Rationality Quotes Thread August 2015

Sabiola

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself.
Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.

It is clearly the same person. And yes, he's actively trying to drive away people for disagreeing with his politics (and/or correctly predicting the presence of neo-reactionaries in a conversation, based on past experience). He also seems to use multiple sockpuppets for upvotes, although I suppose lots of people could just be functionally illiterate.

Giving him a "second" chance seems like a clear failure at reflective decision theory. The punishment should discourage the crime, not just stop the crime. So far it's done neither.

No doubt Nier believes the whole "Cathedral" has defected against him - but unless you think he started out responding to some credible abuse on LW, I really don't care. His beliefs are not Bayesian evidence.

Why is it clearly the same person?

2Anders_H11y

If argument screens of authority (http://lesswrong.com/lw/lx/argument_screens_off_authority/), then argument clearly also screens off lack of authority. Moreover, when someone has a repeated history of making arguments that stand on their own, it would be foolish to make the claim that that person's opinions carry a likelihood ratio of 1. Repeated history of sound arguments is pretty much the definition of authority. I am the one who called for banning VoiceOfRa, and I stand by that judgement. It is more important to me that we don't give veto power over who joins this community to a lone neoreactionary. However, it would be disingenious to claim that it wouldn't be a difficult trade-off. The community would clearly lose something valuable.

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Rationality Quotes Thread August 2015

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Rationality Quotes Thread August 2015

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