All of Azathoth123's Comments + Replies

It seems like half your complaints are that Russian doesn't make some distinction that English does and the other half are that Russian forces you to make distinctions that English doesn't. It strikes me that you're simply more comfortable thinking in English.

3timujin
Which begs the question: why is it so that my native language that I spoke since I was two and everyone in my circle understands, is less comfortable for me than a foreign language I am not even confident in my skill with, possess a limited vocabulary (compared to Russian), and have much less practice in? Not being able to make a distinction and forcing you to make a distinction, are both bad. Look at the "It isn't a fish" example. In English you can distinguish between "It isn't a fish" and "It isn't a mammal", or you can leave it ambiguous ("It isn't"). If you can make a distinction, but don't have to, it gives you a lot more flexibility than both "not able to" and "can and must". Russian is inflexible exactly because of that. I think Russian is just worse at carving reality at its joints. Accuracy and precision and two very different things, down to the point that more precision = less accuracy and vice-versa. That's a good distinction. Forcing you to specify a noun's gender when you're talking about it, with said genders distributed mostly randomly/historically (dare you to say why "mechanism" is male, "machine" is female, and "device" is neuter?), makes no sense, because different-gendered items do not have different behaviour. That's a bad distinction.

But then you've already lapsed into consequentialism, and thus stuck yourself with a mandate to consider the trade-offs between desirable and undesirable consequences.

Yes, and deontologists and virtue ethicists consider trade offs between different principles or virtues.

This is not what deontological and virtue-theoretic politicians actually do.

This is not what consequentialists actually do either. In particular, I've never seen an actual utility function, much less using one to compute trade-offs.

"Look how morally brave I am for being willi

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0[anonymous]
Disagreed. The correct consequentialist answer to a real-life trolley problem is to Take a Third Option and not sacrifice any lives, every time. If you find yourself stuck in a perverse situation, then yes, you pull the lever, not because it's a good thing and you're being brave, but because it's the least-bad thing available in your perverse situation invented by philosophers who like perverse situations.

I would guess that they don't exist in some communist countries.

Yes, and those countries' economies aren't doing to well.

If I understand all of someone's logical arguments for believing what they believe, and I have the knowledge and processing power needed to evaluate those arguments,

Outside of math you also need the relevant evidence, i.e., observations, which requires you to trust that they have been accurately reported.

2satt
Agreed. That's part of the "knowledge" I had in mind.
-2TheAncientGeek
True, true, and true.
3[anonymous]
Sure. But then you've already lapsed into consequentialism, and thus stuck yourself with a mandate to consider the trade-offs between desirable and undesirable consequences. This is not what deontological and virtue-theoretic politicians actually do. What they actually do is see an undesirable consequence, and start loudly pointing it out, signaling "Look how morally brave I am for being willing to let this sort of thing happen out of pure principle!"

So by that standard almost no politicians believe in global warming.

Notice how all the rich actors who show up at charity events to "fight global warming" are also lining up to buy beach front property. (They also tend to fly around in private jets, but that's a separate issue.)

Edit: The reason I didn't use politicians in the above example is that not all politicians can afford beachfront property and the ability to do so correlates with other things that may be relevant to whether you want him in power.

