Is my theory on why censorship is wrong correct?
So, I have next to no academic knowledge. I have literally not read or perhaps even picked up any book since eighth grade, which is where my formal education ended, and I turn 20 this year, but I am sitting on some theories pertaining to my understanding of rationality, and procrastinating about expressing them has gotten me here. I’d like to just propose my theory on why censorship is wrong, here. Please tell me whether or not you agree or disagree, and feel free to express anything else you feel you would like to in this thread. I miss bona fide argument, but this community seems way less hostile than the one community I was involved in elsewhere....
Also, I feel I should affirm again that my academic knowledge is almost entirely just not there… I know the LessWrong community has a ton of resources they turn to and indulge in, which is more or less a bible of rationality by which you all abide, but I have read or heard of none of it. I don’t mean to offend you with my willful ignorance. Sorry. Also, sorry for possibly incorporating similes and stuff into my expression… I know many out there are on the autistic spectrum and can’t comprehend it so I’ll try to stop doing that unless I’m making a point.
Okay, so, since the following has been bothering me a lot since I joined this site yesterday and even made me think against titling this what I want, consider the written and spoken word. Humans literally decided as a species to sequence scribbles and mouth noises in an entirely arbitrary way, ascribe emotion to their arbitrary scribbles and mouth noises, and then claim, as a species, that very specific arbitrary scribbles and mouth noises are inherent evil and not to be expressed by any human. Isn’t that fucking retarded?
I know what you may be thinking. You might be thinking, “wow, this hoofwall character just fucking wrote a fucking arbitrary scribble that my species has arbitrarily claimed to be inherent evil without first formally affirming, absolutely, that the arbitrary scribble he uttered could never be inherent evil and that writing it could never in itself do any harm. This dude obviously has no interest in successfully defending himself in argument”. But fuck that. This is not the same as murdering a human and trying to conceive an excuse defending the act later. This is not the same as effecting the world in any way that has been established to be detrimental and then trying to defend the act later. This is literally sequencing the very letters of the very language the human has decided they are okay with and will use to express themselves in such a way that it reminds the indoctrinated and conditioned human of emotion they irrationally ascribe to the sequence of letters I wrote. This is possibly the purest argument conceivable for demonstrating superfluity in the human world, and the human psyche. There could never be an inherent correlation to one’s emotionality and an arbitrary sequence of mouth noises or scribbles or whatever have you that exist entirely independent of the human. If one were to erase an arbitrary scribble that the human irrationally ascribes emotion to, the human will still have the capacity to feel the emotion the arbitrary scribble roused within them. The scribble is not literally the embodiment of emotionality. This is why censorship is retarded.
Mind you, I do not discriminate against literal retards, or blacks, or gays, or anything. I do, however, incorporate the words “retard”, “nigger”, and “faggot” into my vocabulary literally exclusively because it triggers humans and demonstrates the fact that the validity of one’s argument and one’s ability to defend themselves in argument does not matter to the human. I have at times proposed my entire argument, actually going so far to quantify the breadth of this universe as I perceive it, the human existence, emotionality, and right and wrong before even uttering a fuckdamn swear, but it didn’t matter. Humans think plugging their ears and chanting a mantra of “lalala” somehow gives themselves a valid argument for their bullshit, but whatever. Affirming how irrational the human is is a waste of time. There are other forms of censorship I shout address, as well, but I suppose not before proposing what I perceive the breadth of everything less fundamental than the human to be.
It’s probably very easy to deduce the following, but nothing can be proven to exist. Also, please do bear with my what are probably argument by assertion fallacies at the moment… I plan on defending myself before this post ends.
Any opinion any human conceives is just a consequence of their own perception, the likes of which appears to be a consequence of their physical form, the likes of which is a consequence of properties in this universe as we perceive it. We cannot prove our universe’s existence beyond what we have access to in our universe as we perceive it, therefore we cannot prove that we exist. We can’t prove that our understanding of existence is true existence; we can only prove, within our universe, that certain things appear to be in concurrence with the laws of this universe as we perceive it. We can propose for example that an apple we can see occupies space in this universe, but we can’t prove that our universe actually exists beyond our understanding of what existence is. We can’t go more fundamental than what composes our universe… We can’t go up if we are mutually exclusive with the very idea of “up”, or are an inferior consequence of “up” which is superior to us.
