Overcoming bias guy meme | quickmeme

EDIT: The below is based on my misunderstanding of terminology. It turns out "retract" and "delete" are different things. Oops. Huh. To me, that sounds like exactly sort of behavior a karma system is supposed to encourage. Post worthless comment => comment downvoted => retract comment => future readers don't waste time reading it. I retract [EDIT: delete] comments in high-traffic subthreads threads if they don't get upvoted after a day or two. Should I stop doing this? (Disclaimer: I did not see the original before it was deleted.)

6Douglas_Knight13y

retract = strikethrough + disable voting delete = make invisible (a second step after retraction) The comment was retracted before receiving any votes, with the purpose of being visible but not subject to karma (visible here). I am surprised that this was not clear from the quote; perhaps it's a matter of giving the benefit of the doubt to the user vs the moderator? It was deleted by a moderator, not the user. I think this deletion is very clearly the right action, to the point that I'm surprised that VN didn't delete it when he left his reply. If you want to avoid clutter, you should delete, not just retract, but it looks to me that you do. If you change your mind, you should say that, not (just) retract, and probably not delete. The main point of retraction is to let someone pull out of the karma system without disrupting a conversation. In principle, an edit saying that should discourage downvotes, but in practice it doesn't. Also, for good or for ill, it discourages reading the comment a bit more than an edit.

6ModusPonies13y

Thanks for clearing up the terminology. I think, if the parent had included something like "and therefore I am deleting your post," I probably would not have been confused.

2mwengler13y

You think you're confused? Apparently when my comment was deleted by a moderator, it is NOT deleted in my own view of the thread! So I am reading these confused followup comments with people talking about my having deleted my comment, and I'm staring at the page SEEING my comment there! It was only in a different view where I saw my alread-deleted comment did not have a "delete" option on it while a newer retracted comment I had made did show a delete option that I guessed that my comment had been deleted, but with no indication on my screen that it was not publicly visible.

1A1987dM13y

The fact that non-moderators don't know it when a moderator has deleted their comments is very confusing. Once an entire subthread I was in was deleted by someone, but we only figured out what was going on because the other person was a mod herself.

0OrphanWilde13y

I consider the main point of retraction to be a reconsideration of the value of a comment - that is, it should be used to say "This is, on further consideration, wrong, or without value" while leaving the reasoning for why it was wrong (or without value) in the first place intact, so other people don't commit the same mistake. This is so regardless of whether the karma value of the comment is positive or negative. Karma values are, in general, a useful gauge, but not an ultimate gauge, of the usefulness of a comment; they are in the end the consensus view of a post or comment, which may or may not be "correct".

3jefftk13y

You don't need to do that. The voting system already allows good comments to rise to the top, and because it gives a bonus for recent ones you don't need to worry about your old unvotedup comments hiding new promising ones.

0[anonymous]13y

Even though my retracted comment can't be downvoted, I've received 3 downvotes on other comments because of this. In any case, if you don't want people to work to the metric, why put the metric in place? And for those students of psychology: was I downvoted because I misused the feature, or was I downvoted because I stated what I was doing? I have certainly prophylactically retracted comments before without being downvoted, but in those instances I didn't say why I was retracting. I'll retract this comment too. If you want to downvote me for this it will cost you extra keystrokes. Is it really a good use of your lesswrong.com time?

-2A1987dM13y

I disagree -- retracting a comment just means “I regret saying this”, whatever the reasons for that. OTOH, I think that as a matter of honesty one should still keep the original text of the retracted comment intact (possibly with an explanation for the retraction added), unless it is contains potential memetic hazards (even for readers who know the writer has disavowed it), discloses confidential information, or similar. EDIT: Should have looked into this more carefully -- apparently he retracted the comment immediately after posting it. Yes, I agree that's improper. Retracting.

-10Larks13y

[-]David_Gerard13y80

And of course. (Not great either.)

2ikrase13y

What the hell is that? It looks like some kind of pathetic... I don't know. I know there has been some kind of wierd controversy about groupthink or censorship or something but that kind of meme... It reminds me of a much toned down version of the whole FTBullies thing.

8Larks13y

I thought I'd read all of LW, but can't remember anyone ever linking to the icelandic google's image seach for "no"

1KnaveOfAllTrades12y

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6ph/the_importance_of_not_getting_the_joke/4j11

0ikrase13y

Whaaaat?

[-]ikrase13y70

... damn, we are never going to live down that rape bullshit are we. What the hell, Hanson?

Have to say I don't like it. Wonder who made these.

[-]FiftyTwo13y180

Having only become involved with Lesswrong after it had split off, I've never seen the appeal of "Overcoming Bias." There are a few interesting posts, but a lot of dross and random weird political/incendiary things (like the above). All the good stuff seems to be expressed better elsewhere (mainly on LW).

Possibly this just means LW's voting system is doing its job, but I still notice I'm confused by the appeal. Can anyone enlighten me?

