Normal_Anomaly comments on Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics - Less Wrong

48 Post author: lukeprog 05 November 2011 11:06AM

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Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 07 November 2011 02:13:19AM 1 point [-]

I guess it has more of a "secret society" vibe to it. Oooh, ooh, can we call it the Political Conspiracy?

That would be cool. I'd prefer the Apolitical Conspiracy, or perhaps the Contrarian Conspiracy.

Is 1100 enough karma?

I have over 1500 karma as of today; I think 1100 ought to be enough.

I've tried to stay out of ideological debates, but I don't know precisely what the criteria would be. (And who would decide, anyway?)

I think the mailing list should be set up as invitation only, with some place where one can request an invitation. Then current members could look at their posts, and if the person has a lot of contributions and looks open-minded enough, they can be allowed on. There wouldn't have to be a hard-and-fast karma cutoff if every new member was "previewed" and disruptive members could be banned easily.

The problem with this approach is that it requires an initial trustworthy person or group to start the mailing list and preview the first batch of new members. The LW moderators and/or Lukeprog* is an obvious Schelling point, but they may not have the time or inclination. Conversely, I could probably figure out how to create a mailing list and would be willing to do so, but I don't have the reputation here to be seen as a valid judge of who's non-ideological enough to join.

*Lukeprog would presumably have a significant amount to post to such a list, and is widely respected by the community despite not having moderator powers.

Comment author: pedanterrific 07 November 2011 02:27:49AM 3 points [-]

That would be cool. I'd prefer the Apolitical Conspiracy, or perhaps the Contrarian Conspiracy.

Those are more literally correct, but the acronyms don't work out as ironically.

The problem with this approach is that it requires an initial trustworthy person or group to start the mailing list and preview the first batch of new members.

Well, given that the idea is to create a place where certain norm-violating ideas can be discussed, it seems like the ones with veto power ought to be the ones who have come up with the idea but are reluctant to discuss it in public (I admit I've rather lost track of who this is, in this instance). If nothing else, the veto would be exercised by simply not discussing the topic.

Comment author: lessdazed 07 November 2011 06:07:23AM 5 points [-]

Oooh, ooh, can we call it the Political Conspiracy?

That would be cool. I'd prefer the Apolitical Conspiracy, or perhaps the Contrarian Conspiracy.

Those are more literally correct, but the acronyms don't work out as ironically.

"Contrarian Conspiracy for Correcting Politics"

"New Association for Apolitically Criticizing Politics"

"New Society for Discussing, Apolitically, Politics"

Comment author: Bugmaster 10 November 2011 04:37:25AM 6 points [-]

The problem with setting up such a society is that it's about as secure as a house of cards. If I was a potential attacker, all I'd need to do would be,

  • Create a new account on Less Wrong (or just use my existing one if I was willing to burn it)
  • Act really open-minded and gain a lot of karma
  • Join the Contrarian Conspiracy
  • Archive all its messages for a few months, then publish them on Slashdot, 4chan, and the National Enquirer

In fact, the first three steps aren't even necessary, if you assume that instead of being an outside attacker, I'm an internal member who'd gone rogue. There doesn't seem to be any mechanism in place for stopping a person like that.

Comment author: pedanterrific 10 November 2011 05:04:52AM *  2 points [-]

Possible solutions: wear cloaks and masks, i.e. have the membership of the mailing list be composed of anonymized gmail accounts (46233782482@gmail.com). Also, of course, denydenydeny.

Comment author: J_Taylor 10 November 2011 05:14:29AM 2 points [-]

One also could create a social norm of writing under false identities. That is, have several individuals who are each claiming the same Lesswrong identity.

Comment author: pedanterrific 10 November 2011 05:31:24AM 1 point [-]

I don't see why hypothetical conspiratorial mailing list (HCML) identities and LW identities have to be linked at all, really.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 November 2011 08:50:54AM 3 points [-]

The needed barriers to entry are basically taken care of in who gets invited in the first place. On the list itself I don't actually see that strong a reason to even know which mail address is who, in fact since many people don't really have all that recognisable a style this might work to improve rationality by breaking up existing sympathies and antipathies.

Comment author: J_Taylor 10 November 2011 05:39:17AM 0 points [-]

I saw it as a way of messing up the apparent signal-to-noise ratio for outside observers. However, if one were to wish to do so, there are probably better ways.

Comment author: Bugmaster 10 November 2011 06:11:39AM 0 points [-]

This is a good idea, but it does not guarantee security; and I'm not sure how effective it would be against a determined attacker. It would be relatively easy to collect a large enough corpus of text and then use it to match up "46233782482@gmail.com" with "Bugmaster of LessWrong". And, of course, this assumes that Google won't roll over and surrender all of Mr. 46233782482's contact information to the authorities when said authorities come knocking.

Comment author: pedanterrific 10 November 2011 06:22:06AM 4 points [-]

How determined an attacker are we planning for, here? The original goal was to just meliorate the damage that a theoretical rogue member could cause (as it seems hopeless to try to prevent that). Are you really anticipating "the authorities" getting involved?