I really don’t remember what else I would say after this but, I guess, without divulging how much I obsess about breaking emotionality into a science, I believe nudity can’t be inherent evil either because it is literally the cause of us, the human, and we are necessary to be able to perceive good and evil in the first place. If humans were not extant to dominate the world and force it to tend to the end they wanted it to anything living would just live, breed, and die, and nothing would be inherently “good” or “evil”. It would just be. Until something evolved if it would to gain the capacity to force distinctions between “good” and “evil” there would be no such constructs. We have no reason to believe there would be. I don’t know how I can affirm that further. If nudity- and exclusively human nudity, mind you- were to be considered inherent evil that would mean that the human is inherent evil, that everything the human perceives is is inherent evil and that the human’s understanding of “rationality” is just a poor, grossly-misled attempt at coping with the evil properties that they retain and is inherently worthless. Which I actually believe, but an opinion that contrary is literally satanism and fuck me if I think I’m going to be expounding all of that here. But fundamentally, human nudity cannot be inherent evil if the human’s opinions are to be considered worth anything at all, and if you want to go less fundamental than that and approach it from a “but nudity makes me feel bad” standpoint, you can simply warp your perception of the world to force seeing or otherwise being reminded of things to be correlated to certain emotion within you. I’m autistic it seems so I obsess about breaking emotionality down to a science every day but this isn’t the post to be talking about shit like that. In any case, you can’t prove that the act of you seeing another human naked is literal evil, so fuck you and your worthless opinions.
Yeah… I don’t know what else I could say here, or if censorship exists in forms other than preventing humans from being exposed to human nudity, or human-conceived words. I should probably assert as well that I believe the human’s thinking that the inherent evil of human nudity somehow becomes okay to see when a human reaches the age of 18, or 21, or 16, or 12 depending on which subset of human you ask is retarded. Also, by “retarded” I do not literally mean “retarded”. I use the word as a trigger word that’s meant to embody and convey bad emotion the human decides they want to feel when they’re exposed to it. This entire post is dripping with the grossest misanthropy but I’m interested in seeing what the responses to this are… By the way, if you just downvote me without expressing to me what you think I’m doing wrong, as far as I can tell you are just satisfied with vaguely masturbating your dissenting opinion you care not for even defining in my direction, so, whatever makes you sleep at night, if you do that… but you’re wrong though, and I would argue that to the death.
Your post is hard to read. I recommend writing in shorter sentences and summarizing your main points at the end.
Furthermore, you should control the scope of your piece. You say at the beginning that you’re going to make the case against censorship. Unfortunately only paragraphs 3 and 4 do that. Then you rant about tangential topics. You should also control the scope of your sentences and paragraphs. Your sentences jump all over the place. Try to make one sentence say one thing, and have one paragraph contain one small idea.
In paragraphs 3 and 4, you claim that we humans declared certain combinations of words to be inherently evil. Then you go on to argue that that’s wrong because words don’t inherently correspond to their meanings. This seems to be your argument against censorship. But you don’t need to believe that certain combinations of words are inherently evil to be for censoring those words. You just need to believe that people hearing those words can result in things you don’t want. You seem to anticipate this sort of response earlier on (it’s hard to say, your writing isn’t easy to comprehend), but dismiss the response because apparently it’s irrational to feel emotions after seeing words. You think this because words don’t inherently mean anything. Why you feel we should only feel emotions when seeing things that inherently mean something is never explained.
In the rest of the piece, you try to make the point that morality is a human construct. And you go off on tangential rants about some things you consider retarded. Profanity aside, most people here would agree that morality is to some extent arbitrary. What I don’t see is why you believe that has anything to do with censorship.
Finally, I’m downvoting this mostly because it’s very poorly written. It takes way too much effort to figure out what you probably meant and I would like to see less of this on this site. You say you haven’t read a book since 8th grade. I’m sure you haven’t.
