(I'm hoping the post is not intended to apply its anti-feedback rules to itself, it would be nice for this point to be clarified... Downvoted to express disapproval of disabling of feedback, and to a lesser extent of discussing the post's subject matter.)
Edit: I hereby declare this subthread a special meta-discussion exception to which the anti-feedback rules don't apply :-)
I watched about a quarter of the first episode before I had to stop. I find awkwardness- and embarrassment-based comedy deeply uncomfortable, and the show relied too heavily on that.
Rumor has it that Abed of Community is a better geek/autie character but I've watched scarcely more of that; this is just what I've heard said from fandom.
From reading things like Reddit, I've learned that karma is useful however casual or whatever your conversation is. I don't care if you want to have an off-topic casual conversation section, but being against karma is dumb
The show overall strikes me as one with good dialogue but bad characterisation and plotting, mainly because they are manipulated to serve the cause of whatever joke is in the moment.
Playing the game treating the characters as real people: They all have severe emotional problems and need professional therapy. Canonically Raj can't talk to half the human race without alcohol (though apparently this is psyhosomatic) stemming from some weird family issues, Leonard and Penny both have serious self esteem and relationship issues stemming from their parents. She...
BBT is a lousy show and it fails to depict high-intelligence nerds accurately. I think this is because of the common misconception that all nerds are smart. In reality, nerds seem to have about the same distribution of intelligence as non-nerd people.
The misconception that nerds are especially smart makes people miss the distinction between high intelligence and average intelligence nerds. Average intelligence nerds are much more common, and they really do tend to obsess over childish content like comic books, so that has been the general impression of n...
The apex of this is represented by Dr. Sheldon Cooper, who is, essentially, a complete fundamentalist over every single thing in his life; he applies this attitude to everything, right down to people's favorite flavor of pudding: Raj is "axiomatically wrong" to prefer tapioca, because the best pudding is chocolate.
I have only watched a handful of episodes, at the behest of my Chinese friends. (I had never heard of it before they introduced it to me. Apparently, a large number of Chinese people watch it.)
its characters are excellent examples of high intelligence hampered by immense irrationality
Throw in emotional suppression and lip service to rationality, and you have a recipe for Hollywood rationality.
I think the show is decent, but Sheldon's character just isn't funny. If they put less focus on him, I'd probably watch it more.
Basically: Sitcom comedy, because of its insular nature, requires most of the problems to be caused by the characters on the show. People who are rational/smart tend to cause few problems for themselves and their friends. This means that the characters while ostensibly intelligent need to functionally be a lot less clever than they are purported to be. This is why "smart" characters work somewhat better in things like Sherlock or House (though House still has the problem of the difference between how he uses his intellect on outsiders and how he uses it in his own life, for much the same reasons)
Forgive me (I haven't watched the show), but isn't it a sitcom? There are obvious reasons for real people to want to make themselves more rational... not so much for screenwriters to want to make their characters more rational. Comedies are neither about showcasing characters to serve as models for good thinking, nor about making the characters win more, or spreading the message that they won because of their rationality; they're about making people laugh.
As I understand the show, its humor relies on scientific / "nerdy" mindsets, habits and quir...
One thing that worries me is whether the downvotes are disapproving to the topic, or to myself as a person?.
It seems very unlikely to me that a language as well-known as Japanese or Arabic has no such thing as irony and these guys somehow missed that. How confident you are that if you had heard it in Japanese or Arabic you would have noticed and remember that?
"These guys" took care to clarify what they meant by "irony" and "sarcasm", these terms not being equivalent. If you backtrack and explore the branches of this discussion, you'll see that their definitions are not equivalent to those I've used. They're practically opposite.
As for sarcasm, [snip]I'll take it here to mean "A sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter gibe or taunt"
This is, indeed, in my experience, universal. Though I call it "snark".
...For the purposes of this discussion,
Hi, Welcome to the first Non-Karmic-Casual-Discussion-Thread.
This is a place for [purpose of thread goes here].
In order to create a causal non karmic environment for every one we ask that you
-Do not upvote or downvote any zero karma posts
-If you see a vote with positive karma, downvote it towards zero, even if it’s a good post
-If you see a vote with negative karma, upvote it towards zero, even if it’s a weak post
-Please be polite and respectful to other users
-Have fun!”
This is my first attempt at starting a casual conversation on LW where people don't have to worry about winning or losing points, and can just relax and have social fun together.
So, Big Bang Theory. That series got me wondering. It seems to be about "geeks", and not the basement-dwelling variety either; they're highly successful and accomplished professionals, each in their own field. One of them has been an astronaut, even. And yet, everything they ever accomplish amounts to absolutely nothing in terms of social recognition or even in terms of personal happiness. And the thing is, it doesn't even get better for their "normal" counterparts, who are just as miserable and petty.
Consider, then; how would being rationalists would affect the characters on this show? The writing of the show relies a lot on laughing at people rather than with them; would rationalist characters subvert that? And how would that rationalist outlook express itself given their personalities? (After all, notice how amazingly different from each other Yudkowsky, Hanson, and Alicorn are, just to name a few; they emphasize rather different things, and take different approaches to both truth-testing and problem-solving).
Note: this discussion does not need to be about rationalism. It can be a casual, normal discussion about the series. Relax and enjoy yourselves.
But the reason I brought up that series is that its characters are excellent examples of high intelligence hampered by immense irrationality. The apex of this is represented by Dr. Sheldon Cooper, who is, essentially, a complete fundamentalist over every single thing in his life; he applies this attitude to everything, right down to people's favorite flavor of pudding: Raj is "axiomatically wrong" to prefer tapioca, because the best pudding is chocolate. Period. This attitude makes him a far, far worse scientist than he thinks, as he refuses to even consider any criticism of his methods or results.