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MathWizard

Good things are good

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joined 2022 September 04 21:33:01 UTC 

				
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MathWizard


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Good things are good

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 04 21:33:01 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Writing an effortpost carries with it a number of implications:


-This is a thing you know (or think you know) a lot about.


-This is a thing you genuinely belief, and each word in here represent your own thoughts on the matter.


-This is a thing you care enough about to type out however much you typed out.


All of which then inform the way people are going to reply, argue, comment, and engage in discussion with you and others. Someone who makes an effortpost with an LLM is much less likely to follow up in response to people who respond to them, and much less likely to make good responses. There's little point in debating a particular point they made if they don't even believe or fully understand that point. Cases where the essay was collaboratively put together and edited with an LLM are less egregious examples of this, but still carry some of the issues. If you only know or care enough about this issue to write 500 words yourself about it, then don't make the readers read a 2500 word post inflating it with unnecessary things.


Maybe we just need a weekly or monthly LLM containment thread. "Here is a thing I asked AI about and the essay it gave me and I thought it was interesting and worth sharing/discussion." Because I think there can be value to it, it's just not the same sort of value as the main human-human discussions here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm torn on how I feel about this for the same reason. The issue is not that books are actually sacred. I don't think destroying a non-rare book is any worse than destroying a wooden board or a plastic sheet in practice. But it is a cultural taboo, and demonstrates disrespect for culture and social norms in favor of sheer utilitarian efficiency. Anthropic has demonstrated here that they care more about being efficient and saving money than adhering to social norms.


I think I'm tentatively on their side here, because the public anti-AI crowd has so far demonstrated incredible levels of unreasonableness regarding AI "stealing art" or "wasting water". They're going to come up with something stupid to complain about and hate Anthropic no matter what, so there's little reason for them to respect any other taboos because they'll be hated either way. Crying wolf causes so many problems. I'm still concerned about what this implies about Anthropic's attitude as a corporate entity, but not upset at the event for its own sake.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think you're quite understanding the point @FtttG is making here. It's not merely gotchas and catchphrases, it's gotchas which are specifically unanswerable to people with contradictory or controversial viewpoints that they don't want to expose, forcing them into a catch-22 in which they cannot answer your question.


If you say “The Earth is flat, look out your window”, the round Earther can explain math to show how curved surfaces apear approximately flat when zoomed in far enough, or about GPS, satellites, orbital mechanics, and/or just ships disappearing over the horizon. They are not afraid of answering, because everyone around them will smile and nod approvingly. Even if the answer is complicated and simpler minds might make fun of them for having such a complicated answer to such a simple question/observation, there is an answer.


If you say "It's okay to be white", the correct response is "yeah, and?" The more sane leftist will then proceed to go on about how everyone already knows it's okay to be white so your statement is stupid and pointless but black lives matter is an important statement because police blah blah prison statistics etc.


But the radical leftist does not believe it's okay to be white. They can't/won't say "yeah, and?", they will become angry and try to cancel and censor you and expose themselves for anti-white racists.


The gotchas being promoted here ARE guided by the beauty of our weapons, because they're the specific type designed to exploit contradictions, lies, and cognitive dissonance. They're taking logical and truth based arguments like "you can't simultaneously promote peace, harmony, and anti-racism, while also being an anti-white bigot" and condensing them down into a more memeable form that has more visceral impact when made properly. We already have logical arguments, but some people don't care to listen. It'd be useful if we had plenty of logical arguments AND asymmetrical memes that have broad appeal and can only be used against illogical people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The real problem with the Helen casting is less that she's black, and more that she's incredibly unattractive. Now, these are correlated. I normally don't go all HBD when it's not necessary (preferring to blame culture for most issues among black people), but as far as I can tell this is not merely my subjective preference but an actual objective trait that the majority of men (including black men) agree with: black women are less attractive than white women (or women from most other races). As usual, everything is a bell curve, you can find a couple of exceptions here and there. But it's been shown in studies to be statistically significant, and more importantly you can tell just by Noticing with your own eyes. Everyone knows this except the minority of people with the opposite preference, they just assume that their own subjective opinion is contained to themselves and not universal. And even more importantly, this particular actress, Lupita Nyong'o, is not an exception. She's ugly. Everyone knows she's ugly because they can see her.


