I approve of the potential for humor and found the joke amusing until I noticed that it is flawed.
You can start your indexes anywhere. 0 and 1 are the most common but I have had occasion to use others. (Not technically contradicted by the joke but enough to make it lame… you just have to count the types after the colon and ignore the number).
It doesn’t matter how you index it, the size is not altered. {0 ⇒ “a”, 1 ⇒ “b”}.size = 2. {1 ⇒ “a”, 2=>”b”}.size = 2. (I say this to elevate it from rhollerith’s “everyone I have ever met” to “everyone who isn’t wrong”.)
Then I noticed that the humor itself is a powerful persuader, it nearly distracted me from both those obvious flaws despite their familiarity with the subject. The fact that pointing this out would in most contexts be a faux pas demonstrates a risk that the abuse of humor entails. In fact, even here the “It’s a joke” reply is upvoted to 3. Humor as a conversation halter is (epistemically) undesirable when it conveys false meaning.
I thought the error in logic contributed to the humour in the joke. A perfect parallel to a joke I’d already heard (the binary one) would be less amusing.
I saw the joke before the context so I can’t really say how it affected the conversation, but it didn’t look sufficiently related to the parent to be either misleading or informative about how many types of fools there are. At worst it could be distracting.
I agree with you about jokes in general having a risk of being misleading. I think a good response to a joke that’s misleading in a way you care about is to acknowledge that it’s a joke and respond seriously anyway. And distinguish between replying to the joke and the joke-teller, unless you’re willing to assume the teller agrees with the joke’s implications.
This advice is targeted at the context of lesswrong discussions, where the joke’s been there for minutes or hours,. I don’t know that it would be a faux pas in general, but it would changing conversation tone to a serious mood to respond in real-time like that. Also I don’t know that I’d use it in a hostile environment.
Ignore it. At the margin such effort would be far better spent on bigger, easier to fix issues. On average humor seems (to me) to push away from bullshit rather than towards it so counters would need to be fine tuned.
Something most of us do automatically is reduce association with people who don’t share our sense of humor. People who actively use humor for anti-epistemic purposes (ie. not you) I tend to avoid unconscously. They feel evil.
I approve of the potential for humor and found the joke amusing until I noticed that it is flawed.
You can start your indexes anywhere. 0 and 1 are the most common but I have had occasion to use others. (Not technically contradicted by the joke but enough to make it lame… you just have to count the types after the colon and ignore the number).
It doesn’t matter how you index it, the size is not altered. {0 ⇒ “a”, 1 ⇒ “b”}.size = 2. {1 ⇒ “a”, 2=>”b”}.size = 2. (I say this to elevate it from rhollerith’s “everyone I have ever met” to “everyone who isn’t wrong”.)
Then I noticed that the humor itself is a powerful persuader, it nearly distracted me from both those obvious flaws despite their familiarity with the subject. The fact that pointing this out would in most contexts be a faux pas demonstrates a risk that the abuse of humor entails. In fact, even here the “It’s a joke” reply is upvoted to 3. Humor as a conversation halter is (epistemically) undesirable when it conveys false meaning.
I thought the error in logic contributed to the humour in the joke. A perfect parallel to a joke I’d already heard (the binary one) would be less amusing.
I saw the joke before the context so I can’t really say how it affected the conversation, but it didn’t look sufficiently related to the parent to be either misleading or informative about how many types of fools there are. At worst it could be distracting.
I agree with you about jokes in general having a risk of being misleading. I think a good response to a joke that’s misleading in a way you care about is to acknowledge that it’s a joke and respond seriously anyway. And distinguish between replying to the joke and the joke-teller, unless you’re willing to assume the teller agrees with the joke’s implications.
This advice is targeted at the context of lesswrong discussions, where the joke’s been there for minutes or hours,. I don’t know that it would be a faux pas in general, but it would changing conversation tone to a serious mood to respond in real-time like that. Also I don’t know that I’d use it in a hostile environment.
What would be your suggestion for repairing the situation?
Ignore it. At the margin such effort would be far better spent on bigger, easier to fix issues. On average humor seems (to me) to push away from bullshit rather than towards it so counters would need to be fine tuned.
Something most of us do automatically is reduce association with people who don’t share our sense of humor. People who actively use humor for anti-epistemic purposes (ie. not you) I tend to avoid unconscously. They feel evil.