All of CharlieSheen's Comments + Replies

You know the problem with not outright saying that what you are advocating is actually eugenics is that eventually someone else will do it for you.

use the evidence that you see to update your model of the world,² and your model of the world to decide which possible behaviours would be most likely to achieve your goals

I endorse this advice. Note however some consider this in itself unethical when it comes to interpersonal relations. I have no clue why.

I'm actually at the point when I think it is impossible to give men useful advice to improve their sex lives and relationships because of the social dynamics that arise in nearly all societies. Actually good advice aiming to optimize the life outcomes of the men who are given it has never been discussed in public spaces and considered reputable.

Same can naturally be said of advice for women. I think most modern dating advice both for men and women is anti-knowledge in that the more of it you follow the more miserable you will end up being. I would say follow your instincts but that doesn't work either in our society since they are broken.

1. Approach lots of women
2. Act confident
3. Have entertaining things to say
4. Dress and groom well

...

If all PUA said was those 4 things, it wouldn't be interesting or controversial

This sounds reasonable until you actually think about the four points mentioned in Near mode. Consider:

1. What does approaching lots of women actually look like if done in a logistically sound way? How does this relate to social norms? How does this relate to how feminists would like social norms to be?

2. Observe what actually confident humans do to signal their confidence. Just do.

uncritically downvote anything feminist sounding, and upvote armchair ev-psych;

This is frustrating to read since complaints of other groups that amount to the same thing are ignored, but then again this is to be expected.

From the complaints (and not just here and now) it seems obvious that there is a problem we really should solve.

There being a problem people complain about and it actually being worth solving are remarkably uncorrelated. Here is an argument I made on the matter in the past.

Schelling point for metacontrarian replies of the sort I currently don't feel like making but probably need to be made despite bad signalling.

No dude. Just no. If that becomes policy I'm out of here.

Okay, so... you're going to argue that undersocialized straight white males in 1st world countries currently suffer the most? And what else? Because I already agree that they have it bad, and I can't for the life of me think of any other oppressed group that is denied publicity.

Consider the context of this debate. Are you really sure (mostly) white (mostly) heterosexual (mostly) middle class women are really the most depriviliged group present on LessWrong?

Yet clearly they are the ones with the most explicit political activism and seem to be winning the popularity contest here. See any kind of controversy over sex/romance/gender/PUA we've had over the past oh... 5 years?

Apply this argument to the politics of suffering Konkvistador talked about.

Name three.

nonpartisan analysis

Please vote for Mitt Romney if and only if you throw a fair die and it comes up greater than 2.

Was that a partisan appeal or not? Be consequentalist about policy analysis, I dare you.

Democrats are more likely to take the risk of a global pandemic serious

If its a foreign plague I actually expect Republicans be better at quarantine.

Which administration is less likely to increase Peter Thiel's taxes?

I'm fairly certain he is spending it better than the USG. Considering what kind of charity he spends it on, it doesn't seem like he gives to charity to get tax brakes or buy status for bragging at cocktail parties. I'm fairly sure a richer Peter Thiel translates into a better less existential risk exposed world.

Edited: People don't seem to be following my Peter Thiel link, it goes to the Top Donors for the Singularity Institute:

Thiel Foundation $1,100,000

How about testing our ideas?

Actually judging clever articles by the rent they demonstrably pay in anticipated experience? This idea is too radical Konkvistador. Don't you know that hand waving or reading papers is fun and testing is like ... work?

"This has traditionally been a very divisive point within radical feminism, and it typically divides the discussion into transphobic social-constructionist radical feminists and neo-essentialist post-feminists."

I'm just wondering would you mind reading Moldbug? I want to see the resulting philosophy for the lulz.

You guessed the teacher's password!

How clever of you to share another one! A gold star for both of us! Can you now explain why trusting a sound rationalist's or specialist's conclusions based on their authority if one hasn't the time to investigate them oneself is wrong from a Bayesian perspective?

Now, can you recite (and criticize) his reasons?

I think it mattes for his arguments about us being the pattern in our brain rather than the meat of our brain. But again I haven't read all of the QM sequence, I don't recall claiming I was a particularly... (read more)

Actually the word race is about what part of your ancestry you identify with or society identifies you with. Obviously both culture and genetic diversity correlate strongly with ancestry. The word race was also used in a taxonomic sense in the early 20th century. Indeed racial classification is still used that way in say medicine though naturally euphemisms are gaining popularity.

not the Bantu and the Scot as haplogroup L3 and the San as L0. Why overload the word

You really miss the point here so I suspect you didn't read the article.

