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naraburns  nihil supernum  1mo ago (text post)   6264 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for September 2025

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions to the Main Motte

@naraburns:

@Dean:

@100ProofTollBooth:

Contributions for the week of August 25, 2025

@WandererintheWilderness:

Contributions for the week of September 1, 2025

@ZanarkandAbesFan:

@Dean:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@RandomRanger:

Contributions for the week of September 8, 2025

@Corvos:

@100ProofTollBooth:

@ArjinFerman:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@Southkraut:

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@vorpa-glavo:

@Testing123:

@problem_redditor:

Okay, Chuck. Another Fine Mess You've Gotten Us Into.

@NullHypothesis:

@oats_son:

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@jake:

@Iconochasm:

@MonkeyWithAMachinegun:

Contributions for the week of September 15, 2025

@JTarrou:

@kky:

@Dean:

Contributions for the week of September 22, 2025

@FCfromSSC:

@gattsuru:

@Tractatus:

@Zephyr:

Contributions for the week of September 29, 2025

@CrispyFriedBarnacles:

@BahRamYou:

@problem_redditor:

@Iconochasm:

@WhiningCoil:

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This months takes feel a little weak to me, maybe it's because I'm starting to outgrow this place. The same happened at LW, my first impressions of that site were good, but then I gradually became able to see flaws in peoples arguments, and now most of the posts on there are simply annoying to read, and none of them blow me away or make me feel like I'm not qualified to read them (a feeling which I happen to enjoy, and actively seek out). My method of evaluation is rather non-standard. I consider a unique and insightful take to be superior to a mediocre, but relevant take. I suppose I also find it frustrating to see people debate a X-year-old issue, with none of the arguments being any better than they were X years ago, especially for large X on issues that I consider "solved".

Some of the takes on here are also completely obvious to a lot of 'regular' people, or they're things which used to be common knowledge, but now manages to be uncommon knowledge, especially in educated circles. Some people also advocate for traditional ideas, but do so in a way which has integrated a modern perspective. As a fictional example: If somebody were to say "Borders are an extreme, but necessarily solution" then they'd be refusing the modern position of open borders, while buying into the ridiculus, modern idea that borders are something which needs to be defended in the first place, rather than something obviously necessary. As you fight against bad ideas, you shouldn't also integrate them into your own worldview. You shouldn't buy into a wrong context even if you can refute some ideas from within it. Good takes on general issues are timeless, so a forum which is too strongly colored by the current year will have takes which are only useful within the context which prompted them (causing poor generalizability), they'd be purely reactive. It also creates the fear that moderators would punish you for writing something outside of the overton window, which would be considered completely inoffensive in some other culture and/or some other century.

Most things that frustrate me are very minor, but still impactful, like the idea that loneliness and a lack of sex are the same thing, as if seeing a prostitute would make you less lonely. This very framing is pathological. (I realize it might just have been a simplification though)

Not that all takes are mediocre, a few are quite good (and I'm completely spoiled by having internet access, so I have very high standards), and the only way I can describe it is that reading them feels completely different from the average comment, they're refreshing to read (unlike my own comment. I'm not a good writer and the arrogant tone is probably off putting as well)

Bro, this place is just a hangout without pretensious ideals like Less Wrong, I doubt there's a lot of people who post here with the goal to blow lurkers' minds, and the ones that do are probably eyeing a S***tack career. Anyway, if you're mainly here for consoooming instead of participating as an equal, you're probably doing it wrong.

this place is just a hangout without pretensious ideals like Less Wrong

I am pretentious.

I doubt there's a lot of people who post here with the goal to blow lurkers' minds

I only ever post with the intention of blowing everyone’s minds.

Funny, one large reason I post is to poke holes in 'mindblowing' arguments or to just point out some glaring counterexample that demolishes up a convenient narrative if acknowledged.

