A few others
Also I think there are various stories and depictions where death is not a character but makes an appearance in some way, maybe purely symbolic, and seems to be evil or to enjoy humans dying. I am sure I have seen many depictions of laughing death as a metaphor of scenes of carnage (the first that comes to mind is a double page in the Darkmoon Chronicles where the burning of cities is illustrated with a laughing/smiling reaper).
So perhaps we could say that when Death is made a real character in stories it is more often than not a "kind hardworking man with a job to do"; but at the same time most depictions of the reaper are not characters but rather use a simple portrayal as a metaphor for evil and slaughter. Somewhat in the spirit of this famous image
If this is correct I think we can see where the friend in the post was coming from
“It’s nice to see a portrayal of Death that doesn’t paint him as some mindless villain, and actually gives him some characterization.”
I second that getting an AI to agree with your ideas proves very little. Also, it is somewhat intuitive to me that academia would always be suffering from various affective death spiral dynamics. You seem to have a specific one in mind, but I am not sure what it is or how it relates to the post.
I am not sure if there were recent changes to the pages, but:
I don't see an instance of the phrase "We suggest submitting links with a short description." on the "About" page.
The "About" page links to the new users guide which is probably what you were looking for, even if that's not quite a charter. Apologies if you already read it.
Granted I see no clear indication on that page that debates are welcome in the comments of all posts (and indeed I think there are some rare exceptions). But it does list a few things about "conversations" on the site, for example "we try to focus on what would change our minds".
I quite like some of your ideas about how to design note-taking software and I think I have a partial answer to the issues you point to:
I sent you a DM to talk more about this.
Like (most?) other answers I can provide my own preferences as a mid-20 heterosexual man. So at least you get many datapoints.
The things most important to being someone I would want to have a long term relationship with are
Physical attraction is not exactly the same thing as looks because looks also on an impact on the other factors and on how I estimate them. For example the way you dress might look good in my eyes but be a bad thing overall because it would be low status for me to introduce you to friends/family/colleagues.
I would say physical attraction is overall overhyped. You need to be above a certain level and if I don't find you physically attractive at all there is little you can do to make up for it. But once a certain threshold is met you reach sharp diminishing returns.
Many things go in being a positive influence on my life. This includes having strength that go well with my profile and goals, for some characteristics this means sharing the same strengths as mine (if you and I both communicate well in the same fashion it can be great), for others this means having strengths that that help with my weaknesses (for example being good at handling situations I struggle with). Also we need to have compatible ideas regarding our life paths (children, where to live, ...)
Being of enjoyable company is mostly about how we vibe. In this what matters is very much the end results: am I happy when we are together. Sex is a big part of it but not the majority.
Overall the best way to convince me you will have these positive influences on me in the future is to have them in the present (if you already help with some problems I have, I am likely to think you will help with other problems in the future). Likewise for being good for my status and especially being enjoyable to spend time with.
Lastly, I wrote above about the kind of profile I would likely want to be with, plenty into your framing of "market value". But another big aspect of what relationships do end up happening is who we flirt with/date. A woman could be perfect for me and I for her but we won't end up together if we don't learn about eachother at some point and decide to try building a relationship. In this I believe the important things are:
If I have to turn all this into advice about how to behave to make men like me seriously consider a relationship with you
Small nitpick: "the if and only if" is false. It is perfectly possible to have an AI that doesn't want any moral rights and is misaligned in some other way.
I think you're right but I also think I can provide examples of "true" scaffolding skills:
This comment made me subscribe to your posts. I hope to read more on your attempts in the future! (no pressure)
I felt like I should share my uninformed two cents.
I think what I like the most is when there is a good summary story with the option to read more details on the parts that interest me, ideally with these complements forming their own coherent article. The structure this suggests is to have two posts:
One great advantage of this is that the first also serves as a primer on the second, making it easier to read it.
I can't think of an example of blogposts doing this, though I think there are some sequences on LW that follow this logic. But some books do this, with detailed chapters following high level summaries. "The mind illuminated" and "Against method" come to mind.