All of RomanDavis's Comments + Replies

I don't know how this happened. My comment was supposed to be a reply to:

When the axe came into the woods, many of the trees said, "At least the handle is one of us.

Is this just supposed to be a demonstration of irrationality? Can some one unpack this?

What? Of course people care about the lives of dogs and cats.

Anecdotal Evidence: All the people I've seen cry over the death of a dog. Not just children, either. I've seen grown men and women grieve for months over the death of a beloved dog.

Even if their sole reason for caring is that their cute, that wouldn't invalidate the fact that they care. There's some amount of "organized lying" in most social interactions, that doesn't imply that people don't care about anything. That's silliness, or puts such a high burden of proof/ high standard of ca... (read more)

Under the circumstances of the test (Hours to work and they can't just ignore you) then yes, captain obvious. Without that, though? Much less sure.

And the way Eliezer seems to have put it sometimes, where one glance at a line of text will change your mind? Get real. Might as well try to put the whole world in a bottle.

Well, I still think it made a valid point about being careful about engineering humans and other optimizing.

What I said could be easily boiled down to "What's so great about programming?" To which one could easily reply, "What's so great about running from tigers?"

The point is that programming really is an awesome intellectual activity that could help the human race survive so we might want to maximize the sensuousness of that, but if someone just wants to code that's just as useless as wanting to run from tigers (If that, say lead you ... (read more)

So every time a business gains on account of departures from the free market, that's a travesty, but every time it loses, that's the way things are supposed to work. No wonder you think academics are the only ones who do any good. Besides, TBTF isn't an economic problem, this is a political problem. They had too many lobbyists to be allowed to fail, that's all.

He didn't say that. You're being a troll.

I would expect not exist in a way that suggests causality, e.i. being born and then expecting death, rather than the other way around. This is hard for me to imagine because I didn't really evolve for that world. It's possible that our universe doesn't work that way at the smallest level, but it seems might suspicious that random events lead to a largest world that operates very deterministically. Still, it is possible that this is just the manifestation of probabilistic laws at the smallest level. It's definitely paying rent so far,(for those who do the e... (read more)

I'm not sure. And am not sure how you would you do an experiment to check. My rules aren't data typed into a computer program on which the universe runs, they're descriptions of the universe as experienced through my senses and processed through my mind be things like "inference" and colored by things like the "expectation of beauty", and "Occam's Razor."

The reason I don't believe in the epiphenomenal theory of consciousness is because of the evidence against it, starting with my awareness, the existence of all this talk about... (read more)

Well first of all, we're not perfect philosophers of perfect emptiness. We get our beliefs from somewhere. So it's true that all sorts of things are true that we have no evidence of. For instance, it's very, very likely there's life outside our solar system, but I don't have any evidence of it, so I act as if it's not true because in my model of the universe, it's very unlikely that that life will affect me during my natural lifetime.

I would even go far as to say that there may be matter beyond the horizon of the matter that expanded after the big bang, or... (read more)

My Dad's a retired airforce officer. Living with him. right now. Studying nursing. I do some digital painting and programming and I'm going to see if I can make some money at it (online, wages are terrible here!).

Not literally God, just faith in the idea that bad things above a certain threshold somehow aren't allowed to happen to you. Sometimes the power is thought to be in some other, real or unreal entity, like the state or the fed or democracy or science or whatever. And sometimes it's not. It's just a bias, floating around in your thoughts in ways you aren't terribly aware of.

He wasn't generalizing from one example. He cites many example of people talking and thinking like this.

I'm going to go ahead and take his side on this one. It's just a bias. It's a cogni... (read more)

Oh, I agree, at least to a certain extent. Don't be so green and blue. We really are shirking responsibility. If your morality has responsiblity as the highest virtue, than it might be bad to have a nanny state, but there a serious advantages to having one, such as, as you point out, specialization.