Helen of Troy is supposed to be so beautiful she started a war. If there's one time Hollywood actually needed to cast a beautiful person, this was it. The race swap is not merely historically inaccurate, it is disruptive to the plausibility of the plot. Who would ever go to war for that creature?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've been playing this game with my wife. We're only 27 hours in, but it's pretty fun.


Honestly, I think the game (and a lot of open world games) would have a bit more longevity if they slowed the player's level speed. There's so much to do, so many places to explore, and so much tech that I barely have time to grind out enough resources or do some quests before I'm overleveled for the places I'm in and the tech I was working on and either have to skip content or just be overleveled and underequipped for a while. Rather than let the player blitz to the level cap and then keep wandering around afterwards with a reduced sense of progression, they could afford to extend the mid game to be longer (maybe they do this when you get closer to the level cap, I'm not sure, I'm still level 48, but the game feels a bit too fast for something people supposedly sink hundreds of hours into.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
i hope he follows though and I hope it's good. I hope it makes a lot of money and more people start doing stuff like this. While I don't expect AI films to fully replace Hollywood (at least not in the near future), I expect them to seriously increase competition and offer a great indie alternative.


I do expect AI to mostly take over for adding CGI effects in actual Hollywood though. CGI is just too prevalent and too expensive for them not to do this once the tech is good enough.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There are a lot of games I could recommend, but seeing as how I have 3000 hours in Factorio I have to go with that one. It doesn't click for everyone, but when it clicks it clicks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
More importantly, if the politicians are aware of your campaign and it size and influence they'll be more likely to sway on that issue. Even if you don't swing the election, the threat that you could maybe nudge the polls a bit will make both candidates more likely to want to curry favor with you on your issue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think this is quite right. Because obviously a significant fraction of westerners have played Japanese visual novels and are aware of what can be done. And while this is not the normie, even the normie anime-viewer, neither are the people making western visual novels. The average normie does not write their own visual novel. And when someone who clearly does know and care about visual novels makes one, like DDLC, it's still not a full length visual novel. Not because they don't know or care, but because they can't.


The real issue is infrastructure. The big fancy good mansion visual novels in Japan cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, involve many high quality writers, artists, and voice actors. Anyone in the West who imagines a full length real visual novel cannot get the funding to make it, and cannot find/hire voice actors who would both be willing to work on the project, and good enough to do it well. There ARE no Western equivalents to Rie Kugimiya, Tomokazu Sugita, or Mamoru Miyano.


It's not merely an issue of imagination. Anyone can imagine things. It's the technology and infrastructure required to take that imagination and turn it into reality. And I suppose in some sense this is downstream of culture and imagination. The majority of Western audience imagine and ask for log cabins, so none of the investors or talents try to create this infrastructure. And if some rich visionary made an expensive AAA visual novel it probably wouldn't sell enough to recoup its costs, so the investors aren't wrong. But it's more complicated than simply "no one can imagine anything better". We can clearly see the better things, which is how you and I are talking about them right now. But even the most skilled and creative architect can't go out into the woods with nothing more than a rusty hatchet and make themselves a mansion. Individual people with ideas can only make indie games.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
All of your criticisms are directionally true, I just think the quality of the games is high enough to make up for this (with the exception of Meikyuu which... meh, they could have done better). Maybe they just uniquely appealed to me and my sense of humor. I laughed throughout the entire (quite lengthy) common route in Kajitsu and would gladly have played more (which is why I've replayed it two more times over the years). The character routes, especially the flashbacks, can be a bit of a slog but are still quite good. Likewise, I think Steins;Gate is peak when it is making jokes and being hilarious, while the sad drama stuff does drag on a bit. Overall though, I think they needed the sadder slower parts to tell a meaningful story, and they did, and nothing the West has ever made is even slightly close.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I agree with your object level criticisms about how Westerners have approached this problem, but would categorize all of that under the second way. If a certain culture or group of people publish a bunch of smut novels and can't figure out how to write a decent novel they're still "novels", just not very good ones. If they start filming and publishing porn films, they're still "films". It's the same type of media, even if it's only one specific genre within that media. Visual novel is a form of media, and it's trivial to make something that's in the media. It's highly nontrivial to make one that's good. A mansion is a type of house. A building is a structure which can contain many different types and serve many different purposes. I argue that the word "visual novel" is more akin to "building", and the West can make those. You don't look at a log cabin and say "it's not a building because it's smaller than this mansion". They're not the same, they're not really in the same ballpark in terms of quality. But in a literal and linguistic way they are still the same category of object.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't generally do spooky horror stuff, so haven't played either of them. That said, they appear to still be small scale indie games with stylized but clearly budget art styles, little to no voice acting, and about 4 hours of content each. They are small indie games. Their target audiences apparently like them for what they are, but they are not what I'm talking about. Stein's Gate is about 30 hours and Grisaia no Kajitsu is about 60 if you play all routes. (And both have sequels with even more content, albeit slightly less amazing) These are big meaty stories with intricate details, whole casts of characters, recurring jokes, themes. They develop characters and make you feel for them. They go into backstories. They have slice of life and action and drama. They do everything because they are not constrained by the limitations of a 90 minute cinema timer or the indie creator's non-existent budget.


