Comment author: SilasBarta 17 July 2010 08:40:50PM -6 points [-]

Did you find it obnoxious when Nancy outright ignored the part of the comment where I explained why having wide feet would lead to others being prejudiced against you? Or just the fact of me mentioning this ignoranc ... er, "act of ignoring".

This is what always gets me: no one cares when someone doesn't read a comment and yet still replies to it -- well, to a version of it. Yet when someone points out the rudeness of doing so -- well, then that person's just a terrorist!

What gives? If you're going to criticize just one of those two, which one has priority?

Comment author: cupholder 17 July 2010 09:41:12PM 6 points [-]

Did you find it obnoxious when Nancy outright ignored the part of the comment where I explained why having wide feet would lead to others being prejudiced against you? Or just the fact of me mentioning this ignoranc ... er, "act of ignoring".

Neither. I found the manner in which you mentioned it obnoxious, not the mention qua mention.

This is what always gets me: no one cares when someone doesn't read a comment and yet still replies to it -- well, to a version of it. Yet when someone points out the rudeness of doing so -- well, then that person's just a terrorist!

You are mistaken. I'm not objecting to your pointing out that NL didn't acknowledge your comment as you wanted her to. I'm objecting to the claim that she replied with a 'pretense of ignorance.'

What gives? If you're going to criticize just one of those two, which one has priority?

The one that employs immoderate hyperbole and launches an ill-grounded accusation of 'pretense' at someone else.

Comment author: SilasBarta 17 July 2010 06:33:11PM -6 points [-]

Sorry, guess I hit a little too close to home there... still, any non-obvious downvote rationale (for the entire thread) would be appreciated, via PM if necessary.

Comment author: cupholder 17 July 2010 08:21:05PM *  5 points [-]

Not one of the downvoters, but the tone of these paragraphs was so overcooked I did consider it for a couple seconds:

And frankly, when the asymmetic bra issue came up, I got pretty scared. Some of the commenters -- and I'm not going to single anyone out -- sound like really angry people in general and I fear that being around them would make their rage spill on to me.

They have this entitlement mentality, where everyone has to make clothes that they like. I think it's what motivates a lot of the crime against retailers.

I mean, how dare they make clothes for other people, right?

Those words and your presumptuous 'are you going to take back your pretense of ignorance about shoe prejudice?' question came across to me as quite obnoxious.

Comment author: Alicorn 17 July 2010 07:07:57AM 6 points [-]

It wouldn't be hard to manufacture a half-bra. They already have bras that clasp in front and ones that clasp in the back; there is no obvious structural reason why they couldn't make one that does both and then sell the parts separately. In fact, based on the sorts of bras that already exist, it wouldn't be that hard to have a bunch of bins of detached bra parts that could be assembled in any fashion desired. There are bras with detachable straps, too, so there's clearly no structural reason they have to be permanently affixed and therefore no reason they couldn't be swapped out consumer-side for preferred versions. Most women wear bras that do not fit because there are so many things that need to be right and custom-made ones run into the hundreds of dollars. But it seems an obvious market failure that I can't go into a store, pick out a left cup and a right cup and the straps of my choice, and walk out with something that will work better for me than anything I could find in Target without significant extra expense.

Comment author: cupholder 17 July 2010 07:27:32AM 2 points [-]

Having thought about it a little longer and updated based on your evidently broader knowledge of bras, my original guess for why the market failure exists does seem pretty unlikely.

Comment author: Roko 12 July 2010 04:00:42PM 1 point [-]

what interpretation of the word "probability" does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?

As far as I know a frequentist could never do this. They'd need an infinitely long sequence of experiments to think that the probability of an event was 1?

Comment author: cupholder 17 July 2010 07:07:51AM *  3 points [-]

what interpretation of the word "probability" does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?

Any interpretation where you can fix a broken model. I can imagine a conversation like this...

Prankster: I'm holding a die behind my back. If I roll it, what probability would you assign to a 1 coming up?

cupholder: Is it loaded?

Prankster: No.

cupholder: Are you throwing it in a funny way, like in one of those machines that throws it so it's really likely to come up a 6 or something?

Prankster: No, no funny tricks here. Just rolling it normally.

cupholder: Then you've got a 1/6 probability of rolling a 1.

Prankster: And what about rolling a 2?

cupholder: Well, the same.

Prankster: And so on for all the other numbers, right?

cupholder: Sure.

