DecaDeciHuman
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User ID: 3518
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
Language is an adaptive compression and error-correction algorithm on concepts over a lossy channel, give or take.
And indeed there is a lot of overlap between English and an entropy code with a preshared dictionary. (Not perfect by any means - English is complicated!) Pick a number of output symbols, pack your common concepts into short combinations of output symbols and your less common concepts into longer combinations of output symbols, and go from there.
Every input symbol in an entropy encoding has an optimum length of output symbol(s) based on the input symbol probabilities. Pick an output that is longer, and the encoding will be less efficient on average. But also: pick an output that is shorter, and the encoding will be less efficient on average too! This is because making the output encoding for that particular symbol shorter requires making the output encodings for other symbol(s) longer in a way that results in a less efficient encoding overall.
English's error correction and detection is largely in the form of sentence structure and (commonly) using only a relatively small portion of the potential space of all spoken syllables (or letters, in the case of written text. For instance, you were able to reed this sentence regardless of my typo, due to 'reed' being far less likely to refer to the plant in context than to a mis-spelling of 'read').
English speakers tend to adapt their language to channel capacity too, using simpler and more distinct words and concepts when e.g. in the presence of high amounts of background noise. Ditto, English speakers have a tendency to have a reasonable grasp of 'unusual' words, and when one is encountered will often slow down, repeat, or otherwise be careful about saying it as a hint of 'yes, this is in fact what I meant to say, not an inadvertent error'. (The fact that this overlaps substantially with 'unusual words tend to be practiced less' is very helpful here!)
You even have adaptive encoding. Jargon is precisely noting that a concept comes up a lot and so assigning a shorter nickname to it in context. Ditto things like short nicknames and first names versus full names. Use the short form when it is unambiguous in context, and otherwise use the longer (but unambiguous) version. Even pronouns are themselves just shorter references to a particular person (or set of people) when it can be inferred from context as opposed to repeatedly stated.
Now let's come back to names.
If you demand you must be referred to by, oh, the word 'and'. What have you done?
Well, first off you've just decreed that the preshared dictionary for everyone be updated to include you as a definition for the word 'and'. This is a minor cost for the benefit of one, in the classic salami-slicing fashion. At least it is a one-time cost (...it is a one-time cost, right?)
Second, you've just made the handshake process more annoying for everyone. Quick: what happens when I talk to someone who has not heard that you are to now be referred to as 'and'? Answer: confusion & wasted time. This is at least a cost paid no more than once per person (hopefully).
Third, you've make the 'standard' use of the word 'and' marginally more ambiguous. Again, this hurts everyone for the benefit of one, in the classic salami-slicing fashion.
Fourth, you've just decreed people must memorize said moniker in order to refer to you. Trivial in this case; decidedly non-trivial in others. Again, this hurts everyone for the benefit of one, in the classic salami-slicing fashion.
Finally - recall the above discussion re: adaptive encoding. You've decreed that there is no acceptable longer version, and as such you occupy a non-trivial portion of the space of the entire English language. In practice what happens is people ignore this and come up with increasingly convoluted workarounds. Because at the end of the day: you're probably that important to yourself. You may be that important to your closest friends (if so, you have good friends). Beyond that? You - statistically speaking with regards to the preshared dictionary that is English - are not that important. Or, more to the point: not everyone can be that important.
The same sort of thing occurs when a word has overlap with a concept that is used more frequently than your name.
And an analogous sort of thing even occurs when you pick a word that does not exist. Again: Shannon capacity. Adding a symbol does not magically break the channel capacity bound. It just makes the transmission slower, and communication overall - assuming that you are not used in context as often as the symbol length would imply - slower.
So, all of the above being said, if you're still pushing to change your moniker, what can you do?
- Pick something that matches typical English (language not location, speaking of ambiguity) norms. This meshes with the error correction & detection better, and causes less friction.
- Pick something that already matches the tag of . Again, this meshes with the error correction & detection better, and causes less friction.
- Pick something that is unambiguous enough that it does not slow down other unrelated communication. So: very short names are terrible, as are names that are close to other words (especially ones that would potentially make sense in context).
- Pick something that is simultaneously short & unsurprising enough that it is not a particular burden for others to remember, and long & surprising enough that it does not clash in the aforementioned ways. (There is a tension here!)
- Don't complain about people using the shortform moniker for other concepts. This reduces friction for people who aren't close to you.
- Have an unambiguous longform moniker, and allow people to use it when applicable. Again, this allows people to fall back to said longform when necessary.
- Be permissive about what you receive. Those that are closest to you are most likely to have reason to allocate an additional chunk of their concept space to you.
...and in the context of "use "comrade" instead in every occurrence [of a gendered pronoun]" (@IGI-111):
- This is a longer term, which hurts when talking about said person. There is a reason why 'I/my/me/he/she/him/her/his/hers/they/them/theirs' are all short: they are very common.
- This results in many repetitions of words - which are used in English's error detection & correction for other purposes. E.g. "he himself will bear the blame" -> "comrade comrade will bear the blame".