8Swimmy13y

Well, I'll stick up for OB and Hanson. Hanson posts about interesting things in a droll way. That's intentional, I believe: sometimes he seems to be trying to get a rise out of people, but most of the time he's trying to reduce emotional reactions to his posts. He's really, really invested in ideas like evolution: simple theories that explain lots of different phenomena. This is why we get lots and lots of posts about signaling, near/far, and farmers/foragers. He thinks that these explain far more than people currently give them credit, so he's trying to expand their influence. If this seems boring, let me just point at that Hanson has provided or advertised: 1) Probably the best explanation for why medical expenditures in the US grow faster than health outcomes. 1.a) What I consider the best post on any blog about what economists can say about health care reform 2) An explanation for traditional scifi aesthetics 3) Why dumbed-down arguments work better in politics 4) An ev/psych hypothesis for left/right political divide 5) An ev/psych hypothesis for the appeal of adventure novels and video game settings 6) Problems with the business world and how to fix them (and why they won't be fixed) 7) The dark side of cooperation He's also interested in experimentation and clever solutions to social problems. Hence, 1) A fantastic (but probably politically unworkable) way to solve the problem of CEO value. 2) Futarchy, of course. I doubt it would be very efficient on a large scale because of target/noise problems, but on a local government scale I think it could be amazing. 3) Other numerous applications he's come up with or advertised: solving standardization/focal point problems (like blu-ray vs hdvd), solving which movie scripts to fund, etc. If you have seen much of this expressed better elsewhere, consider the value of originating an idea vs. explaining in different words. A lot of the LW community was around for the OB days when Eliezer and Robin blogged

3coffeespoons13y

Overcoming Bias can be interesting, but (as with the post on rape) I often feel that people like me (with left/feminist leanings) are being trolled.

[-]Desrtopa13y200

I don't think that Hanson is trolling so much as he's choosing deliberately provocative subjects to pontificate frankly on (I think any definition by which this would be considered "trolling" is inappropriately broad.)

I do think that he does tend to treat a few concepts as hammers which turn everything else into nails, and often bases his arguments on shaky premises. I don't think he has a very good sense of how far he can extrapolate before he's basically speculating blindly.

2ikrase13y

Not sure. Overcoming bias is both Hanson's own blog (where he pushes ideas such as ems (those are uploaded people, right?) and cynicism) and a general project about rationality / what it says on the tin. I've always liked the Less Wrong aristocracy (Compliment!) better as they often seem to make fewer "theory class" mistakes.

5FeepingCreature13y

To my knowledge, ems are uploaded people self-optimizing for pure computational efficiency in a sort of malthusian race to the bottom. [edit] Correction, em is just a shorthand for whole-brain emulation. The malthusian race was a proposed scenario, but not a necessary one.

0ikrase13y

Seems like it would be easier to make expert systems (Possibly out of uploaded infants or animals?) than use humans?

0FeepingCreature13y

Well if expert systems make better ems [edit] uploads they'll outcompete the human ems and dominate the market, so humans will self-modify to become more like expert systems or stop getting allocated computing time. (and that's why you don't run future supertech on capitalism!)

-2ikrase13y

Waitwhat? Also, are we calling everything an em? What are all these people computing in the first place? Also, it seems like the obvious choice is for a human to own several expert-system or trained animal ems and rent their services or something. ????

1FeepingCreature13y

Sorry, I said that wrong. Also, the human is strictly overhead. There's no reason to expect we'd necessarily be better than an expert system at owning and managing expert systems. What they're computing in the first place, I have no idea. I think the assumption is that there'll be a computing-based economy of any kind, not necessarily what the specifics of it are. And data mining is already an enormous industry, for instance.

0ikrase13y

GAAAAAAHHH! I think somebody forgot to have something to protect! Is this Hanson's actual idea or your idea of the consequences. Frankly I expect an energy-and-matter based economy.

0Larks13y

This is a positive prediction, not a normative one.

-2ikrase13y

Had heard 'and that's why you don't run future supertech on captialism' and previously heard about Hanson being strictly libertarian possibly in a bad way, so thought that he was somehow accepting of this stuff.

0FeepingCreature13y

I am not very confident I'm accurately representing his position. Really, I'm hoping somebody'll correct me if I'm too far offbase. Grain of salt, go read his posts on the topic, etc etc.

-1IlyaShpitser13y

See, it's things like this that makes LW seem creepy to me.

1somervta13y

Are you saying that you dislike the LW aristocracy, or that you dislike the fact that LW has an aristocracy?

[-]pinyaka13y150

Referenced post

2Pfft13y

CharlieSheen, I guess?

1khafra13y

A non-neurotypical person. This one displays something I'd actually call humor; the rest are just OB references or "take that, OB!" references.

[-]wedrifid13y180

A non-neurotypical person.

That isn't a phrase I prefer to see used as (what amounts to) an insult.

5thescoundrel13y

My complaint is that is either a euphemism for autistic (in which case, just say autistic- if that feel "Squicky", re-evaluate your statement), or it is so vague as to lose all meaning- someone with bi-polar disorder is non-neurotypical, but is no more likely to have made these than anyone else. If you do mean specifically autistic, you may want to broaden your understanding of autism. Autism is not standard, it can present in many, many ways, including many that would not create this type of image. The images are indicative of a poor grasp of humor, and a poor grasp of the original subject matter, but I do not see a higher probability for an autistic person to create these against the general population.

