hankx7787 comments on Help! Name suggestions needed for Rationality-Inst! - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 28 January 2012 02:24AM

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

Comments (297)

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

Comment author: dbaupp 30 January 2012 02:27:04AM 5 points [-]

Why is Less Wrong against humor?

Err... It's not. I have seen a few comments where people have lamented the fact that their most upvoted (by far) comment ever was a light-hearted joke, rather than one with some deep insight or otherwise useful contribution.

As much respect as I have for Eliezer (which is a lot), people tend to get all emotionally attached to the "hero" of their community/movement, and suddenly it becomes not ok to joke about the authorities or otherwise hint anything negative about them at all. Doesn't go well with your whole "we're not a cult" thing.

I didn't downvote, but I don't think people were necessarily downvoting because the names mildly insulted Eliezer. I'm guessing that just didn't think they were very good names for an organisation attempting to improve the rationality of humanity. (e.g. the second one relates to AI far more than rationality.)

Comment author: hankx7787 30 January 2012 01:25:11PM 1 point [-]

I'm not complaining about the downvotes, maybe people just didn't think it was funny. I was just responding to the attitude Konkvistador expressed above (which is getting upvoted). So I'm not addressing something that doesn't exist.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 February 2012 11:20:01PM *  0 points [-]

I think you need to read this thread.