Comment author: SolveIt 16 June 2016 10:33:03AM 4 points [-]

While I am generally for lowering the bar to posting, I would consider this post lacking both content and context even if it were a comment.

Downvoted.

Comment author: SolveIt 26 March 2016 05:20:58AM 1 point [-]

I'm sure the engineers knew exactly what would happen. It doesn't tell us much about the control problem that we didn't already know.

OTOH, if this wasn't an intentional PR stunt, that means management didn't think this would happen even though the engineers presumably knew. That definitely has unsettling implications.

Comment author: OrphanWilde 18 February 2016 01:44:15PM 5 points [-]

You're downvoting an explanation of a downvote because you don't like the reasons given? So am I to interpret this to mean that next time I shouldn't give an explanation, and should just downvote the post, rather than giving anybody an opportunity to voice disagreement and debate the relative merits of a given post?

Nice community norms, there. Shame if something were to... happen to them.

Comment author: SolveIt 18 February 2016 04:45:47PM 0 points [-]

I upvoted your first post despite disagreeing with it for this very reason. That being said, expecting people to not downvote posts they disagree with based on meta reasons isn't going to work. This is just another reason we should rework the karma system.

Comment author: SolveIt 12 February 2016 05:36:12PM 12 points [-]

The actual effectiveness of MIRI

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 24 November 2015 04:48:59AM 12 points [-]

MealSquares (the company I'm starting with fellow LW user RomeoStevens) is searching for nutrition experts to join our advisory team. The ideal person has a combination of formally recognized nutrition expertise & also at least a casual interest in things like study methodology and effect sizes (this unfortunately seems to be a rare combination). Advising us will be an opportunity to improve the diets of many people, it should not be much work, you'll get a small stake in our company, and you'll help us earn money for effective giving. Please get in touch with us (ideally using this page) if you or someone you know might be interested!

Comment author: SolveIt 25 November 2015 03:32:20PM 4 points [-]

Do you have any plans for international shipping? (Say, the UK)

Comment author: SolveIt 26 October 2015 10:10:03AM 4 points [-]

What happened in 1970 that poverty started sharply declining?

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 06 October 2015 09:59:27PM 1 point [-]

You can't know which. You can only infer from the overall effect I'd guess.

Comment author: SolveIt 07 October 2015 08:35:35AM *  1 point [-]

I agree. I was flippantly making a point on the lines of this quote

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.

-John Wanamaker-

Comment author: Lumifer 05 October 2015 06:12:03PM 7 points [-]
Comment author: SolveIt 06 October 2015 08:30:20PM 1 point [-]

Does he know which portion is the waste of intelligence?

Comment author: advancedatheist 05 October 2015 03:23:01PM *  -11 points [-]

Apparently incel played a role in Chris Harper-Mercer's rampage killing last week. And he reportedly derived inspiration from Elliot Rodger's example last year. I suspect we'll see more of these guys because of all the media attention the previous ones receive, and the next incel mass murderer will probably leave documentation behind about his admiration for Mercer.

Mixed-race parenting and absent or disengaged fathers seem to act as secondary causes in both Rodger's and Mercer's alienation and generally screwed up lives, but no one wants to talk about those factors for some reason. Setting aside the miscegenation and the disrupted family relationships, that leaves the growing incel phenomenon, the sexual eviction of more and more of the male population, as the elephant in the room that people really don't want to talk about, because it raises inconvenient questions about feminism, women's sexual freedom and hypergamy.

No, point to shiny distractions like guns, "mental illness," "misogyny," etc., instead of naming the main issue here.

I saw a blogger who linked to discussions on reddit and dailykos where apparently women demand that the state round up incels and put them in "camps" or otherwise do away with them. I found that striking, because I've noticed that women freak out when I say that we need to restore a healthy patriarchy where women can't get sexual experience until marriage.

Now, at first blush the usual Manospherean reason suggests itself: This proposal unsettles women because they find most men sexually repulsive, even though in monogamous societies where most women have to marry ordinary men and have sexual relationships with their allegedly yucky husbands, they find the experience tolerable and they make a go of it. Some of these women might even wind up respecting their husbands after seeming these men's character in action.

But another reason for this reaction suggests itself to me: Guilt. Women know on some level that they have done wrong by embracing feminism, sexual freedom and hypergamy, and they don't want to face accountability for their transgressions. The ones who advocate online the murder of incels apparently do so for the same reason criminals try to murder their victims and the witnesses to their crimes: They don't want these men around to testify against them.

Comment author: SolveIt 06 October 2015 02:08:08PM 15 points [-]

You need to get off the internet and start interacting with normal people who don't advocate state-sanctioned massacres of any kind. You can find extreme enough opinions of any colour on the internet if you try hard enough. That doesn't mean any significant number of people hold them, it means there are billions of people online and someone went out of their way to find the most rhetorically useful targets.

Comment author: SolveIt 19 September 2015 05:12:45PM 2 points [-]

Well, the obvious objection is that clearly not everybody's going to do what you do, so your hypothetical scenario is often going to be irrelevant. Furthermore, I'd think that

"If everyone here always smoked, they'd install a powerful ventilation system, so I'd be okay" is exactly what you should think. Of course, you should factor in the cost of the ventilation system, but that those costs exist isn't any reason to assume that the marginal change in utility you effect by your actions is going to stay constant when multiplied by seven billion.

I've just noticed that I'm confused, and that's because your comments on the second error seem to be saying that you should shut up and sum utilities, which kind of renders your comments on the first (and my reply) obsolete. Oh well.

I'll just point out that if you could measure utilities well enough to actually shut up and multiply, you wouldn't need this kind of heuristic.

Also, this heuristic fails miserably in the face of any kind of conflict. Of course unilateral disarmament works if everybody does it at the same time. While I understand that your heuristic isn't supposed to be used in such cases, you'll find actual situations without underlying conflicts are rather difficult to find.

Finally, your grammar is mostly fine and certainly no significant obstacle to communication.

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