2wedrifid13y

(It likely isn't your intention but I'm a little uncomfortable having these 'you' claims as replies to me when it isn't me to whom they apply.)

0thescoundrel13y

My apologies, I was meaning a more general "you", as in "the person who uses this phrase". Not directed at you you, just the common you, and you are certainly not the you I meant for "you" to refer to.

1wedrifid13y

Not actually true (in the specific example, although I support your general objection about terminology misuse). In a hypo-manic phase someone is more likely to get caught up with the kinda-clever notion of making Hanson memes and get carried away dumping all his ideas, exercising less judgement and restraint than he otherwise would. (Of course some time later they would later be able to look at their work and see why it isn't funny and delete it. They are also more likely than average to come up with a whole bunch of awesome memes.)

0thescoundrel13y

Fair enough- I should have chosen a clearer example.

0wedrifid13y

Sociopathy would be a perfect example (in the sense that I would expect them to be less likely to make terrible jokes like that). Dyslexia would work too. Definitely not schizophrenia though.

2Matt_Simpson13y

I agree, but I'm not sure it was intended as an insult. The effect in (some) readers is similar though, so maybe I'm splitting hairs.

-1khafra13y

You're one of the last people I would have expected to show strong moral disapproval for a neutrally-phrased, true statement. Which of these claims offends you more? "People on the autism spectrum usually have problems understanding or generating statements considered humorous by neurotypicals," or "Obese people usually have problems climbing several flights of stairs quickly"?

4wedrifid13y

The phrasing may be neutral but the decision to use it in the particular context was not, and that conveyed social meaning of the type that I felt it appropriate to assert opposition to. (A thought that I recall crossing my mind was "Hmm... this is getting dangerously close to 'non-neurotypical person' being used where 'retard' once may have been, before that became a politically incorrect move.") I am perhaps less confident of the Autism diagnostic capability of the memes in question. In fact, I might consider the fact that the person follows OvercomingBias at all to be stronger evidence! Neither of those offends me.

[-]ygert13y130

Interestingly, that one is nothing more than a quote from HPMOR. From chapter 63:

But "pessimistic" wasn't the correct word to describe Professor Quirrell's problem - if a problem it truly was, and not the superior wisdom of experience. But to Harry it looked like Professor Quirrell was constantly interpreting everything in the worst possible light. If you handed Professor Quirrell a glass that was 90% full, he'd tell you that the 10% empty part proved that no one really cared about water.

[-]ikrase13y120

Am I correct in my impression that Rational!Quirrel is in part inspired by Hanson?

6simplicio13y

I certainly have that impression as well, yes.

4ikrase13y

Also Yvain mentioned his 'Evil Hansonian' and 'Bleeding Heart Liberal' internal interlocutors once.

[-]pinyaka13y60

I notice that I am confused.

Who is this?

[-]Qiaochu_Yuan13y120

Robin Hanson.

2ikrase13y

He writes Overcoming Bias. Is rather cynical, predicts future involving (i think) libertarianism and stuff that sounds morally bad to present day sensibilities. Had a gaffe a while ago where he ignored mental trauma related to bodily autonomy, expressed confusion about rape being considered worse than cuckoldry.

1ChristianKl13y

On the right hand side of LessWrong, if you scroll down you see Overcoming Bias mentioned as sister site.

0Ben Pace13y

More importantly, it's where EY started blogging when he was sponsored by the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford (he moved here after finishing the first few sequences).

9wedrifid13y

Where "first few" means "Basically all of them". There are a few later additions but the bulk (from when he was writing a post a day or somesuch) was all OvercomingBias.

3ESRogs13y

Note: it is meant that he moved to LessWrong from Overcoming Bias, not that he moved to the States from Oxford. :)

5[anonymous]13y

[Meta] Speaking as someone who upvoted this, (edited for clarity) why did someone downvote? Not everyone knows what Hanson looks like. This isn't the first time I've noticed on LW an answer having more karma than the question, which is a Thing That Bothers Me. (Although I do think that there is such thing as a stupid question, this isn't obviously one of them.)

-1ChristianKl13y

In general posts in discussion are expected to contain more information than a simple link. As the time of this writing the post with the most upvotes is saying "I think this kind of submission is better suited in an open thread. :)".

0[anonymous]13y

I'm confused as to the placement of the above comment.

1Randy_M13y

Why are you confused? It's a perfectly obvious that it is misplaced due to prior poster's confusion about your post's target. ;)

-2Error13y

He looks a bit like Jack Nicholson in Batman, going by that picture. O_o I'm not sure about the downvote. I'm upvoting the question on the grounds that noticing confusion is good.

[-]A1987dM13y30

In some of those there's text covering his eyes and in some there's text covering his mouth, making it even clearer how his eyes are frowning while his mouth is smiling.

[-]Jack13y10

What is the one about Less Wrong being a dare referring to?

9simplicio13y

I think it's a riff on the old story that Scientology arose from Hubbard betting that he could start a religion.

[-]Gondolinian11y00

The link in the OP is broken. This one is better.

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