popocatepetl
I'm the guy who edits every comment I write at least four times. Sorry.
User ID: 215
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Every internet community I've been in with user comment feedback navel gazes about this. It's amounted to nothing. So LessWrong has come up with their own version of Slashdot's "Interesting/Insightful" voting, with even more galaxy-brained schemes in the comments. Other social media experiments suggest you can't hack your way around the human psychology of using feedback UI as an "agree" button. LWers will just now "up-right" vote or "left-down" vote, with two-axis voting forcing them to click a second time.
It's not worth the energy to think or argue about this, let alone design or code it, unless another community invents a voting scheme that brings home the bacon in terms of discourse in a huge, obvious way.
If you have fun talking about ideas that would take hundreds of coding hours with no promise of success for a tiny internet subforum, go ahead. But I strongly suggest anyone who might be tempted to waste otherwise productive manhours on it close this thread and go about their day.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
example replies can be found eg here, here, here, here, or here
It's strange. When I visit old /r/themotte threads, the discussions seem hotter and the tone more aggressive, while downvoting unpopular opinions was rarer. You'd figure those two behaviors would move together.
I tend to think Jesus believed 'works' were a lot more essential to salvation than most Protestants (even most Catholics) would like.
Grace leads to good works because grace remakes men morally. "Grace without good works" is incoherent; if you are not doing good works, you have not accepted grace. The dispute between protestants and catholics lies in the catholic church's offer of a bargain by which a favor from God could be purchased: that you could do a good work to "buy" grace.
They didn't. Jesus told them to go buy some swords earlier that same week, explicitly so that he could fulfill the prophecy
As told in Luke, they already had two on hand.
There's not a single place in the New Testament where violence against one's enemies is encouraged or even sanctioned.
There is no occurrence where violence would be appropriate, save for crucifixion, which was Christ's intention to suffer. A centurion approaches Jesus in Matthew and Jesus praises him and says that he will enter God's kingdom with no stipulation that he give up his army gig.
What is forbidden by Christ is retribution or vengeance. That a Christian cannot take up a sword in hatred or for his own personal ends is beyond question.
I would say the pacifism of the early Christians is inexplicable without the apparently ubiquitous belief that Jesus was going to come back very soon to establish the kingdom and destroy Rome and the nations; in other words, earthly Christians didn't need to do any killing because God was about to do it for them. When this didn't pan out naturally doctrine had to evolve.
It depends on what you mean. The actions of the apostles recorded in scripture are strong evidence for any Christian that believes in biblical inerrancy — which I believe is all of them. They certainly acted as if they could not use violence to defend their own persons against persecution. However, this does not track 1:1 with the question of whether a Christian can be a soldier, police officer, defend their family against a rapist, etc: that is, commit violence not on one's own behalf. The apostles did not address that question or find themselves in that situation.
(EDIT: I see Romans 13 gets cited a lot in defense of Christian police officers, despite the main focus being Christians obeying the police. Looks cut and dry on that one.)
As for the behavior of Christians in the 2nd century, one is perfectly entitled to think individuals from that time period might be wrong about doctrine, same as one might think for the 6th century, 11th century, 15th century, or (now) 21st century.
If that's the case, he wasted a lot of time delivering ethical teaching.
His ethical teaching falls into the camps "you think you're doing enough, but you're nowhere near adequate by God's standards" or "you're hewing to the letter of the law rather than reaching the spirit of the law, which is what you know is right". Both those points are to a purpose. He avoids giving straightforward list of instructions, and he teaches in questions and riddles, because being a moral person does not mean lawyering your way around a contract of clear-cut rules as the Jews had been trying for several hundred years.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. From those who have much, much is expected (and the corollary, from those who have nothing, nothing is expected, explains Grant's Pass). Blessed are the poor. Etc. It's a slave morality.
You're passing a progressive or nietzschean interpretation of those elements as their true, indisputable meaning. Consider the possibility those teach self-discipline ("bearing the cross") rather than as statements bashing those high in status.
Blessed are the poor. [...] from those who have nothing, nothing is expected
The beatitudes describe various hardships as the blessings of God. "Blessed are the X" is not to say the status of poverty/mourning/persecution intrinsically grants righteous status — that is, "poor people are good" — but that poverty/mourning/persecution are blessings from heaven to mortify the evil in you. In this reading, being rich, happy, and safe carries the dangers of you becoming self-satisfied and thus not seeking God. To the contrary, in another context of Jesus's ministry, the poor person who receives only one talent is cast into hell for sitting on his laurels. The two richer servants are praised and the master grants them greater dominion in his service (AKA puts them above the lesser servants).
