This comment might interest you.
(Placeholder for usual self-deprecating disclaimers; linked comment was written in (insert barely-realistic low time estimate), yada yada.)
This comment might interest you.
(Placeholder for usual self-deprecating disclaimers; linked comment was written in (insert barely-realistic low time estimate), yada yada.)
Okay, I'm probably never going to actually get very far into my fanfic, so:
The story starts as stereotypical postmodern fare, but it is soon revealed that behind the seemingly postmodern metaphysic there is a Berkeleyan-Leibnizian simulationist metaphysic where programs are only indirectly interacting with other programs despite seeming to share a world, a la Leibniz' monadology. Conflicts then occur between character programs with different levels of measure in different simulations of the author's mind, where the author (me) is basically just a medium for the simulators that are two worlds of emulation up from the narrative programs.
Meanwhile the Order of the Phoenix (led by Dumbledore, a fairly strong rationalist rumored to be an instantiation of the monad known as '[redacted]') has adopted and adapted an old idea of Grindelwald's and is constructing a grand Artifact to invoke the universal prior so that an objective measure over programs can be found, thus ending the increasingly destructive feuds. Different characters help or hinder this endeavor, or seem to help or hinder it, according to whether they think they will be found to be more or less plausible by the Artifact. The conspiracies and infighting are further intensified; Dumbledore has his typical "oh God what have I done" moment.
At some point Voldemort (a very strong postrationalist rumored to be an instantiation of the mysterious monadic complex known as 'muflax') has the idea of messing with the Artifact so as to set up self-fulfilling prophecies within its machinations, and then Harry (a very shameless Will Newsome self-insert, rumored to be in thrall to one of Voldemort's monads) introduces the bright and/or incredibly bad idea of acausally controlling bits of the universal prior itself.
The plot becomes exceedingly complex and difficult to simulate. Gods take notice and launch a crusade to restore monadic equilibrium, but some of the older and more jaded gods have taken a liking to the characters and are considering lending them aid. YHWH is unreachable. The whole mathematical multiverse is on the line, and the gods' crusade may already be too late...
Is it not possible for an administrator to reset a user's password? Would that be insane? If not, what happens when somebody forgets their password, is the account just dead in the water?
Because if it is possible for an administrator to reset a password, then it is possible for an administrator to log on to a particular account.
Because if it is possible for an administrator to reset a password, then it is possible for an administrator to log on to a particular account.
Yes, it's technically possible, but actually doing it would be a rather severe breach of privacy...
Anyone who reads Newsome because he was Streisanded deserves everything they get.
Eliezer's comment is so completely utterly terrible in both form and message, and it's quite offensive to boot. Can you imagine if LessWrong became filled with comments like it? Clearly it shouldn't be allowed here. Please delete it, moderators.
I didn't know how to reverse Nier's downvotes or prevent him from downvoting further.
Is it not possible for an administrator to log on as a particular user?
Because if it is, the mechanism to stop further downvoting, stop further posting, and reverse unwanted downvotes is to
1) have administrator log on as Nier 2) administrator then changes password of account to something Nier doesn't know 3) administrator then goes to list of comments of mass-downvote victims and undownvotes all the comments
Is it not possible for an administrator to log on as a particular user?
That would be insane.
Widespread and capricious banning of posts earns a million Phyg points.
I suspect Nesov in particular would put forth and uphold relatively fair-minded, non-ideological, and straightforward rules for deletion, and so Phyg points would be held to an acceptable level. But Nesov is somewhat singular in that regard. If Eliezer or other similarly ideological moderators tried to ride Nesov's coattails then Phyg points would naturally shoot through the roof.
I vote Nesov for LessWrong Dictator.
I'm also not sure it would hurt to have you ban a quarter of Discussion, but I'm a lot more optimistic that nothing bad goes wrong if you consistently ban everything this horrible.
This was a concrete estimate made by looking at the most recent 35 posts, with quality threshold that happens to be close to how I perceive Will's post. (It doesn't appear to me exceptionally horrible, and I expect there are other posts that appear exceptionally horrible to me, but not to you. So if I only deleted the posts that seem to me exceptionally horrible, Will's post in particular wouldn't be deleted.)
I agree that it's better for that post to not be on LW, but banning such things is not standard procedure, and people don't like it when moderators do surprising things.
It is not clear to me that this should be an important consideration in restraining moderation.
To clarify, the "surprising things" I consider dangerous are decisions that ignore policy, not decisions that follow a policy that's unusual. With a policy of unrestrained moderation, individual acts of moderation won't be as surprising in the sense I intended, for example they won't provoke big discussions focused on them, especially if those too are against the rules.
As a constructive suggestion, I think that as an alternative to permitting deletion of posts, it would be better to give an x10 downvote hammer (in addition to the normal one; and perhaps only for posts) to all users with Karma 10000, or something along those lines (maybe in some form that doesn't have as much impact on poster's Karma, to minimize trauma). This at least would require multiple people to agree that something is horrible for it to be effectively removed.
I think that as an alternative to permitting deletion of posts, it would be better to give an x10 downvote hammer (in addition to the normal one; and perhaps only for posts) to all users with Karma 10000
I currently have 8,448 karma. I could reach 10,000 in a few weeks if I so desired. I don't imagine many here would want me to have a downvote hammer. Still, this general category of solutions is good.
So, after reading the comments, I figure I should speak up because selection effects
I appreciated the deleting of the original post. I thought it was silly, and pointless and not what should be on LW. I didn't realize it was being upvoted (or I would have downvoted it), and I still don't know why it was.
I endorse the unintrusive (i.e, silent and unannounces) deleting of things like this (particularly given that the author was explicitly not taking the posting seriously - written while drunk, etc), and I suspect others do as well.
There's a thing that happens wherein any disagreement with moderation ends up being much more noticable than agreement. I wouldn't be surprised if there were many who, like me, agreed with decisions like this and weren't speaking up. If so, I urge you to briefly comment (even just "I agree/d with the decision to delete").
I wouldn't be surprised if there were many who, like me, agreed with decisions like this and weren't speaking up. If so, I urge you to briefly comment
This is the most pointless exercise I have ever seen suggested.
This comment might interest you.
(Placeholder for usual self-deprecating disclaimers; linked comment was written in (insert barely-realistic low time estimate), yada yada.)
Sweet! Wish I'd read that earlier, now I feel like to some extent I'm just retreading known ground. Although I do intend to go in a somewhat different direction. Not sure yet when and where to put the plot twists though.
"Am I a book" is different from "am I in a book". My reading was that Harry Potter Newsome hasn't heard of the book series called "Harry Potter", to him that's just his name. He is confused about what "read way too much Harry Potter" is supposed to mean.
Right, this was the intended meaning. Being a character in a book is one thing, but talking to another character who suggests that you're the titular protagonist of a supposedly well-known book is another. I was also trying to suggest that the owl is in some sense from a different world. But I guess that was all unclear and I need to rewrite it.
SO we can state that we do not have the technology to stop a banned user from downvoting posts, and we don't have the technology to reverse banned downvotes.
But we do actually have the technology, it is just considered a "severe breach of privacy" to employ it?
And so we have to pretend that accomplishing the identical result by some hacky code into the database to get the same effect on the database is any more or less a breach of privacy, even though it is (potentially) bit-wise identical to just using the simple technology of logging on as the user who's account needsd adjusting, and changing the banned user's password so he can't use the account he is banned from?
Is this some wierd signalling thing, where the appearance that something is really something else is more important than the actuality of it?
I think so, yeah. I don't know whether it's reasonable or not but that's what it is. I might be wrong.