Prankster: So you assign a probability of 1 to a number between 1 and 6 coming up?

cupholder: Yeah.

Prankster: Surprise! It's 20-sided!

cupholder: Huh. I'd better change my estimate from 1 to 6/20.

Comment author: Alicorn 17 July 2010 06:55:31AM 3 points [-]

It wouldn't surprise me. It's cosmetically expected that asymmetries like that be corrected for the visual benefit of others (and for the purpose of making clothes fit) with fills or some other sort of padding. That's also the suggestion I've tended to get when I've expressed a wish for half-bras.

Comment author: cupholder 17 July 2010 06:59:40AM 1 point [-]

You're right, I should've thought of that. I expect it's easier (maybe therefore cheaper?) to manufacture little silicone blobs or whatever than a half-bra, which must partly be why there's a market for the first and not the second.

Comment author: Alicorn 17 July 2010 01:58:54AM *  11 points [-]

What I want to know is why no one sells half-bras. There's a market: most women are at least somewhat asymmetrical, plenty by enough to warrant different cup sizes. It wouldn't be revolutionary bra technology: it would just have to fasten in the front and the back both and be packaged individually. And it wouldn't take up much extra store space to stock the same range of sizes. I looked once, and there's a patent on it, but no one seems to actually manufacture the things.

Comment author: cupholder 17 July 2010 06:53:42AM 2 points [-]

There's an even more compelling market: women who have had a single mastectomy. I'd be surprised if there weren't medical half-bras out there already for them.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 12 July 2010 12:05:31AM 5 points [-]

Interesting tidbit from the article:

One avenue may involve self-esteem. Nyhan worked on one study in which he showed that people who were given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information than people who had not. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen — and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won’t.

I have long been thinking that the openly aggressive approach some display in promoting atheism / political ideas / whatever seems counterproductive, and more likely to make the other people not listen than it is to make them listen. These results seem to support that, though there have also been contradictory reports from people saying that the very aggressiveness was what made them actually think.

Comment author: cupholder 12 July 2010 11:52:11PM 3 points [-]

These results seem to support that, though there have also been contradictory reports from people saying that the very aggressiveness was what made them actually think.

Presumably there's heterogeneity in people's reactions to aggressiveness and to soft approaches. Most likely a minority of people react better to aggressive approaches and most people react better to being fed opposing arguments in a sandwich with self-affirmation bread.

Comment author: Peter_de_Blanc 21 April 2009 12:40:32PM 5 points [-]

Different people will have different ideas of where on the 4chan - colloquium continuum a discussion should be, so here's a feature suggestion: post authors should be able to set a karma requirement to comment to the post. Beginner-level posts would draw questions about the basics, and other posts could have a karma requirement high enough to filter them out.

There could even be a karma requirement to see certain posts, for hiding Beisutsukai secrets from the general public.

Comment author: cupholder 11 July 2010 11:42:30PM *  2 points [-]

The negotiation of where LW threads should be on the 4chan-colloquium continuum is something I would let users handle by interacting with each other in discussions, instead of trying to force it to fit the framework of the karma system. I especially think letting people hide their posts from lurkers and other subsets of the Less Wrong userbase could set a bad precedent.

Comment author: zero_call 07 July 2010 06:10:28AM *  0 points [-]

This kind of rebuttal absolutely fails, because it simply doesn't address the point. You're taking the OP completely out of context. The OP is arguing against cryonics evidence in the context of having to dish out substantial money. The pro-cryonics LW community asserts that you must pay money if you believe in cryonics, since it's the only rational decision, or some such logic. In response, critics (such as the OP) contend that cryonics evidence isn't sufficient to justify paying money. This is totally different from asserting that you don't believe in cryonics or the possibility of cryonics out of context.

In your examples, you don't have to pay out of your wallet if you believe that 1) practical fusion power, 2) human mission to Mars, 3) substantial life extension exists. These examples are misleading.

Comment author: cupholder 07 July 2010 08:45:17AM 1 point [-]

So would it be right to say your objection is based on the expected utility of working cryonics instead of its probability?

Comment author: ciphergoth 07 July 2010 07:30:08AM 2 points [-]

According to Mike Darwin one cryonics facility (don't remember which, sorry) has already been shot at from the street.

Comment author: cupholder 07 July 2010 08:41:33AM 1 point [-]

For being a cryonics facility? Is there enough evidence to determine if it could've been just a random drive-by?

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