A few others
- Death from the Castlevania series is simply evil
- Death in Supernatural is debatable. He is made sympathetic at some point but in his first appearance he is about to destroy Chicago then changes his mind with the reason "I like the pizza".
- In the Thorgal series it is a complete asshole inventing new ways to put mortals close to being dead without being fully dead, for fun.
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:
- Make the repository of notes more semantic than usual, halfway between pure text notes and a structured database. If the notes exist in a graph database then it becomes possible to write database queries (probably with something like SPARQL).
- Allow the user to store queries within notes so the query is run whenever the note is opened. Maybe allow for a graph visualization of the query. This way the semantic structure becomes a part of the normal way to interact with the "hub" notes.
- The ontology used on a topic is defined by the structure of the links. If the user wants a new ontology they just create it on top of the old one and let the old one rot. No need to erase it and it does not distract from the new one (maybe there is some name reuse in the link/attribute names, but that's trivial to fix).
- Use LLMs to correctly annotate notes with the semantic information that populates the database (links, tags, some attributes, ...) This way they don't need taste to know how to edit, they just follow the pattern that comes with a given ontology. Perhaps this requires the user to create templates.
- Provide a good CLI (Command Line Interface) for the software. This way the user can write scripts to update their notes using any language. It becomes easy to apply the new ontology to the old notes, possibly fully automagically but most of the time there is probably a bit of manual work left afterward. That's fine.
- (unrelated to your post) let the GUI be a VScode extension so the user can use whatever other existing extension they like, this way there is no need to also design a good text editor.
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
- Positive influence on my life (compatible goals and desires, good at providing help I need, ...)
- Being of enjoyable company
- Being high status, or rather being someone who will have a good impact on my own status
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:
- Show you qualities (in my case, show you will have a positive influence/be enjoyable to be around/improve my status)
- Make it clear it is ok to pursue you, socially and in your own view (it won't bother you)
- Don't do it in a way that reduces your status. Making the first move is fine but it seems to me women who are too forward risk being seen as desperate / having some hidden flaw ("why can't you get men to chase you? What's wrong?").
If I have to turn all this into advice about how to behave to make men like me seriously consider a relationship with you
- Be good looking. If you are plain looking to begin with then being reasonably fit and dressing well is probably enough.
- Be kind and open to others.
- Display some great qualities (smart, disciplined, creative, empathy, ...)
- Be approachable
- Make me feel like I can help you in some way. This is both because it makes me think you are likely to like me and therefore it is worth trying to see if a relationship is possible; and because it is in some way deeply alluring to me and many other men to be helpful to women.
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:
- How to pass an exam: in order to keep learning with the academic system/university/school you need to regularly do good enough at exams. That is a skill in itself (read the exam in its entirety, know when to move on, learn how hard a question is likely to be depending on the phrasing of the following questions, ...) Almost everyone safely forget most of this skill once they are done studying.
- Learn to understand your teacher's feedback: many teachers, professional or otherwise, suck at communicating their feedback. You often need to develop a skill of understanding that specific individual's feedback. Of course there is a underlying universal skill of "being good at learning how individuals give feedback"; we could think of it as the skill "being good at building a specific kind of scaffolding".
- Learn to accept humiliating defeat: A martial artist friend told me it is important at first to learn to accept losing all the time because you learn in the company of strictly better martial artists. Once you get better, you presumably lose less often.
This comment made me subscribe to your posts. I hope to read more on your attempts in the future! (no pressure)
1I felt like I should share my uninformed two cents.
- Interpol seems like a promising lead, if you can get the right person at Interpol to understand the situation. I am not saying this is easy, but maybe you can get an email to be sent on your behalf on the right mailing lists (alumnis of some relevant school maybe?).
- Other comments suggested getting funding from EA and that sounds fitting to me. But there is probably someone in EA that can connect you with Interpol directly. Maybe you can request to send a broad email on top of requesting funding.
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.