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All of trimeta's Comments + Replies

What I Tell You Three Times Is True
trimeta10

While I'm sympathetic to the idea that "you are likely to begin believing things you say to yourself frequently, and furthermore you are likely to act in ways to make these beliefs come true," I'm not sure I'd use Scott Adams as the prototypical purveyor of this idea. He is known to have beliefs difficult to characterize as "rational," notably a belief in intelligent design creationism. The Wikipedia also cites him as being a hypnotist and a vegan; these are not inherently irrational, but I don't have further sources to analyze Adam's specific perspective on these issues.

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0Mike Bishop
Some of the smartest and most epistemically rational people I know are vegan. They simply do not want to support what they consider the unnecessary cruelty to animals involved in modern food production.
4Scott Alexander
The intelligent design issue is complex, but he's said outright that he doesn't believe in it. I think his position is something like "Most people who believe evolution are not smart enough to understand it, and would be better off believing intelligent design since it makes more sense on a naive level. Most believers in evolution who are not biologists are making the 'science as belief-attire' type mistake." It's been a while since I read about that particular flame war, so I might be mistaken, but I do remember he specifically said that with extremely high probability ID was wrong. Hypnotism has been shown to work in studies by the AMA, BMJ, and every other group of medical experts who have investigated the question, and he's a vegetarian, not a vegan - and so am I, so you're going to have trouble convincing me that's a strike against him. Though if you want to write a post about it, I'd be interested in hearing your arguments against.
Proposal: Use the Wiki for Concepts
trimeta20

As a person who's completely obsessed with the TV Tropes wiki (and has only just recently started to peruse this site), I applaud any efforts to apply that model to furthering the cause of rationality. One problem I foresee, however, is hinted at with your comment that "the trope explanation itself will be a short bite of joy" and that this promotes opening up new tabs to acquire said bite of joy. If you're trying to compare the postings themselves to the trope descriptions and the comment threads to the references, the analogy breaks down due to... (read more)

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1Eliezer Yudkowsky
The idea is that the wiki summary provides the short bite of joy. The blog post linked is a long bite of joy, analogous to the references and lists in TV Tropes. The comment thread... has no real analogue, it's a whole different sort of time sink. :)
0[anonymous]
The idea is that the wiki summary provides the short bite of joy. The blog post linked is a long bite of joy, analogous to the references and lists in TV Tropes. The comment thread... has no real analogue, it's a whole different sort of time sink. :)
1thomblake
This is a good point. One of the features of TVTropes (helped by its wiki format) is that you can get a short explanation of any linked concept right at the top of the page. This is a good argument for why the wiki is what one should link to first, instead of the post explaining it on LW. Should wiki articles start with a short, definition-like summary? ETA: I agree with Vladimir_Nesov below. Abstracts are key.
6newerspeak
You should try the tree-style tabs Firefox extension, which makes it practical to manipulate browser windows with 50-100 open tabs at a time. It takes about a day of getting used to, after which time you'll wonder how you got along without it. Thinking about it now, I realize that TVTropes was the website that convinced me I needed that functionality.
2MBlume
You should've seen my browser windows when I first discovered OB a year and a half ago.