Comment author: Bugmaster 10 November 2011 06:50:44AM 2 points [-]

Well, on the one hand, Vladimir_M believes that his beliefs are so heretical that they can cause society -- any society, if I understand him correctly -- to turn against him in a really intense way. On the other hand, our authorities have been getting quite jumpy lately; for example, merely having an Arabic-sounding last name is already enough for the FBI to attach a tracking device to your car. When you put the two factors together, it seems reasonable to expect said authorities to take an interest in the membership of the Contrarian Conspiracy.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 11 November 2011 01:09:17AM 9 points [-]

Well, on the one hand, Vladimir_M believes that his beliefs are so heretical that they can cause society -- any society, if I understand him correctly -- to turn against him in a really intense way.

Where on Earth did you read anything like that anywhere in my comments? Please provide a citation. (Which you should be able to do if you assert it as a known fact that person X believes Y.)

This, by the way, is another way in which expressing opinions about controversial and charged topics can be more dangerous than one might assume. Already in the second- or third-hand retelling, your opinion is not at all unlikely to be distorted and amplified into a caricatured soundbite that sounds far more crude and awful than anything you ever meant to say or actually said. If such things happen even on the "meta" level, what can one expect to happen when concrete topics are broached?

Comment author: Bugmaster 17 November 2011 03:47:36AM 2 points [-]

Please provide a citation. (Which you should be able to do if you assert it as a known fact that person X believes Y.)

Ok, I tried doing just that right now, but I couldn't make heads or tails of the thread at all at any capacity. So, firstly, I have to withdraw my comment for lack of evidence; my apologies. But secondly, can you offer some advice for navigating gigantic threads on Less Wrong ? For example, is there a way to search just a single thread for comments with certain keywords, or to flatten the thread, or something ?

Comment author: wedrifid 10 November 2011 07:30:09AM *  2 points [-]

Well, on the one hand, Vladimir_M believes that his beliefs are so heretical that they can cause society -- any society, if I understand him correctly -- to turn against him in a really intense way.

Such a belief does not exist! Vladimir_M is a liar. A dirty, dirty liar!

(Prove me wrong? :P)

Comment author: pedanterrific 10 November 2011 07:38:12AM 6 points [-]

There's no such thing as a hate-speech basilisk! Don't be sill-

whisperwhisper

RAARGH DIE YOU FOUL HERETIC

Comment author: lessdazed 10 November 2011 01:28:07PM 0 points [-]

any society, if I understand him correctly

This would be a mistake analogous to the mind projection fallacy. I do not so understand.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 November 2011 08:46:20AM 3 points [-]

Trivial inconvenience to protect against a trivial danger.

I find the scenario very low probability if high impact.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 November 2011 11:12:06PM 0 points [-]

This might be useful.

Comment author: ahartell 07 November 2011 05:21:34AM 5 points [-]

I like this idea, but since I have very little karma, I would be a bit sad to see it happen. Could an email list be contrived in such a way that users with lower karma could read the correspondences of the group without having the ability to post messages? If possible, it seems like that would maintain the integrity of discussion while also allowing interested parties to learn new things.

Comment author: pedanterrific 07 November 2011 06:18:37AM 7 points [-]

If you don't have a lot of karma, and the requisite posting history of being nonpartisan, how could the Conspirators trust you not to spread around the Deep Dark Secrets that would give the site a bad reputation?

(If I seem to be giving off mixed signals, it's because I'm not sure how I feel about this idea myself yet. I'm having a really hard time imagining what could be somehow so beyond the pale as to be impossible to allude to in public.)

Comment author: Nominull 07 November 2011 06:38:38AM 3 points [-]

To take an attested example, discussion of the beliefs and tactics of the Pick Up Artist (PUA) community was either heavily discouraged or banned, I forget which, because of the unpleasant air it seemed to give to this site.

Comment author: pedanterrific 07 November 2011 08:41:48AM 1 point [-]

I'm lost. Isn't that exactly what started this discussion upthread?

Comment author: [deleted] 07 November 2011 09:48:13AM 3 points [-]

That is not really discussion about PUA, but rather about what is problematic about discussing PUA.

Comment author: pedanterrific 07 November 2011 09:38:47PM 1 point [-]

Except, you know. It's being alluded to in public. So it doesn't seem to qualify.

Comment author: ahartell 07 November 2011 06:47:49AM *  1 point [-]

Good question. I don't have an answer, but I guess there could be tiers? Like, if a person* has a couple hundred karma, has been active on the site for a while, and has conducted him/herself well then that person could receive low level access. With the concern you brought up it's hard to choose criteria that would make a user trustworthy but that wouldn't warrant just letting them in completely. I guess I would advocate less stringent requirements. Like, nobody with negative karma and to be accepted you need to have been on the site for x amount of time and have been polite/non-inflammatory/thoughtful in all previous discussions. If a person has low karma because they rarely comment, they likely won't post much in the email list anyway.

If we need a way to find out if someone's trustworthy, can't we just ask them to raise their right hand?

*This hypothetical person happens to be me.

Comment author: pedanterrific 07 November 2011 08:42:54AM 1 point [-]

You'd have to ask the people who know what's going on and why it should be kept secret.

(I am not one of them.)

Comment author: Strange7 25 August 2012 04:20:06PM 1 point [-]

Apolitical Conspiracy could be abbreviated as APC, a vehicle useful to well-resourced partisans who want to decide when and where to engage without resorting to sneaking about dressed as civilians.

Comment author: Strange7 25 August 2012 04:26:14PM 0 points [-]

I'd like to request an invite, if this is still a thing.