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Alicorn comments on Open Thread, September, 2010-- part 2 - Less Wrong
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Comments (858)
May as well... Me.
Great profile!
witty, + 5
sci-fi and singularity geek, +5
draws a webcomic + 5
wants kids, +2
degree in worldbuilding, awesome, +10
cooking, +3
vegetarian, -2 :(
likes fancy pretentious cheese, +1
I'm too old, live on another continent, and my wife is next to me right now, -50
Thank you. Now I have a face to go with my pointless Internet crush! :)
Oh man, you read like an alternate universe version of me where I stayed in school and kept reading fiction. Or, if it's not quite that strong, you at least send off a lot of "in my tribe" vibes.
I'm almost exactly the same way. I don't need only one at a time, but I like small groups or pairs. The closer I am to the people in question, the more of them I can handle at once. I'm building a list of axes (that's the plural of "axis" here, not "axe") along which humans are distributed for social/relationship purposes, and I definitely think "what size of group do you prefer to socialize in" is important enough to be on it. (It might actually have been the first one.)
I really want to try your cauliflower soup now.
I have a rant about a set of "most private thing" answers that includes yours. You're not obliged to care, but there it is.
I just don't know how to organize things I talk about into "more private" and "less private". I just have "too private to mention" and "not private". So while I'd gladly pick something and put it there if I had such a spectrum, I don't know how to make facts about myself line up in a spectrum. Suggestions?
Soup. I also add a parsnip or two to each batch lately, and I tried it with a turnip once but didn't think it was an improvement. I would have added these to the post but I have forgotten how to log into my blog, it's been so long since I've used it.
Oh, that's a good reason. On a side note, I'm curious--have you made a deliberate choice to use the UK style of punctuation for quoted words at the end of a sentence (period outside, not inside)? If so, why?
The only thing I can think of is to look for intersections of the set "other people might consider this too private to post" and "I do not consider it so." Anything in both of those is probably at least private enough to be interesting. Alternatively, I consider your other use of that box (adding something which didn't fit anywhere else) to be entirely valid.
Thanks!
I put punctuation inside quotes only when it is part of the quote. For example, I'll put an exclamation point inside quotes when I note that I sometimes greet people by saying "Hi!". (But then I put a period after that.) I am not conscious of this being a UK thing; it's just how it makes sense to me.
Can you give me examples? The ones I've seen in the wild have not had any clear analogues to myself.
Yeah, this is certainly logical, and like RobinZ I've seen other people do it for the same reason. It happens to also be what's taught in UK/world English, as opposed to US English, or at least such is my understanding. It startles me when I see it, though, presumably because the US rules were so thoroughly ingrained in me as a child that it seems to mismatch an otherwise good impression of someone's grasp of grammar.
In case it's not clear enough, I don't think less of you for using that syntax; I'm just probiing my reaction to it.
Uh, hm. I'm not sure, actually; I don't know where your comfort zone lies! Sex is usually a good bet; I've also used that field for things I'm not embarrassed by but can be shy about mentioning because some people are dicks about it. Things I can remember having there at some point, or could have, include:
There are flaws in these; the second one makes me sound boring, and the latter two both result in dumbasses saying things like "you just haven't tried the right drink/dick yet." But they're examples of things in the personal-but-not-too-personal set for me.
I know how to ride a bike, but don't have and have never had a driver's license - but that isn't private at all. I don't drink coffee or alcohol either, but one's clearly stated in the sidebar and the other seems irrelevant and also not private at all (and I answered a question about it). And my analogy to the last case would seem to invite messages that, as you say, are not welcome.
I use the same notation, and have seen other people report the same for the same reason.
I punctuate the same way, and for the same reason. I suspect it's a geekishness thing.
Guy Steele & Eric Raymond (don't know which wrote this part):
Here or here.
(The first link is to the copy on ESR himself's site, but the quotes are messed up.)
Me too. The mathematician Paul Halmos was an outspoken defender of this.
It is a well written and interesting profile. I'd go with it being a bit more concise, but that is my personal taste.
You make it clear that you are unapologetic about your liking of Stephenie Meyer, I don't think you need the section about liking kids movies. It seem somewhat redundant (I'm not implying that Twilight is a kids movie, simply that both make the point that your taste in media is your own, not societally driven).
It's a great profile. My preference is for more concision, but not everyone's the same about that.
IMO I think your third picture (the wedding one) should be your main one, it's a very good photo.
But I'm not wearing a bandana, and therefore I don't look like myself!
You totally do look like yourself! It's not like you'll show up for a date and the person will be like "WHENCE THE BANDANA, LIAR?! YOU ARE NOT THE DROID I WAS LOOKING FOR." And then you'd be like "WTF" and that'd be that. Where was I? Oh, right, sleep deprived.
Can I get second opinions on the relative goodness of the bridesmaid picture sans bandana and the more characteristic bandana-containing pictures? Will's raving and I can't trust his judgment :)
I definitely prefer the bandana. But then I'm an aging hippie, so my judgment is suspect.
Nice profile, btw. God, you guys make me feel old.
They made me feel old (I'm 31), now I feel less old.
I find the bandana one more attractive (the one with the dark sweater, not the one with the big wooden, I mean, metal thingamajig), you look more natural and comfortable than the wedding one.
(Does this mean I'm an aging hippie too? I do have a beard.)
It's not wood, it's an actual metal bat'leth.
That one is my favourite too.
Well, sheesh, now I don't know what to do. My own preference is the closeup of my face, so I'm going to switch back.
Honestly, I think most people expect you to put up your best pictures in the fore.
If you don't they might think your average pictures are your best pictures, and you look worse in person.
The world of dating is not at all about honesty sigh
These are my best pictures. I'm terribly unphotogenic; these three (and a redundant bat'leth picture) are just about the only ones I can stand to publicize.
