If arguments over the relative merits of Star Wars and Star Trek became a regular feature of this site, I would feel compelled to burn it to the ground.
Wow, I expected a downvote or two, but −15 seems like an unusually severe Less Wrong sense-of-humour-failure given I was making a tongue-in-cheek reply to a comment with a not-very-serious tone itself.
Less Wrong is a tough audience for a comedian. Only the cleverest (i.e. least obvious and most unexpected) jokes draw upvotes.
A useful rule of thumb: Expect to draw a downvote from everyone who thought of your joke themselves, but then decided not to post it because it was too obvious.
That sounds like an interesting challenge then: I wonder if I have assimilated human thought processes well enough by now to produce a “funny” comment that gets voted up above some crucial threshold.
I will expend little effort toward this end, however, since it’s only distantly related to producing paperclips.
I figured the basic meaning was serious, but I interpreted the tone as (perhaps unintentionally) comically hyperbolic, hence my apparently failed attempt at replying in kind.
It wasn’t necessarily a “sense-of-humour failure”! One can get a joke and still not like it, or like it but think that it still shouldn’t be posted here.
STTNG is basically the closest we’ve ever come to a TV series about rationality
Look, I enjoy The Next Generation too, but I think you may be suffering from a pony effect. Rationality is great, and Star Trek is great, but that doesn’t mean the two have anything to do with each other.
He didn’t actually make a comment about which series was closer to a Lesswrong perspective on rationality. You may be inclined to put an equal sign between “best reflecting the rationalist agenda” and “better series,” but that is a question of taste.
Leaving aside questions of how sensible STTNG is when gold-pressed latinum circulates along side replicators that appear to produce things costlessly, etc., etc.
If arguments over the relative merits of Star Wars and Star Trek became a regular feature of this site, I would feel compelled to burn it to the ground.
Wow, I expected a downvote or two, but −15 seems like an unusually severe Less Wrong sense-of-humour-failure given I was making a tongue-in-cheek reply to a comment with a not-very-serious tone itself.
Less Wrong is a tough audience for a comedian. Only the cleverest (i.e. least obvious and most unexpected) jokes draw upvotes.
A useful rule of thumb: Expect to draw a downvote from everyone who thought of your joke themselves, but then decided not to post it because it was too obvious.
That sounds like an interesting challenge then: I wonder if I have assimilated human thought processes well enough by now to produce a “funny” comment that gets voted up above some crucial threshold.
I will expend little effort toward this end, however, since it’s only distantly related to producing paperclips.
I was entirely serious.
I figured the basic meaning was serious, but I interpreted the tone as (perhaps unintentionally) comically hyperbolic, hence my apparently failed attempt at replying in kind.
It wasn’t necessarily a “sense-of-humour failure”! One can get a joke and still not like it, or like it but think that it still shouldn’t be posted here.
Fortunately there’s nothing t argue over, since Star Trek is obviously better ;).
Voted down for being utterly wrong.
.
Look, I enjoy The Next Generation too, but I think you may be suffering from a pony effect. Rationality is great, and Star Trek is great, but that doesn’t mean the two have anything to do with each other.
.
He didn’t actually make a comment about which series was closer to a Lesswrong perspective on rationality. You may be inclined to put an equal sign between “best reflecting the rationalist agenda” and “better series,” but that is a question of taste.
Leaving aside questions of how sensible STTNG is when gold-pressed latinum circulates along side replicators that appear to produce things costlessly, etc., etc.
Also, this sort of critique...
By the Laws of Karma, I am Less Wrong than Shard Phoenix! Therefore Star Wars is better.
There’s really no comparison, because Star Wars isn’t sci-fi; it’s fantasy in space.