Please tell me if I’ve misrepresented what you’ve written.
I don’t understand why your claim here would be true, though. How could a human just “not want” something if they don’t believe that something is inherent evil? They think it is arbitrary evil? Consciously claiming that an opinion is arbitrary then thinking that opinion is worth something seems absolutely ridiculous to me. Is it not impossible to win an argument if your position is entirely arbitrary?
I was trying to argue that seeing things could never inherently mean anything, though. I was trying to affirm that emotion as it exists in the human mind is completely independent of all external constructs, such as words, or nudity.
I don’t know what you’re referring to here. If you’re referring to my proposing the breadth of this universe that was just to have done so so the notion of my argument expecting blind conformity out or readers would be killed.
Passive aggression aside, I still do not understand how what I written was poor at all. I don’t understand what I did wrong. Why should I do any of what you suggest I do?
You might find you don’t get downvoted to oblivion
I hope you realize that you expect sheer, unadulterated blind conformity from me here, and that you have not even remotely attempted to prove my expression in the English language to be inherent evil, and your proposed amended iteration of my expression to be inherent good.
I’m a picky eater. There are a lot of foods that I don’t want. But I don’t consider them inherently evil.
Swearing decreases my status, which means that I will make less money, which means that I won’t be able to afford to buy as many mosquito nets for poor africans, which means that more of them will die of malaria. If I swear, evil things will happen, but it’s not the swearing itself that’s evil.
In your first scenario, I just cannot understand… perhaps it is my simply lacking certain mental faculties here that would render my mind normal, but I cannot sympathize with just not wanting certain food while not actually claiming that your consuming that certain food will be inherent evil, or that the certain food is in itself inherent evil. If the evil is not inherent then the argument is arbitrary, as the evil you claim is not a fundamental property of that construct as it exists naturally in this universe. If I don’t want to eat something you could bet your ass that I would argue against my consuming that thing to the death...
In the second scenario that is one where one must compromise on what I believe to be the objective most rational method for the sake of accomplishing a side goal, which is different to simply forcing the world to tend to its most rational end. One might have to do that to simply continue living. That is a very cheap scenario to propose… the human’s irrational world makes it so you cannot be rational(as I perceive it) without possibly throwing your life away. Composing this paragraph was difficult, and the first paragraph here was a second draft but I’d like to be clear that I am of the opinion that it is impossible to think something is arbitrary evil, rather than inherent evil… arbitrary evil does not make sense to me…
I consider the discomfort that will result if I attempt to eat the food to be inherently evil. Does that count?
Yes, it does, and it fits with my philosophy that thinking one’s own opinion is “arbitrary evil” is impossible...
I may have been subconsciously refraining from all-out proposing fundamental arguments that expound why I believe my opinions must be correct and all conceivable dissenting opinions must be wrong. I haven’t argued in a very long time… I’m surprised I can even express myself as well(in my opinion) as I can right now. One year ago I just wasn’t able to express my philosophy from so long of not doing so or considering it in English and I had to just apologize and leave the conversation. Wasn’t fun. Btdubs, this entire paragraph is just myself stalling because I can’t submit this post yet… system claims I am trying to submit too fast… had to wait 10 minutes I believe,
So anyway, from correlating what I perceive to be objective good to all parts of itself and from giving my perception of objective evil the same treatment I believe the food you like should turn you on, which is really great. I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, after I assimilated scat and vore fetishism and such to myself just to have the sympathy I had to change some stuff.
It sucks that humans can’t actually bite into bone and the like as easily as other animals… Would be cool.
Maybe I committed the Like Mind Fallacy and you really are like you said? If so, I think there’s something seriously wrong with you. Being that extreme about everything can’t be healthy. Being turned on is fun and all, but I don’t think it’s supposed to happen as often as you suggest.
Mate, I assure you that I worship reason and only ask for reason to think and do, and only wish to give others reason to think and do. I don’t lie… I do not believe lying to be inherent good. The only times I lie would be in the scenarios where telling the truth and inherently totally adhering to my philosophy would compromise my existence in this world, for instance. Living unaffected by the human is at the moment more important to be than being the best in all aspects...
