Jayson_Virissimo comments on What is the best programming language? - Less Wrong

4 Post author: lsparrish 26 May 2012 12:58AM

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

Comments (98)

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

Comment author: lsparrish 26 May 2012 06:06:50PM 14 points [-]

Snark isn't the same as rationality.

Let's break it down, shall we? The comment contains the following three things:

  1. A joke insinuating "rational programming" is the same as "rational toothpaste". No claim is made explicitly, so no rebuttal can be made. This is pure dark arts if you ask me.
  2. Negative instruction: Don't do this. No attempt to explain why.
  3. Positive instruction: Do that instead. Again, no attempt to explain why.

And you think this is more rational than the detailed, respectful, intelligent comments made by people who actually thought about the questions for five minutes and shared their expertise?

I'm appalled.

Maybe it's obvious to you that having "most rational X" in the title is stupid. And to be honest in hindsight it seems a bit silly to me as well, now that I have explicitly thought about the reasons for it. But it wasn't obvious when I wrote it, and it surely isn't self-evident to everybody.

I'm not against setting up norms and rules, and yes they are gonna change on people, and yes people need to be humiliated from time to time for breaking them flagrantly, but it's simply unfair to make humiliating jokes in retaliation for breaking them when there is no actual reason for the person to have known about the norm's existence.

Note that Konkvistador didn't even have a link to a top level post to substantiate the claim that this norm exists, just "I think this has been mentioned before" -- am I supposed to read every comment on LessWrong to see what norms I'm supposed to be following?

Give me a break!

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 26 May 2012 08:22:22PM *  3 points [-]

Snark isn't the same as rationality.

Forgive my ignorance; so what is the most rational form of humor?

Note: Both of these comments are jokes and were intended to be funny, not snarky punishments for norm-breaking.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 26 May 2012 09:08:59PM 10 points [-]

It turns out to be fart jokes. I have an elegant proof of this, but it is too long to fit in a comment.

Comment author: Curiouskid 30 May 2012 12:34:11AM 2 points [-]

Louis C.K. was deconstructing why farts are funny on the daily show the other day:

  1. They come out of your ass.
  2. They make a trumpet noise.
  3. etc
Comment author: lsparrish 27 May 2012 04:59:02PM 1 point [-]

Argh, I can't believe that went completely over my head in both cases. Now that you've added the italics around "most rational" I can see it.