I think that the picture detracts from the article. It’s a deviation from most other LW pages, heteronormatizes the content, and in addition since the in-picture and out-of-picture background is white, the people look like cutouts in this really awkward way.
tenshiko
Karma: 340
Though I find the signatures you propose to be objectively morally acceptable, they fill me with a faint unreasonable disgust, like when I hear people justifying having a marriage for a purpose other than true love. I know that it’s more practical for many people to do things differently than what I view to be the idealized norm, but I still find the idea aesthetically displeasing. I feel that a revamping of LW’s profile system could reduce the need for this, because if profiles were better organized, and I actually had an interest in seeing the novel you’re writing based solely on the fact that you wrote it, or Flattring you, I would go to your profile. But as it is profiles can only provide a handful of sparse links, so that’s not really an option.
I also would have preferred to see this post in discussion.
Fifteen right now, a sophmore at a magnet high school. Quite shallow (for instance, my biggest concern right now is my upcoming Haruhi Suzumiya cosplay). Too emotional (my AP Computer Science teacher makes me cry twice a week). Pitiably immodest (see aforementioned gratuitous reference to AP Computer Science and AP BC Calculus). I fooled around on the sl4 wiki when I was about twelve. Some people might still remember that.
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This is a very old thread, but I would still like to comment to make the point that I had assumed for a couple years (seriously, years) that, like so many other places on the internet, “open to anyone” actually meant “open to anyone over eighteen”. And then I had assumed that I would make an embarassment of myself here, like I did some years ago on the good old sl4 wiki.
Seriously, you want us to come along with our /argumenta ex silentium/ and all? …if this is really the community sentiment I have to wonder why the “popular Harry Potter fanfiction” angle isn’t being milked more for its recruiting potential. I suppose that’s what dignity is.
One key cause of piracy left out of this analysis is the significant demographic of people who have internet but can’t buy things over it. This usually describes teenagers in developed countries who have internet access, but don’t have capital that they can freely spend on digitally purchased objects. The amount of young adults who actually have jobs is really falling in developed countries because of the promotion of internships and volunteering opportunities, which are easier to obtain than jobs and have equal or greater prestige. Even if they do have income, they may not possess credit cards. There’s a good portion of this group that can’t even drive to purchase things with cash. So every new possession they obtain by spending money, or rather getting an adult to spend/provide/transfer money, is a significant expenditure.
In this situation, knowledge becomes something it seems irrational to pay for, because it seems like it “should” be liberated. They might acknowledge that being able to understand physics better or win arguments has a value of $20 or $50, but they won’t spend that when they could get a comparable result with an expenditure of time, even if said time is worth more than the money would be.
If I’m understanding the chronophone correctly, the thing is that what comes out cannot be anachronistic. Maybe I’m not. If I’m understanding it as a strategy-conveying phone, then it would just tell Archimedes that you’re trying to trick him into believing an anachronism.
Personally I’d eagerly chirp about awesome technology like nanobots and solar power and high-speed trains that so many countries seem to be ignoring right now, and hope that it would pick up the kind of stuff Hero of Alexandria was doing with steam and such. (Although this might not work. It’s such a shame that he came after Archimedes). It would be very interesting to see how this would turn out in conjunction with the whole space travel --> naval expansion idea...
Grownup sexual issues in the sense of acquainting one’s genitalia with someone else’s body parts are (mostly) theoretical for (not too precocious) children! Issues of one’s sex are decidedly NOT. From a very, very young age—maybe for boys it doesn’t become non-theoretical until middle school, but I’d laugh at the idea that girls aren’t hyperconscious of gender expectations after the age of about five. MOR!Hermione is constantly comparing her relationship with Harry to “Romances” she has read, expecting herself to fill such a role under constant societal encouragement and reinforcement of how girls just act that way and melt in a variety of creative manners whenever they so much as think momentarily of love. That’s something she never ever would have been exposed to and acting upon if she hadn’t needed to visit McGonagall in December.
I’d prefer to see this in discussion, as it’s pretty much just a link to a post somewhere else with no significant insight or analysis.
