

MugaSofer 2 Sep 2013 20:57 UTC
30 points
in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Rationality Quotes September 2013
No, you caused an argument. And if you keep annoying them, you’ll never get an actual discussion, either.

MugaSofer 26 Nov 2012 12:13 UTC
25 points
on: LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance
I have to say, I found most of these to be either standard geek fare (I play D&D and the DM railroads me towards combat) or pretty obvious sexism-is-bad (Dad says I need to cook or I wont get a man.) Is is possible that you’re overestimating the inferential distance here?

MugaSofer 2 Jan 2013 17:30 UTC
24 points
in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2013
Deep wisdom indeed. Some people believe the wrong things, and some believe the right things, some people believe both, some people believe neither.

MugaSofer 6 Nov 2012 11:50 UTC
20 points
on: 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Did it a few days ago, only just noticed the karma.

EDIT:

P(Supernatural) What is the probability that supernatural events, defined as those involving ontologically basic mental entities, have occurred since the beginning of the universe?

What if you believed in, say, angels or ghosts that used powers from outside the matrix?

MugaSofer 5 Jul 2014 21:04 UTC
17 points
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: [moderator action] Eugine_Nier is now banned for mass downvote harassment
Thank you, Kaj. I really do appreciate your handling of this, if I haven’t said that already; I know these things can be difficult.

I will just issue that user a warning as well as let MugaSofer know who was downvoting him. MugaSofer may choose to make that information public or keep it between the two of them, as he wishes.

I got your message, and I’ve received an apology and explanation from the person in question. I think I’ll keep their identity quiet, although—in the interests of lessening wrongness—anyone who cares, if such a person exists, should PM me and we can talk about it.

(I think Eugine’s downvotes are just that: a whole lot of downvotes. We’ve disagreed a few times, I’m not too surprised. Still, it’s a shame to see him go.)

MugaSofer 27 Jan 2014 10:46 UTC
17 points
in reply to: Locaha’s comment on: 2013 Survey Results

Not everybody see their lives as a big genetic experiment where their goal is to out-breed the opponents.

In fact, most people don’t—judging by those numbers.

MugaSofer 8 Apr 2013 19:34 UTC
17 points
in reply to: A1987dM’s comment on: Rationality Quotes April 2013
Yes, actually. He believed the true dimensions of the Earth would conform to his interpretation of a particular Bible verse (thwo-thirds of the earth should be land, and one-third water, so the Ocean had to be smaller than believed) and fudged the numbers to fit.

MugaSofer 27 Dec 2012 16:26 UTC
16 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87

I always interpreted her as exaggerating in canon

She quotes textbooks word for word, all the time. It’s practically a running gag. I always assumed that Rowling thought that was a side effect of being smart.

MugaSofer 22 Jun 2018 6:29 UTC
15 points
in reply to: DanielFilan’s comment on: Remembering the passing of Kathy Forth.
It’s pretty standard to respond to the suicides of Y victims by rallying to reduce Y.
Making a commitment not to notice when something drives a person to suicide seems like it would probably be a monumental mistake.

MugaSofer 1 Jan 2013 19:34 UTC
15 points
on: You can’t signal to rubes
It seems logically rude to create your own definition, declare it the one “true” definition, and then complain that others are using their own terms. The term “signalling” has been used consistently, judging by your examples of so-called misuse, and it is you who is refusing to interpret them correctly.

Furthermore, is it really that hard to postulate that people may associate certain traits with signals that do not require said traits to produce?

MugaSofer 23 Jun 2018 10:19 UTC
14 points
in reply to: Paperclip Minimizer’s comment on: Remembering the passing of Kathy Forth.
Any suicide in general, and this one in particular, definitely has multiple causes. I’m really sorry if I gave the opposite impression.
But I think it’s reasonable and potentially important to respond to a suicide by looking into those causes and trying to reduce them.
To be more object-level:
- Kathy was obviously mentally ill, and her particular brand of mental illness seems to have been well-known. I don’t know what efforts were made to help her with that (I do get the impression some were made), but I’ve seen people claim her case was an example of the ways our community habitually fails to help people with mental illness and it certainly seems worth looking into that.
- Kathy publicly attributed her suicide to the fact that she had been sexually assaulted. Whatever else was in play, it’s certainly true that sexual assault is a risk factor for suicide and she really does seem to have been assaulted. It behooves us to check for flaws in our protections against this sort of thing when they fail this dramatically.
- In particular, it seems she felt she didn’t know how to avoid inevitably getting assaulted again. I get the impression this was part of a paranoid/depressive spiral on her part. But it’s true that this is a real phenomenon and I’ve talked to other rationalists who have been concerned with this as well.
To return to the meta level, I’m also very concerned by the fact that this has been taken up by the anti-rationalist crowd and this may be making some people defensive. I don’t recall anyone saying that we should be so concerned about suicide contagion as to ignore the object-level issues raised completely when Aaron Swartz committed suicide, for example. Maybe we should have been! But the fact that we as a community potentially failed or simply could have done better here means that we should be more careful about dismissing this, not less.

MugaSofer 10 Jul 2014 20:18 UTC
14 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: A few remarks about mass-downvoting
Huh. Now that someone has been caught very much doing this, did you find out why you couldn’t detect it before?

MugaSofer 27 Mar 2014 15:47 UTC
13 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: Rationality Quotes March 2014
Yes.

Well. Sort of. Not exactly.

They were stealing government files on domestic surveillance in order to leak them—the quote comes from the journalist who was their press contact (see the link beneath the quote.)

MugaSofer 12 May 2013 19:47 UTC
12 points
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
My instinct is that this is stupid, but I have a feeling I may be mindkilled on this. Someone should test this; create sockpuppets with male and female names to see how common and critical replies are.

Would normally have downvoted, incidentally, but not going to in case I’m just siezing upon excuses to lower the status of perceived political opponents.

MugaSofer 11 Apr 2013 22:14 UTC
12 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Rationality Quotes April 2013
Woah, I’d better implement Phase One of my evil plan if it’s going to be ready in time for the hero to encounter it.

MugaSofer 20 Feb 2013 13:09 UTC
12 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Think Like a Supervillain

If there’s not any supervillain active on any given day in Gotham, Batman sits around preparing to fight them, letting most of the status quo stay unchanged.

Well, his secret identity spends his time making large amounts of money and giving it to charity.