I like the bit about curiosity. Have you looked at all into other factors like grit? :P

Thanks for your reply, it makes me feel much better and I'm glad and impressed we're not annoyed at each other, especially considering I can also be easily annoyed.

Oh! Yay! (:

I think a lot of people can understand being alienated but I don't know what the rationalist solution is.

It seems to me that many on LW are alienated, and it's resulting in the most ridiculous clusterf... People desire to quickly jump to the conclusion that the person they're talking to is not worth talking to (I think this might apply more to new people than others)... because they are so alienated and have to do something about it, but there's this wild mix of causes of annoyance and it just makes a mess. There are older users who are spitting out logical fallacies, newer users who are clueless, new users who are sharp, old users who are sharp of course... and sometimes one annoys one's self (which is what happened to me just now). And of course if people DON'T ignore annoying users, or at least tell them that they're doing it wrong, they're encouraged to stick around without improving the annoying behavior... but this is wrought with peril because as you have seen, if I am the one who made the mistake, and I tell you that you've made a mistake, I get to look like an idiot, and you get to feel bad for no reason. Many times, when somebody points out my mistake, it's the same problem - they made a mistake but didn't notice it, possibly because they're so annoyed with the last 10 people that annoyed them that they're not giving me the benefit of the doubt. Occasionally they do point out some mistake I made, so that's good. But it seems like people here are a bit too apt to reach for the 2 x 4.

That's part of why I like HPMOR- Harry is like an alien trying to make a single friend. In his case, he's alone because he's superior to everyone and thus can't rely on anyone else, which may be some cold comfort, but that wasn't exactly my situation...

What was your exact situation?

I am an alien for sure. I relate to not being able to rely on anyone else, but it is not comforting that I'm usually better at figuring things out than those around me. I have plenty of friends but the friendships are one-sided: I am understanding and emotionally supportive to them, but they do not understand me deeply enough so they aren't really useful for me to talk to about my thoughts and feelings. I've noticed that most of the other aliens haven't mastered staying rational when they've discovered an interesting alien they might get close to. This has ruined the vast majority of my attempts to get to know other aliens. I used to have a problem with staying rational when meeting other aliens myself - but that's not my problem anymore. Now my problem is that nearly everybody else is going about it in dysfunctional ways and I'm burnt out on that. I have no idea how to solve this, so I'm just walking away from that catastrophe and I've decided to fill my time up with group projects for now.

The article itself says that lesswrongers were part of the data set but I didn't take this to mean this was about lesswrong in general.

I read the subject line for the OP but the title of the article was so similar I didn't notice it wasn't exactly the same. Sigh. I think I've been had by change blindness. (There's an interesting LW article I'm being reminded of right now.). My title oversight explains most of the confusion here.

What are the reasoning skills you identified as lacking in my comments?

None. It was perceived lack of motivation to read things that prompted that. This perception is fixed now. I'm sorry about that.

Maybe you're annoyed I didn't get your child/rapist example?

I am constantly alienated and usually somewhere near my limit for alienation. Often past it, often just below it. If I seem annoyed, that is probably to blame more than anything. I'm perma-annoyed.

I want to know if I'm being irrational, that's the whole point of this.

If you want to continue after my oversight with the title, I will engage, but I should probably start over and re-focus. What specific perception(s) do you want to discuss?

I hadn't realized LessWrongers were being called cold and calculating.

Really? There's an article link in the OP. The Wall Street Journal did an article on LessWrong. Why don't you read it?

Despite Hanson writing some libertarian things, my impression was the plurality of lesswrongers subscribed to socialism or liberalism. Is this erroneous?

The article links to a survey that LessWrongers did and so does the OP.

I see you're new here. FYI people are not going to take kindly to it if you comment on threads without reading the OP and/or closely related materials (such as the WSJ link and survey in the OP). This is because a lot of the people here are very well read. Maybe you are, too, and can understand this. They also don't take kindly to it if people haven't endeavored to read about reasoning skills. Maybe you have already read some books on things like logic and biases or have read the sequences or something. If not, I'll let you know that you need familiarity with these types of subjects if you want to fit in.

The type of murderer who just completely flips out isn't described as "cold and calculating" but we might describe a strategic killer that way. However, that comparison just means the strategic one is thinking more - not necessarily that the thinking being done is more intelligent. It might only imply that the strategic one isn't flying off the handle in response to emotion.

Try this scenario:

There's a murder who wants to kill a certain victim. The murderer watches the victim for a while to discover their commuting habits. They make a plan and purchase supplies. After a few weeks of planning, the murderer waits in the bushes, possessing everything necessary to kill their victim - formaldehyde for a snare, handcuffs for restraints, a knife, and a first aid kit in case the victim hurts them in a struggle. They wait for an hour until the victim is in exactly the right spot, and then they pounce with the formaldehyde. The murder handcuffs the victim and takes them to a different location where nobody can see. Then the murderer kills the victim.

Is this murderer cold and calculating?

Did the murderer use more strategy than the average person might use on a camping trip that involves hunting?

I think the answer to that is "no", so the meaning is potentially more like "cold enough to calculate" not "cold but intelligent".

Also, "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care". If people see you as malicious but weak, say a child who fights with the other kids, they're likely to write you off as an annoyance and ignore you.

However, if they see you as malicious but strong, a fully grown person who is a rapist we'll say, then one is seen as a threat and people will pull out all the stops to get rid of you. A serial rapist gets news coverage. People stay indoors to avoid them. Police put in extra effort.

How often have there been news reports of a child bully wandering the sidewalks, urging you to protect your children? Probably never. That would just make people laugh. But I've seen rapists on the news plenty of times.

I think LessWrong would be better off with a label that means something more along the lines of "harmless nerds" or "intelligent people who care about the world".

