Hi, I Sincerely hope you will also put this on youtube....
Teal_Thanatos
Karma: 62
I upvoted this half because I laughed and half because I now want a gnome.
That’s something i don’t quite understand. As an evil dark lord, I’d be willing to be cruel and pretend people have a choice. ‘Stand aside and I will spare your life’ then… Bam. Dead anyway.
:) I look forward to reading it.
In Reference to “Consequentialism Need Not Be Nearsighted”
Let’s start with the word Simple. It’s in the first two words of the opening sentence of your post. Remove it, please don’t use it again. You’ve just set up the entire post to automatically fail a percentage of readers who will be (now) emotionally impacted by failure to understand any section of your post. Even if it is understood after a moment or hours reflection, the self-shame brought on by this single word will reduce your chances to gain positive karma.
This word is used four times. This may be four times too many.
Next, you’ve used an example that ‘many’ saw through. What is many, how did you decide many have done this? by what cause do you have to decide that the people who post replies indicating they saw through it are the majority?
Why put in reflections (or praise) to a segment if it’s going to exclude a large portion of your audience, you seem to be limiting the article to those who’ve already succeeded at finishing your previous article.
In your fifth paragraph you introduce names, Defectbots and CliqueBots. This information is used once in the footnotes. It’s not really useful and shades the article by personalizing it. When Kibitzing is off and no names are beside the post, this seems to be a little...wrong. Your personalization of the article destroys the detachment of it’s content, making it more about you and less about the content, this could narrow the field of people
So, in conclusion. to me, when you are writing, I am excluded because I have not immediately grasped everything in your article at once, I am excluded for a second time for not reading your previous article (And then, not seeing the catch on it straight away) and finally, for a final exclusion for caring about the content and not about you.
I hope this has helped.
So very true (in reality) and so very wrong (morally) at the same time. It’s my sincere hope that work on Raising the Sanity Waterline will eventually annihilate the relevance of this quote to modern society.
I’ve downvoted this for the following reasons. Appearances are deceiving and also people may present false appearances for their own benefit. What cannot be seen is still in effect (Gravity) Etc.
In a practical demonstration, what appears to be a piece of stone. Behind it, It’s sand. It’s pressed together over time, precipitation of minerals causes binding. Inside there could be some old fossil. Who knows.
I don’t think that’s a really good idea. It doesn’t exactly fill me with desire to have more articles which are not directly related to rationality. Besides, having a whole bunch of articles about explaining non-writing contribution is important and person X should be thanked is going to get old very quickly.
Co-Authorship however is pretty good! it’d help people who get beta’d before posting.
if the downvotes were to be changed, I’d like to see more along the lines of Upvotes/Downvotes/Total Karma. Controversial posts would still have reasonable numbers of up/downs and would be visible thus, but the total karma would reflect the overall feel of the post. This information is all recorded in the db anyway.. Though to be honest, as a standard user I would hardly be interested in this information at this point. so please, make it optional.
I’d like to see that. throw in an editor that allows you to suggest changes, then two others have to approve it for it to be actioned. Follow this up with the post in question having a link at the bottom ‘Possible Changes Pending’ so that others can be notified and then power it up with a Karma connection
(Formula:(PostKarma/10/Editors changes) rounded up to one would give a single editor 5 points for a fifty point article, five editors with approximately equal changes one karma each… or 1 each for 4 and two for the fifth editor who contributed between 20% and 40% of the approved editor changes)
Hi, I believe this site is for the improvement of all mankind.
Facebook may currently be a less than intelligent social networking website. But are we not here to Raise the Sanity Waterline? I can’t remember which article of Lesswrong indicated that it may be prudent not to enhance the upper reaches of Rationality, but to improve the lower end so that there are more people available to enhance the upper end. ( I believe there was an article (not This One but another) that went into detail on this.
While there may be downsides to facebook viewing, I would like to point out it can be negated reasonably. (Or unreasonably in my example:) Just by having a cookie on that facebook link so that if a non-member clicks it, it transparently prevents them from signing up for a week. As many people from facebook will immediately like the article before posting a reply, many of the ‘quick responders’ will be eliminated… unless they come back in a weeks time.
Alternatively, just manage the facebook like to only go to an article without comments, this prevents the ‘easy’ facebookers from signing up and continuing, while those with a little more wit can parse back the URL to go to the main site.
Lesswrong has the brainpower to come up with some ideas to manage this, and I think it’d make a great community project to sort out how to do so.
HI, I’m a support software developer. Can I ask where exactly that came from?
Hi, The post is short, sweet and get’s the point across. However I feel it could be better with a little bit more information including multiple sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify
This doesn’t really comment that Whitbreads may have incomplete evidence, facts, bias or his own aims.
Can also be an indication that everything is more than one person/mind can handle. By stepping into the sun, we enjoy the warmth and may be overwhelmed by the world as we see it. The song’s lyrics seem cautionary, indicating that despite the warmth of being in the world do not attempt to see everything, do not attempt to do everything? This is rational, there are things we may not enjoy as much as others. To reduce our overall enjoyment by not placing parameters on our activities would be irrational in my opinion.
That sounds awfully negative and I can’t see any basis for it apart from negativity. ie: For what basis do you declare that people striking the root are any more likely to strike each other than striking the branches?
While you might use the analogy to declare that the root of the problem is smaller, please note that there are trees (like Giant sequoias ) which have root systems that far outdistance the branch width.
I’m going to have to call you on this one, in your trivial example you are intending harm/chaos/diversion to/to/of the Nazi plan. Causing disruption to another is vicious, even if you are being virtuous in your choice to disrupt.
I agree with going too far, this quote seems to me to be reflecting extremities and mid-ranges categorization. Yes, there’s a lot more than 149 options, but there’s many which are functionally the same, and categorizing it all under two options ‘Get Shot’ & ‘Do what they say’ doesn’t take into consideration ‘Do what they say, then get shot to hide witnesses’ or any other option, it parses all options into mutually exclusive categories when in reality, they’re not mutually exclusive.
By enforcing the two phase blanketing mentality, there’s no consideration of changing of situation or any other variables. (Such as, ‘wait to attention elsewhere, escape.’). A good decision maker does need to be able to dismiss bad options with minimal thought, but dismissing good(Less Wrong!) options with the bad is detrimental as well. What I’m taking from the quote is not that I must consider every option (The first speaker does not, he/she merely considers three and states the existence of others.) but that I must be cognizant of the fact that there are other options available and not categorize them in such a way that they are unavailable to my self.
As I’m new to Rationality, this may be a little convoluted, if you could explain any holes in what I am trying to explain I will be grateful.
I am sure that this quote indicates that categorizing options too far is detrimental. The Sequence on Reductionism’s summary states ‘complicated things are made of simpler things’ but categorizing all the simple things together despite their belonging to separate complicated things should indicate a fallacy. It also indicates that the entirety of the options available are not considered properly if they’re grouped too much.
Hi, I’d love to come to this. But unfortunately I am A) in Newcastle and B) at work the following day.