The libertarian in me says it'd be ideal to have a third party, like an advocacy group, or a religion or whatever, taking that responsibility for those who need it while the government did the minimum against fraud and such. But as long as people don't realize they're Beyond the Reach of God, that's going to have problem of it's own.

Fixed both.

Typo. Fixed.

Also, he makes the assumption that you've read other stuff by him, which creates a decent sized inferential distance. This alllows him to cover more material per post. This is a pretty common trope among blogs, including this one. But it can be confusing.

I tend to just ride the wave of confusion until something later clarifies it, but that makes skimming nearly impossible. I like styles that make me read every word as important as it helps me remember what I'm reading.

Living in Tagbilaran on Bohol right now. If you can find other interested parties I might be able to make it to Manila.

See a priori, No Universally Compelling Arguments.

Users always have an idea that what they want is easy, even if they can't really articulate exactly what they do want. Even if they can give you requirements, chances are those will conflict – often in subtle ways – with requirements of others. A lot of the time, we wouldn't even think of these problems as "requirements" – they're just things that everyone expects to work in "the obvious way". The trouble is that humanity has come up with all kinds of entirely different "obvious ways" of doing things. Mankind's model of the universe is a surprisingly complicated one.

Jon Skeet

The forty twoth virtue of rationality is "Let me not become attached to sex I may not want"

I am running on corrupted the set of all possible fetishes.

Someone awsome on here recommended Learn Python the Hard Way. I've had school off since Tuesday and I've been kicking it's ass since. It's really fun. I thought it'd be neat to test out what my abilities are like on Project Euclid.

I've solved three so far. I'm particularly proud of coming up with a program to do the Fibonacci sequence. It's a simple program, and probably not as efficient as it could be, but i didn't look at any spoilers and feel like a diabolical genius after having solved it.

Of course, but you don't get surprised when we turn out to be a bunch of apes after all.

Of course. But it destroys excuses, which I've found to be the best motivation for action, both in myself and others

I suspect the denial doesn't come so much from "determined to do things despite consent" as much as "determined to preserve one's own self esteem." But it comes off creepy anyway.

They're totally applying it inconsistently. But they don't know that. Hence, the social ineptitude.

The point of my post was: you may have swung rather wide of mine.

I mean, women almost never react to being creeped out with an unambiguous response that makes a socially inept person know what's going on with no room for denial.

I really wished they did, but I can understand why they don't.

I didn't say that. You can do what you want. But if someone made you feel uncomfortable, you already feel uncomfortable. Should they not have made you feel uncomfortable? Yes. Is it fair? No.

What are you going to do about it? That's the only question you get to answer.

I, for one, have read these. They come up any time feminism rubs up against male geekdom, like blisters. Hopefully they do some help, but change is hard, and that's just how social skills are: they're skills, and acquiring them is and requires serious change on your part as a person.

This is obfuscated by other things, like hey, sometimes it is the other person's problem. Not all the time. Maybe even only rarely. But sometimes. And the temptation to make that excuse for yourself is very strong, even if you do know better.

The defensiveness isn't a good thing... (read more)

If you're dealing with a person with a person with poor social skills, the onus is already on you. You can try to help, or you can run away, or do a hundred other things, but you are already dealing with it.

I'd just like to suggest that using subtle social cues on the socially inept might not be terribly effective for accomplishing desired social outcomes with that person.

They totally told me I was doing things wrong. All the time. It's just they were doing so in a code I didn't understand and expecting me to operate by rules I wasn't told about. If a woman did something like this seven years ago, (And, while the same thing didn't happen, a lot of the subtler cues did.), I would have done the same things the man did. I was never, ever told, "Hey man, you're being creepy. Cut it out." I wouldn't have known what to do, and I would have done the exact wrong thing.

I wouldn't do it now. I'm roughly as good of a person as I was then, I just understand the rules better.

So, my social skills are not great. Aren't even really good. But over the last few years, I've gotten so much better from where I was that it's ridiculous.

Anyway, I wish people, particularly women, had been that open with me about my behavior.

