Alex Vermillion(Alex)

Karma: 747

I found the community in spring 2020 through HPMOR which I found while bored and reading stories online. When I learned that there were other people using such witchcraft as “not only using reasoning on math exercises, but also issues in the real world”, I was sold.

Crocker’s Rules and Metahonesty are in effect (on me) at all times.

You can always message me and I will not be upset. No anxiety needed around “bugging” me.

If I say something and you think “Wow! He sounds like a moron who doesn’t understand humans!”, you’ve misunderstood and I was trying to make a more subtle point. Extend me charity and I’ll find it low cost to extend it to you.

Alex Vermillion 30 Aug 2024 15:10 UTC
−1 points
0
in reply to: Ninety-Three’s comment on: Why Large Bureaucratic Organizations?
Well if the question is “If the whole world is made of smart people with really high motivation, why is it how it is?” the answer is “That question assumes some false things”

Alex Vermillion 7 Jun 2024 16:31 UTC
3 points
9
on: Split and Commit
Popping back in on this one after a while.

I really enjoy this. This can cut through a large number of annoying problems with one trick: If you split and commit and the actions for all the likely paths are essentially the same, you can ignore which thing is true for now.

“What if I’m a Boltzmann Brain?” If I am not, then I should proceed as normal. If I am, then it does not matter. --> Proceed as normal.

“What if my shirt is blue?” if it is not, then I’ll wear it. If it is, then I’ll wear it. --> Wear the shirt

It might sound silly, but I think Split and Commit is an easy-sell technique which can free you from a lot of unnecessary investigations automatically. Sure, it’s also a good method for operating under uncertainty, but you get simplification for free.

Last note: I find this a good technique to explicitly invoke when someone close to me is anxious. We can build plans for the anxiety being true or not, but if it turns out to change nothing, we can ignore it.

Alex Vermillion 7 Apr 2024 1:11 UTC
3 points
1
in reply to: Alex Vermillion’s comment on: What’s with all the bans recently?
Ugh I just posted that and I already am not sure. I think the correct answer is “leave a comment saying I appreciate the effort but downvote, because this question seems like chaff and upvotes factor into the algorithm and rankings of upvoted posts”, but this is a personal blogpost so the right answer is probably an upvote since those don’t frontpage I think.

Alex Vermillion 7 Apr 2024 1:09 UTC
4 points
3
in reply to: mukashi’s comment on: What’s with all the bans recently?
I’m conflicted. I appreciate the effort put into the post, but it seems like a lot of the posters are genuinely creating lots of low quality content and I’d much rather have a small amount of good content than a large amount of meh-or-bad content to sift through to find the good stuff.

I’ve settled on a net downvote, but would probably do a upvote and a disagree vote if that was an option.

Alex Vermillion 7 Apr 2024 1:05 UTC
2 points
2
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: What’s with all the bans recently?
It doesn’t sound like this is a good summary, no

Alex Vermillion 31 Mar 2024 19:10 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: frankybegs’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
I think you are dramatically overestimating how difficult it was, back in the day, to accidentally or incidentally learn Scott’s full name. I think this is the crux here.

It was extremely easy to find his name, and often people have stories of learning it on accident. I don’t believe it was simple enough that Scott’s plea to not have his name be published in the NYT was invalid, but I do think it was simple enough that an analogy to lockpicking is silly.

Alex Vermillion 28 Mar 2024 17:00 UTC
9 points
1
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
Hm. I think we like Slate Star Codex in this thread, so let’s enjoy a throwback:

It was wrong of me to say I hate poor minorities. I meant I hate Poor Minorities! Poor Minorities is a category I made up that includes only poor minorities who complain about poverty or racism.

No, wait! I can be even more charitable! A poor minority is only a Poor Minority if their compaints about poverty and racism come from a sense of entitlement. Which I get to decide after listening to them for two seconds. And If they don’t realize that they’re doing something wrong, then they’re automatically a Poor Minority.

I dedicate my blog to explaining how Poor Minorities, when they’re complaining about their difficulties with poverty or asking why some people like Paris Hilton seem to have it so easy, really just want to steal your company’s money and probably sexually molest their co-workers. And I’m not being unfair at all! Right? Because of my new definition! I know everyone I’m talking to can hear those Capital Letters. And there’s no chance whatsoever anyone will accidentally misclassify any particular poor minority as a Poor Minority. That’s crazy talk! I’m sure the “make fun of Poor Minorities” community will be diligently self-policing against that sort of thing. Because if anyone is known for their rigorous application of epistemic charity, it is the make-fun-of-Poor-Minorities community!