2BoilingLeadBath
As a possibility, buying current beach-front property is consistent with believing in global warming if you also believe that it is hard enough to predict where the new beach-front will be that it is cheaper (say, per future-discounted year of residence) to buy property on the current beach and then at the new location of the beach, than it is to buy any combination of properties today. The inheritance question is actually rather different, as it is about buying beach-front-property-futures in the present.
8NancyLebovitz
Evidence?
-1[anonymous]
Surely a positive trait is a positive trait for anyone to have? I see you've done a large amount of market research -- oh, wait, I don't. No. It's not. Not even slightly. If you mean it's contrary to popular narratives, sure -- but then you're not saying whether women do fight, only how well publicized their fighting is. Women fought in the African National Congress. Women fought in the US Civil War. In World War I, the US started officially allowing women into the navy and air force, while Russia had fifteen battalions of women -- one of which had the moniker "Battalion of Death". In World War II, the Soviet Union again accepted women as volunteers, but they assumed women would be poor fighters, so high command seldom sent them into battle. In response, many of them deserted, sneaked to the front, and fought clandestinely. This despite the shit heaped on them by their commanding officers, sexual harassment, and rape. If you're asking whether women fought in a particular war, the answer is almost certainly yes. Oh, but you said "on par with men." You must have known about these examples, conducted a review of the combat performance of all-women and mixed gender units, and compared that with the performance of all-men units, right? And you controlled for combat experience, considering commanding officers tried their damnedest to relegate women to background roles? Women tolerate this because it's the best representation they can find -- but there's less tolerance over time and more demand for women in all roles. The passivity varies between annoying and sickening -- mainly because it's constant. The extremely narrow range of body depictions no doubt contributes to the body image problems that many women face. But the games industry is ridiculously male-dominated. The odds of getting together artists, animators, writers, and art directors who all agree to have a woman who isn't crone, seductress, or fair maiden -- you'll get that in a handful of indie studios.

Sarah Hoyt isn't quite NRx, but her recent (re)post here seems relevant.

In particular, the old distinction between deserving and undeserving poor.

Here is Eliezer's post on the subject.

Classics is the traditional solution to the latter and I think it's still a pretty good one, but now that we can't assume knowledge or Greek or Latin, any other culture at a comparable remove would probably work as well.

Um, the reason for studying Greek and Latin is not just because they're a far-removed culture. It's also because they're the cultures which are the memetic ancestors of the memes that we consider the highest achievements of our culture, e.g., science, modern political forms.

Also this suffers from the problem of attempting to go from theoretical to practical, which is the opposite of how humans actually learn. Humans learn from examples, not from abstract theories.

To put it shortly, it seems to me we have lost the ability to build new things, and became an online debate club.

Did LW as a group ever have this ability? Going by the archives it seems that there were a small number (less than 10) of posters on LW who could do this. Now that they're no longer posting regularly, new things are no longer produced here.

try creating a new one from scratch, or whatever?

A reasonable case could be made that this is how NRx came to be.

2Vulture
If this is where NRx came from, then I am strongly reminded of the story of the dog that evolved into a bacterium. An alternative LW-like community that evolved into an aggresive political movement? Either everyone involved was an advanced hyper-genius or something went terribly wrong somewhere along the way. That's not to say that something valuable did not result, but "mission drift" would be a very mild phrase.

Maybe we should have a meta-rule that anyone who starts a political debate must specify rules how the topic should be debated.

Um, this is a horrible idea. The problem is people will make rules that amount to "you're only allowed to debate this topic if you agree with me".

One aspect of neoreactionary thought is that it relies on historical narratives instead of focusing on specific claims that could be true or false in a way that can be determined by evidence.

I don't see how it does this any more than any other political philosophy.

0ChristianKl
It's not true for someone who does get his beliefs by thinking about issues individually. Whether or not you call such a person having a political philosophy is another matter.

When you say "X does Y", you must specify gender of X in Y's form.

Nitpick: I believe you meant "X did Y".

0timujin
Yeah.

Berkeley's explanation that there is no physical world, but God exists and is directly causing all of our sensations is an alternate theory, although a rather unlikely one.

What evidence lead you to this conclusion?