When you take a lo... (read more)

I don't. However EY keeps emphasizing how crucial the QM sequence is to the other material, so I take his word at it.

I do think probability theory and a lot of other math is a must.

"Affirmative action is racist!" True if you define racism as "favoring people based on their race", but though the archetypal case of racism (white people keeping black people down) has nothing to recommend it, affirmative action (possibly) does. In the archetypal case, decisions are made based on race, success is completely decoupled from merit, and disadvantaged groups are locked into a cycle of poverty with little to no escape. Affirmative action keeps the first disadvantage, arguably escapes the second disadvantage depending on the

Good point about the Weimar Republic as an example of failure mode of democracy. I'm not sure whether it's germaine that part of the failure was it ceasing to be a democracy. Any other examples?

Here you go:

To promote an informed population and democracy in Rwanda, international agencies had promoted development of the media during the years leading up to the genocide.[27] It appeared that promoting one aspect of democracy (in this case the media) may, in fact, negatively influence other aspects of democracy or human rights. After this experience it h

I would like to see more diversity. Not just in terms of demographics (though that too)

To take a stab at that applause light.

Ceteris paribus yes I can agree diverse contributors may be beneficial to our mission. Especially value diversity, since differences in desired conclusions may lead to motivated cognition being called out more. But I think when most people speak of diversity they don't have that kind of diversity in mind. So sticking to the other kinds, I have to note that I haven't seen a single data driven argument for this why this would be so... (read more)

There is nothing inherent in rationality that should limit it to computer/ math/ physics/ philosophy types.

Actually, I'm pretty sure there is.

It really really helps to be comfortable with math to do rationality, there is no way around it. The kind of people who have both the capability and interest to master things like programming or probability theory or Quantum mechanics will tend to be what you call "computer/ math/ physics/ philosophy types".

There are highly intelligent people in other fields also, and I feel like people from other disc

Oh yes I fully agree. I wasn't trying to start a discussion on gay marriage after all! Its just the title the author chose.

I find it exceedingly unlikely that increasing "stigma and fear" will reduce such behavior.

I found this article interesting overview of examples of unintended consequences of past changes, that makes a case for being very cynical of this particular kind of argument:

A Really, Really, Really Long Post About Gay Marriage That Does Not, In The End, Support One Side Or The Other

I find it exceedingly unlikely that increasing "stigma and fear" will reduce such behavior. For instance, out-of-wedlock births, teen pregnancy, divorce, etc. are all higher in more socially conservative societies — including when we compare the U.S. vs. Western Europe, or "red states" vs. "blue states" within the U.S. ...

I find it very likely that they will since social shaming is among the most powerful means a culture can employ to maintain norms.

Blue state vs. Red state comparisons as well as Western Europe vs. USA are ... (read more)

Races are clusters in DNA-space by James_G

Marriage is getting less common.

Marriage rates have basically collapsed among lower SES African Americans in the US and dropped significantly for all other classes as well. In addition to this the number of relationship hours one can expect from a marriage is that the average age of marriage is getting higher and higher for women.. In addition to this divorce rates are high and mostly driven by women, for example:

Evidence is given that among college-educated couples, the percentages of divorces initiated by women is approximately 90%.

Both also spea... (read more)

Charlie, your argument style in this conversation started insightful and tactfully expressed. It has become lax and contemptuous.

I can see that now, I was tired and went emotional. Sent an apology to novalis and I'll retract the ones that now seem inappropriate.

The link was there since before your responded. All I was saying that if you don't see my argument yet I won't be bothering with you further today since people are wrong on the internet all the time and I'm unfortunately mortal. Maybe I will write up a post in response tomorrow or maybe someone else can pick up where I ended.

I might have had more patience with you if you hadn't so clearly displayed tribal feeling in the OP btw. Thought I must admit once you threw around "rape apologist" that made me laugh hard enough to forgive you.

You are missing the point.

There is no shortage of available employers either!

A man being desired by other women is intrinsically sexy to women. Consider what this means if you take a laissez-faire approach to the sexual marketplace.

The difference, of course, is that there is in fact no shortage of available partners.

