Comment author: tim 24 July 2015 02:32:57AM *  1 point [-]

Is the premise that modern sites do not take studies on aesthetics/usability/effectiveness into account even true? I've moved into web development over the past 8 months or so and I regularly search for topics such as "log in vs sign in," "ok cancel button placement" and "optimal web page navigation."

It seems to me that there is no shortage of studies, opinions and hard evidence on display regarding the (in)effectiveness of particular web design choices. Granted not every google hit is going to cite a formal study, but a surprising amount do. Googling the above over the past ten minutes or so has given me references to a study on optimal text layout, a study on label placement/alignment, why dropdown menus apparently suck, and how presenting users with too many choices is detrimental to user engagment (admittedly this one was generalized to the web after the fact).

Comment author: LessWrong 23 July 2015 08:50:10AM *  0 points [-]

Depends on who you're marketing the site to. Programmers would be satisfied by descriptive links or even plain urls. Have you ever seen werc in action?

On the other hand of the scale, you have websites like this that appeals to.. I dunno, this design annoys me but I guess it works otherwise the site wouldn't be there for almost two years I know it.

Comment author: tim 24 July 2015 02:05:05AM 0 points [-]

Regardless of the content of either of those sites, the first is clearly more aesthetically pleasing despite the lack of shit moving around on the page. Scrolling to the bottom of the second (which shouldn't even be a thing at all: it's like a <100px scroll on a standard monitor and even hiding the taskbar and bookmarks toolbar in Chrome still leaves a miniscule amount of vertical scroll) reveals a copyright footer (and "top" link!) that is almost comically out of place after viewing the content above it. I would be very surprised if this site worked because of its modern web facade rather than in spite of it.

Comment author: MrMind 21 July 2015 08:56:40AM 6 points [-]

All your links are belong to wrongness. Please delete the 'www' before en. in en.wikipedia.

Comment author: tim 23 July 2015 04:13:08AM 3 points [-]

Clarity, you have a large number of comments with incorrect Wikipedia links. Your "introspective illusion" comment directly above this one does it correctly. You clearly are capable of generating functional links to Wikipedia pages.

Please take a few minutes to make your recent comments less frustrating to read. It is frankly astounding that so many people have given you this feedback and you are still posting these broken links.

Comment author: tim 17 July 2015 04:13:14AM -2 points [-]

There's this extremely intelligent alien species that has evolved a distinct sense of morality very similar to our own, just more rigid. So rigid that they are incapable of even comprehending the way we might think. And we view killing them just as we view recycling computers.

What happens next?

Comment author: James_Miller 15 July 2015 12:26:57AM 3 points [-]

Iranian leaders regularly chant "Death to America" and yet the United States seems to be on course to letting Iran acquire atomic weapons even though we currently have the capacity to destroy Iran's military and industrial capacity at a tiny cost to ourselves.

Comment author: tim 15 July 2015 02:36:59AM 8 points [-]

Are you confused as to why politicians would repeat a phrase that reliably energizes their political base even though it may not represent reality completely accurately?

Comment author: Tem42 13 July 2015 03:19:17AM 1 point [-]

That would only be effective if people do that more than once a week... do they?

Comment author: tim 13 July 2015 05:12:42AM 2 points [-]

They don't create a new discussion post drawing attention to an old thread once a week, no. Whether there is one person a week who would make the same post in a less obtrusive thread dedicated to such posts is another question.

The existence of the Open Thread complicates the issue a bit as well.

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 12 July 2015 12:27:09PM *  8 points [-]

I don't really get what I'm supposed to comment on in this thread.

Comment author: tim 13 July 2015 02:10:38AM *  6 points [-]

I believe you're supposed to link to a past post you feel is valuable enough that people who missed its initial appearance in discussion should go back and read it. The idea of this thread being that you don't have to create a new post and clutter up discussion to do so.