Fucking… I have to wait six more minutes to post this. But yeah, I am turned on by everything I think is good. I think it’s really great. I may as well say the following since I am at −16 karma and talking about random shit to occupy time but I am a gigantic furry. Do you know what a furry is? I define a furry as one who believes that the human is not good enough, so they replace aspects of them with something feral. I think it’s absolutely amazing… There is an entire fuckhuge community- ancient, too. This shit was happening before the internet- of users out there who believe they either sympathize with a feral creature more than the human, or they find the human something less than ideal so they replace parts of them with something feral. It is an extremely convenient correlation to force, too, as feral creatures universally have no perception of right or wrong as far as the human knows. They simply are. By correlating your understanding of good to the feral creature- which you are by being a furry- you basically try to rid yourself of your inferior, human traits, which is kind of endearing in a way, but the majority of furries don’t view it from that radical of a viewpoint. They worship feral creatures, yes, at least in their own way, but to them they’re just indulging in emotion… I treat it as a science that has to be conquered.
I forgot why I started on this thing about furries. Never mind, I scrolled up and saw. I’m turned on by my laptop too.
I have 30 more seconds to waste but, one of the inherent upsides to being a furry is that, if you are an otherkin, meaning you view yourself as an animal of some sort when your eyes are closed, so to speak but in the extreme circumstances even when they are open, you actively saturate all perceived negative aspects of your form you grasp at the moment with your understanding of pleasure, which is the furry creature you identify as. I highly recommend it… it sounds fucked but since the distinctions are so clear it is likely much more safe than doing the same with human worship.
They could think it leads indirectly to undesirable consequences.
I wish I had seen this sooner. I wish I had had the chance to share some of my thoughts with Hoofwall before ze was banned. If you come back to reading this page, Hoofwall, I’d like you to know this: I’ve been where you are, and I’d like to show you a way out.
I know how the world of human interaction feels mysterious. It follows hundreds of unwritten rules that were invented before we were born, and we are expected to already know them, or to deduce them from just being around people. I know, it makes no sense.
We are confused; we are scared. We enter human society in a state of cluelessness as to what it is they want and how we can speak of what we want and how we will agree on anything and how we will help one another and how we will keep from hurting one another and it suddenly seems like it’s forbidden to even speak of these fears out loud. We are supposed to have already figured it out.
So at first we approach cautiously, trying very hard to make as few mistakes as possible, and retreating in panic every time we step on the wrong place and activate the invisible laser alarm. Humans are so strange, and they don’t want to make the effort to make themselves understood. They expect us to already know.
So after a while we start deducing our own rules, and making simplifications that work for us. At last there’s some sense of structure, some explicit path for dealing with humans. And it feels like it works, but we can never be completely sure. Humans react in unpredictable ways, and we start fearing we missed some vital detail in the rules we invented to help ourselves navigate reality. Our rules conflict with the more ancient, more widespread, more complicated social rules which existed before us and envelop us. Some actions, gestures and words have a specific history; even if we were not taught them, we’re still expected to already know. Yes, I know, humans make no sense.
And we are powerless against their rules. Humans seem to live happily with those rules; we need to adapt. Even if the rules we invented for ourselves seem to make more sense, it would be too much effort for all of humanity to unlearn and relearn. We need to adapt. We need to consider what already is. We need to deal with humans in their terms, because they’re too lazy to accept any others. Even if those rules are also invented, even if no word has any “inherent” power in itself, the force of tradition is still strong, and it’s easier for everyone to behave as if it were universal. I know, humans are stupid. But they don’t take well to be told that. It has cost thousands of years to arrive at the rules humans have now, and when we try to show them why those rules make no sense, we’re interpreted as if we were implying that all those thousands of years were a waste of effort. Humans look at us in disbelief, and ask, “How do you presume to know any better?” I know, humans are absurd.
