Will_Newsome comments on Consider giving an explanation for your deletion this time around. "Harry Yudkowsky and the Methods of Postrationality: Chapter One: Em Dashes Colons and Ellipses, Littérateurs Go Wild" - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Will_Newsome 08 July 2014 02:53AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 08 July 2014 06:20:59AM 8 points [-]

What's postrationality, what are it's skills, and what is the difference between those skills and the skills of rationality?

Comment author: Will_Newsome 08 July 2014 06:32:40AM *  1 point [-]

I was gonna go into that in Chapter Two: Analyzing the Fuck out of an Owl. But I guess I won't, since my stupid fanfic idea seems to be attracting more drama and pettiness than could possibly be justified by the content. Alas, it seems postrationality is just too meta for this base basement world.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 July 2014 07:26:36AM 15 points [-]

Not creating drama seems to be antithetical to creating popular literature :).

Comment author: Will_Newsome 08 July 2014 07:35:27AM 7 points [-]

Lol. Wow. It may seem absurd but that was the first LessWrong comment I've read in like a year that caused me to actually have a new idea. Thank you.

Comment author: DanielLC 08 July 2014 08:00:06AM 7 points [-]

You can just tell us without involving fanfiction.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 08 July 2014 08:05:15AM *  10 points [-]

Explaining things without targeted obfuscation? ...Do you know who I am?

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 08 July 2014 11:23:12AM 14 points [-]

Someone who seems to have something interesting to say, but is unable to say it.

Comment author: CronoDAS 08 July 2014 09:01:42AM *  19 points [-]

Do you know who I am?

I can't help myself...

It was the final examination for an introductory English course at the local university. Like many such freshman courses, it was designed to weed out new students, having over 700 students in the class!

The examination was two hours long, and exam booklets were provided.

The professor was very strict and told the class that any exam that was not on his desk in exactly two hours would not be accepted and the student would fail. Half an hour into the exam, a student came rushing in and asked the professor for an exam booklet.

"You're not going to have time to finish this," the professor stated sarcastically as he handed the student a booklet.

"Yes I will," replied the student. She then took a seat and began writing. After two hours, the professor called for the exams, and the students filed up and handed them in, all except the late student, who continued writing.

Half an hour later, the last student came up to the professor who was sitting at his desk preparing for his next class. She attempted to put his exam on the stack of exam booklets already there.

"No you don't, I'm not going to accept that. It's late."

The student looked incredulous and angry.

"Do you know WHO I am?"

"No, as a matter of fact I don't," replied the professor with an air of sarcasm in his voice.

"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" the student asked again.

"No, and I don't care." replied the professor with an air of superiority.

"Good," replied the student, who quickly lifted the stack of completed exams, stuffed her exam in the middle, and walked out of the room.

Comment author: mwengler 08 July 2014 10:50:17AM 12 points [-]

I was gonna go into that in Chapter Two: Analyzing the Fuck out of an Owl. But I guess I won't, since my stupid fanfic idea seems to be attracting more drama and pettiness than could possibly be justified by the content.

I'd prefer you not give up so easily.

The drama was created by whoever arbitrarily eliminated the original post. You don't get to censor something secretly, and then allow a repost but then claim the drama around the censorship is really just drama created by the original post and then use that drama to justify the censorship.

At least not if you are still paying lip service to rationality.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 July 2014 07:20:04PM *  6 points [-]

Smoke dat moose! Git dem maggots! Smoke dat moose! Analyze dat owl!

[a note for them what don't get it, as our democracy demands: I am referencing someone else who wrote allegedly impenetrable and seemingly drug-fueled masses of insight in order to incentivize the creation of more things that might fit that model, and hoping to create a meta-norm that's more conducive to stylistic experimentation, for reasons which will probably not be obvious to anyone here so go try to understand continental philosophy or something. Except you don't even need to do that since the relevant ideas are already contained to some nonzero extent in the rationalist corpus! PS most of y'all lose a not-Quirrell not-point for not seeing that certain relevant issues have been discussed here before.]

Comment author: Tenoke 08 July 2014 09:34:03AM *  1 point [-]

But I guess I won't, since my stupid fanfic idea seems to be attracting more drama and pettiness than could possibly be justified by the content

Uhm, there isn't that much drama. Are you telling me you actually expected even less drama when you decided to post a short drunken-rambling-turned-fanfiction as a criticism of rationality/EY/HPMOR (if that is what it is, I am not sure), and then re-post it at the same place upon deletion?

I can only assume that you are pretending to be badly calibrated here.

Comment author: mwengler 08 July 2014 10:52:48AM *  2 points [-]

I can only assume that you are pretending to be badly calibrated here.

The drama of being summarily deleted should not be underestimated. Censorship, orthodoxy, these are major themes of prerationality that I honestly thought had been decided against rather definitively in modern rationality. But lesswrong has reopened the question many times, including when it summarily deleted the original of this post.