Downvotes are bad. They decrease trust and cause defection spirals. I am confident that the existence of downvotes makes the community less enjoyable, less welcoming and less productive on net.
That said, I'm not sure we should do anything to punish people using them in an extra-bad way.
Well the classic lie in medicine is when a sibling confides in the doctor that he doesn't want to donate a kidney to his brother or sister and he's just getting tested out of family pressure. I understand that in such a situation, the doctor will normally lie and say that they ran the tests and the sibling is not a compatible donor.
Actually, regardless of the reason, they just say that "no suitable donor is available." If pressed, they say they never release potential donors' medical information to recipients, for confidentiality and to protect donors from coercion.
There is often mentioned "LW" in the comments, but it seems to be an abbreviation for Letter Writer (the person who wrote the letter about the "rationalist"), not LessWrong. It took me some time to realize this.
Well, I expected that making "rationality" popular would bring some problems. If we succeed to make the word "rationality" high-status, suddenly all kinds of people will start to self-identify as "rationalists", without complying with our definition. (And the next step will be them trying to prove they are the real "rationalists", and all the others are fakes.) But I didn't expect this kind of thing, and this soon.
On the other hand, there doesn't have to be any connection with us. (EDIT: I was wrong here.) I mean... LessWrong does not have a copyright on "rationality".
there doesn't have to be any connection with us
Comments mention HPMoR, and letter writer says he read it aloud to her. The Modafinil use is also circumstantial evidence.
The letter writer mentions her (ex-)boyfriend's OK Cupid account screenname in the comments. I looked at it and didn't recognize him. I checked the same screenname on Reddit, which she said he also used (no account under that name) and here (an account exists by that name, but I don't think it's the same person - in particular the OKC account has a characteristic punctuation error that the local account doesn't make). If anyone from Missouri wants to see if he looks familiar there are breadcrumbs to follow.
It's possible that the choice of the word "rationalist" was a coincidence and this is not a peripheral community member mistreating his Muggle girlfriend, but just some random guy. I think it is worth finding out if we can.
It appears the letter writer is in or from Sydney, Australia. Does this ring a bell to any Sydney LWers?
So... What do we make of this?
Excerpt:
He is a rationalist who is deeply against living by social norms and just sees them as defaults, and is “non-default” about pretty much everything including work path, values etc., as well as lifestyle including cooking (lives off takeaway so as not to spend time grocery shopping and cooking), cleaning (does not have much of a regular cleaning habit – I broke glass in his kitchen a month ago and he said I shouldn’t have to clean it up and it’s still there), sleeping (he has no regular sleep schedule and sleeps when he wants to. The kind of work that he does is largely from home with long deadlines. He ships a prescription anti-narcolepsy from overseas which allows him to stay awake for long stretches on little sleep – although he plans on giving this up soon). He also takes party drugs and for a while, was taking quite high amounts of MDMA on a weekly basis, which pretty much wiped him out the day or two after. I have always been uncomfortable around drugs, although he did not really know the extent of my discomfort, and I can’t take them myself due to mental health. He dropped back to once a month after I expressed concerns about escalation and he acknowledges that he has some susceptibility to addiction, although he is not currently dependent.“
One serious issue we had was that he gave me an STI. He had rationalised that he had a very limited risk of having an STI so despite my repeated requests and despite being informed that a previous partner had been infected, did not get tested. I was furious at his intellectual arrogance and the danger he had put us both in. I lost a week of unpaid time off work and my mum had to nurse me through my allergic reaction to the treatment. I told him I wanted to break up, but we ended up supporting each other through the treatment and ultimately decided to get back together and work things out.
I'm a 30-year-old first-year medical student on a full tuition scholarship. I was a super-forecaster in the Good Judgment Project. I plan to donate a kidney in June. I'm a married polyamorous woman.
American medical wages are above the world average, but medicine is one of the highest paid professions throughout the developed world, including in Canada (and yes, moreso than pharma PhD researchers on average, especially if one pursues a more lucrative specialty). Probably this should not be the determining factor.
The outside view would be that probably American medical wages will not plummet in the next 6-8 years, although that's a fairly irrelevant question (a career extends for decades).
or goes to a medical school in the Caribbean (where getting into them is apparently easier than mainland medical schools, but to complete the training takes six years)
These schools tend not to do as well in placements for residencies.
These schools tend not to do as well in placements for residencies.
This is a significant understatement-- ~95% of US MD students match into residencies; for foreign grads it's around 50% and likely to fall further. Don't go to med school abroad if you want to practice in the US.
Incidentally, I've just started med school in the US on a full tuition scholarship and am willing to answer questions related to admissions.
Thanks!
Do you have any suggestions for suitable forums?
I would suggest forums.studentdoctor.net but honestly anyone who has found SDN is probably in pretty good shape as far as medical school admissions advice goes.
Q: Why are Unitarians lousy singers? A: They keep reading ahead in the hymnal to see if they agree with it.
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"being welcoming" is not actually good for a community if you want standards to be high.
I'd agree that it's a two-edged sword, but 1) Keeping standards high is not our only goal, and being welcoming is good for other purposes, and 2) I think there are better ways to be unwelcoming to low-quality people that cause less collateral unwelcomingness to good people.