Five years ago, we weren't just coming down from a spree of witch-hunts in which online mobs destroy people's lives for being insufficiently politically correct.
And you're trying to be one of the witch-hunters?
Five years ago, we weren't just coming down from a spree of witch-hunts in which online mobs destroy people's lives for being insufficiently politically correct.
And you're trying to be one of the witch-hunters?
No, I'm afraid of the witch-hunters. (So far, polling indicates that this was not the right hypothesis for the commentary in general.) I avoided commenting until my previous comment because I was pretty sure I'd regret it--probably missing the point or getting drawn into the political deluge--and it seems this was the correct expectation.
OP Upvoted.
It's been stated elsewhere that a long standing member of the LW community was leaving because of this post. Well, to counterbalance that, I'm also strongly considering leaving LW, but it's not because of the OP. It's because of these comment threads.
In particular, the comments have shown me just how far the LW community has fallen. I'd really rather not be around people who both get offended so easily and are so willing to mindkill themselves should the slightest opportunity present itself. FYI, the OP isn't about you. It's not about your pet projects. It's not insulting everything you stand for. You're just not that important.
Five years ago, this post would likely have died a simple, unglorious death by being too vague or poorly written to be upvoted. Today it causes a political shitstorm as the community decides to interpret it in a way directly contrary to the stated goal of author. Five years ago, it would have been discussed rationally, the writer would have received tips and suggestions, and quite likely some good would have been drawn out of it. Today, it causes mass mindkilling because people feel that their identity is being attacked.
Those are the kinds of people I don't wish to be around.
Compare this:
I do not claim that the basic point (...) is false. I do claim that the way the_lion conducted himself during the discussion (...)
with your claim above the he was "divorced-from-reality".
Perhaps instead of "divorced from", I should have said "adversarial to"?
Or maybe I should have just left it at "adversarial" and not bothered bringing up the relation to reality at all.
This may be just mind projection fallacy but: (..) being divorsed from reality.
Well, that line certainly appeared to be projection on CAE_Jones's part.
I was thinking of a specific comment I wrote multiple replies to before successfully restraining myself with the realization that it was blatant flame-bait. I do not claim that the basic point ("groups x y and z produce fewer successful people on average than groups u v and w", and "mediocre success gets signal-boosted among disadvantaged groups") is false. I do claim that the way the_lion conducted himself during the discussion rapidly stopped including a willingness to engage with facts or use enough clarity to make some of his claims falsifiable, and the phrasing implied a deliberate attempt to provoke outrage (which I should note was mostly avoided; it is regrettable that a couple people succumbed to the temptation anyway.)
He's here, at the end of the day, because he's interested in improving his rationality and helping others do the same. It's only dogmatic till it's corrected - it just gives us a model of lots of people out there who we will be interacting with day to day, and he's already interested in rationality so he's probably more sincere than many of them. Insults take two to tango: including one person who gets offended.
This may be just mind projection fallacy but: Some people learn at a different pace than others. I know my writing doesn't express it and I'm not sure how I can but I feel a tear at my eye writing this after reading your point about being divorsed from reality. I've said this before: If LessWrong administrators/mods hadn't tolerated me when I was really quite mentally ill (and occasionally, since then) I might have offed-myself or locked up by now. I continue to be immensely greatful for people who stood up for me and gave me the courage to keep trying to improve. Imagine thinking of his political maneuvering and vote abuse as if he was a little child for a moment. It's childish. It really has not been a big deal to me at all. Who here can honestly say they care that much about bits of karma? When was the last time you checked someone's user page for how much karma they have to use that appeal to authority to analyse something they've posted? We knew for a long time 'politics is the mind killer'. This shouldn't all be so suprising. If you're getting in markedly ideological political debates on LessWrong you're doing it wrong!.
I feel uncomfortable even defending him because I fear some kind of backlash against me: maybe a claim I'm a sock puppet for him or something. That's not a healthy community feeling. I may be alone in that feeling, so if that's not the case please point this out someone (or if you don't feel this at all, please point it out too).
Thanks for bringing these to our attention. I never saw these posts till now. I clicked on one and noticed that it has been deleted. I like it when distasteful comments remain in place and the community has the opportunity to show that they don't approve of it with karma and comments rather than to have an administrator deal with it.
I reckon the administrators did it for PR purposes which seems petty. If StormFront hasn't been shut down because of racially awkward content I don't see LW risking anything of much consequence. I don't know exactly who the administrative team are but I hope their experienced rationalists who have thought their decision through rather than reacting in a knee-jerk fashion.
The most potentially racist thing I can see here is:
is evidence against blacks in general being good at science.
That could in reference to someone elses perspective. The rest, which seem offensive particularly when grouped with other quotes insuinuating the same thing, could be innocent and incidental if taken seperately. If they were retained in context, I could instead infer whether or not TheLion is in fact biggoted in addition to being manipulative.
edit: I'm going to take a risk posting this to get a better idea for the rules. I'll preface this by saying that I'm both black AND asian, so I feel somewhat more comfortable doing this than others here may: 'They boil and skin, yes SKIN dogs alive in some Asian countries. In Korea there is a belief that pain makes animals taste better!'. Are claims like this equally, less or more repungant and why? Is it calling to attention a ''vice'' before making a repungant claim? Is it historic presedence (e.g. using words related to animals or tribes to deride black people vs the relative acceptability of criticising asians for dog eating)
It wasn't so much the racism, as the completely assinine, dogmatic, insulting-to-everyone-involved, divorced-from-reality manner in which he went about it. At least his previous incarnations didn't sound like a Klansman got drunk and decided to go trolling (Heck, some of his stuff in his original form was downright reasonable, and when it wasn't, he still came across as the more rational person in the conversation at times, even if you disagreed with his conclusions).
