Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."
User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
3d ago
Anecdata of 1: I served on a jury that had about an even split of men and women, for a domestic violence case. The women on the jury seemed more upset about the case in general and had less sympathy for the defendant, but the case that the prosecution put forward was so flimsy, they were forced to agree that we had no choice but to acquit.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
4d ago
Keeping humans in the loop puts pressure on the processes to be more legible and comprehensible. If you dump everything into an inscrutable ML model, then the danger is that people will simply offload their thinking to the model and take its word as law. When your account gets banned at youtube, no one can actually say why (except in high profile cases) - it’s just, “The Algorithm said so, and we trust The Algorithm”. I don’t want society to work that way. I want there to be a person who has to take responsibility for the decision, and who can explain their reasoning. No hiding behind a binary blob of trillions of parameters.
Of course, humans can build labyrinthian inscrutable bureaucracies too. And humans can be outright evil. But I’d still rather take my chances with humans. Unlike AI, they have skin in the game - they are conscious entities, they have desires and fears. They can be persuaded or bribed, they are subject to political and social pressures, they will grant exceptions under the right circumstances. These are not aberrant modes of operation - they are necessary to the functioning of a humane society.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
5d ago
I don't see why regulation is a bad thing here. I don't want AI making hiring decisions, or monitoring what I write on the internet for wrongthink, or deciding verdicts in criminal trials. Anything that helps prevent that (even if imperfect and incomplete) is a good thing in my view.
(You may say that the use of AI in these domains is inevitable and cannot be prevented - but then, why get upset about the regulation in the first place? Why worry about something that you think will have no impact anyway?)
This is the type of vague, awful, impossible regulation that is focused on writing politically correct reports and which actually kills innovation.
I think there should probably be less innovation in this space.
What, specifically, are you worried about losing or missing out on?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
5d ago
My actual preference, for here and for every web forum, is to just eliminate upvotes and downvotes entirely.
Occasionally I write an effortpost that gets few or no replies, but still gets a significant number of upvotes. I like having a signal that my post was appreciated, even if no one had anything to actually say in response. It's no fun just screaming into the void.
I think the actual solution is for people to just stop taking downvotes personally. As you point out, all a downvote means in most cases is "I disagree". That's fine! People can disagree! That can be a valuable and useful signal, to know where you stand with regards to the consensus community opinion.
Can the Motte change, and attract a more ideologically diverse user-base, and also make its atmosphere more attractive to people with different and challenging perspectives?
I don't know what concrete steps could be taken to do that at this point, except maybe relaxing moderation somewhat against users who have clearly unpopular opinions. But even then, probably not.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
5d ago
Well, on a personal level I simply don't think that's much of a problem. If someone wants to be in a constant revolving door of one year bans that's fine by me - particularly if it helps decrease the likelihood that we end up permabanning a valued community member.
If you think that sort of system would place an undue burden on the mod team then I respect that, although I don't think a cap of one year on bans would actually add that many more posts to the mod queue, given the small number of users who would likely find themselves in that sort of situation.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
6d ago
One of the post is just taking a simple argument and making it 5k words … My definition of very bad writing when you just go for length
In all likelihood, the post does contain more information than could be compressed into 200 words. It’s pretty hard to write coherent, sensible sentences that literally say nothing, unless you really go out of your way to do it.
Typically when people say that writing “uses too many words” or “says nothing”, what they actually mean is that there is content there, but they simply find the content to be trite, false, uninteresting, irrelevant, etc. All of which may be valid criticisms. But that’s different from there being no content at all.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
6d ago
For the time I have spent here, I don't think I got any serious challenge from someone across the political aisle from me.
This has been discussed extensively before. There's only so much that can be done about it unfortunately.
There's currently some very spirited disagreement going on in the thread about Trump's conviction! Sometimes, all it takes is the right issue.
Anyway, on the subject of moderation: imo permabans should be reserved for literal bot/spam accounts and other obvious bad actors. I think there's very little reason to ever permaban a genuine good faith poster.
For Hlynka-type cases, where the person is clearly contributing constructively but they also persist in violating the rules on decorum, I think that bans should cap out in the 6-12 month range. This would make it clear that breaking the rules has consequences while also preventing situations where the mods are forced to permanently exile valued community members. There would also be no accusations of favoritism, because this is where bans would cap out for basically every good faith poster, regardless of number of AAQCs.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
6d ago
Trump is a convicted felon.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Our current treatment of felons is very unjust and needs reform: e.g., they should all have their voting rights reinstated for a start. Personally I’m proud and excited about the prospect of voting for a convicted felon in November. Perhaps it will help signal that we’re ready to start easing the stigma surrounding convicted criminals.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
7d ago
...And I have zero confidence that the above communicates anything across the gap, any more than it did last time I tried.
