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21d10

This post surely cannot be complete without a mention of the Soviet petrol-powered rocket boots.

4mo10

If it is of interest, I carried out a highly informal reddit survey on the birthrate in the context of Scotland's TFR being below that of Japan (with a summary here).

A common reason for not having children was the cost in terms of health, time, stress, freedom to travel, plan holidays, and move house. These are mostly invariant with income (unless you can afford a full-time nanny) and are the natural product of "good parenting" norms/obligations.

(which, it should be noted, are often reasonable: I think being a good parent does require spending ... (read more)

Sherlockian Abduction Master List

SeñorDingDong

9mo30

This is fun (although endless, especially if we include things related to deliberate/semi-deliberate signalling), here are a few:

(1) Hobby-related examples. Callouses on the palm in the spot where fingers connect to hand (e.g. like weightlifting callouses) , and on the thumb (on the side facing towards the other fingers), is quite commonly due to rowing. E.g., the friction of the oar rotating around the fingers and thumb holding it. Crooked nose sometimes indicates repeated breaking - high contact sports or plain fighting most common. From experience... (read more)

1Cole Wyeth5mo

I haven't been able to verify that protestants don't wear a cross on a chain - it seems like they prefer an empty cross to the more catholic-coded crucifix, but this doesn't seem to be what you meant?

2Cole Wyeth9mo

Thanks for all the suggestions - it will take some time to research and integrate them! The task is effectively endless, there's a tradeoff curve between time and insight -> agency increases. I think that (particularly if a well-curated list of reliable rules is available) the average person should spend a few hours studying these matters a couple of times a decade to increase their agency. That means the list could still usefully be a little longer. The task of constructing and curating the list in the first place is more time consuming, which means I should be expected to spend more time than is strictly useful on it. In terms of clothing, I included some well-established status symbols that seem to have staying power and linked to further resources for people who are interested - but I don't recommend obsessively following the fashion cycle. You're probably right about the side-note, though it seems hard to disentangle.

On green

SeñorDingDong

1y23

A sensible point, though dating yin to the advent of 'modern civilization' is too extreme. The 'spiritual' or 'yin-like' aspects of green have a long history pre-dating modern civilization.

The level of material security required before one can 'indulge in yin' is probably extremely low (though of course strongly dependent on local environmental conditions).

1xpym1y

Right, the modern civilization point is more about the "green" archetype. The "yin" thing is of course much more ancient and subtle, but even so I doubt that it (and philosophy in general) was a major consideration before the advent of agriculture leading to greater stability, especially for the higher classes.

Win Friends and Influence People Ch. 2: The Bombshell

SeñorDingDong

1y20

Under this definition of 'manipulation', telling someone about a new brand of toothpaste is manipulation, which suggests to me that this framing is overly broad.

The question is whether you believe in any form of personal autonomy, such that a person can be responsible for their own internal changes, even if stimulated by someone or something else. Day to day life suggests this is a useful concept, and that there is a meaningful distinction between being lied to and being given true information, just as there is between coercive-control and sad movies... (read more)

1Anders Lindström1y

SeñorDingDong, thank you for your thoughts on this. Let's assume that a human is a biological system with various levers and buttons and that every human action is goal oriented, no matter how small of an action. In the interaction of two of these systems, both have a goal with the interaction (no matter how small or insignificant). Both systems knows that the other system has levers and buttons that can change that system into complying with each systems goal. A Is it then unreasonable to frame this and all other interactions between these two systems as attempts to manipulate the other system to achieve a specific goal? Example. System A see System B in a nightclub. A think that B is a rather sassy system and wants its attention. A walk past B and try to get eye contact by looking intently at B. A knows (thinks) that staring is a lever to pull or a button to push to turn B’s head and get B’s attention. B notice A gaze and eye contact is established. A’s goal is achieved and done so by manipulating B’s system ever so slightly. Now, as you pointed out, we do not maybe know for sure what cause a specific reaction but that does not mean that we do not want to achieve a specific reaction with our actions. The case of telling someone of a new toothpaste brand is no less of a manipulation attempt then a scammer trying to get someone to give them money under some false pretenses i.e. there is a goal and words are the means to achieve it. What is true or not does not matter. Say that you want to be nice to your friends when talking about the brand new super good toothpaste they should try. Then your goal is to feel good about yourself and the means to achieve this is to use words (I assume it will not be under gun point, but that is another mean to achieve the same outcome) to manipulate your friends’ system into going to the supermarket and buying and trying that new toothpaste. Would you mind explain more about what you mean with: “Day to day life suggests this

