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I wonder if the is opposite true. Steal a movie. Watch some twisted porn. Post a shocker in a kids' forum. Become ridden with guilt. Be motivated to do more charity.
In response to
Doing your good deed for the day
So you steal a movie, which means the next homeless guy you see gets change in his cup, which lets you slam the front door in a girl scout's face, the memory of which drives you to volunteer at a soup kitchen, which in turn assuages your conscience when you buy incandescent light bulbs because they look better than CFLs, so you help an old lady across the street, which relieves you of all responsibility for the other old lady who just got hit by a truck, who haunts you in your dreams, so you adopt a child, who grows up to become a mad scientist who destroys the world, thus ending the vicious cycle once and for all.
And that's why piracy is wrong.
In response to
The continued misuse of the Prisoner's Dilemma
When you write "If the others continue to cooperate, their bid is lower and they get nothing" you imply an iterated game. It seems clear from Hamermesh's account that players were only allowed to submit one bid.
Ashley won, but she didn't maximize her win. The smartest thing to do would be to agree to collude, bid higher, and then divide the winnings equally anyway. Everyone gets the same payout, but only Ashley would get the satisfaction of winning. And if someone else bids higher, she's no longer the sole defector, which is socially significant. And, of course, $20 is really not a significant enough sum to play hardball for.
That's not picking nits; that's switching out a metaphorical definition mid-discussion for a more literal one, a species of "moving the goalposts".
This is picking nits.
Well, I don't feel bad at all, so obviously you haven't won this argument yet. Unless I'm wrong, of course.
Well, if you want to pick nits, a vacuum cleaner sucks more than realizing you're wrong in an argument.
Why is this being voted down? I'm pretty sure Nominull didn't post the quote in order to endorse it as a normative sentiment. There's an ick reaction so you hit "Vote down"? But that's not what decides whether a quote is a good thing to have read!
Also, in general, the quote is accurate. While it is intellectually useful to be proven wrong, it is not really a pleasant feeling, because it's much nicer to have already been right. This is especially true if you are heavily invested in what you are wrong about, eg. a scientist who realizes his research was based on an erroneous premise will be happy to stop wasting time but will also feel pretty crappy about the time he's already wasted. It's not in our nature to be purely cerebral about such a devastating thing as being wrong can be.
Being wrong is the best possible outcome of an argument, as it's the one with the highest expected knowledge gain
No, that's backwards. Learning that you are wrong is good if and only if you are wrong. But it's only good because you were already wrong, which was bad - you were making bad decisions before. It's like saying that it is better to win the lottery than to be born rich. Roughly speaking, it doesn't matter when or where the money or knowledge comes from, only that you can use it.
It isn't that winning the lottery is better than being born rich, it's that winning the lottery is better than not winning the lottery. Even if you're already rich, winning the lottery is good. Presumably you weren't born right about everything, which means it's more useful to lose arguments than win them. After all, if you never lose an argument, what's more likely: that you are right about everything, that you're the best arguer ever, or that you simply don't argue things you're wrong about?
In response to
Biking Beyond Madness (link)
Did Eliezer or someone else with admin rights just edit the tags? I don't think this is really relevant to akrasia, as it isn't about doing something that wouldn't otherwise be done at all, but ignoring thoughts known to be erroneous("I'm at the limit of my strength"), making a convulsive effort and doing the winning thing instead of the "sensible" or "rational."
Wouldn't ignoring thoughts known to be erroneous despite immense physical pressure to listen to them be a display of extreme rationality?
I recently thought of something else related to why one would prefer a "new" book to an old one. There's a certain suspense involved in reading a work in progress. Waiting for the next installment, making guesses at what's going to happen next, discussing your theories with your friends who are all at the same place in the story as you are, and so on, are all things that rarely, if ever, happen with old stories as intensely as they do with new stories. A message board I used to frequent had an extremely long-running discussion of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series that died shortly after the final book was published.
In other words, with new stories, you can give someone something to anticipate. Old stories tend to be well-known to the point where everybody already knows what happens, and the anticipation only lasts as long as it takes you to get from the beginning to the end.
Thanks, it's been a while since I wasted a whole morning on TvTropes. Please link responsibly, people!
In response to
Waterloo, ON, Canada Meetup: 6pm Sun Oct 18 '09!
We have two confirmed (stoat, and rune the suggester); we need one more confirmed for this to happen! Eirenicon?
It looks unlikely, I'm afraid. The timing conflicts with my Answers in Genesis study group... haha, nah, just kidding. But I probably have to work. C'est la vie.
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And you don't see any issues with this? That would seem to be far worse than the English rule/losers-pay.
I pick a random rich target, find 50 street bums, and have them file suits; the bums can't contribute more than a few flea infested dollars, so my target pays for each of the 50 suits brought against him. If he contributes only a little, then both sides' lawyers will be the crappiest & cheapest ones around, and the suit will be a diceroll; so my hobos will win some cases, reaping millions, and giving most of it to me per our agreement. If he contributes a lot, then we'll both be able to afford high-powered lawyers, and the suit will be... a diceroll again. But let's say better lawyers win the case for my target in all 50 cases; now he's impoverished by the thousands of billable hours (although I do get nothing).
I go to my next rich target and say, sure would be a shame if those 50 hobos you ran over the other day were to all sue you...
If the defending party is only required to match the litigating party's contribution, the suits will never proceed because the litigating bums can't afford to pay for a single hour of a lawyer's time. And while I don't know if this is true, it makes sense that funding the bums yourself would be illegal.