I've come to learn that the way the world 'really' works is messy and on the fringes is quite unknowable, and I've come to gain an instinctive skepticism towards anyone who claims to have a insight that explains large, abstract phenomena.

I like people who engage with the messiness and admit to the limits of knowledge over those who claim to have it all reduced to smooth lines and platonic ideals with certainty.

I like people who engage with the messiness and admit to the limits of knowledge over those who claim to have it all reduced to smooth lines and platonic ideals with certainty.

You should certainly make an effort to study philosophy then! It's right up your alley. (The tradition of philosophers tearing down Platonic ideals goes back to at least Plato.)

I mean, I did study it.

Hume kind of demolished the idea that we can ever achieve certainty regardless of how airtight our arguments seem.

You still get some brave souls trying to swap an ought for an is, and acting like I wouldn't notice.

Isn't this limitation a part of the map rather than part of the territory? Language is limited, logic is limited, math is limited, etc, but reality doesn't particularly care about the mental jails which we create. I disagree with your earlier comment that understanding aspects of the world in depth is impossible, but I do believe that knowledge alone is insufficient. A condition you might accept for "understanding aspects of the world" is being able to predict the future, and some great people of the past have made eerily good predictions (I believe Tesla predicted phones and computer monitors, and Nietzsche predicted communism and its death toll. Less impressive works are ones like 1984, but that still requires a good intuition to notice an approaching problem before others). Maybe it seems like a nitpick, but my claim is "0.01% of people have a solid understanding of some aspect of the world", and with how statistics work, the vast majority of people who claim to have these abilities are wrong.

I hope you get to experience something which breaks your models of what's possible. It's a refreshing experience and a great blow to limiting beliefs

My model of what is possible is pretty vast and expansive.

My model of what humans individually are capable of is far more limited.

The muddly part is all about coordination. Game theory, information theory, and public choice theory (and other branches of economics) all help give us an idea of how humans in groups might interact for better and for worse, and how power gets pushed in directions that aren't ideal for human development.

If humans can get aligned together and communicate well enough to share an (accurate) world model and use that to advance a particular goal, we get amazing things. The Apollo Program. The Manhattan Project. The Large Hadron Collider.

But somehow, despite our tools improving, the ability of humans to do large scale coordination seems to be eroding? This makes it way harder to predict future developments, but it does not bode well.

Game theory problems only emerge at scale. Smaller communities don't suffer from them nearly as much for this reason. I believe in the capability of exceptional individuals, humanity has advanced thanks to great people/'giants', the mediocre masses add very little value.

I also happen to have reverse engineered some of these dynamics, and probably better than 99% of researchers, for I have solutions that I don't see anyone else talk about directly. Granted, Jordan Peterson wrote a book warning about excessive order, but I don't think he realizes that he's mathematically correct in warning against that. And do you know that the definition we use for "rational agent" is one which always seeks its own advantage? If our ideal for how one ought to think is completely void of good taste (like that definition is), then we will run into problems which didn't exist in the past because good taste used to protect against it.

How do you get somebody to do 1000$ worth of labour, without paying them, and without coercion? It seems impossible mathematically, and yet, my grandma has sometimes done this, just because she enjoys helping people. By making people more intelligent, but less human, less things become possible. General intelligence might conflict with instincts, as learning logical thinking is all about suppressing your natural biases, instincts, emotions, etc.

Accurate world models aren't bad per se, but they're not sufficient. Being completely objective also puts you at a high risk of becoming a nihilist.

Of course our coordination is getting worse. We're also becoming more lonely despite being "more connected" than ever. The reasons are more obvious the less educated one is.

More comments

Have you considered opening a S***tack?

Nah. It's not a format I'm interested in. I like the community dynamic here, and I like the spontaneous back-and-forth arguments that emerge.

Well then, you are doing it right.

You keep spelling that with one too few *'s, you know...

I thought he was writing Shittack.

It was actually "Substack" all along, but I was acting like it's a slur.

I got it, just going for low comedy.

I hope I don't get banned.

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