There is no shortage of available wealth either! I don't know why those Africans go on starving when we clearly have enough food for everyone on the planet. I mean all they have to do is arrange to get hired by someone and then buying some food!

There is in fact no shortage of people employing desirable employees.

One might uncharitably describe this as the "nerds whining about not having a girlfriend" argument.

I know! Its like those icky poor people whining about material inequality.

Serial monogomy, rather than polygyny, constitutes the vast majority of all Western relationships. So I just don't think it's true that there's unequal access.

This might shatter your brains, serial monogamy in practice basically is soft polygamy. You badly need to read some of Roissy's writing on how sexual attraction seems to work if your own IRL observations haven't ... (read more)

Or rather they might believe that, yes, some men are dangerous but my current boyfriend is an exception.

We have evidence precisely this is happening.

Ovulating women perceive that sexy cads would be good fathers to their own children but not to the children of other women.

Strongly recommend people follow the link to read K's comments on it as well as the original paper.

I just can't imagine a woman saying, "yeah, he's going to rape my daughter, but I really love him!"

You have a very limited imagination and limited experience in moving outside middle our upper class social circles or you are being dishonest. Go out and meet some young people in your nearest underclass neighbourhood. Or if that is too scary read up on the sociology papers on such communities.

Even outside of that, women find dark triad traits sexually attractive in men. Getting away with violence is also sexy. Now pause to consider in addition ... (read more)

I'm sure you've read the sorts of arguments I would make before and been unconvinced.

Yes because I think the strong moral revulsion the average Western person has towards "racism" comes from ethics based on sacredness (I recommend your read Tinkerbell ethics series by Sister Y to see what I mean by sacred) and not due to consistent application of utilitarian ethics.

Not to say lots of "racism" might not reduce overall or average utility, but the same could be said of the targets of other emotionally charged arational revulsions. For... (read more)

If someone's belief that white people have higher average IQ than black people was based on evidence that white people have higher average IQ than black people, they'd very likely believe that East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews have even higher average IQ. If they don't also believe that, I'd strongly suspect their belief is based on something else

I agree with this assessment, since such a person is likely just searching for good things to say about one group and bad things to say about another.

Can you tell me what the word "racist" means?

The use of "racist" is generally very wide and means several different meanings, their only common point is that they are boo lights that are hard to get rid of once someone accuses you of them.

Wikipedia definition:

A hate group is an organized group or movement that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or other designated sector of society.

I don't think VDARE is a hate group.

In other news the group X has decided that the most reasonable set of political positions is held by the ideology Y. It just happens to be the ideology that has a ready made and politically viable arguments for more funding to be funnelled to group X.

It might start a session of self-modification by looking for the secret of joy and end (like some Greek sages) deciding that tranquillity is superior to joy. This modification of desire en route to realizing it is easily classified as learning, and deserves our respect. But imagine the case of a machine hoping to make itself less narcissistic and more considerate of the interests of others, but ending by desiring to advance its own ends at the expense of others, even through violence.

It might start a session of self-modification by looking for the secre... (read more)

The reasons why they might be anti-correlated Thiel explores seem mostly about the US and not some hypothetical country of mostly Libertarian voters. The thing is no such country exists in the world and this is I think no coincidence.

Democracy is like having dinner in a expensive restaurant with a few million people where everyone knows they will be splitting the bill at the end of the evening. The incentives are both on a organizational and individual level messed up and we rationalize our choices afterwards to make them seen less like defecting against ... (read more)

I have added a source for Peter Thiel's statement, some of his reasons are also mine.

My previous belief was primarily based on adults telling me as a child that democracy was the mechanism keeping us free. My change of opinion stems in large part for me looking for the appropriate evidence for such a claim and not finding it.

One of the arguments that kept me believing in my early teenage years was that looking around the world one sees "democracies" as better places to live and more free than "non-democracies". This isn't powerful evi... (read more)

I think they are possible. I'm especially optimistic about the new possibilities opened by advancing technology. Thought talking to Konkvistador has made me think even something as simple as a well thought out monarchy might be better for city-states and small countries with no more than a few million people.

Moldbug is less wrong than most political scientists, many historians and quite a few sociologists.

"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."

--Peter Thiel, The education of a libertarian

This has been my opinion as well since late 2011.

Thank you for the correction and actual info! I should have made it clearer I was speculating.