= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
byrnema comments on [LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (866)
I don't know if the things that bother this feminist would also bother me, but I've been reading Less Wrong for several years and I'll say that with some delicate issues, Less Wrong is like a bull in a China shop. In some investigations, it's like trying to determine if there is life on a planet by bombing it. I just avoid these topics entirely.
Sometimes I like to drop in and just marvel at the trainwreckiness. It gets too tangled for me to even think about trying to point out the multiple failures and lacks of context and utter-missings-of-the-point.
EDIT: Including some moderate such tangles in several places below in this very thread...
A friend described LW as "like students arguing seriously about how often you really need to shower".
That's not a bad discussion to have, though! What if showering more than two or three times a week causes your back to break out? What if rinsing every other day is good, but using shampoo/soap/etc that often causes unwanted side effects? What if the optimal frequency of showers for keeping body-odor minimized is every third day, and showering every day or every other day actually makes BO worse? We need data!
(I'm not being sarcastic. However, the optimal showering strategy is likely to vary from person to person, and be influenced by diet, physical activity, genetics, environment, etc.)
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/04/news-you-can-use.html
If those students live in a society that mostly does not even wash their hands, I'd consider that an improvement.
(Yeah, I'm deliberately misrepresenting your analogy.)
Upvote for last line!
In other words, "like people I regard as low-status arguing seriously about whether assumptions unquestioned by high-status people like me are actually true".
Probably right.
Once a day is the bare minimum for basic decency. Unless you happen to share your water and heating bills with me, in which case more than a couple per week would be the epitome of frivolity. ;-)
How does that simile make sense? You can destroy the life by bombing it, I don't see what you supposedly destroy by posting on a blog.
I chose this simile because I did want to capture how destructive and upsetting I find these discussions. (Though I then preferred the humor of the word, 'trainwreckiness'). Another analogy I had in mind was that of astronauts drinking tea (the astronauts capture the overly cerebral cluelessness better, and for sure imagine a 'high tea' with little cups and little knives for spreading jam that keep getting fumbled) but I wanted to also have it immediately understood that the porcelain cups were imploding like eggshells in their oversized white mittens. The bull was a better symbol for this.