If these statistics are likewise correct, about half of child molestations involve a direct family relationship. “Stop adding children to your family” seems like a pretty unrealistic method of preventing child molestations from occurring. Then again, a pretty substantial chunk of child molestors are trusted non-relatives, so I see how the baugruppe would disproportionately enable that demographic.
“Do not let parents be alone with their own children” likewise seems pretty unrealistic. Would you want to suggest that a non-parent should be limited in their time alone with a child?
Furthermore, there will only be one baugruppe. Perhaps two. Aren’t the participants in such an enterprise disproportionately likely to be economically advantaged with consistently present parents, and therefore less appealing targets for child molestors?
I think the problem is that even though people in their heart of hearts know that the chance of IQ distributions being 100% equal between arbitrarily divided groups is impossibly low, we confuse the idea of accepting that with acting upon it. Distinguishing between individuals based on any arbitrary indicators is seen as discrimination. Strictly speaking, it is discrimination in the strictest sense of the word, but the word discrimination is indexed to something intrinsically wrong and immoral, in modern American English at the very least.
The complete lack of actual ads on LW does a great deal to raise the status of this website, as you say. There are basically no websites nowadays where this is possible except for government ones and others independently maintained. No matter how classy the advertisements are, there’s still a certain pallor cast over the page when “tained” by commercial intent.
I’d love to see a Dutchbook post.
You predict my opinion correctly—as I’ve said elsewhere I have other aesthetic concerns due to the picture itself. At the very least I think it’d look much better with a colored background, because of the cutout effect I mention.
...in this version of the problem, it is much more obvious to me that you take only box B forever and ever and ever.
Several of Eliezer’s essays have a somewhat angry tone to them, particularly those arguing that humans need to develop means by which we no longer have to die, expressing a frustration with the typical human’s resignation to death. Similarly, they are resigned to eating butter because it’s a normal kind of thing and their parents did it and just a little can’t be that bad for you.
The more that I think about it, the more that I like the idea. It could actually be a relatively amusing cliff notes on various facets of rationality, a kind of who’s who to the memes around here (e.x. “Luminosity Bella consults her notes on how she liked what she had last week, seeing what kind of impact her introduction of cougar blood is having”).
Or it could just be like one of those angry essays Eliezer does sometimes, with such lines as “and they just THROW THE BUTTER ONTO THEIR POTATOES like it’s a friend of the family”, in which case healthy eating would be a metaphor for cyronics.
The Volunteer’s Dilemma
Because it’s not like there’s clear evolutionary evidence for other potential reasons to have sexual attraction, right?
Most people demonstrate heterosexual behavior in modern heteronormative society. There is a huge difference between this and the generalization “most people are heterosexual”. In ancient Greece, “most people” (or men, anyway) were capable of having both pederastic relationships and productive heterosexual marriage. I have no data but I’d really like to see some, on how much societal norms affect orientation. Which is itself a relatively new concept.
I didn’t read Harry’s statements as stereotypically male-child-stupid or even stereotypically male-stupid, but stereotypically hyperintellectualist-male-stupid—as in specifically similar to behavior like Luke’s, not that of any non-Internet non-rationalist man I’ve actually met. A male child of ordinary intellectual background, no matter how stupid, could not have made the specific mistakes Harry made here, because he drew his deemed-inappropriate ideas from “enlightened” papers.
A good example of stereotypically male-child-stupid is Ron’s lines you quote here (and many of Ron’s actions in general). These are stupid comments Ron was able to make in spite of not having read any papers.
Hermione’s reactions are stereotypically female-child-stupid. She reacted the way she did precisely because of not reading these particular enlightened papers. This is the exact opposite of Harry’s stupidity! I think I understand why you wrote the scene with these results—Harry has read lots of rationalist papers you think more people should read, while Hermione in spite of her intelligence does not have the exact same background. However, because Hermione’s actions fit with “stupid female child”—not alleviated by her intelligence—and Harry’s with “stupid-though-very-intelligent male adult” (Harry’s reading on these specific psychological ideas is very incongruent with that of even most well-educated 11-year-old boys), we get subtext like Alicorn points out about female infantilism and so on.
As for some anecdata, last month when I was explaining to a progressing-to-ex-boyfriend that he did not meet my paramour standards, he said I should consider lowering my standards, and I said he was proof that strategy could not possibly work for me.