I have benefited from linking your post to others as a reference point for non-constructive alignment approaches, so don't feel any guilt I expect that if we live for another few years this post will pay for the damage it's caused ;) 

I believe you have psychologically harmed me.

Well done!


I appreciate what appears to be your very best effort.
We certainly need to keep working on this category of problem until: 

20 years pass and somehow we're still alive and everything is great!

I must admit confusion, and a quick googling does not alleviate it;
For those of us outside of academia, what exactly do you mean by "AF style publication"?

My first comment on the new forum, please give feedback on which community norms I inevitably end up violating.

I'll attack the first section of your post, and I'll be disregarding the controversial intelligence-autism correlation.

a person who is both unusually smart

You are an outlier, the rules aren't made with you in mind.

Most people are forced break some rules in order to win, but from the perspective of most people, you can do moves which are impossible.

You can Win without breaking any rules.

Why would you throw away utility by taking unnecessary risk?

You benefit from everyone around you being more constrained by rules which they can't help but break and you can navigate trivally. In short you benefit the most by making the meritocracy gauged by something you're good at.

Risk is either for plebs who can't avoid it, or outliers who have spent their lives practicing how to do risk well.

The latter group we call "billionaires".

My steelmanning of Ialdaboath's claim isn't that it is impossible to succeed without being a psychopath. (Though I would definitely agree that his perspective is rather dreary and pessimistic) It is that the paths to success in society have been distorted by psychopaths into requiring one to express psychopathic traits in order to succeed a lot more of the time than would be the case in absence of psychopaths within the ruling elite.

I think ialdabaoth's claim is valid if, when measured, the most politically and culturally powerful quintile of the world population proves to be more than 1-4% clinical psychopaths.

I am assuming the top quintile of world population is what is meant by winners: people who control a disproportionate amount of the world's resources, and by proxy, people.

The USA has the world's largest prison population, of ~2.2MIllion and a total population of ~316 Million (both 2013)

If we were to expect an even distribution of Psychopathy across the bellcurve of intelligence then there should be between ~1.58 Mn and ~6.32Mn Psychopaths in the US prison system. Furthermore, we should expect 35.5Mn to 142Mn worldwide prison population of 100% <100IQ psychopaths.

However it is a mere 10.3Mn (all 2013 statistics)

This indicates that at least 70%, and perhaps as many as 92% of <100IQ Psychopaths are going free worldwide, this of course does not indicate that these individuals aren't simply part of the exploited lower classes. It also says nothing about the remaining population of >100IQ Psychopaths, presumably of equal size.

There is much hubub around some tabloid 'research' along the lines of "21%of leadership positions filled by psychopaths" However I can't be bothered to validate the source so I won't claim this is true.

This leaves me with a rather weaker position than I expected before writing this but you should draw your own conclusions.

Enjoy your stay!

I think most of the people who were around ten, or even six years ago now consider this place a mostly static repository of articles which are useful to refer to, rather than a dynamic community forum capable of generating more of said articles.

While I agree with your sentiment, I also care substantially more about the continued success and growth of solstices than about one or two participants of such events being deeply offended.

Elo is taking a stand here, which I believe needs to be taken, and few others are due to following the social norms of pre-emptively not offending people.

I admit I am confused; is sidestepping around the issue part of Ask or Guess culture?

I wonder where this form of communication lands in Ask, Tell, or Guess Culture?

1. I agree completely.

2. Politics has most certainly damaged the potential of SSC. Notably, far fewer useful insights have resulted from the site and readership than was the case with LessWrong at it's peak, but that is how Yvain wanted it I suppose. The comment section has, according to my understanding become a haven for NRx and other types considered unsavoury by much of the rationalist community, and the quality of the discussion is substantially lower in general than it could have been.

3. Sure.

4. Codebase, just start over, but carry over the useful ideas implemented, such as disincentivizing flamewars by making responses to downvoted comments cost karma, zero initial karma awarded for posting, and any other rational discussion fostering mechanics which have become apparent since then.

5. I agree, make this site read only, use it and the wiki as a knowledge base, and start over somewhere else.