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Rain comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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Comments (1329)
-- John Brunners
mattnewport's comment was much more broad and insightful than "This is old therefore it is good".
His point (paraphrasing the general conservative thesis) is that social customs arise as solutions to difficult problems and have highly immodular interplay. Therefore, before relaxing them, you should at least identify what problem it was (believed to be) solving, and how it interplays with the other customs and factors (including the ick factor in others).
In the case of homosexuality, the taboo against it is extremely common across cultures, which suggests some kind of mechanism like, "Cultures that didn't have a taboo against it were outbred or otherwise dominated by a more populous culture."
Of course, no one actually argues for such a taboo against it today on that basis, though it has the trappings of a good argument: "If we don't have pro-reproduction customs, we'll be unable to withstand the memetic overload from cultures that do, and will be unable to perpetuate our values across generations." (Several European countries provide good examples of cultures slowly losing their ability to protect Western values by being outbred by those who don't share those values.)
But even so, if this is the concern, there are much better, Pareto-surperior ways to go about it: e.g., require everyone to either have children, help with the raising of other's children, or pay a tax after a certain age that goes toward relieving the burden of others' childbearing.
Unfortunately, the debate on the issue is nowhere near this point.
I'm sorry if you felt I was advocating a position when instead I understood and was in agreement with his points. I was merely supplying an interesting quote about half of them.
I do not appreciate being called a fool when you make no attempt to discern my reasoning.
Tell me what reasoning I was supposed to find your comment, as it related to the parent's point, and if we can agree there's something non-foolish about it, I'll revise my comment. Sound good?
There are two kinds of fools:
One says, "This is old therefore it is good.": Conservatism, when the person is holding beliefs for irrational reasons (fear, ick-factor, a desire to avoid all change, etc.)
The other one says, "This is new therefore it is better.": Change advocates, when they fail to take into account the possibility that conservative positions may be robust or long standing solutions to difficult problems that made sense for a large period of time or in certain cultures.
Both sides can hold the correct position for irrational reasons, and one should put thought into it, and obtain more knowledge, before deciding which is correct.
So it didn't say anything that the parent of your quotation comment hadn't already said?
Yes. It's almost as if I was merely supplying an interesting quote.
And as much as I do not appreciate being called a fool when you make no attempt to discern my reasoning, likewise, I do not appreciate passive aggressive questions whose intent is apparently to state my comment is worthless to you.
I'm sorry that I took the valuable 4 seconds it took to read the quote, and that it spawned this subthread where you have continued to complain about my posting of the comment. I'm sorry that it bothers you enough that you feel the need to indirectly call me a fool, and to indirectly say my comment is worthless.
I apologize for giving you grief about the quote.
When I initially saw it, the tone of the quote seemed to reveal a lack of assimilation of the insight mattnewport gave; to the extent that the quote is doing so in this context, such oversimplification does count as a (3rd) kind of foolishness. I do not, however, deem you a fool.
While I still don't think the quote was helpful, I will remove the remark that implies you are a fool. And, as standard practice, I didn't mod down any of your comments in this thread because I was involved in the thread's argument.
Please do not take offense.
"Discrimination when considering changing things is important" is what I got from it.
That is a severe undercounting of types of fools.
-- Unknown
Lame quote because everyone I have ever met who starts indexes at 0 says "2 types": it is just that they call them Type 0 and Type 1 instead of Type 1 and Type 2.
ADDED. I am not saying that writers should start indexes at 0, just that the fact alluded to in the quote (that, e.g., the "1" in "Type 1", is different from "2") is not a good reason for avoiding the practice. A good reason to avoid the practice is that diverging from a long-standing stylistic convention distracts without contributing anything substantial to your point.
It's a joke.
I approve of the potential for humor and found the joke amusing until I noticed that it is flawed.
Then I noticed that the humor itself is a powerful persuader, it nearly distracted me from both those obvious flaws despite their familiarity with the subject. The fact that pointing this out would in most contexts be a faux pas demonstrates a risk that the abuse of humor entails. In fact, even here the "It's a joke" reply is upvoted to 3. Humor as a conversation halter is (epistemically) undesirable when it conveys false meaning.
I thought the error in logic contributed to the humour in the joke. A perfect parallel to a joke I'd already heard (the binary one) would be less amusing.
I saw the joke before the context so I can't really say how it affected the conversation, but it didn't look sufficiently related to the parent to be either misleading or informative about how many types of fools there are. At worst it could be distracting.
I agree with you about jokes in general having a risk of being misleading. I think a good response to a joke that's misleading in a way you care about is to acknowledge that it's a joke and respond seriously anyway. And distinguish between replying to the joke and the joke-teller, unless you're willing to assume the teller agrees with the joke's implications.
This advice is targeted at the context of lesswrong discussions, where the joke's been there for minutes or hours,. I don't know that it would be a faux pas in general, but it would changing conversation tone to a serious mood to respond in real-time like that. Also I don't know that I'd use it in a hostile environment.
What would be your suggestion for repairing the situation?
Ignore it. At the margin such effort would be far better spent on bigger, easier to fix issues. On average humor seems (to me) to push away from bullshit rather than towards it so counters would need to be fine tuned.
Something most of us do automatically is reduce association with people who don't share our sense of humor. People who actively use humor for anti-epistemic purposes (ie. not you) I tend to avoid unconscously. They feel evil.
It would probably work well if you rattle it off quickly in a real-time conversation because it would show that you are engaged and have some wits about you, but what does it contribute to a conversation in which participants have hours to formulate a reply before the reply becomes stale?
Maybe I'm missing something: is there a truth or half-truth buried in, "There are 1 types of people in the world: those who start indexes at 0, and those who don't," that I have missed?
The potential for humor. Is this not an acceptable purpose on Lesswrong? If so, I will cease posting potentially humorous or interesting quotes and other miscellany outside of Quote and Open Threads.
I don't think most people object to humour here, I think the complaint was not that this was a joke but that it was not a very good joke.
I don't think it's a very good joke for the same reason as rhollerith but then I'm a dyed-in-the-wool C++ programmer so I can't understand why anyone would start indexes at 1...
Speaking just for myself -- well, speaking for myself and for anyone who upvotes this comment -- I have a slight preference for you to restrict your humor and interesting quotes to Rationality Quotes, which by the way I do not read. (I do not have a way to avoid reading humorous comments in Open Thread without avoiding all the other comments there.)
I hope I have not made you feel unwelcome, Rain. I find what you have to say interesting in general, and I am glad you are here.
ADDED. And I admire anyone who donates to the Singularity Institute.
I have found the persona required to interact positively with this community to be very different than the others I have adopted in the past, and the scrutiny is merciless.
Which is to say, I have mixed feelings on the matter, and am willing to continue engagement.
I am intrigued and wonder how much my experience matches yours. Are there any observations you would be willing to share?
Right, but it's obviously inferior to the common "There are 10 types of people in the world: those who use binary, and those who don't."