Less Wrong, Before posting this, I debated myself as follows: "Should I create a new username?" Motivations (normal): I have not posted here in a long time. There are honest, good reasons to start on an interesting forum with a "clean slate." One reason is that I have changed so...
LessWrong has been having fun lately with posts about sexism, racism, and academic openness. And here just like everywhere else, somebody inevitably claims taboo status for any number of entirely obvious truths, e.g. "top level mathematicians and physicists are almost invariably male," "black people have lower IQ scores than white...
Now that I have said this, I am not allowed to say other things.
"My rights begin where others end."
That is a theory. It has implications. I will go to private messaging. I believe that you are decent.
It is my most important theorem.
Grounding is a good word.
Like "Grundlagen..."
Jesse Parrish. 109 Stanley Ave. Maryville, TN. Mathematics dropout. Blue collar worker. I worked for airlines. I did everything right. I put in my notice months ago.
(Continuation - a concept I did not "appreciate", in a format I never "needed" until "just now.")
That's why I overheard it. The wise man, who never taught me, accidentally said this, before I ever heard of Bayesianism. One of the wise man's friends knew Bayesianism - not as it is practiced here - though he knew the differences... Why am I confident, when he had never heard of less wrong... What did the other wise man do to describe the field to an interested novice, who ended up being a typical dumb young kid, and disappointing him.. He said a word that I didn't know then, and I looked... (read more)
"Unfortunately I don't know enough about you to put my finger on something and it's harder over text without real time feedback."
It is impossible, and absurd, to show up listing all of one's implicit motivations. This is why I could never write anything before. It somehow never "felt complete." It never, "felt entire." My problem, was that I could not "trust people" enough to "give adequate credit" to their expertise. I agreed with this, but I did not understand it, sufficiently. I wrote it down, I made predictions, and I tested them, and what I found was... "deep understanding." I do not reread Less Wrong... (read 1455 more words →)
This is an example of a good answer. The author has a better chance of seeing where I am than I do. I have suddenly found a strange deference to the concept of expertise. I see them everywhere. But I cannot use them, if I do not at least risk looking like an idiot. I must accept that I look like an idiot, in order to be a rationalist. "If something is true, I want to believe it is true." This is a very important virtue, and the fact that it was phrased as a litany, when I only thought in "equivalents" and "difficulty level..."... (read 933 more words →)
Less Wrong,
Before posting this, I debated myself as follows:
"Should I create a new username?"
Motivations (normal): I have not posted here in a long time. There are honest, good reasons to start on an interesting forum with a "clean slate." One reason is that I have changed so many of my opinions since I last posted. This is not a big deal. I am recently 25.
Motivations (abnormal): OH MY GOD SOCIETY ANXIETY NEW SITUATION AAHHHHHHH.
Motivations (selfish): Less Wrong is full of experts whose internet names I keep coincidentally running into...
A pleasant surprise: Absolutely everybody I've been speaking with lately is entirely surprised that I had social anxiety all along.
My therapy: honesty. Weaknesses of honesty: obvious. ... (read 843 more words →)
Just muse.
Except that doesn't necessarily reflect anything real besides the details of the culture in question.
Except [supporting lowering the age of consent under some circumstances] doesn't necessarily reflect anything [real] besides [culture], [like witchcraft!] Word salad. What you could have said is, "I was mistaken, as I could not have predicted that," or, "I was correct, because lowering the age of consent is a really popular right now."
And yes, having something happen to you that does not cause physical damage or mental distress (because you don't know it happened) can reasonably be categorized as not containing "harm", although obviously there are different possible definitions of the word "harm".
I think people... (read 376 more words →)
This particular slogan was selected for usefulness. It retains it's meaning when considered as a question solely in the current context.
When I try to believe that, I become confused. I've found in this and other threads that my being reminded of rationalist truisms correlates with something other than a failure of rationality.
Sure. All I have to do is check what the culture you live in condemns.
Right, which is why you'd be able to guess that I support lowering the age of consent under certain circumstances and relaxing penalties in others. You have a bad discriminant. You are weak at something you shouldn't be.
... (read more)As I have indicated before, I consider
What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
I wish we could get past slogans.
Ok, we're trying to determine whether or not "meaningful consent is meaningful". A question: could you guess with high reliability what situations I think constitute meaningful consent or not?
A scenario: suppose I slip a girl a roofie, slip her into my car, take her home, and fuck her. Then I sneak her back into the party.
Was my crime "slipping a girl a drug", or was my crime "that and rape"?
the sort of thing people picture when you say "rape"
Which in my experience people picture extremely inaccurately. They picture girls getting grabbed off a park sidewalk by a ravenous stranger. That's a very atypical case. Outside of prison, rape is typically perpetuated by friends and lovers and dates. This is unsurprising given pure opportunity, just as it's unsurprising that children are typically victimized by families and trusted friends of their families, not by strangers with candy.
Requiring rape to be "violent" is to require that most extra-penal rape be reclassified as not-rape. There is usually the implicit threat of violence, and the (typically) women in such circumstances are... (read more)
LessWrong has been having fun lately with posts about sexism, racism, and academic openness. And here just like everywhere else, somebody inevitably claims taboo status for any number of entirely obvious truths, e.g. "top level mathematicians and physicists are almost invariably male," "black people have lower IQ scores than white people," and "black people are statistically more criminal than whites." In my experience, these are not actually taboo, and I think my experience is generalizable. I'll illustrate.
You're at a bar and you meet a fellow named Bill. Bill's a nice guy, but somehow the conversation strayed Hitler-game style to World War II. Bill thinks the war was avoidable. Bill thinks the Holocaust... (read 608 more words →)
And I can say, also honestly, that everybody I worked with is really, really impressive. It is hard to work in a highly regulated private industry.
So, when I say "ask me anything," I can promise: you are safe in the hands of my friends.