1Unknowns
After I wrote that comment, I realized that the only way of distinguishing that from the physical world hypothesis is by the prior. Because "there is a physical chair which is responsible for some of my experiences when I am in my room and continues to exist even at the times when I'm not experiencing it" predicts entirely the same things as "God has an idea of a chair in my room, and He causes experiences according to that idea." So if one is more probable than the other, it would be according to the prior. On the other hand, someone might argue that "there is a physical world that is defined by a certain mathematical theory" and "God exists and has a mental model of a world defined by that same mathematical theory, and produces experiences according to that mental model" may not even be distinct hypotheses. In other words, what exactly does it mean to say that God exists and has a mental mathematical model? And what exactly does it mean to say that a physical world exists according to a mathematical model? Someone might assert that insofar as these predict entirely the same experiences, they are not even different theories, but just different ways of describing the same thing. According to this, Berkeley's theory would not imply that the chair in my room does not really exist, but rather that "there is a chair in my room" means exactly the same thing as "God's mental model includes a chair in my room". So it would still be true to say the chair exists and so on. Not sure how one would refute that. But assuming they are two different theories, it sure seems like the physical world theory should have a higher prior.

The impression I get from Gardner is that "the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good".

So what does that make the LW sequences?

gjm110

Obviously it doesn't make them anything. But I have heard similar criticisms levelled at them.

My own impression of the Sequences is that most of what they say is fairly standard-issue analytic philosophy / cognitive science / physics / whatever; that where they're novel they're right more often than (according to what I've read, which I repeat is rather little and I have no reason to think it very reliable) Korzybyski is when he is novel; and that there's very little in them that's just straightforwardly wrong as (again, according to what I've read) some k... (read more)

When the most powerful weapon is the pointed stick…

Skill is an a large premium. Thus those who have the free time to practice can end up dominating.

7Desrtopa
Actually, one thing that I noticed while reading this book is that despite engaging in violence far more frequently than people in non-tribal cultures, the Yanomamo don't really seem to have a conception of martial arts or weapons skills, aside from skill with a bow. The takeaway I got was that in small tribal groups like the ones they live in, there isn't really the sort of labor differentiation necessary to support a warrior class. Rather, it seems that while all men are expected to be available for forays into violence, nobody seems to practice combat skills, except for archery which is also used for food acquisition. While many men were spoken of as being particularly dangerous, in all cases discussed in the book, it was because of their ferocity, physical strength, and quickness to resort to violence. In fact, some of the most common forms of violent confrontation within tribes are forms of "fighting" where the participants simply take turns hitting each other, without being allowed to attempt to defend or evade, in order to demonstrate who's physically tougher. I'm not sure how representative the Yanomamo are of small tribal societies as a whole, but it may be that serious differentiation of martial skill didn't come until later forms of societal organization.

We just really don't know very much about the roman economy, and are unlikely to find out much more than we currently do.

On the other hand we do know a lot about what happened in 1921, Krugman just wishes we didn't because it appears to contradict his theories.

Generalizing from one example isn't good .. science, logic or argument. But it's better than generalizing from the fog of history.

Um, no. History contains evidence, it's not particularly clean evidence, but evidence nonetheless and we shouldn't be throwing it away.

NRx's are generally not utilitarians.

0skeptical_lurker
What ethical system do you follow?
4Shmi
I've met at least one claiming he is.

Hey hallucinations are totally a thing.

Otherkin (or transgenderism, as discussed in previous posts) is an identity. It refers to who you are. Homosexuality is an orientation. It refers to whom you desire.

And this distinction is relevant because?

4polymathwannabe
I covered that in my responses to RichardKennaway in this same thread. I can see you're refusing to understand this issue. I'm done discussing with you.

What's the alternative. Site what's currently going on in other countries (people generally aren't to familiar with that either)? Generalize from one example (where people don't necessarily now all the details either)?

Yes. Because both of those have actual data, and are thus useful - your reasoning can be tested against reality.

We just really don't know very much about the roman economy, and are unlikely to find out much more than we currently do. Generalizing from one example isn't good .. science, logic or argument. But it's better than generalizing from the fog of history. Not a lot better - Economics only very barely qualifies as a science on a good day, but Krugman is completely correct to call people out for going in this direction because doing so just outright reduces it to storytelling.

which makes progressivism the stream itself, rather than a dead thing floating down some other stream.