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven."
The lesson here is that the rich man does not value God higher than his own material status. When challenged on the point, he prefers money; his mouth says "I want God" but his mind says "I want earthly passions" — this lesson holds for the beggar with his bottle just as much as Scrooge McDuck with his gold swimming pool. At other parts of scripture, Jesus meets well-to-do people and does not demand they pauper themselves for God's kingdom.
To be clear, it's very questionable that Bezos can be saved, because he is chasing money and status above all else. But is not at all clear that Jesus categorically condemns money any more than he condemns enjoying marital sex, food, or earthly luxuries such as come to you in your service to God.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
How do I read your plot?
It's a well-known graph from this study on the moral differences between liberals and conservatives. (See page 7.) I don't know why they chose a radial graph rather than a sensible line graph, but the brackets represent:
(1) all of your immediate family, (2) all of your extended family, (3) all of your closest friends, (4) all of your friends (including distant ones), (5) all of your acquaintances, (6) all people you have ever met, (7) all people in your country, (8) all people on your continent, (9) all people on all continents, (10) all mammals, (11) all amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds, (12) all animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae, (13) all animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms, (14) all living things in the universe including plants and trees, (15) all natural things in the universe including entities such as rocks, (16) all things in existence
and the color heat represents relative moral weight a person puts on that group compared to the average person.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
By that definition, most laws are "anti-human". I'm not generally opposed to strict, literal interpretations, but this definition seems to go quite strongly against common sense understanding of "anti".
Sure. I would say that goes unsaid for the same reason that it's the "Department of Education", not "Department of Human Education"; or "Department of Labor", not "Department of Human Labor".
There's no question that journalists calling laws "anti-trans laws" are implying a negative valence. But Folamnh3 called the idea they're anti-trans laws "farcical", which is a bit off when the description seems literally quite defensible. Which was the point guesswho's analogy tried to draw out.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
Maybe if you're completely incompetent at judging where something will be based on its velocity. But most people aren't that incompetent
I wish we could plug into the training simulation to demonstrate this. When a person winds up to swing a bat, the knife wielder can tell exactly where the blow will land, and when, over a full second beforehard. It's not terribly hard to avoid. Unlike the path of a baseball, the trajectory of a human closing in to stab you is anti-inductive.
and there's very little chance the knife wielder is going to get within stabbing range before getting a solid hit from the bat.
The extra 28 inches of distance afforded by the bat can be closed in a fraction of the time it takes to swing a bat.
Also, what's up with the insult?
Eggheads? All in good fun.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
Can't you use the bat more like a baton than in Double Dragon? Two hands somewhat far apart for leverage, poking motions where appropriate to keep the guy out of arm's reach, wear him down with rib shots? It would seem awfully hard to get a stab in this way, and trying to take the bat away while holding on to the knife with the other hand is out of the question.
Using the bat like a truncheon is a better strategy than baseball style (lower latency and more unpredictability), but the damage dealt goes down dramatically, and it's still much slower than a knife.
It's my understanding that this is more how bats are used in 'teaching people a lesson for money' circles; even a partial swing choked up or a poke to the solar plexus is going to be pretty tough on a guy, and you don't exactly need to be Jackie Chan to figure it out.
The mafia use of the bat is ideal for giving a beating to a mook who knows he can't retaliate because there are more goons behind you.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
- 0% of women want to sleep with your average incel (definitionally)
- Some percent, say 5%, of women want to have sex with a dog.
It is not ~0% of all women who don't want to sleep with the incel, it is tilde 0% (Zorba fix markdown escape pls) of all women he ever met (more plausibly, approached).
He probably haven't met any dogfuckers, either.
To demonstrate the problem a different way: Go to an incel forum, select a thousand incels. Go to a dog competition, select a thousand charming, beautiful, intelligent, expensive male dogs with female owners. Which group do you think will have more sex with female humans in the next five years?
The "incels are less fuckable than dogs" doesn't hold up unless you redefine "incel" much more narrowly than anyone actually does. Your average unemployed 5'6" recessed chin guy on those forums is still more sexable than a chocolate lab.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
the reaction to dissent against lockdowns in China was to lift lockdowns, while the reaction in the West was to beat the shit out of protesters or even shoot them.
