Cyan comments on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong

10 Post author: CronoDAS 16 February 2010 08:29AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (857)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Cyan 19 February 2010 12:14:00AM 2 points [-]

I think Death Note was a little too close to Calvinball to be truly instructive.

Comment author: gwern 19 February 2010 02:51:34AM *  0 points [-]

The second half arguably does have some fast and loose play by the writer, case in point being how Mikami was found by Near - arrgh, this has nothing to do with LW!

How about up until Y'f qrngu*, can we compromise on that?

* ROT-13 encoded to spare LW's delicate sensibilities. Here's a decoder.

Comment author: Cyan 19 February 2010 04:10:08AM *  2 points [-]

I was mostly referring to how the reasoning had to deal a gradually accreting set of rules, each one constructed in the service of narrative (that is, fun) instead of being a realistic constraint. I really did mean Calvinball.

Comment author: gwern 19 February 2010 02:13:24PM 0 points [-]

Calvinball is temporally inconsistent; it's been a while since I read DN but I don't remember any of the later rules making me think 'if only Light had known that rule, he would totally have owned his opponents!' Most of the later rules seemed to just be clarifications and hole-fixing.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 February 2010 03:33:07AM 0 points [-]

Please edit above to avoid spoilers.

Comment author: gwern 19 February 2010 02:04:49PM *  4 points [-]

The manga finished nearly half a decade ago, and Y qvrq* before the half-way point. "There's a statute of limitations on this shit, man."

* ROT-13 encoded; decoder

Comment author: Document 19 February 2010 08:26:47PM 3 points [-]

When I apply the statute, my justification is along the lines of "people usually only care about spoilers if they're watching a series or planning to watch it soon, which are unlikely given a random person and a random series". Hariant's comment could easily be interpreted as asking for recommendations of anime to watch, in which case "planning to watch (considering watching) it" would be a given.

Comment author: gwern 19 February 2010 09:27:38PM 2 points [-]

We cannot meaningfully discuss how DN & ilk hold lessons for LW without discussing plot events; funnily enough, spoilers tend to be about plots. And as I said, applying the principal of charity means not interpreting Hariant's comment that way.

Comment author: Document 20 February 2010 06:23:21PM *  0 points [-]

I had to look that up; Wikipedia says that "In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity requires interpreting a speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.". I thought I was applying it by assuming that you hadn't considered that interpretation of the comment, rather than that you were ignoring it, so I'm not sure what you mean.

Also, I don't know what you mean by "as you said".

(Message edited once.)

Comment author: gwern 21 February 2010 10:12:11PM 0 points [-]

Which is more charitable: to interpret someone's comment as typical social fluff inappropriate for even the open threads, or to interpret it as an attempt to collate useful fictional examinations & introductions to LW-related material?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 February 2010 09:12:18PM 3 points [-]

Please edit both of the above to avoid having your comments deleted. It's great that you have that opinion, but some people may not share it, and also there's this incredible amazing technology called rot13 which is really useful for having your cake and eating it too in the case of this conflict. And we can all consider that official LW policy from this point forward.

Comment author: wnoise 20 February 2010 04:29:29AM 8 points [-]

I know a couple people that claim to have unintentionally learned to read rot13 to the point where it is no longer a spoiler protection. (I can read it, but it's not automatic.)

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 20 February 2010 06:50:55AM 4 points [-]

It's all well and good to have some character of the founder rub off on the site, but not every fetish.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 February 2010 07:47:11AM 5 points [-]

I don't think you understand the degree to which people who don't want spoilers, don't want to hear them.

Comment author: ciphergoth 20 February 2010 03:32:07PM *  0 points [-]

Spoilers for a classic movie here:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/1s4/open_thread_february_2010_part_2/1ndd

Since the actual intent of the comment was to spoiler it can probably be deleted without further discussion.

EDIT: the edit is a big improvement. It used to be an actual spoiler.