Let me be clear: the scenario you present almost never happens. Now, if it does happens, yes, the creep involved has no excuse but to stop. But the signals people, and particularly woman, give off can be much more obscure if you don't know what you're doing.

Like jury duty. Yeah. Why would it be different in Greece?

I think this is it:

http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/aba1.html

Which culture?

I don't get it either. Seems to happen every time politics is brought up. My own posts in this thread have gone up and down several times. Reflexive down voting over politics I can understand, even if I think it's silly.

The up votes are actually harder to explain. It's possible I could have educated some one, but given the people who post here, that seems doubtful.

I thought the point was clear. Apparently, I was wrong.

If you found it was rude, it's because I found the point silly, obvious, and really not worth the time. And here I find shortcuts make long delays.

I didn't mean literally don't complain ever, that's silly and I never said that. There is a certain extent to which I think that if you have immediate control over something you should just shut up and do, but that wasn't what I meant either.

All employment is comodification of human time, and therefore objectification of human beings. Part of living in the real world is making peace with that. The fact that people want to single out porn is silliness. That's what I meant. Is this really what this whole conversation has been about?

You could always head out into the woods and farm. Or beg. Or steal. Or kill yourself. I didn't say you liked the job. I said you like the job enough. If the job didn't exist, you'd be worse off.

At this point, you're comparing two different versions of society, a society (A) where the job exists and a society (B) where the job doesn't exist.

Yes.

But at this point, you're comparing two different choices for an individual within the same society (A), choosing to have the particular job (choice A1) or quitting (choice A2).

Yes.

Those are two different questions. E.g. imagine that the porn industry didn't exist at all, for some magic reason. Wouldn't the customer money financing it go to some other form of entertainment or product? What makes y

I'm comparing the job to the job not existing. Not to no job at all for an individual. We'd all prefer a better job for ourselves, and if we aren't jerks, we'd prefer better jobs for others too. Until the robots replace all the shitty jobs and all forms of scarcity vanish I don't see the point.

There are so many jobs on the labor market. If you have a job, then you must at least think it is better than the alternatives. How is this controversial?

I'm not sure if I'd go all the way to good. Only an improvement over nothing, given that you stay in the job. If you dislike the job enough to either not take it or quit, then it wasn't.

If there are a lot of people competing for a job, assuming they actually want the job and aren't tricked by magic fairies, they must at least believe the job is going to be and improvement over their current employment.

Ah. I thought you were implying something more like "40ish hours a week" of work.

I don't know how that changes my point. You like the job enough to keep working, therefore it is an improvement of your life. Conceivably, a solution could be better social welfare or better regulation of the industry, but if the job didn't exist, (as I assume would be the ideal state for an anti porn feminist) that takes away something that was improving their life.

I happen to live somewhere where wages are terrible, there isn't much of a safety net outside your ow... (read more)

No, just imperfectly rational ones. Are you suggesting they were tricked into the job somehow?

Really? Cause it seems like it'd be more valid to me. You could take a part time or second full time job, take a hobby that produces goods (gardening, carpentry, etc.), and if you have full employment this implies you do not need secondary non full employment to survive.

EDIT: Oh, I've been there. I would have wished I could get a job in porn too. Or at McDonalds. Or anywhere. Again, if you take the job, you at least perceive it is an improvement over not taking the job. Right? Or am I crazy?

Are we talking about a separate world here, where the only form of employment is porn? If it was that unpleasant with lousy pay the job wouldn't be that competitive: they'd be doing something else.

They weren't sold into slavery. If you don't like a job, hold out for something you like more. If there's no such job, and you don't step out of the labor market, you don't not like the job enough to complain: it really is an improvement on your life. Or, demand more money to make up for the amount you dislike your job. This seems to be what happened in porn.

There are so many worse problems in porn as a job than the fact that people might not feel artistically fulfilled in their job. Porn can be a really unpleasant job for women, especially if you are wo... (read more)

No. I just told you. Sometimes a disproportionate response encourages other people to hurt you. That's actually part of the rule.