They are to full visual novels what Five Nights and Freddy's is to Elden Ring. They're different things which cater to different target audiences (with some overlap). But there's a difference in scale and ambition which (in visual novels) the West can't realistically match.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you're just comparing quick cheap goonslop and/or small indie projects, then sure both of them can make some passable stuff. But if we look at proper visual "novels", masterpieces like Grisaia no Kajitsu, G Senjou no Maou, or Steins Gate, there just is nothing in the West even remotely comparable. The West does not have a sufficiently large audience, nor a sufficiently talented voice acting scene, nor the level of culture to put forth the kind effort and budget required to make a proper visual novel.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Visual novels are the video game version of anime and manga and as a consequence, they can only be produced in the Japan region of Asia.




Do you mean this in a literal linguistic way, as in if it doesn't come in Japan it doesn't technically count as a "visual novel" even if it's identical in every way, as in the Champagne example? Because this is entirely false. Neither "visual" nor "novel" are Japanese words. We don't have an equivalent word in English because that's what these are.


Or do you mean this in a less literal but more meaningful way, as in only the Japanese have the cultural competence to actually make one of these any good. Because I would mostly agree with that, I don't think I've ever seen a decent visual novel come from anywhere other than Japan even if hypothetically one could.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'd argue the defining line is that you know exactly who the KKK are and how they are likely to react.




They don't know every single individual member of the KKK, they're still casting mistrust into the void, it's just a smaller void. If they speak in the public streets of a town with 10% KKK membership is that suddenly acceptable? Is it 1%? I'd argue the KKK meeting is a more egregious example in degree, but not in kind. We live in a society where you know mentally ill schooler shooter wannabes are a non-negligible fraction of the population and how they are likely to react. They want the fame and martyrdom that the media implicitly promises them, and if it didn't give them that attention then most of them wouldn't bother. Nobody was surprised that there have been multiple assassination attempts at Trump. This was expected behavior. I argue that, for a subset of the media, bloggers etc, this was literally intended behavior. That they deliberately incited anger and hatred in the public with the hope that it would inspire literal violence against Trump. And that most of these people did not meet the legal requirements for "incitement to violence" and got in no legal trouble and kept their jobs.




I think a relatively good and objective bar is the line between simply publicly wishing bad things on your enemies and specifically trying to convince someone to commit criminal acts.




For legal purposes that is the best we can do. For moral purposes the bar is much much further into ambiguous territory.


I want you to imagine, for a moment, an ideal stochastic terrorist. A person (or AI agent) who has two main goals:


    

  1. Maximize the probability that violence occurs against target X
    2. 

  2. Do not meet the legal definition of incitement to violence.
    3. 



That is, stochastic terrorism is literally their goal and intended behavior, not an accidental side effect. What sorts of behaviors would you expect this person to engage in? What sorts of words would they use? How does this compare to prominent left-wing media and blog posters in the real world? And more importantly, is this behavior morally good? Are you actually unironically arguing that this hypothetical ideal stochastic terrorist has done nothing wrong because they avoided breaking the law? Or are you arguing that they don't exist and every single person inspiring violence in the real world is doing it accidentally (and that this makes it perfectly acceptable)? I disagree with both of those, but I'm not sure how to focus my arguments because I'm not really sure where you're coming from.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Let's suppose the year is 1880, and someone who is not a member goes to a KKK meeting and tells them all about how their black neighbor is a rapist. They have no proof or evidence, they just make up a story about it and get everyone riled up. They do not literally advocate for violence, but they went there on purpose and told this story on purpose in this location to these people.