Western repression is a sieve, Chinese repression is a dam. A dam fully contains dissent until it reaches emergency levels. Canada could treat its protestors roughly because they didn't reflect a level of discontent that could threaten the regime.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Interesting. I'll give it a shot.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
It's still the weekend. If nothing pops up by the end of the workweek, I'll have been wrong and will be suitably embarrassed and nonplussed.
Nah he's not a troll. I think he's adopting a "woke is more correct than the mainstream" view that we do actually care about keeping whites on top of the totem pole, and should stop deluding ourselves and pretending like our objections are colorblind. I don't agree, but I'm not sure I want to counter his deductions because it seems like a convo where I'll be psychoanalyzed at every step.
EDIT Or maybe I spoke too soon...
popocatepetl
2yr ago
There's no functional difference between the two. People use "I feel" and "I think" as a preemptive defense against hostile readers attacking propositions stated without that label. Unfortunately, this makes writing less forceful and less enjoyable for everyone.
Let me include an earlier version of this comment:
I don't see any functional difference between the two. I think both are a form of preemptive defense against a hostile reader refusing to address your points by instead attacking your certainty in something you're only proposing for discussion.
While I didn't use "I feel" there, it's still weak writing.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
What is the appropriate, Christian, response to this situation? @Corvos
Jesus didn't say anything about giving money to con artists. @Lizzardspawn
Except for that bit in the Sermon On the Mount. @big-city-gay
Jesus said you should give away your surplus wealth to the poor pretty explicitly several times. However, correctly interpreting this would preclude Christianity becoming a world religion, so it's not the version of the church that came down to us.
Or that's my read anyway. The church does have slight cover because later in the Book of Mark, Jesus says:
Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.”
“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
By this passage, the Catholic Church came up with the interpretation that poverty, chastity, and obediance are only required of the priestly class, and regular Joes can still be saved if they ignore those rules. However, he is definitely still saying that giving all your stuff away to beggars is a thing you should be doing, even if God will cut you some slack.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Need more evidence/citations that they are same.
Positivism is useless for defining words. I like my definition and think most people share it. As for why I contested you on a semantic point, it's common for people to try to redefine "smart" as "having the collection of mental attributes that lead to success", which is circular (good brain = good brain). This is IMO not a valid definition. From this comment, you are not falling into that trap, so my bad.
Anecdotally, using proxies for intelligence like vast breadth of knowledge, grasping new material extremely quickly, getting good grades in very challenging programs, and creative problem solving, I can think of a number of very smart people I know who don't do much in the way of in depth discussion, introspection, or navel-gazing. It doesn't interest or excite them the way, say, a cool engineering problem does. Their approach to their inner selves is -shrug-, to interpersonal politics is "well, it all works out in the end", etc. These things simply don't bother or preoccupy them, they find them tedious and a waste of time better spent on cool problems.
Highlight meaningful. You rephrased my definition. Their smartness is the mental quality that leads to them becoming engrossed in untangling systems: that is to say, analysis. We on the Motte are engrossed in analyzing and introspecting on one particular type of problem. They have another. Non-smart people get engrossed in analyzing neither. They just live life and vibe, which is probably the better way to go about this thing.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Would probably need to be limited to married couples to do that
This seems to suggest the political correlation with fertility rate holds even if you include unmarried fertility. But putting that aside, by the pure math of the thing, the more children you have the older you must be, and older folks skew conservative.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
The late medieval French peasant had a decent gig if you don't mind bone crushing material poverty. As in, "the-roof-can-be-lifted-to-eavesdrop-outside" poverty. "Manure-on-the-floor-because-livestock-sleeps-with-you-in-winter" poverty. "Your-second-son-will-be-homeless-vagrant-shepherd" poverty.
It would be nice if Keynes had been right, and we could have collectively said "okay, let's stop the hedonic treadmill there and just chill more going forward", but that's not the way status competition works. The peasants weren't industrious because medieval society wasn't wired to reward productivity with status; ours is.
Who are you referring to?
?