Well progressivism self-identifies as "being on the right side of history".

Well progressivism self-identifies as "being on the right side of history".

Indeed it does. It sees itself as the stream and the tide, not dead flotsam. At least, when it is not casting its enemies as the stream and itself as the living thing valiantly fighting against oppression. Chesterton, progressivism, and neoreaction all have that equivocation in common, casting their favoured ideology as either the tide or as fighting against the tide, as it suits their rhetoric.

0Lumifer
Yes, to a degree. However in this particular case I can get exposure to both negative shocks AND positive shocks -- and those certainly are uncorrelated.

I'm inclined to think that non-ideological autocracy (we're in charge because we're us and you're you) is the human default.

I'm not sure about that. In fact, I can't think of any actually non-ideologically autocratic society in history. Are you sure you're not confusing "non-ideological" with "having an ideology I don't find at all convincing"?

I was just amused by the distinction between what we think of when thinking "grammar nerd".

I was thinking of the people involved in things like lojban. Who were you thinking of?

0Emily
Academic linguists. (I am one - or, a psycholinguist, anyway.)

I couldn't care less whether sexual orientation is innate or a choice. If it's innate, the debate is over. If it's a choice, you're free. In both cases, nothing wrong has happened.

s/homosexuality/other-kinness in that paragraph. Do you still agree with it? If not, what's the difference?

2polymathwannabe
EDITED: It took me several minutes to guess what the s/ syntax probably meant. Otherkin (or transgenderism, as discussed in previous posts) is an identity. It refers to who you are. Homosexuality is an orientation. It refers to whom you desire. They are different categories, but they can and do intersect (for example, if a person was born with lady parts, and only finds feminine people attractive, and identifies as male, that person is a transman, and not homosexual).

Even in 200 years we went from homosexuality being legal

Citation please.

Pathological counter example: "Passive propulsion in vortex wakes" by Beal et al. PDF

0Richard_Kennaway
Chesterton was talking about Neoreaction, right? ETA: A note of clarification for those in need of it: I am not actually claiming that Chesterton was talking about Neoreaction.

... the lateral thinker who finds a new route forward, the hedonist who bungee jumps off the edge, and the engineer who builds a bridge.

(Of course, there might not be another route to find, the bungee jumping could get you killed, and a bridge might not be cost-effective, but I'd like to at least consider a third way out of a dilemma)

I think all the work here is done by determining what actually constitutes a precipice.

Is, or was, anyone actually saying anything that amounted to "we are safe, therefore precautions are unnecessary"? What I've heard people saying is more like "we are safe enough with our current level of precautions, therefore such-and-such an extra precaution is unnecessary".

This has the Chesterton's post problem. What do you mean by "our current level of precautions"? Do they include the existing provisions for quarantine in case of emergencies?

2gjm
They include whatever is being done now. Which appears to be something like: don't try to block or delay entry from affected countries wholesale; get people arriving from places affected by Ebola to monitor themselves for a while after travelling and take appropriate action if they suspect infection; etc. This all seems to be working OK. Of course the situation could change in ways that justified large-scale quarantining, but I'm not aware of any reason to expect that it will.

We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do n

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2gwern
This seems like Chesterton is making it up completely. Most progressives base the impulse on the hope that things could be better; dealing with the decay of conservatism is not a hypothesis that even enters in their minds. The 'truth of conservatism' (at least, the straw-conservatism defined by Chesterton here) is taken for granted by most people: if things keep on going like this, they'll keep on being like this. No one has ever become a feminist by saying 'my god! if we leave things alone, the patriarchy will keep becoming even more oppressive and brutal with each year! We need to fight this slide of the status quo, and incidentally, it would be nice if we could not just repair the rot but also yank the status quo towards feminism and get women the vote and stuff like that'. No, it tends to be more like 'the status quo is awful! Let's try to move it towards getting women the vote and stuff like that'.
Kindly230

I am reminded of:

"Arf arf arf! Not because arf arf! But exactly because arf NOT arf!" GK Chesterton's dog

@stevenkaas

In trying to find the above quote by wildcard searching on Google, I stumbled upon another quote of this nature by the dog's owner himself: "I want to love my neighbour not because he is I, but precisely because he is not I." There appears to be another one about science being bad not because it encourages doubt, but because it encourages credulity, but I'm unable to find the exact quote.