For what it's worth, I like them. You have a good smile, and the smile is what makes or breaks a picture.
Yes, and in most photos, I look like a complete doofus - these are the good smiles, not just random smiles :P
Well your good smiles are adorable. So there. :P
If you have a friend with an interest in photography and a decent camera ask them to take a few pictures. A good camera and some basic photography skills make a huge difference.
As far as I know, I do not have such a friend.
Well if you acquire one bear it in mind. I have a Panasonic GF1 which happens to be the camera OkCupid found took the photos with the highest average attractiveness and a photo I have of myself taken with it (a random snapshot by my sister who's not majorly into photography) got the highest rating of all my photos on their My Best Face test even though I don't think it's the most flattering picture of me from the ones I tested. Some nice depth of field and bokeh in the background seem to swing it for a lot of people though.
I meant the comparison of your bridesmaid one to your non-bridesmaid ones.
People, generally, will make an initial judgment based on the first picture. Of course if you are not interested in general people, it doesn't matter so much.
I think both bandana pics (specially the grey bandana one) are better than the bridesmaid one.
I like bat'leth most, other bandana second, wedding third. But if you're going with the non-bat'leth bandana photo because you can't get close enough in on that one to frame your face the way you'd like, as it seems like you are, I trust your judgment.
Bridesmaid over bandanna. I love the little braidy-hair thing. Doesn't matter that you don't look like that all the time -- I don't wear satin leopard-print dresses all the time, but it's a good photo.
All right, I swapped 'em. That photo also has me in makeup, which I also never wear and was obliged to permit for the wedding... The braid is actually really cool. The hairdresser taught me how to do it - it builds into its procedure the fact that humans have two hands, and doesn't require you to have three or four, which is nice :)
Aargh! Surely you know that only low-status people use the preposition "for" in this context!
High-status people say "in".
One of my best friends, who is far more intelligent than I, sometimes says 'could of' instead of 'could have'. My point being, having language pet peeves is fine and normal, but whether people make those errors or not is a really poor indicator of status (even though hearing 'could of' and 'for all intensive purposes' drives me up the wall)
Some very intelligent people also wear T-shirts instead of suits. Nevertheless, it would be preposterous to deny that wearing a suit is a meaningful status signal, or to claim that clothing is a "really poor indicator of status".
Signaling mechanisms aren't perfect, and yet they're still signaling mechanisms anyway.
In engineering / software circles, wearing a T-shirt rather than a suit is a kind of countersignaling.
Indeed; and no doubt linguistic countersignaling also occurs in some communities. (Example: politicians.)
Spoken language is much more difficult to change on purpose than clothing is, so in my view it has much less value than clothing choices as a status indicator.
In that case it should have more value as a status indicator -- harder to fake.
I think my main disagreement with you here is in whether unconscious or conscious signalling has higher value as a method of determining actual status. I would argue that choosing to put on a suit is actually a better determinant of high status than an accent that indicates I grew up in Dumbistan, because status is something you obtain as opposed to something you either have or don't.
I think that all talk of status flirts with the Mind Projection fallacy. Status is almost entirely in the eye of the beholder. A high status person is one who conforms to the ideals of the status-judge. So, you are both right as to what signals status, as long as you really mean "what signals status to me".
How can you even tell the difference? It seems like unless you're speaking in a very formal, deliberate manner, they're pronounced nearly identically.
It must be a dialect thing, I can clearly hear the difference. I wish I couldn't.
I don't think I've actually heard "in" used there, and it sounds awkward to me. I guess I'm just low-status. Oh well.
You have, many times. Trust me.
"I'm a graduate student in philosophy".
-> "I went to graduate school in philosophy"
-> "Philosophy? I went to graduate school in it."
The Googles would seem to agree:
This is curious. Do you have an explanation for why "for" is associated with low-status and "in" is associated with high-status (in this context)? Are there other similar linguistic phenomena?
Hm, I suppose I could attempt one. I think my current best guess would be along the following lines:
High-status people will tend to have a richer cache of stored expressions; in a given situation, they are more likely to be able to precisely reproduce a previously-heard expression appropriate to the context, rather than having to make up a new expression on the spot. This is especially so if the idea being expressed is one that high-status people think about more often than low-status people do. Consequently, a high-status person will be more likely to remember the phrase "graduate school in philosophy" in detail, including the specific information about "in" being the preposition used; whereas a low-status person, who (at least at first) may not have as much occasion to speak about graduate school in philosophy, may only have something like "graduate school [preposition] philosophy" stored in their mind. As a result, when they first need to use the expression, they will have to spontaneously choose a preposition, and the choice they end up with may not be the same as the one in the existing expression commonly used by high-status folk. But now, when the low-status person next uses the phrase, they will have a tendency to remember the preposition they themselves used the last time; so this new expression will then spread among their low-status associates, and will become the standard cached version of the expression for low-status people.
I don't know whether this is one, but I expect that some such expressions have different "correct" forms on either side of the Atlantic.
Yes, of course status levels are not the only source of linguistic variation; there's also geography, and other things also.
Note however that high-status language varies less by geography than low-status language.
Also, British English (at least "Southern British Standard") sounds higher status to me than American English in general, so I would find it surprising if an expression that struck my (American-English) ear as low status turned out to be a high-status British form. I would expect the reverse -- that is, something that sounds low-status to a British speaker being a high-status American expression -- to be more common.
Sticking to prepositional shibboleths, another one that comes to mind concerns professional athletes and sports teams:
Low status: "X is on the Texas Rangers." (Generalized from the use of "on" in expressions like "whose team are you on?")
High status: "X is with the Texas Rangers." (Standard expression used in the specific context by sports journalists, etc.)