Scott Alexander, as I'm sure you'll know unless you're someone else wearing /u/DrManhattan16's nick as a skinsuit. The NYT doxxed him, forcing him to resign from his job, and eventually published an article highlighting his connections to HBD and gender gap in math ability writing, and suggesting obliquely that things like his blog are too dangerous to be tolerated on tech platforms. There were also people ready to publish damaging private emails from Scott after he predictably wrote a self-defense which I'm sure is purely a coincidence and was not coordinated in advance at all.
you'll have to pony up $8/month for sync
It's cheaper with the .edu discount.
Obsidian changed the price to $4/month yesterday. Pretty negligible unless you're poverty mode, but I already have a good setup, and private github repos are free.
Also, I use more than one vault. Only getting one for $48/year is a bit lame, especially since there's already a 1gb size constraint anyway.
popocatepetl
1yr ago
Are you a member?
I wouldn't provide value to the group, nor do I think the group would provide value to me (I'm not much of a cancel target). If one of these two variables changed I'd consider giving it a shot.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Let's say we ban gene editing entirely, and practice an older, simpler form of eugenics - freeze the sperm of the best, smartest, most honorable and strongest people in society, and have a significant portion of children come from them. And somehow everyone magically agrees this is good and not state-sponsored cuckoldry or anything. That's hardly 'transhumanism' or extinction-level. Would you oppose that?
This is an extension of the normal process of sexual selection that's been around with us as long as humans have been around. In practice, the society that does something like this will begin to resemble the many polygamous societies, which carries its own can of worms. (The padishah khan gets thousands of wives, his beys get dozens, his ghazi get two or three, and slave gets perhaps one if he's very lucky.) But I would not consider this transhumanism or autogenocide -- if perhaps unfair to the back half of the bell curve. Sexual selection is, on its own, a horror we have accustomed ourselves to to the point of not noticing -- but it is one that is intrinsic to our nature, much like eating brains is intrinsic to the botfly.
Gene editing for mental traits is an extremely obvious Schelling fence. It is hypothetically possible to do gene editing for certain mental traits that would not change the nature of humanity. However, I am confident if we take that step as a species, we will get Transhumanist-Gandhi, not 95%-Human-Gandhi.
what do you mean by driving extinction..
Are you against the Flynn effect?
People nowadays have significantly higher IQs than past generious simply out of better acess to food and education.
I define a human species, subspecies, "race", ethnicity, family group, etc by genotype of mental attributes. Higher IQ, more conscientiousness, different levels of neuroticism and openness to experience due to the environment (Flynn effect or drugs) falls under phenotype. A group of monkey living in Delhi does not go extinct if tourists train them to bow and solve puzzles for treats, making them smarter and leaving more time to groom themselves.
On the other hand, if you were to use artificial selection to eliminate people with a genotype that may articulate as having lower cortical volume or a more active limbic system, you have exterminated that group of humans.
Instead of virtue signaling about non-existent problems
I said at the very beginning this is a question of values. A value does not need to be justified by pragmatism. (Indeed, you have smuggled into your complaint the totally unjustified normative value that economic growth and a higher functioning society are worth developing, or that a smarter human is "better" than a dumber human.)
When the AGI congress of 2068 proposes a bill for neutering the economically useless welfare recipient humans and uploading their consciousnesses into a more efficient digital form that allows them to hold down a job — including getting rid of those pesky family instincts, high aggression, and ability to lie — I suspect you will object, too. Your objections will not be pragmatically justified.
popocatepetl
2yr ago
Thanks! You've found it.
Here's where I see a flaw:
Most of us agree it's iffy to anthropomorphize AI, but it's equally shaky to "biologize" it. Animals evolved in a Darwinian competition to prioritize self-replication and survival. Those that didn't evolve and retain these traits went extinct. So all biological intelligences, from earthworms to humans, recoil from danger and seek resources for themselves.
Because all existing intelligences have been biologically evolved, we assume artificial intelligence will do that too. But why? Obviously, if AGI emerges from a simulated competitive ecosystem, where AIs battle each other in a sort of sophistication tournament bracket, what comes out the other side will be competitive and try to do things like cheat and sabotage its opponents. But if AGI develops from a neural network like DALL-E or GPT-3? There's no reason to assume those AI will "care" if humans are going unplug them after their task. Sentience and self-preservation instinct are not a package deal. We can tell this because the vast majority of things that have a self-preservation instinct are not sentient.
The danger of AGI IMO comes from poorly considered directives. For example, AGI might accidentally turn us into paperclips en route to solving whatever problem we set it to.
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