What do you think you failed to communicate in that thread?
Let me try to give my own gloss on what I think you were getting at. I often find myself on the side of defending... - subjectivity? I'm not sure what the best word for it is - against those who would argue for a purely rationalist technocratic worldview. I think consciousness is a real phenomenon that can't be explained away as an illusion, I think the arts and humanities are important and STEM supremacists get on my nerves, I think that individual choices matter and people aren't just reducible to their structural roles in the social system.
If you have an affinity for those positions, then perhaps we're not as far apart as you might think. Even if I might disagree with some specific formulations you put forth.
I was thinking in terms of systemic control, doing my utilitarian calculations, shutting up and multiplying
Well, I'm certainly no utilitarian and never have been.
death is deeply natural and that Good Deaths exist
I'm in complete agreement.
I think I understand the difference in perspective you're trying to articulate here. But, as usual, I simply disagree that it divides the space of political ideologies cleanly in two.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
8d ago
It's not clear because it doesn't clarify the important question, which is: what are the documents Trump is being charged with falsifying?
The definition of "business record" itself is just a definition of a term. It's not going to include any specifics about what business records a person did or did not create in a particular concrete case. Presumably, that information would have been discussed during the trial proper.
According to your interpretation, the government could prosecute you for writing on a post-it note in your office, determining that this is a business document, and then alleging that you lied when you wrote it. That's not clear at all!
"Unjust" and "counterintuitive" are not the same thing as "unclear".
I was purely addressing the assertion that the definition was "word salad", nothing more. I think that accusations of that sort are thrown around too liberally on TheMotte so I felt that it was important to address. Too often people default to calling something "bad writing" when actually they have a different (and more specific) complaint with it.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
8d ago
Back at the old place, Hlynka argued that it was precisely this embrace of "principled defeat" in this life for the sake of the next that defines "right wing" and separates it from the left, and thus only those who believe in an afterlife can be on the right
This is an interesting idea, and it's the best and most coherent version of the Hlynkian thesis that I've seen. (I don't recall ever seeing this exact formulation in any of his own posts, at any rate - if you have a link I'd appreciate it.)
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
8d ago
I’m not sure the definition of Business Record is very specific or useful since it seems to qualify nearly any piece of data in any equipment or file held by the business.
That was probably the intent - which in turn makes the definition very useful, to the relevant government authorities.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
8d ago
It's not word salad. I think it's quite clear. If you know what "writing" is, and you know what it means to "keep or maintain" something, and you know what a "condition or activity" is (perhaps the most vague part of the definition, but still, these are very common ordinary words and it's easy to furnish many examples of conditions and activities), then you understand the definition.
The definition as written may lead to counterintuitive results. For example, if I'm the CEO of a company and I write on a post-it note "we have a lot of money" and I store that in my desk drawer in my office, then that is a piece of writing, and it is kept by the enterprise (on our premises, with security measures to prevent unauthorized access), and it does reflect a condition or activity (the condition of having a lot of money), so it appears that according to this definition, the post-it note would count as a business record. But being counterintuitive is not the same thing as being unclear.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
9d ago
This verdict will likely galvanize voters come November – leading to record turnout among Republicans.
That would be nice, but, I'm not holding my breath.
I view this lawfare as both morally wrong and deeply destabilizing.
I do too. But not everyone thinks the way we do. A lot of people don't care at all (or at least, they don't care beyond whatever their personal opinion of Trump is).
I'm planning a post that touches on the notion of people acting on principle vs people acting out of raw personal interest, and this topic dovetails nicely with that. Sometimes people really do act on pure principle alone, even though that can be difficult to recognize when their principles are foreign to you. But there's two sides to that. Sometimes they don't act on principle - sometimes they just act on self interest, or vindictiveness, or whatever. And it can be segmented from issue to issue - someone can have sincerely held convictions on one question and complete indifference towards another.
How many average people off the street actually have a sincerely held stance on the injustice of overt political lawfare? I don't know. Probably not that many. I wouldn't want to wager any serious stakes on it.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
13d ago
Definitely 4chan. Some boards are jannied a lot, some none at all.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
17d ago
I think it's less about the absolute quality of the link and more about the specific topic at hand:
-
Medieval Icelandic literature - although this is something that I would personally be interested in, it's not a general interest topic, and you can't necessarily expect the forum at large to want to discuss this, no matter how good the writing itself actually is.
-
Biological determinants of homosexuality - closer to being a general interest topic, most people here probably at least have an opinion on it, but it's unlikely to be a particularly strongly held opinion, and the topic is unlikely to generate strong disagreements on this particular forum.
-
"Are women having too much casual sex?" - topic with very broad appeal for multiple reasons, everyone has a strongly held opinion on it, and there's also a lot of strong disagreement among the commentariat here on this particular issue. Controversy is the best way to generate discussion.