I'm pretty sure cold and calculating means something more like "monstrous".

"Cold and calculating" also sounds synonymous with "sociopathic".

So, this description is bad.

The main argument that I can think of in support of affirmative action is that I do think it's common for young children to need role models to have an imagination about what their interests and potential futures might be.

Why does the role model need to have the same race/gender/etc. as the child?

I'm Nancy Hua. I was MIT 2007 and worked in NYC and Chicago in automated trading for 5 years after graduating with BS's in Math with CS (18C) and in Writing (21W).

Currently I am working on a startup in the technology space. We have funding and I am considering hiring someone.

I started reading Eliezer's posts on Overcoming Bias. In 2011, I met Eliezer, Robin Hanson, and a bunch of the NYC Lesswrongers. After years of passive consumption, very recently I started posting on lesswrong after meeting some lesswrongers at the 2012 Singularity Summit and events leading up to it, and after reading HPMOR and wanting to talk about it. I tried getting my normal friends to read it but found that making new friends who have already read it is more efficient.

Many of the writings regarding overcoming our biases and asking more questions appeal to me because I see many places where we could make better decisions. It's amazing how far we've come without being all that intelligent or deliberate, but I wonder how much more slack we have before our bad decisions prevent us from reaching the stars. I want to make more optimal decisions in my own life because I need every edge I can get to achieve some of my goals! Plus I believe understanding and accepting reality is important to our success, as individuals and as a species.

If Ada Lovelace is the best example of a notable woman in computing 50 years from now, I will eat my hat.

It's obvious there are more notable men in STEM history than women. Thus a question that arises is if the notable women who do exist in STEM history are there because they're better than the men, having overcome despite discrimination, or if they're being retroactively singled out, a desperate lowering of the bar to identify SOME example.

However, this question of retroactive affirmative action is not the issue recognizing Ada Lovelace is trying to address. I don't know enough history to know if Lovelace is a worthy example, but I think it is important for people in general to identify with successful people similar to themselves so that they can imagine being like those people someday. Personally, I don't particularly need to look at someone's gender to identify with and be inspired by them. When an impoverished immigrant Jew like Einstein overcomes Nazis and scornful teachers and whatever else, I, despite being a Chinese woman from Pittsburgh, identify with his struggles and don't let people thinking I'm stupid because I'm smiley or shy or a woman or whatever deter me. However, many people do need role models to help them realize nascent interests in STEM subjects, especially if the peer group they identify with are not typically interested in those topics. For most, it's easier and more enjoyable to hang out with your friends doing girl things than go off on your own to explore programming or science in a room full of boys who ignore you.

Regardless of innate or learned differences in men and women, by far the first factor in this result for past populations is the number of men in STEM vs women historically, which is why the present is such an exciting time for women in STEM- there are a lot more females in STEM now! There may well be more notable women in STEM in our lifetimes than have ever existed. This idea inspires and motivates me to become one of them!

Do some men find posts singling out notable women offensive/ annoying because they think elevating a perhaps undeserving woman is unfair to all the deserving men? The suggestion of discrimination and affirmative action towards one set often upsets people in the complement of that set because humans have a strong instinct for fairness and hate injustice. Affirmative action is unfair to people who had nothing to do with past injustices, even if they're benefiting from them, so I sympathize with the negative comments, although I don't know whether two wrongs make a right in practice. My hope that we will soon have a bevy of women undeniably worthy of recognition and honor in STEM history.

Marie Curie was regarded as an accomplished scientist by her contemporaries, and it is implausible that this high regard is explicable in terms of political correctness, given the time period.

Marie Curie was not famous for being an accomplished scientist. You have never heard of the person that discovered Radon, that being a far more important discovery than Radium, for Radon revealed the transmutation of the elements. She was famous, then as now, for being an accomplished female scientist. She was, then as now, like many famous women of the nineteenth century, a mascot.

The evidence that unqualified females have been affirmative actioned in to STEM fields since 1880 or so, and into administrative positions since around 1850 or so, is pretty similar to the evidence that they are being affirmative actioned today. This produces predictable results, which results are then denounced, starting in the 1860s, as the result of incorrigible misogyny, and proclaimed to be grounds to apply affirmative action even more vigorously and suppress thoughtcrimes even more harshly.

In practice everyone acts as if female STEM credentials are given merely for being female, rather than actually being qualified, and those that deny acting in this manner, nonetheless do act in this manner, just as those that repudiate John Derbyshire's infamous advice as racist nonetheless act in accordance with that advice. This could be because everyone is consciously or unconsciously misogynistic, or it could be because credentials really are given merely for being female.

And this has been the case for well over a hundred years, with everyone saying for over a hundred years that it was the last generation that was horribly misogynistic, but now we are thankfully past all that.

Which then is it? Misogyny or gender realism? One statistic that might be relevant to that question is that today's SAT is no longer an intelligence test, but instead measures the same thing that grade point average is supposed to measure. Predictably, boys do substantially better on the SAT, and substantially worse on grade point average. Affirmative action grading for female GPA is one possible explanation. You, perhaps, may have a better explanation.

Boys also do substantially better on the LSAT, but that is to be expected, since the LSAT is an intelligence test rather than an accomplishment test.

When I claim that women have been affirmative actioned for over a hundred years, it was of course denied back then, just as it is denied now, so I cannot prove that claim, but the smell of hypocrisy and doublethink were suggestive then, as they are suggestive now.

If you ask me for a properly authoritative citation for that claim, I will not be able to give it. All I can produce as evidence is a funny smell, which funny smell has not changed much in over a hundred years.

If you insist, however, I can give you properly authoritative citations for grade point average, LSAT, and SAT.