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Separate question which we should probably have a community policy on: should the existence of these alternative comment threads be mentioned at SSC? On the one hand, assuming we do succeed in getting high-quality discussion going on here, it would be good for people to be able to read it. On the other hand, if the average SSC commenter starts reading the LW-based threads then they may well start commenting here and thus drag the level of comments here down to the level of SSC. (Third alternative for consideration: mention the existence of these threads at SSC, but specifically ask people not to come over here to comment?)
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Slate Star Codex: alternative comment threads on LessWrong?
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Please recommend some audiobooks
I listened to the audiobook of Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Religion and Politics" over the summer and would recommend it. (That said, I got it while it was on offer and it appears to be rather more expensive now).
I don't know if you are also interested in podcasts, but in case you are I would recommend The Sequences (via Castify) in general, and possibly other things depending upon your personal interests.
In response to
Open thread, September 22-28, 2014
Is there a listing of Yvain/slatestarcodex's fiction? I just finished reading The Study of Anglophysics, and I want more.
I'm not aware of any complete compilations of his fiction in one place; that said, you can presumably find most of it by going through the "fiction" tag on SSC, the fiction section of his website and the fiction tag on his old LiveJournal.
I find it difficult to believe that houseboats are inherently less expensive. It seems more likely that there's some reason house boats cannot be made as large and expensive as regular houses, so the average houseboat is much cheaper than the average house, even if it's more expensive than a house of the same quality.
The internet gets much more difficult if you don't live in cities. While it mitigates the costs of people not living near each other, it does not remove them. There are still lots of people putting large amounts of time into physically commuting.
Why not use mobile homes? They can't be stacked in three dimensions like apartments, but at least you can put them in two-dimensional grids.
Motor homes might well make more sense for this. The reason I came to this view is that I like canals and so houseboating seemed like a pleasant idea; at around the same time, I read this NY Times piece suggesting that home ownership is not necessarily a good thing. Houseboating seemed like a way of dealing with that; motorhomes simply didn't occur to me as a (probably better) alternative.
A houseboat is rather less expensive, which frees up capital for other purposes.
Aren't RVs even cheaper?
Indeed. I would in principle be willing to apply a similar argument to RVs, but (since living in an RV holds no aesthetic appeal for me, whereas houseboating does) I am rather less aware of what the logistics would be like.
Is there even enough coast for that?
If people didn't live in cities, they'd have to commute more. There would be a large increase in transportation costs.
Where I live there is an abundance of canals. "Most people" is perhaps an exaggeration, but the main points in defence of increased houseboating would be:
(1) a house is a large, expensive, immobile and illiquid asset. A houseboat is rather less expensive, which frees up capital for other purposes.
(2) the internet makes it less necessary for most people to live in cities.
(3) there would be less costs associated with moving between different areas.
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What are your contrarian views?
[Please read the OP before voting. Special voting rules apply.]
It would be of significant advantage to the world if most people started living on houseboats.
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What are your contrarian views?
[Please read the OP before voting. Special voting rules apply.]
There probably exists - or has existed at some time in the past - at least one entity best described as a deity.
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The problem with Robertson's thought experiment, I feel, isn't that it's extreme or visceral, but rather that it is strawmanning an overwhelming majority of atheists. (Scott actually coined a term for this sort of thing: weak man.)
Most atheists I know don't in fact believe that God is the only possible source of morality; in fact, many of them hold that even if God existed, they would still evaluate each of His commandments on their own merits before deciding to obey. The mere fact that you don't believe in God doesn't make you a moral nihilist all of a sudden. Robertson's thought experiment relies upon the implicit assumption that atheism implies moral nihilism, making it okay to rape and murder, which is frankly a very old argument that has been refuted a great many times, both on and off the Internet.
Can we differentiate between "Atheists ought logically to be moral nihilists" and "If you are an atheist, you are necessarily a moral nihilist" ? I take you to mean the second of these, which is indeed plainly false.
The first of these statements is not obviously false. It is (epistemically) possible that there are no good non-religious grounds for moral realism (which is not to say that there are good religious grounds for it either). That said, I do wonder if Robertson actually believes it. If he ceased to believe in God, would he really start behaving "immorally" whenever it turned out to be in his self-interest?