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nyan_sandwich comments on That Thing That Happened - Less Wrong
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Comments (82)
What are we getting at here? A thing happened, and predictably, people attempt to recruit it as a soldier. Your meta-commentary is entertaining, but what's the point?
We're just making fun of people treating any news as evidence for the superiority of their tribe. Then making fun of ourselves for asserting the superiority of our tribe by making fun of others.
I think the serious use of this post is to look at your own thinking, notice you're doing those mocked things, and stop.
I am not used to this level of meta.
EDIT: and thank you for clearing that up.
You're welcome.
But that's just two levels. If this confuses you, either you should read Hofstadter and Death Note and MoR, or you shouldn't.
Agreed, but I think taking levels in (analysis/understanding of) meta is just overall too useful to not at least try. Those three are also excellent recommendations whether or not you understand meta well.
So, the whole point is about LWers making fun of people who make fun of everyone else who disagree with him(blue/green) in a particular point. Konk should put this on the text.
Making fun of Blues who make fun of Greens, and also making fun of LWers who make fun of the above. And that would spoil the joke.
I just realized that if you interpret nyan's original comment at the top of this thread as being about the meta, then it sounds like he's one-upped all of this with further meta-fun.
I'm not actually talking about any particular thing or policy.
Let's ban the serious tag and live happily ever after in a superposition of humour and serious meta-comment.
I am convinced by this proposal but in order to save face I must now explain how this is what I had in mind the entire time but was misunderstood by the simpletons here.
[Serious comment]
I posted this a while ago. I think it is still very relevant.
Seriously.
Ok, but what are you getting at? Is this just a bit of meta-fun, or am I missing the point? Am I spoiling the party by asking questions?
This is why I hate meta. It encourages discussion that isn't aimed at solving any particular problem.
...except this particular meta is. It's aimed at solving the particular problem that MixedNuts already described very well.
Arguably, "meta" discussion is just like everything else; Sturgeon's Law applies, and 90% of meta is crap meta (or meta-crap? Kekeke). That good 10% is usually more useful at solving a bunch of problems than tackling each problem one by one without meta would be.
Fair enough. It's possible that my reaction here is based on a combination of not closely reading the link and therefore misinterpreting Konkvistador's intended message. In fact, if one doesn't read the link, the non-meta version of Konkvistador's message is fairly consistent with his known policy preferences / methods of historical analysis.
In short, it's probably a good thing that I didn't have time to respond to this post this morning, before the comments gave it appropriate context.
Don't quite see which policy preferences you are talking about.
I certainly hope so! Not much point in writing parody if you can't make fun out of oneself.
I realize now that this wasn't your intent, but this:
made me think of this discussion we had about historical trends. Not your fault that American TV uses blue for one of the political parties, specifically the one that you like less. But it created inferences in my mind, since I hadn't read the link closely. (see also this, which suggested to me that this issue is still very much on your mind).
This isn't really a local failure mode. I think I do well at avoiding this particular failure, and your specific application of the general principle was well received (based on karma). That's why I said that this meta doesn't seem to be aimed at solving any particular problem.
Sure, but you can use it amuse yourself or even do some cheap signalling.
I thought that cheap signalling was bad.
If signalling of a virtue is cheap, people will signal even if they lack the virtue - creating substantial waste and disguising those who actually have the desired virtue.
If signalling a virtue is cheap then the waste may not be all that substantial after all and the problem is primarily the difficulty in detecting actual virtue. For creating substantial waste look to signals that are costly but nevertheless important enough to be signaled heavily. Like higher education degrees and male peacock's feathers.
Fair enough. I don't take much from Hanson, but I agree that insincere signalling is not something we should reward - I personally think that insincere signally is mildly immoral - at about the level of basic Dark Arts rhetoric.
Regardless of the moral valence, if one does something only for signalling value and not because one intrinsically desires the result (e.g. how some folks treat attending classical music concerts), then I suspect one would be personally happier if one would stop the signalling behavior - not that this is always practical.
whoosh