Comment author: wnoise 20 February 2010 06:30:08PM *  6 points [-]

The actual intent was to point out that embargoing references past a certain point truly is ridiculous. Referencing a 69 year old movie (EDIT: several hundred year old play) is an attempt at a reductio ad absurdum, made more visceral by technically violating the norm Eliezer is imposing.

Certainly there's no real need to discuss specific plot points of recent manga or anime on this site. This, in fact, holds for any specific example one cares to name. On the other hand, the cumulative cutting off all our cultural references to fiction does impose a real harm to the discourse.

References to fiction let us compress our communications more effectively by pointing at examples of what we mean. My words alone can't have nearly the effect a full color motion picture with surround sound can -- but I can borrow it, if I'm allowed to reference works that most people are broadly familiar with.

I don't think that most recent works count -- they reach too small a segment of LW, and so are the least useful to reference, and the ones most likely to upset those who are spoiler averse. The question is where the line should be set, and that requires context and judgment, not universal bans.

Comment author: ciphergoth 01 March 2010 09:55:25PM 0 points [-]

I think there's a cost/benefit tradeoff, and that comment is all cost, no benefit.

Comment author: dclayh 19 February 2010 09:18:40PM *  3 points [-]

In that case can we have a little rot-13 widget built into LW? Or is there a Firefox plugin I should be using?

(Personally I think the whole "spoilers" thing is ridiculous, but I'm fine with this as site policy if it's easy to do.)

Comment author: kpreid 19 February 2010 11:06:31PM *  7 points [-]

I use this “bookmarklet”:

javascript:inText=window.getSelection()+'';if(inText=='')%7Bvoid(inText=prompt('Phrase...',''))%7D;if(!inText)%7BoutText='No%20text%20selected'%7Delse%7BoutText='';for(i=0;i%3CinText.length;i++)%7Bt=inText.charCodeAt(i);if((t%3E64&&t%3C78)%7C%7C(t%3E96&&t%3C110))%7Bt+=13%7Delse%7Bif((t%3E77&&t%3C91)%7C%7C(t%3E109&&t%3C123))%7Bt-=13%7D%7DoutText+=String.fromCharCode(t)%7D%7Dalert(outText)

[Not written by me; I have no record of where I obtained it.]

Put it in your bookmarks bar in most web browsers, and when you click it it will display the rot13 of the selected text, or prompt you for text if there isn't any selection. In Safari the first entries in the bookmarks bar get shortcuts ⌘1, ⌘2, ..., so it ends up that to rot13 something on a web page I just need to select it and press ⌘3.

Comment author: dclayh 19 February 2010 11:28:13PM 0 points [-]

Excellent, thank you.

Comment author: Document 19 February 2010 09:48:23PM 0 points [-]

www.rot13.com ?

Comment author: dclayh 19 February 2010 10:01:39PM 1 point [-]

Good, although having to open a new tab still seems less than maximally convenient.

(Actually, doing a hidden-text thing like TVTropes does would be pretty good, come to think of it.)

Comment author: ciphergoth 19 February 2010 02:20:10PM 2 points [-]

I love that comic, but I think the statute of limitations takes more than five years to expire...

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 26 January 2012 02:57:42PM 1 point [-]

Stuff that's not really part of the mainstream popular culture is more spoilable. Cowboy Bebop came out before The Sixth Sense, but I'd still assume open spoilers for The Sixth Sense wouldn't be as bad as ones for Cowboy Bebop on an English-language forum.

Comment author: gwern 26 January 2012 03:18:37PM 0 points [-]

I don't think that's true either. The people in the study were specifically screened to not have heard of the stories used.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 26 January 2012 04:35:26PM 2 points [-]

Assuming the general social norms for spoilers thing for "spoilability", not whether it actually ruins entertainment for those who don't know the story yet or not.

Comment author: wnoise 20 February 2010 12:17:17AM *  1 point [-]

EDIT: Romeo and Juliet die at the end.

Comment author: dclayh 20 February 2010 12:19:38AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: mattnewport 20 February 2010 12:26:12AM 0 points [-]

Bruce Willis was dead all along.