6NancyLebovitz
I'm inclined to think that non-ideological autocracy (we're in charge because we're us and you're you) is the human default. Anything better or worse takes work to maintain.

OTOH there is a single point of failure

There is something worse than having a single point of failure, that's having multiple points of failure in "series", for lack of a better term.

0skeptical_lurker
Indeed, although whether this makes a single point of failure attractive depends on whether one is satisficing or maximising.

Um, NRx's aren't arguing for totalitarian countries.

Hint: Monarchy =/= Totalitarianism.

In fact one of the main neoreactionary arguments for monarchy is that historical absolute monarchies have been less totalitarian, in terms of government intrusion into citizens day-to-day life or control of the economy, then modern "liberal democracies".

People who sleep with their same sex do not necessarily identify as homosexuals

Just noticed this clause. Then which of the two is the thing that is supposedly 100% innate?

2polymathwannabe
Nothing prevents a straight man from having a night of experimentation, and he may or may not end up liking what he finds. I couldn't care less whether sexual orientation is innate or a choice. If it's innate, the debate is over. If it's a choice, you're free. In both cases, nothing wrong has happened.

How about the Black-Scholes model with a more realistic distribution?

Or does BS make annoying assumptions about its distribution, like that it has a well-defined variance and mean?

0ChristianKl
It assumes that the underlying model follows a Gaussian distribution but as Mandelbrot showed a Lévy distribution is a better model. Black-Scholes is a name for a formula that was around before Black and Scholes published. Beforehand it was simply a heuristic used by traders. Those traders also did scale a few parameters around in a way that a normal distribution wouldn't allow. Black-Scholes then went and proved the formula correct for a Gaussian distribution based on advanced math. After Black-Scholes got a "nobel prize" people stated to believe that the formula is actually measuring real risk and betting accordingly. Betting like that is benefitial for traders who make bonuses when they win but who don't suffer that much if they lose all the money they bet. Or a government bails you out when you lose all your money. The problem with Levy distributions is that they have a parameter c that you can't simply estimate by having a random sample in the way you can estimate all the parameters of Gaussian distribution if you have a big enough sample. *I'm no expert on the subject but the above is my understanding from reading Taleb and other reading.

Interestingly, most of the arguments against language influencing thought that I've seen wind up showing the grammar doesn't influence thought. Basically the biggest effect language has on thought is via vocabulary, which must be really disappointing news to all the grammar nerds obsessing over the perfect grammar to give their conlang.

2Emily
Yes, this is true. Consensus is largely that language can certainly influence thought in language-specific domains, and that it can influence aspects of cognition in other domains, but only to the extent of shifting probabilities and defaults around --- not to the extent of controlling how speakers think or preventing some types of thought according to languages spoken. Most "grammar nerds" I know are linguists, who think this is neat because they're more interested in how language works on a more fundamental level than individual grammars (though of course those are interesting too). I guess it's possible that conlang types have the opposite view! I was just amused by the distinction between what we think of when thinking "grammar nerd".

Technically true, although Mao managed to get remarkably close.

I'm not as familiar with WHO's ICD; however, I'd expect the process that produces its contents to be similar to the one for the DSM.

On the other hand, gender dysphoria is classified as a mental disorder in the DSM, and the treatment is helping your body match your brain, not the other way around.

Um, you do realize the DSM's contents is massively influenced by politics?

