All of iridium's Comments + Replies

It would definitely be a bunch of work, since a bunch of libraries we use also use cookies. If there is a strong argument for the benefit, I would definitely consider it.

They don't see it as "misleading". They are teaching you the socially approved reaction to a stimulus (but they obviously wouldn't use these words), which is exactly what a good ally in their world is supposed to do. Unfortunately, such precious gifts are wasted on nerds, who try to translate them into maps of territory instead of memorizing and repeating them as a part of social performance. From their point of view, they are cooperating with you... it's just that they play a completely different game. I have a few friends among normies, but I usually don't go to them asking for advice about the real world (unless they happen to be domain experts at something). Normies can be a wonderful source of warm emotions; that's what their world is mostly about. Any factual statement needs to be triple checked (without telling them about it), though. Note that I am not dismissing friendship with normies here. Warm emotions are important. And so is domain expertise, because I can't always go and ask a fellow rationalist about some obscure detail (also, nerds are prone to overconfidence at domains they lack expertise in; no, you can't replace tons of data with mere high IQ). But trying to bring normies on your travel at exploring the real world is an exercise in frustration.

>while if you're a normal person reading this (haha, jk), you might think I'm awful hard on nerds (how can you say such mean things as that they don't care what others think and are incapable of properly expressing themselves?) Testing this sounds worth doing. Intuitively, I think it's false. Caring too much about what other people think is in general a low status thing, while caring about the truth is a high status thing (if not particularly important).

Hi! I'm a nerd in many respects but I am enough of a normal person to have noticed a sense of offense while reading this. Perhaps I am an unrepresentative sample: I was offended because I want to believe that I am engaging in real thought, and that I have a map of the world that I refer to when constructing my answers, but I suspect that secretly I am just a button-presser when you get right down to it. I did feel pretty dehumanized, actually. I actually feel as though I am not able to adequately participate in either form of communication, the nerd or the normal. This may be the result of inadequate social training teaming up with inadequate intellectual rigor. But because I cannot do "nerd" well enough, that (to my subconscious) must mean I am "normal" and hence inferior.

Have you ever heard someone say "Don't you trust me?" And maybe you think "What's that supposed to mean? I basically trust you to act like you've acted in the past; in your case, that means I expect you to display behaviors X and Y with great consistency, and behavior Z with moderate consistency..." I've done that a lot. "I trust you to do XYZ," I would say. But...even at the time, I had a nagging feeling that this wasn't really what they meant. This is what I (and other nerds) mean by trust, not what they mean. What they mean by "trust," is roughly, an expectation that someone will model their own interests with pretty good accuracy and generally work to fulfill them. They will act as an agent seeking their fully general benefit. So, "don't you trust me?" is basically asking "don't you think I more or less know what you want and will avoid hurting you, and also will help you as it is convenient, or sometimes even inconvenient for me to do so?" They think of trust differently, and in their sense of the word, they can be perfectly trustworthy even while displaying the political behaviors that would make them, for example, poor scientists. Now, you've probably always felt as I did that this question is never asked except the expected answer by "yes." I have a sense that there is some significance here, probably revolving around the idea that any answer other than "yes" is an insult, for which you will be in their debt, while getting that "yes" is a way of getting your commitment, and thus, your complicance...but I have a definite sense that I don't quite understand this completely yet. At the same time, I think I see why my old "Well, I trust you to do XYZ" actually worked pretty well for me, even if it was by accident, out of obliviousness. It's not insulting at all, but it does get me out of committing to follow their lead generally, and thus, in the specific instance that they're probably trying to get me to help them out with.

It's dehumanizing according to nerd standards, but, then again, we're familiar with the kind of social status afforded nerds. Which I don't mean in a "we can hit them 'cuz they hit us" sense, but merely to say that they don't think it's dehumanizing to think their way. Normal people are the majority after all, the ones who are political through and through are both the mob and its leaders, whereas nerds tend to be political only about...most things? A lot of things? Even if they're not political for humans, they're still quite political. Rationalists are nerdier than nerds, in this sense, since they try to take the nerd mindset into everything, essentially undoing their political instincts (politics is the mind-killer?). Does that make them more or less human? Well, I remember how political I used to get. I feel like I've improved; I feel that undoing my political instincts and overwriting them with cold nerd reason has been good, so, according to these standards, normal people who have even more political drive than I ever did are indeed worse off. At the same time, nerds are often called cold and...inhuman, aren't they. Which is more human, nerdiness or politics? Well, normal people think it's that political nature that defines them as humans. In a sense, they're right. Nerds are trying to do instrumentally what would be correct for any species. Truth and (non-social) power would work as well for aliens as humans, so you can't really say that nerdiness is an especially human quality, quite the opposite. Why, then, do I feel better having nerdified myself? Well, it may be less human, but I feel it's more alive, more aware, more powerful. It's only since I've become a stronger kind of nerd that I've become powerful enough to understand why nerds have the disadvantages they do, how they come about, and (I'm working on it), how to overcome them and give nerds the best of both worlds. Learning this required becoming more nerdy, not less. Ironically, t

We have at least one person who was part of Caltech culture for a while, so that is probably where we got it.