I’m not even sure I can dignify this with the term “motte-and-bailey fallacy”. It is a tiny Playmobil motte on a bailey the size of Russia. (from https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/)

Can your use of “Journalism” pass this test? Can we really say “the hostility to journalists is not based on hyperbole. They really are like this. They really are competing to wreck the commons for a few advertising dollars.” and expect everyone to pay close attention to check that the target is a Bad Journalist Who Lies first?

Alex Vermillion 28 Mar 2024 16:52 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Alex Vermillion’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
Your comment is actually one of the ones in the thread that replied to mine that I found least inane, so I will stash this downthread of my reply to you:

I think a lot of the stuff Cade Metz is alleged to say above is dumb as shit and is not good behavior. However, I don’t need to make bad metaphors, abuse the concept of logical validity, or do anything else that breaks my principles to say that the behavior is bad, so I’m going to raise an issue with those where I see them and count on folks like you to push back the appropriate extent so that we can get to a better medium together.

Alex Vermillion 28 Mar 2024 16:49 UTC
3 points
−1
in reply to: frankybegs’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
I’d be amenable to quibbles over the lock thing, though I think it’s still substantially different. A better metaphor (for the situation that Cade Metz claims is the case, which may or may not be correct) making use of locks would be “Anyone can open the lock by putting any key in. By opening the lock with my own key, I have done no damage”. I do not believe that Cade Metz used specialized hacking equipment to reveal Scott’s last name unless this forum is unaware of how to use search engines.

Alex Vermillion 28 Mar 2024 16:47 UTC
7 points
2
in reply to: interstice’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
I don’t (and shouldn’t) care what Scott Alexander believes in order to figure out whether what Cade Metz said was logically valid. You do not need to figure out how many bones a cat has to say that “The moon is round, so a cat has 212 bones” is not valid.

Alex Vermillion 28 Mar 2024 16:46 UTC
4 points
−5
in reply to: LGS’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
The evidence offered “Scott agrees with the The Bell Curve guy” is of the same type and strength as those needed to link him to Hitler, Jesus Christ, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Cate Metz, and so on. There was absolutely nothing special about the evidence that tied it to the people offered and could have been recast without loss of accuracy to fit any leaning.

As we are familiar with, if you have an observation that proves anything, you do not have evidence.

Alex Vermillion 27 Mar 2024 2:56 UTC
23 points
31
in reply to: LGS’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
I don’t think “Giving fake evidence for things you believe are true” is in any way a minor sin of evidence presentation

Alex Vermillion 27 Mar 2024 2:51 UTC
12 points
5
in reply to: romeostevensit’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
If you’re looking to convince without hyperbole, drawing the link from “Cade Metz” to “Journalists” would be nice, as would explaining any obvious cutouts that make someone an Okay Journalist.

Alex Vermillion 27 Mar 2024 2:45 UTC
32 points
47
in reply to: quanticle’s comment on: My Interview With Cade Metz on His Reporting About Slate Star Codex
This is not a good metaphor. There’s an extreme difference between spreading information that’s widely available and the general concept of justifying an action. I think your choice of examples adds a lot more heat than light here.

Alex Vermillion 15 Mar 2024 16:17 UTC
1 point
0
on: Cause Awareness as a Factor against Cause Neutrality
This seems very important. Thank you for writing it.

Alex Vermillion 15 Mar 2024 3:10 UTC
1 point
0
on: Vote Strength
I don’t really understand the site’s software enough to give a good explanation, but seeing the code that (at one point?) governs/governed this was helpful to me when someone linked it previously: https://github.com/ForumMagnum/ForumMagnum/blob/devel/packages/lesswrong/lib/voting/voteTypes.ts

Alex Vermillion 8 Feb 2024 0:28 UTC
3 points
0
on: What Piles Up Must Pile Down
I’ve got a todolist with tags, and one of them is “monotonous tasks that I don’t mind doing when I’m having a very bad day”. This helps me a fair amount with certain buildups of disorder

Alex Vermillion 2 Jan 2024 2:49 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: The LessWrong 2022 Review
I was waiting to see what you guys turned out as an ebook or sequence and trying to see if I could take it to a printer for a personal copy.|

Now I understand that the difficulty is a layer earlier and it’s worth figuring out how to “make an ebook for printing ”, not “print an ebook”

Alex Vermillion 2 Jan 2024 0:08 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: The LessWrong 2022 Review
I’d like to express pretty large appreciation for the answer; this changes what things I, personally, was planning to do wrt the finished product. Thank you

Alex Vermillion 16 Dec 2023 5:19 UTC
3 points
5
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: The LessWrong 2022 Review
Huh, I believe you did this and I believe you got the result, but I just have no model for what the heck is going on. It happens sometimes I guess, but damn I cannot grasp this.