JoshuaZ comments on Is Molecular Nanotechnology "Scientific"? - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 August 2007 04:11AM

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

Comments (51)

Sort By: Old

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

Comment author: JoshuaZ 30 August 2010 06:36:33PM *  12 points [-]

Your comment seems to be hovering around 0 with multiple upvotes and downvotes. I suspect this is because you replied to an individual who appears with great certainty to either be a troll or to be someone with a mental illness (I don't know if being a general crank is a mental illness per se). This individual is 1) claiming that he has revolutionary ideas relating to ancient Egypt 2) claiming that some of his ideas have been stolen from him by a popular rap-artist, 3) writing "E=MC" when he apparently means "E=MC^2" 4) claiming that his ideas are "copyrighted" 5) claiming that nanotechnology is some sort of UN plot. Given those data points one can conclude with a high confidence that interacting with the individual will not produce any useful results and is likely to simply damage the signal to noise ratio.

Comment author: Mass_Driver 30 August 2010 11:28:41PM *  4 points [-]

Wait, how does interacting with a troll damage the signal to noise ratio? Whose signal? Whose noise?

EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that the relevant signal-to-noise ratio is in the Recent Comments feed, which makes plenty of sense. I have been convinced, and will not interact with people I perceive as trolls. Note that at no point did I reply to anything Shoga said, nor do I defend Shoga's views, nor do I welcome Shoga's participation on Less Wrong. I was simply trying to understand Joshua Z's comment.

Comment author: jimrandomh 30 August 2010 11:49:58PM 12 points [-]

It clutters up the Recent Comments feed. We'd rather it contained neither trolls nor responses to trolls.

Comment author: Mass_Driver 31 August 2010 12:04:38AM 3 points [-]

Thanks.