The website is currently down and parked by GoDaddy. Archive.org has several snapshots, but they are all 404s since 2012.
Pablo Repetto
Karma: 254
Who wouldn’t watch an ad for $10? Hell, at 10 cents per 1-minute ad, that is near minimum wage.
May I propose “appraisals” as a substitute for “opinions”? It is more precise, in that it implies judgement of worth
I know this misses most of the point of the article, but I also believe it’s worth pointing out: I don’t think a male wanting a female body form is any weirder or wronger that a male wanting to be 2 inches taller, buff, and having 20⁄20 eyesight.
PS: I did try reducing “weird and wrong” to their components. Result of the excercise: I find the OP uncontroversially “statistically rare” or “heterodox”, but neither “viscerally repulsive” nor “morally reprehensible”. I can see the value of explicitly reducing complex concepts in the general case, but I’m not sure it was worthwhile for this instance.
It is a direct response to a quotation from the article, so not really.
I guess I want to be “a normal [...] man wearing a female body like a suit of clothing.”
Is that weird? Is that wrong?
Okay, yes, it’s obviously weird and wrong, but should I care more about not being weird and wrong, than I do about my deepest most heartfelt desire that I’ve thought about every day for the last nineteen years?
And remember: on-site backups are not backups. Even if you are working on a git repo, it is surprisingly easy to screw up your commit history so badly you have to burn it all down and start over, and that is not by far the worst possible disaster.
I have not yet read the book, but from a recommendation I infer that Leo Strauss’ “Persecution and the Art of Writing” goes into considerable depth on the mechanics of using vagueness as a dogwhistling mechanism.
This comment did not deserve the downvotes; I agree with asking for disclosure.
It does deserve criticism for tone. “Alarmist and uninformed” and “AGI death cult” are distractingly offensive.
The same argument for disclosure could could have been made by “given that LW’s audience has outsized expectations of AI performance” and “it costs little, and could avoid an embarrasing misunderstanding”.
Depositions and Rationality
Thank you for the comment!
Using strategies that still work when some people act adverserial with you and try to deceive you is in line with being rational.
I think this gets close to the insight that motivated my post: a part of ourselves often tries to curl into a ball and deny reality to avoid emotional stress, interacting with that part of you is kind of adversarial.
“I don’t know” can be a accurate. I think the advice is intended against people playing dumb, like Bill Clinton’s “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” or this witness denying knowledge of what a photocopier is. I know I’ve pulled this bullshit on myself at least once.
Certainly for crux-hunting, you need two people who are fundamentally collaborating.
It has been pointed out to me that therapy is analogous to depositions in a way relevant to your argument: in therapy both patient and therapist are there with the stated purpose of resolving emotional tensions in the patient, but the patient can prove unhelpful or actively oppose the therapist’s probes.
I think this is an example of an interaction that is collaborative in principle, but where techniques designed for adversarial interactions may do good.
Working through D&D.Sci, problem 1
I’m late for the party. I put my blind analysis on a full post, and will be going through all the problems in order.
Working through D&D.Sci, problem 1 (solution)
It’s great fun! I’m very pleased you are enjoying the posts. :)
That link points to your Dual N-Back piece. I think you meant https://www.gwern.net/Replication#nhst-and-systematic-biases