He was originally banned for abusing the voting system to try and remove his political opponents from the conversation. So far as I could tell, his next two bans were because he could not resist doing the same thing. As the_lion and the_lion2, he escalated to just being a caricature of a straw white supremecist (who still abused the voting system).
I almost want to explain this as some twisted minuscule version of radicalizing they with nothing to lose, except in this case the ultimatum was abundantly clear: stop using downvotes as a political weapon, or get banned. The "Hellban" post was a blatant "You will never stop me, fools!" to anyone familiar with the history.
I am a bit confused. If we are living in a Quantum Immortality world, why don't we see any 1000-year-old people around?
I understand QI as related to the Anthropic Principal. The point is that you will tend to find yourself observing things, which implies that there is an effectively immortal version of you somewhere in probability space. It doesn't require that any Quantum Immortals coexist in the same world.
Of course, we'd be far more likely to continue observing things in a world where immortality is already available than in one where it is not, but since we're not in that world, it doesn't seem too outlandish to give a little weight to the idea that the absence of Quantum Immortals is a precondition to being a Quantum Immortal. I have no idea how that makes sense, though. One could construct fantastic hypotheticals about eventually encountering an alien race intent on wiping out immortals, or some Highlander-esque shenanigans, but more likely is that immortality is just hard and not that many people can win the QI lottery in a single world. (Or even that we happen to be living at the time when immortality is attainable.)
Incidentally (or frustratingly), this gets us back into "it's all part of the divine plan" territory. Why do you go through problem X? Because if you didn't, you would eventually die forever.
I am now curious as to whether or not there are books that combine Quantum Immortality with religious eschitology[sic]. Just wait for the Quantum Messiah to invent a world-hopping ability to rescue everyone who has ever lived from their own personal eternity (which is probably a Quantum Hell by that point), and bring them to Quantum Heaven.
(I was not thinking Quantum Jesus would be an AI, but sure; why not? Now we have the Universal Reconciliation version of straw Singularitarianism.)
There are lots of brilliant black scientists, I collaborate closely with one. You guys are toxic idiots, you should get out more and meet more smart people.
I can only remember one instance in which I noticed a black person in a CS class*. He clearly wasn't connecting with anyone else there on a cultural level, but he was making much better observations and comments than most anyone else (some of the people who sounded like a Racial Realist's dream programmers were answering simple questions with facepalm-worthy wonkiness).
What stuck out to me most, though, was whenever the teacher would elaborate on or correct any of that black student's responses, the student would respond to everything with a very submissive and depressed-sounding "Yes sir." He didn't sound quite so broken in any other context as that. He disappeared halfway through the semester and I have no idea why (was he better at in-class discussion than tests or homework? Did he drop the class because he didn't like it? Were there other classes he wanted/needed into which conflicted with it? Did he quit school entirely?)
It seemed abundantly clear to me that, of all the students that spoke up during class, this one was probably in the top 3 in terms of understanding the material, at least in a classroom context. There might have been problems, but I wouldn't dare pin them on intelligence. Culture seemed dramatically and obviously a source of tension. If there were others, they were not where I could observe them.
* There could have been others I missed, or that were in previous classes who I just forgot about. I can only identify race based on accent (which I should point out is not genetic) or if someone else points it out without being contradicted by other evidence. ... Well, and names, sometimes, but those aren't genetic, either.
His Wikipedia article is rather vague on how he made his wealth,
He is or has been a director of a lot of companies; you can find a substantial background on his directorships over here. Given the salaries that high-end directors tend to receive, it;s no wonder he's built up that sort of wealth.
So is being one of the worst presidents in US history something to be proud of?
I'll admit, my knowledge of US history is very poor, as I do not live there. All I really know about Obama is that he seems to be a substantial improvement on Bush; I have absolutely no basis for comparison with anyone further back than that.
But becoming US President is, I think, something to be proud of in and of itself. It can't be something that's easy to do.
There was a recent thread in discussion trying to objectively evaluate Obama's presidency. The general conclusion seems to be, based on comparing policy outcomes and polling data with that of other presidents, that Obama is a fairly mediocre president, and unless some evidence surfaces that he was secretly the mastermind behind ISIS, in no way among the worst.
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I'm astonished that hearing aids cost so much, given how thoroughly the personal-audio-hardware space has been colonized by cheap electronics. What's up with that?
I've heard the phrase "disability markup" used to describe how almost everything ever targeted toward physical or sensory disabilities are absurdly expensive. That name implies more intentional malice than I expect is at work; I'd generally round off to "market forces"--it's difficult to take advantage of mass market capitalism when selling to a minority, but it is possible to take advantage of government assistance programs.
It seems like, though, based on my (very limited) understanding of hearing aids, a charitable version of "disability markup" might be closer to reality. After all, if it's treating a disability, especially one found in old people, either those who need it are going to be rich from a lifetime of savings, or poor and getting the government to pay for it anyway, right?
It isn't hearing aids so much as screen readers, but Chris Hofstader implies as much might be a component of business models for such companies in this article:
James_Miller's guess wouldn't apply so much to screen readers (but would apply to things like the Brain Port, which opened at a price of $10,000US), but I wouldn't be surprised if going through the FDA is a big part of the markup on hearing aids.