I also get disappointed when the forum doesn't want to discuss more specialty issues that I have a strong interest in. But, that's how it goes. The topics with the broadest general appeal will always generate the most discussion.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
17d ago
I got about halfway through before I called it quits because it got repetitive.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
18d ago
What do you want exactly, in concrete terms?
Presumably you want a return to pre-1960s norms surrounding sex. But what does that entail and how do you enforce it? Is it just a shift in soft cultural norms, or are there actual policy changes?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
18d ago
Can you explain what that means, and what your justification for that claim is?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
19d ago
Not engaging and being critical is a default victory for the minoritarian/woke supporters. Does this means you are obligated to take part in the culture wars? Well, kind of. Like it or not, those who show up are those who win.
Depends on what you mean by "show up", and what you're expecting to get out of it.
There was no conceivable act of individual heroism that could have shattered the power of the Catholic church at the height of the Inquisition, or hastened the fall of Soviet communism during the reign of Stalin. There was no "war", just those with power enforcing their will on their powerless, with very few meaningful avenues for rebuttal. Only through the accumulated weathering of decades (or centuries) did a change of conditions eventually become possible.
I certainly think it's virtuous to not be afraid of the censors. Do what you want to do, and don't let them stop you. But don't have delusions of grandeur either. If the only reason you're waging the culture "war" is because you think you can change the course of world history, then you should consider if there are better ways you could be spending your time.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
20d ago
I think it’s just a foregone conclusion at this point, even among the most optimistic Western analysts, that Ukraine isn’t getting the far eastern territories back.
Have any recent events made you update towards thinking that Russia will be able to force complete regime change?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
21d ago
Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
But, as I've argued before, there is no neutral definition of what constitutes an "inflammatory" claim. The claims that count as inflammatory for you depend on the particular ideological viewpoint you've adopted. So it would at least be good to specify the viewpoint from which you're judging a particular claim as inflammatory.
I personally don't think there's anything inflammatory at all about "women love a killer". Regardless of whether the claim is true or false, I don't view it as a slight against women, or a failing on their part. Plausibly it could be taken as a relatively natural corollary of a Darwinian/Hobbesian view of life.
I'm aware that my view on this particular question may be unusual, and in the framing of say, polite upper middle class Western society, most people would view this as an inflammatory claim. But if "polite upper middle class Western society" is going to be the frame of reference that we use for judging claims as inflammatory on TheMotte, shouldn't we be modding a lot more posts than we already are? Every time HBD comes up for example, a number of posters write under the assumption that HBD is true. But HBD would be considered to be an extremely inflammatory complex of claims by most people in the West today. Is no one allowed to post under the assumption that HBD is true unless they include a link to a list of HBD 101 resources laying out the supporting evidence?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
22d ago
it is highly unlikely they’d care about us. We don’t have anything they don’t already have.
We extensively study all sorts of animal and microbial species here on earth, simply out of curiosity, even though these species don't "have anything" for us. Sometimes this research leads to medical advancements, but usually it doesn't. Most academic research is in the same boat. There's no "practical" reason to study obscure religious treatises from late antiquity, or the cultural practices of a hunter-gatherer tribe in Africa, but people do it anyway.
The aliens are undoubtedly weirder than we can possibly imagine
Maybe. But if they are, then that means that we'd be impossibly weird to them! Which would make us rather more interesting.
Of course, it's an open empirical question whether aliens would find any value in studying us or interacting with us. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. But thinking that humans couldn't possibly be interesting to a scientifically advanced alien intelligence is just as much of an unfounded bias as thinking that humans are always at the center of the universe.
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
23d ago
I really look forward to Zvi’s AI roundups every week. It’s easy to just skim for the relevant bits and ignore the rest.
Well, let's do a thought experiment. Suppose a civilization invents a technology that gives them an extreme competitive advantage but, for some contrived reason, it can only be powered by immense amounts of human suffering. Everyone gets plugged into the machine and subjected to intense unending physical torture, like an inverted hellscape version of The Matrix. Presumably, you would never choose to live in such a society, no matter how evolutionarily successful they were.
You could bite the bullet and say that, yes, because they survive and outlast, they are better - but this would only be the most abstract type of "better", because your revealed preferences would show that you could never actually accept such an arrangement.
You have the luxury of extolling the virtues of Darwinian competition because, coincidentally, the most dominant civilization on the planet right now is also the one that provides that most lavish opportunities for hedonism. The social organism itself becomes more competitive, while the individual is allowed to become more sedentary, more secure, increasingly protected from the vicissitudes of nature - a strange kind of "competition" indeed. If being competitive meant actually living the life of a drug cartel lackey or a post-apocalyptic warlord, if it meant actual physical competition and actual danger, then you would likely find that a reassessment of your fundamental values would be in order.
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