Some of the members, but not the storyteller, go and lynch the accused man.


Is the storyteller merely guilty of slander, equal to anyone else who makes any false rape accusation? Are going to the KKK and telling them in particular this story neutral acts which do not change the moral culpability of the action? Because that seems decidedly non-consequentialist. I agree with Scott that we can't really outlaw stochastic terrorism because it's too easily confused with regular criticism to avoid false positives.


But nobody is ever going to apologize for accidentally committing stochastic terrorism because it is almost by definition not an accident. It's primarily a crime of intent. If someone literally wants to someone to die but wants to skirt around legal prohibitions against inciting violence then all they have to do is carefully moderate their words to just fall short of the boundary and phrase them in a way that wink wink, nudge nudge everyone they're talking to knows mean "please commit violence". Adding "in minecraft" after wishing death on someone does not fool anyone that you literally mean you hope their character dies while playing minecraft but the person lives. Celebrating after someone gets assassinated is not consistent with an ordinary person who didn't realize their words might inspire a psychopath. If the death of the person is an intended outcome of the speech, a feature not a bug, then the people who encouraged it are morally guilty of stochastic terrorism, even if the law can't pin them down.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
All are saved if they repent their sins and seek forgiveness and salvation through Jesus Christ. As prerequisites this requires


    

  1. A basic understand/belief of Jesus, including his Divinity, Sacrifice, and offer of Forgiveness.
    2. 

  2. A basic understanding of sins., including what they are, why they're bad, and why you specifically are a sinner.
    3. 



Any distorted version of Christianity which teaches "Jesus was a wise human Prophet" or "You only have to apologize for sins that you personally agree are bad" is unlikely to result in salvation. There is some debate about exactly how strict the requirements for salvation are, but making up your own rules because you think you know better than God is not what they mean by "repentance".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is clearly and obviously not intended as a threat. This is their attempt to signal "we're paying attention to your concerns and are going to try to take them into account while we go forward".


The ad is not actually answering the questions, because they don't have answers. They're not explicitly saying "we are going to solve these problems", but they're definitely not saying "we don't care about these problems. They are implying they are going to solve the problems without making any explicit claims or promises. It's ultimately a hollow attempt at placating anti-AI concerns, but there is no reasonable way to interpret it as a "threat". It's just empty corporate "we care" slop.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My wife and I met online about 7 years ago, which came after 5 years of my trying online dating on and off because I lack the social awareness to avoid being awkward and/or creepy, but am self-aware/self-conscious enough about it to avoid hitting on anyone unless I am unambiguously allowed to (ie, online dating).


We have never officially gone out on "a date", in terms of going out and sitting down at a restaurant or movie and having it be a thing. Both of us are introverts, both of us are frugal, and we lived 3.5 hours away by car, so didn't meet in person for quite some time. We spent several weeks chatting, and then did video calls, and then found some co-op games to play on Steam together. I half-ironically credit the foundation of our relationship to Gloomhaven for being a fantastic game with a ~200 hour campaign. We did eventually meet up in person, but it was 4 months after we had been talking and playing games together and she sent me the address to her apartment and I drove the 3.5 hours there. She's not going to not show up: she lives there.


But this came when I finally met someone who actually liked me and wanted to interact with me, and someone I thought was actually worth spending time with and stepping out of my introvert shell for, after years and hundreds of failed conversations prior to that.


So... I'm not quite sure what advice to give other than "get lucky". If you go through a few hundred stupid people you'll eventually encounter some in the top 1% in terms of mutual likability (you like them more than other people like them, and they like you more than other people like you). But my other advice, which may vary in actionability depending on your hobbies and preferences, is to try to enable yourself to filter out the stupid people with less effort than setting up a date and getting stood up at it. Find someone who is fun to talk to and do things together with online. Write poems, tell stories, get to know each other. Do all the things you're supposed to do on a first date on the internet by typing on a keyboard, and drop anyone who isn't both interesting and interested in you. Maybe even do a video call as your "first date". This is going to massively filter out a lot of people who might be turned off by this sort of dynamic. I consider that a good thing, because I didn't want someone who wasn't interesting and interested in talking to me, and good with words (and spelling and grammar). But if this isn't the kind of person/experience you're looking for then my only advice is to try to figure out other ways to minimize your cost per person. Because it is a numbers game and you are going to have to go through a lot of people before you find someone actually good.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The reason I'm decidedly centrist is because the extremists on both sides keep identifying valid problems in society and then trying to destroy everything and cause ten more problems just to fix that one. And then utterly denying that the problems the other side identifies even exist or are worth worrying about. If we're clever and we tweak the incentives properly so that people can't enrich themselves by exploiting loopholes in the system, the system can function better and solve these problems. We should accurately assess problems. We should fix problems. We should not destroy society in the hopes that maybe it might fix one particular problem to the exclusion of all others.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