Comment author: Sithlord_Bayesian 30 June 2015 07:09:59AM *  9 points [-]

In the spirit of asking personally important questions of LessWrong, here goes. Please be gentle with me.


Related:

Discussion post by another user on being raised by narcissists

r/RaisedByNarcissists


My parent always had a number of narcissistic traits, but was never a full-blown narcissist. They (singular) supported me financially and always seemed to legitimately care about how well I was doing academically and professionally. However, they had a habit of lowering my status by verbally critiquing my actions, and sometimes made odd demands of me, such as demanding that I share some of my passwords with them, or demanding that they be present every time I go to the doctor (I'm 25).

Right now, I think that I'm either going to severely limit contact with my parent, or cut contact completely. I think that cutting contact completely is likely to be more pleasant and easier on me, but I'm really not sure about that yet. I've had a few family members tell me that I'm obligated to keep in touch with my parent. Since LW is my in-group, and since I share lots of values with the kind of people who tend to post here, I'd prefer to get advice here, rather than elsewhere. Specifically, I'm not sure if I have a familial obligation to remain in contact with my parent, given that they've only been somewhat emotionally abusive to me; it's probable that they don't even realize/ are incapable of realizing that I find their treatment of me to be hurtful. Do you think that I have any such obligation?

Complicating factor: if maintaining a good relationship with my parent might slightly increase the amount I expect to be able to donate to effective charities at the cost of (in expectation) making me less happy, does this change my obligations?

Comment author: tim 03 July 2015 03:27:12AM *  2 points [-]

Complicating factor: if maintaining a good relationship with my parent might slightly increase the amount I expect to be able to donate to effective charities at the cost of (in expectation) making me less happy, does this change my obligations?

I can't lend you any specific advice here, but I'm pretty confident that this is an insane thing to even consider considering in the situation you describe.

Comment author: G0W51 30 June 2015 04:43:30AM 1 point [-]

Here's a potential existential risk. Suppose a chemical is used for some task or made as a byproduct of another task, especially one that is spread throughout the atmosphere. Additionally, suppose it causes sterility, but it takes a very long time to cause sterility. Perhaps such a chemical could attain widespread use before its deleterious effects are discovered, and by then, it would have already sterilized everyone, potentially causes an existential catastrophe. I know this scenario for causing an existential catastrophe seems very small compared to other risks, but is it worthy of consideration?

Comment author: tim 30 June 2015 05:50:32AM 5 points [-]

On the face of it, I don't feel that this particular risk differentiates itself enough from "what if [insert subtle end-of-times scenario here]?" to be worthy of specific consideration. It's a lot of what ifs and perhapses.

Comment author: Squark 27 June 2015 06:20:03PM 8 points [-]

IMO what is interesting about this ruling is that AFAIK it doesn't appeal to any law which hasn't existed for decades. So, if we accept the premise that the supreme court is only "interpreting" the constitution, it follows that gay marriage should have been legal a long time ago (where I use "should" in the legal rather the normative sense). While some will probably claim it is exactly the case, to me it seems rather clear that the "interpretation" of the constitution is changing with culture and social norms. Now, while I'm sure that in a democratic system cultural transformations should find their way into law, this seems like a weird way for it to happen. Instead of having elected legislators changing the law according to the will of people, appointed judges are reinterpreting existing law. So, while I wholeheartedly endorse the object-level act of allowing homosexual marriage, the meta-level process leading to this act looks questionable. However, I don't live in the US so maybe something is lacking in my understanding of that system.

Comment author: tim 30 June 2015 03:24:27AM *  -1 points [-]

While I agree that the process seems absurd on the face of it, I don't think it's as nonsensical as it appears at first glance.

It's way, way easier to have a small group of people re-interpret a static text over and over than it is to have a larger group of people, accountable to an even larger group of constituents, write new text that they all agree on over and over.

edit: I guess basically what I'm saying is that democracy is hard and this is a nice out?

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