Comment author: [deleted] 04 May 2016 06:47:44PM *  4 points [-]

Advice (grain of salt here) from a journalistic perspective:

  1. Less pictures. They distract from your point, adding little-to-nothing (for me, personally, nothing). If you want to keep some "personality," one pic akin to the hedgehog suffices.
  2. Less links. Links should show data, and be relevant to not just the specific point but the overall message. I.e. your link to the goat race needlessly takes your reader away from the page. Time is the fundamental currency of life, and they might not invest as much if you constantly redirect them. Also, for purposeful links, use Wiki-esque formatting: number, then actual link in footnote.
  3. Less words. We see your earnestness and tone throughout the post--your writing style very clearly reflects you, which is great! Now the challenge: take out the fluff while still keeping yourself in there.

Essentially: less, less, less. "If I had more time, I would write less."

All that said, I am excited to see where this project goes. I will donate when I have the funds. Thanks for sharing. :)

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 21 May 2016 04:58:04AM -1 points [-]

All three things are quantised and should take 'fewer': Fewer pictures, fewer links, fewer words. Less is for things that aren't countable; less liquid, less wrong.

Comment author: DataPacRat 16 May 2016 05:10:57AM *  13 points [-]

Wrote Something Story-like

Living in Weirdtopia: Week One

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 17 May 2016 06:07:32AM 3 points [-]

This is awesome. Please write Week Two.

Comment author: Alia1d 29 March 2016 09:07:57PM 16 points [-]

I think there is another reason SJWs (and others) may dislike “rationality” that is getting buried here:

  1. The author is not a good reasoner, and while arguing over these experiences, often says stupid things, and gets told ze is irrational

There is a difference between an argument not being phrased in a reasonable way and the argument itself being stupid. When my husband and I were first married I would win must of the arguments NOT because I was necessarily right (as later came to realize) but because I was a better rhetorician. I could lay out my case in an orderly fashion. I could work commonly agreed statements into my arguments. I could anticipate counter arguments and set-up to counter them. I could model possible external circumstances and present those that supported my view. This lead to a situation where my husband constantly felt steam rolled. He might not be able to articulate logical fallacies but he could feel the effects of his preferences constantly being overruled by mine. I needed to learn to back off and respect his views even if they weren’t phrased as elegantly as mine. Even though I could use a rationality is winning approach to maneuver the situation so that “we spend all the entertainment money on sci-fi books and none on cable” looked like the “rational” decision, I eventually came to realize that, to serve my overarching goal of a flourishing marriage, our hedonic preferences needed to be weighted equally and split the money between our preferences “I really, really want X,” is never stupid or irrational in and of itself. It’s just a preference. To the extent that some SJWs seem to want to say “I really, really want X,” and leave their argument at that, then rationality is irrelevant to them.

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 30 March 2016 04:44:53AM 12 points [-]

To the extent that some SJWs seem to want to say “I really, really want X,” and leave their argument at that, then rationality is irrelevant to them.

Rationality is also irrelevant to my daughter, and for the same reason, as for example in this exchange:

Daughter: I want TV. Me: No more TV now. Daughter: But I want it!

This is rather a common 'argument' of hers; from the outside it looks like she models me as not having understood her preference, and tries to clarify the preference. To be sure, she has the excuse of being four.

Comment author: Brillyant 16 March 2016 01:36:50PM 1 point [-]

Can you explain how a simulated universe, for instance, is more useful than deism? Doesn't it also simply move the question of ultimate origins back a step?

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 19 March 2016 09:21:53PM 0 points [-]

Right, which is why I don't postulate a simulated universe as the explanation for existence.

Comment author: Brillyant 16 March 2016 12:48:28AM 1 point [-]

Yeah. Okay. Is there any consensus about what caused the big bang? Like, how it happened?

It seems to me abiogenesis is super tricky but conceivable. The "beginning" of everything is a bit more conceptually problematic.

Positing a hyper-powerful creative entity seems not that epistemologically reckless when the more "scientific" alternative is "something happened".

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 16 March 2016 05:40:25AM 2 points [-]

Positing a hyper-powerful creative entity seems not that epistemologically reckless

How about epistemicologically useless? What caused your hyper-powerful creative entity? You haven't accomplished anything, you've just added another black box to your collection.

Comment author: WalterL 14 January 2016 08:04:48AM 4 points [-]

“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort.” ― Isaac Asimov, The Gods Themselves, page 31

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 16 January 2016 08:07:18AM 2 points [-]

Cynical, but is it actually true? It seems to me that a lot of people are actually quite strongly committed to the cause of the environment, or defense against terrorists. They do not necessarily take effective action for those causes, but they would certainly vote for someone who signalled similar commitment.

Comment author: Lumifer 16 November 2015 04:10:25PM *  -1 points [-]

If from Paleolithic to the height of Roman Empire, then trends would be exactly opposite, a march from freedom to slavery.

Um... You believe that between Paleolithic and the height of Roman Empire the progress went in reverse?

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 17 November 2015 06:23:18AM 0 points [-]

How many slaves were there in the Paleolithic?

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 17 November 2015 06:17:40AM 5 points [-]

Unfortunately I cannot communicate why I think Christianity is true; it's a gestalt thing - it just makes sense, it can't be any other way in the light of all the evidence.

-- Any number of quite successful CEOs, neurosurgeons, writers.

Comment author: username2 10 November 2015 12:22:00AM 1 point [-]

What's the best way to make my body more flexible?

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 14 November 2015 09:10:54PM -1 points [-]

Surgery to replace the bones with rubber things.

Oh wait, you had some constraints on the problem?

Comment author: RolfAndreassen 09 October 2015 04:57:25AM 2 points [-]

There are two options: Either we have terminal goals that include "having a good time" and "living enjoyable lives", so that a pleasant life is good in itself. Or else we have terminal goals that are finitely achievable, and when we've achieved them we should shut down humanity as useless. In the latter case, we can throw out anything that doesn't advance us towards those finite goals; not in the former.

I think one may hold the first belief without advocating wireheading, in that our terminal goal may be "enjoy a wide variety of pleasant things that exist outside your skull".

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