we will see "scientific" "studies" with the headline finding that self-driving cars actually get into more accidents than human-driven cars per mile driven (and then you dig into it and you find that the severity of the accidents in the former case is vastly lower than in the latter)




100% this, and the way they measure this will be the number of incident reports available in some database, where self-driving cars automatically and electronically send a report every time they bump someone even if there is no visible damage, including someone opening their car door into another car parked next to the, while human driven cars only count if there is a police report or insurance claim.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would call it a non-consensual hookup. Less bad than an average rape, but still kind of rape. If you've had sex with someone several times and like them, and aren't opposed to having sex with them in general but just don't want to at the moment, you're way less likely to get violent with them than if a stranger attacks and tries to rape you.


I don't know what your marriage/SO situation is, but consider a time when you weren't in the mood for sex (maybe you're trying to get to sleep because you have to get up early the next morning, maybe you literally just had sex, maybe you're over at someone's house going to the bathroom). If your SO corners you, drunk, and tries to have sex with you despite it not being the right time or place, you're not going to stab them with sewing needles to get them to stop. I expect you'd use significantly less violence to make them stop and be much less likely to call the police on them afterwards when they're sober even if you do give them a stern talking to.


Now, in terms of the reasons rape is bad, in particular the physical and psychological trauma, this is way way less bad than a normal rape. But it's still bad, and not the same as a "hookup I regret". The hookup I regret is when the man did nothing wrong and the woman retroactively tries to change the morality of the action. If it wasn't wrong when he did it because he followed all of the rules, then it's not wrong. But if he's not following the rules, if he is forcing himself on someone who does not want it and unambiguously makes it clear that they do not want it, then he is doing something wrong. He is a bad person. Less bad than a central example of a rapist, but somewhere in the same ballpark, regardless of what word you use to describe it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One of the big problems with dating apps is that they succeed when somebody stops using them, which makes them really hard to monetize. Honestly I think the best hope we have is for someone rich like Elon Musk or Bill Gates to donate a ton of money to a non-profit that just focuses on making a good app for relationships with no monetization so that it doesn't have any perverse incentives. Maybe have a donation link and encourage people who end up happily married to donate to show their appreciation, but otherwise just make a good product for the good of society and accept that doing the right thing is going to lose money.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The reputation and rating system is supposed to handle this, because if you try to scam people and 90% of them figure out what you're doing then they rate you horribly and you fall into troll/spam/bot hell and the sales people end up pairing with each other. But I guess there are risks of


A: Naive people who are sympathetic to salespeople and don't rate them horribly might end up getting paired with them more often, which is precisely their target audience. and
B: If people just make a new account they get paired with other people who made new accounts and it might end up making the default neutral reputation landscape equivalent to the troll/spam/bot hell, with only high reputation people being able to avoid it.


But it's not like I haven't thought of this. One of the main points of the reputation system is to prevent misbehavior in a similar way to how social networks do that in real life.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for July 3, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Every time I see a smart person come up with an idea of how to make a better dating app, what they're really describing is how to create a dating app that will only appeal to other like-minded smart people.




Yeah, and? Smart people like dating and are likely to want to date other like-minded smart people. If the normies with no attention span don't use it then that's just another filtering mechanism to weed them out.




If I want to have a conversation with a random person I might not see again, I'll go to a bar like a normal person, thank you very much.




Sounds like effort. I think you're overestimating the length of survey: like 1-3 numbers you rate on a scale from 1 to 10. People like upvoting people on Reddit, it doesn't need to be much more than that. I'm talking like numbers for an algorithm to dump into a mathematical function, not comments that a human is going to read.