- This directly results in some ambiguity - English normally splits out e.g. they/them/theirs to help better-form surrounding sentence structure, which you lose by using 'comrade' for all three.
- This causes a clash with English's error detection & correction, due to resulting in sentences that would otherwise be ungrammatical (e.g. "comrade comrade will bear the blame").
- This is ambiguous - especially when talking to someone who has not yet heard said decree. If I am your sworn enemy, I do not want someone to think I am referring to you as a mate, companion, or associate.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
Certainly parents tend to admit that they would, if pushed, prefer to have their child switch pronouns without medically transitioning, than medically transition without switching pronouns.
I would be interested to see if this was still the case if we had fully-reversible medical transitions.
I would be also interested to see if this was still the case if we had Clarketech-style indistinguishable-except-with-specialized-medical-tech medical transitions.
Here's hoping that I'll be able to see the answer to at least one of these questions within my lifetime...
Are you seriously saying you're fine with a man getting bottom surgery, breast implants and estrogen shots, renaming himself 'Alice', and wearing dresses - but once he demands to be addressed as 'she', that's where you draw the line
Rule of thumb: if something only affects consenting adults, it is no business of mine.
(Sidenote: my actual internal rule of thumb is a little more subtle than this, including the self-referential social contract definition to attempt to address the paradox of tolerance. Not relevant in this particular situation.)
Elaborating on these cases:
a man getting bottom surgery
[Under the assumption that this] affects only a consenting adult: is no business of mine.
breast implants
[Under the assumption that this] affects only a consenting adult: is no business of mine.
[n.b. said rule of thumb does not apply about demands to affect those who are not consenting adults]
estrogen shots
[Under the assumption that this] affects only a consenting adult: is no business of mine.
wearing dresses
[Under the assumption that this] affects only a consenting adult: is no business of mine.
[n.b. said rule of thumb does not apply about demands to affect those who are not consenting adults]
renaming himself 'Alice'
Depends on what precisely is meant by this.
If this means 'private chats between consenting adults refer to said person by the moniker Alice', this affects only consenting adults, and as such is no business of mine.
If this means 'publicly wishes to be known by the moniker Alice', this is on the borderline of said rule of thumb. I tend to lean towards saying this rule of thumb does not apply; I can see arguments either way and so tend to err on the side of stating this is no business of mine regardless.
If this means 'demands to be known only by the moniker Alice', this affects those who are not consenting adults, and as such said rule of thumb does not apply.
demands to be addressed as 'she'
This affects those who are not consenting adults, and as such said rule of thumb does not apply.
N.B. Do not conflate 'said rule of thumb does not apply' with ''should not be allowed'.
N.B. Do not conflate 'is no business of mine' with 'is endorsed'.
N.B. Do not conflate 'do not conflate A and B' with 'A implies not B'
N.B. In general, do not conflate A implies B with !A implies !B.
N.B. In general, do not conflate A implies B with B implies A.
I'm sorry but I just don't believe this could be any serious person's root objection to transgenderism.
I'm curious: what portion of the above axiom and implications thereof do you not believe could be serious, and why?
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
I wonder how much overlap there is between the discussion on gendered pronouns and the discussion on common names for substitute foods.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
because it is still making the claim "It is my business what genitals you were born with.", which is the exact claim to which trans people and their allies object!
I have seen similar backlash against people who change writing styles to avoid referring to such people by gendered pronouns, even though this does not match the stated claim.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
Hopefully I am not putting words in your mouth:
So what you're saying is that identities need an immune system?
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
I cannot tell your position on the subject from this post.
I have seen "they're just words" used to defend both sides of this argument.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
This does not work in the presence of coerced paternity testing.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
Legal contracts between consenting adults are not something I think the state should be able to veto.
What is your definition of coercion in this context?
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
Apparently almost any recreational drug can trigger schizophrenia. Even alcohol!
I would be interested in statistics on relative rates & hazard ratios.
(Although I understand for various reasons this sort of statistical data is rather difficult to gather reliably.)
You can be allergic to water on the skin; this does not mean that it is a common allergy.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
As you build your shiny, state of the art system you are purchasing items from other businesses and those items will be taxed.
This is missing the point, meaning I probably need to elaborate. Let me give an example of what I mean:
VAT: 10%, to put a number out of a hat.
Cost of the one-off ASIC's raw materials? $10k.
Cost of the one-off ASIC's R&D? $10M.
Total amount of VAT if the ASIC was sold at 'true' price? $1,002k
Total amount of VAT if the ASIC was kept internal-only? $2k
If you're just saying that, "As things get less expensive, VAT will decrease," then yes, that's true, but so will the amount of UBI needed to maintain a standard of living.
The former is true assuming a fixed demand. The latter is true only for items which are required to maintain a standard of living.
I trust given this information you can spy the immediate counterexample to your assertion that fulfills the former but not the latter.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
If you were Canada & Mexico would you be spinning up a nuclear weapons program right now?
Right now? No. That window has closed.
A few years ago? Absolutely.