An even deeper atheism

SeñorDingDong

1y10

Like: what happens if you read a book, or watch a documentary, or fall in love, or get some kind of indigestion – and then your heart is never exactly the same ever again, and not because of Reason, and then the only possible vector of non-trivial long-term value in this bleak and godless lightcone has been snuffed out?!

I'm finding it hard to parse this, perhaps someone can clarify for me. At first I assumed this was a problem inherent in the 'naturalist' view Scott Alexander gives:

"This is only a problem for ethical subjectivists like myself,

... (read more)

1RogerDearnaley1y

My personal view on how to work with ethics as described in ethical philosophy terminology is basically a moral anti-realist version of ethical naturalism: I think the constraints of things like evolutionary psychology and sociology give us a lot of guidelines, in the context of a specific species (humans), society, and set of technological capabilities, so I'm a moral relativist, and that designing an ethical system that suits these guidelines well is exacting work. I just don't think that they're sufficient to uniquely define a single answer, so I don't agree with the common moral-realist formulation of ethical naturalism. Perhaps I should start calling myself a moral semi-realist, and see how many philosophers I can confuse?

Gentleness and the artificial Other

SeñorDingDong

1y4-2

The section on bears reminded me of a short story by Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) called 'The Bears of Namotoko.' Here's an internet archive translation with illustrations. To give a quick summary:

Kojuro is a lone hunter who travels through the mountains of Namotoko with his dog, hunting bears for their gall bladders and pelts. Kojuro does not hate the bears. He regrets the circumstances which force him to be a hunter, "If it is fate which caused you to be born as a bear, then it is the same fate that made me make a living as a hunter." The bears thems

SeñorDingDong

2y40

Does your argument also apply to physical sports? If not, what makes table tennis different from monopoly?

"Did you lock it?"

SeñorDingDong

2y10

I think your analogy gestures at something useful but needs expansion. The 'roofie detector gadget' example could be reframed in a way which disempowers - eg, 'it's your fault for not using this gadget', or 'well you really ought to have used this gadget', etc.

This suggests to me subject matter of the advice is less important than its underlying motive or attitude. I think advice will generally be disempowering if it presupposes the level of risk a person can acceptably run. Contrast the following: 'well, you were wearing revealing clothes' versus 'y... (read more)

2Said Achmiz2y

If you add blame to the advice, then of course you change the impact—because you’ve added something that wasn’t there before. “If you do X, Y will result” is simply not the same thing as “you are at fault for not doing X”. This isn’t a reframing, it’s simply a different claim. The substance of advice is important if you’re trying to accomplish some goal (i.e., improve your outcomes somehow). The motive for advice-giving is important for interpreting advice (i.e., determining whether it’s likely to actually be useful), but is screened off by the judgment of usefulness. As for “attitude”, it may be “important” in the sense of affecting interpersonal relations, but as far as the utility of advice goes, attitude is irrelevant. The recipient can make their own decision about risk no matter how someone else phrases advice to them. I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re getting at, here. No doubt (especially if the incident in question is as traumatic as rape). But who here is suggesting that “immediately after the incident” is a good time for advice-giving of any sort? This seems like a red herring. However, there does at some point come a time when advice is warranted. At some point, one must continue living one’s life. And then one must make various choices; and it is possible to choose well (and reduce one’s chances of repeated victimization), or to choose poorly (and maintain or even increase those chances). Advice, at this point, is appropriate. In short, when we’re discussing “what advice is appropriate”, we are presupposing that we’ve chosen the timing properly. Having assumed this, the question of what advice we should give does still remain. I don’t deny it, mostly because there’s hardly anything here to deny… what is contained in these two paragraphs except platitudes and generalities?

LESSWRONG
LW

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