2gjm
Neither Bryan Caplan's post at the other end of that link, nor the Wired article he in turn links to, appears to me to be saying that the contents of the DSM are "massively influenced by politics". [EDITED to add:] For the avoidance of doubt, I agree that both make a lot of criticisms of the DSM. I just don't see that "massively influenced by politics" is what they're complaining about.
3polymathwannabe
It's also listed in the WHO's ICD, if you prefer that source.

There are ontogenetic factors (insufficient uptake of testosterone, for instance) that might lead to a child with male-typical sexual organs but more female-typical neurological features.

Why would this effect the neurological and only the neurological features? On the other hand the example of other-kin shows that it's possible for a human brain to identify as something it isn't.

Depends on where I went to school in a liberal state and what I describe was definitely going on.

3skeptical_lurker
Do you mean that at your school people were teaching children to "find out if they're trans"? If so, then please do describe what was going on.

People who sleep with their same sex do not necessarily identify as homosexuals, and definitely not all homosexuals identify as transgender.

Sorry if my wording wasn't clear.

No valid argument exists to equal homosexuality per se with, (..) or having a psychiatric disorder.

I don't see what argument you can possible make for why say transsexuality shouldn't be considered a psychiatric disorder but being an "other kin" should. Today people who call transsexuality a psychiatric disorder are labeled "evil trasphobes", the way progress... (read more)

2polymathwannabe
Again, you are confusing homosexuality and transgenderism. Same-sex attraction is not classified as a mental disorder and does not require any medical intervention. On the other hand, gender dysphoria is classified as a mental disorder in the DSM, and the treatment is helping your body match your brain, not the other way around. "There is also evidence that transsexuals have parts of their brain structure that is typical of the opposite birth-assigned gender." That's why in another comment I said it's firmware: your gender identity cannot be 'repaired' because it's wired in your brain, and that's why the treatment is modifying your netherparts instead. The problem with otherkin is that they deny their own humanity, which is in a completely different category than denying one's femaleness. (However, if future surgical advances allow anyone who wants to get functional hooves and wings implanted, I say let them be happy.)
1pragmatist
How about the fact that everything we know about ontogeny suggests that gender of a child of human parents should be more fluid than its species, since the determination and development of gender-typical physiology in utero is complex and multivocal? There are ontogenetic factors (insufficient uptake of testosterone, for instance) that might lead to a child with male-typical sexual organs but more female-typical neurological features. There aren't any analogously complex species-determining processes involved in the development of a child.

You're leaving out that he left Latin America to get away from those problems

But do they understand what caused them.

also that a lot of immigrants want to become real Americans (or whichever country they're moving to).

I'd be more comfortable with an immigration policy that explicitly screened for something like this.

Many Western societies have seen pretty dramatic productivity-enhancing institutional changes in the last few hundred years that aren't explicable in terms of changes in genetic makeup.

Who said anything about genetics?

Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea seem to make a pretty strong case for a huge independent effect of institutions.

Korea is. China (I assume this is what you mean by Hong Kong and Singapore) is evidence against.

0AlexSchell
Oops, shouldn't have assumed you're talking about genetics :) Still, if you're talking about character in a causally neutral sense, it seems that you need to posit character traits that hardly change within a person's lifetime. Here I admit that the evidence for rapid institutional effects is weaker than the evidence for institutional effects in general. (Re: Hong Kong, Singapore, no, I do mean those cities specifically. Their economic outcomes differ strikingly from culturally and genetically similar neighbors because of their unique histories.

It could be any number of things. Including the one I take it you're looking for, namely some genetic inferiority on the part of the people in country A.

Not necessarily, my argument goes through even if it's memetic.

The people who move from country A to country B may be atypical of the people of country A, in ways that make them more likely overall to be productive in country B.

Your only response to this has been a handwavy dismissal, to the effect that that might have been true once but now immigration is too easy so it isn't any more. How about some

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