(The tricky bit about spinning up a nuclear weapons program is that it invites immediate reprisal, but dissuades longer-term reprisal. Spinning up a nuclear weapons program when your neighbor is dropping thinly-veiled hints of invasions is already too late.)
Now... quietly making sure you have the CFD horsepower available, and the people with CFD expertise available for said research, and ideally as much design and development as you are confident you can get away with doing quietly without the physical fissile material? Absolutely. Tricky bit here being that sims are a whole lot harder to do without calibration data that neither Canada nor Mexico have access to.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
Maybe. VATs get tricky for items never sold.
If I spend most of my resources on researching and building a shiny and state-of-the-art automated widget-making system (that I will never sell) such that I am able to make & sell widgets dirt-cheap, how much VAT does a widget add?
Answer: far less than before I built said system.
This sort of thing pops up a lot in tech - fabs, VLSI chips, and software development all often fit this pattern where most of the cost is internal and as such somewhat nebulous.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
I am confused.
Your prior comment indicated "these people advocating for trad sexual mores don’t seem to join the many existing Christian fundamentalist groups out there". I stated that this was largely due to such people already being Christian. You're agreeing that the majority of such people are already religious conservatives, but now saying whoops, you're actually just talking about the minority of such people who are not already religious conservatives?
A statement of 'I’ll notice that the minority of people advocating for trad sexual mores who are not already Christian don’t seem to join the many existing Christian fundamentalist groups out there.' I don't see as a particularly interesting comment on the topic.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
There have been many many many attempts at such a clearing-house.
They all end up falling over sooner or later due to misaligned incentives. Sooner or later someone gets the "bright" idea of charging people for "premium" access. Which can kind of work for a while, until 'premium' turns into 'priority'. And sooner or later someone realizes "wait, we get more money charging month-to-month if people stay on our website instead of leaving because they got a job", and start arranging things to have near-misses as opposed to good fits.
Same cycle that happens in dating markets.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
No. Let me restate said hypothesis:
- People a decade ago by-and-large disliked hookups.
- Zoomers also by-and-large dislike hookups.
- People a decade ago had significant social pressure to behave otherwise.
- Resulting in people a decade ago by-and-large stating they like hookups.
- Said social pressure has by-and-large-collapsed for Zoomers.
- This results in Zoomers saying they dislike hookups.
- This comes across as "Zoomers dislike hookups more than people a decade ago" - which isn't true under said hypothesis. It's just more visible.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
I mean hookup culture, mathematically, seems to be the same few people hooking up with each other
I can easily imagine a case where both
a) the majority of hookups are with repeat partners
b) the majority of people having hookups are with a new partner.
Example: a small clique of 11 people who all hooked up with all the other 10 3x times each (55x3->165 total hookups), and a larger group of 20 people who each had one hookup apiece.
Total number of hookups: 55x3 + 10, or 165.
Total number of first-time hookups: 55+10, or 65.
% of hookups with repeat partners: ~61%
Median number of hookup partners: 1
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
it doesn't seem like most men dislike them
There is a fair amount of social pressure to behave otherwise. Or was a decade ago. Maybe said zoomer trend is said social pressure collapsing for one reason or another?
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
From my experience people advocating for trad sexual mores tend to already be Christian and view church-shopping as abhorrent.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
I even put it in my name to make it easy.
There are a surprising number of corners of the internet now where P('biological woman' | 'explicitly and visibly states is a woman') is lower than P('biological woman' | 'NOT(explicitly and visibly states is a woman)').
(Alas, it is essentially impossible to gather proper statistics on this.)
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
A common complaint with earmarked donations (& grants for that matter) in general: "buy the new shiny" is often far more attractive than "do the preventative maintenance to keep the previous workhorse running".
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
I would be quite happy with a law banning contracts that cannot be meaningfully understood in 5 minutes. That's not a law banning even per se 100,000 pages of dense legalese but I should be able to read a contract in one sitting with no surprises. Same with a law. (Lawyers will love this once they realize it means litigating over whether the fine print was adequately represented by the topline!)
This ties into an axiom of my political views. Give or take:
Once a person is affected by more words of law than it is possible for them to read and understand in their lifetime, corruption is effectively inevitable.
(Which then feeds forward into constitutions, hierarchical laws, kitchen-sink bills, etc, etc.)
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
A similar sort of arms race is happening in hiring. Resume -> run through LLM to fake effort ('personalize') for a billion jobs -> hiring managers run through LLMs to try to regain sanity in number of seemingly-effortful applications. It's a rather unfortunate Nash equilibrium.
Anecdotally I've seen a lot more 'have any friends that would be a decent fit for this job?' style hiring lately than I have in a long time. And I suspect that may be one of the major outcomes - more web-of-trust style communication.
DecaDeciHuman
3mo ago
One other big challenge currently is latency. Those big reasoning & purpose models are not quick compared to the speeds industrial automation of that sort tends to run at.
Basic image recognition I'd say has gotten there, but not the rest of it.
Drawing your attention to my comment to @WandererintheWilderness here.
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