But still, many of them seem happy. They seem to function perfectly fine with their complicated, invisible rules. Maybe it would be worth to know more about those rules, and why they exist in the form they have, and how humans benefit from them? It may be our best strategy; humans expect we address them in their language. Trying to use their language in our own private way will cause many misunderstandings. They don’t know all the effort we have had to make to try to learn about their world; they will never know how much effort we make everyday to keep our sanity and still function; they don’t see what we see in the words. Speaking to them in the same way we speak inside our minds will fail to show them what we see, because they don’t live inside our heads. To make ourselves understood, we have to use words in a way humans are familiar with, and be mindful of the socially accepted ways of using words. Otherwise we’ll all be speaking different languages. Even if we truly mean no offense, humans have already learned that some ways of speaking are used when offense is intended.
It’s inevitable. Those rules existed before us. Humans are weird, and noisy, and erratic, and inconsistent. And more importantly, humans are in power. They get to decide how society works. Some of them have been trained to be sensitive to those of us with less than typical minds, and they try to do their best, but they don’t live inside our heads and don’t know what it’s like to be always puzzled by everything. We need to adapt. We need to refrain from letting our anger take control. We need to be very patient with humans and remember that some of them may even be just as surprised as we are, and may get to see our point, if we really try to explain it.
Thanks for writing this. It probably wouldn’t have done any good, but… thanks.
You hate humans, did you say? You appear to be my enemy, why should I help you or engage with you?
I only seek to convince you and others to think like me. Mines is a philosophy that should objectively maximize your pleasure and minimize your pain, but for some reason, even though I have personally systematically destroyed every dissenting opinion I have ever seen or could come up with over the years, humans just don’t care, and they choose to exhibit inferior behavior. In relation to the thread topic for instance, there is literally, /literally/ no reason at all to take offense at being called an insult or anything, yet humans do anyway, despite the fact that they could easily just construe the emotion they feel upon being exposed to the insult to be pleasurable, even, if that is what they really wanted.
It is not like reason actually matters when it comes to the human, anyway… Look at how many downvotes this thread of mines has gotten… Of the ten downvotes I have currently only a few people have posted in my thread, and I do not even know if any of them have downvoted me. Some even went to my profile to downvote irrelevant posts I feel, as I would see the downvotes just climb in numbers every few seconds. Mate, I don’t even know what I am going on about here but if my proposing an argument as to why you should think like me doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will, and I don’t really care… but if you want to engage me in argument or otherwise just make me tell more of the logic behind my opinions I don’t mind doing so… this website’s reaction to me is very disappointing, though, especially considering that most all users on this site likely identify as “rationalists”.
You demonstrate that humans can easily be driven insane. And then you are left with an insane human. In my experience, insane people aren’t very helpful. I recommend trying to drive humans sane instead. It’s vastly more difficult, but very productive if you can manage it.
Are you implying that I should conform to literal objective inferior* behavior simply because the human is irrational and the validity of my argument and ability to defend myself in argument does not matter to them?
*forgot this word before this edit
I don’t think either of us were addressing the real issue, so I’ll start over.
This reminds me of a story from Change of Heart.
If you’re not familiar with signalling, I suggest reading up on it. A lot of human behavior is explained by it. People are built for politics. If you’re in a group of people who have long hair and wear funny clothes and preach about the environment being great, then by doing the same thing you can show that you’re loyal to them. If you really want to signal loyalty, you can burn your bridges with everyone else and do something crazy like getting arrested. If cut your hair and put on a suit, it signals that you’re loyal to your workplace, and by extension not them. It might help the environment, but you’re not built to save the environment. You’re built to maximize inclusive genetic fitness, and politics is a great way to do it.
I think the same thing is going on here. You’re not swearing because “fucking” is such an amazingly useful word. You’re signalling something. If I had to guess, I’d say that you’re signalling that you don’t need us by burning your bridges with us.
Who is “us”? Is “us” those who live by LessWrong’s philosophy? This community disagrees with my argument? But yes, I believe your conclusion is what I said outright… I use it because it is a trigger word to humans… It pisses them off, despite the fact that I may have said or written a thousand words of argument prior to dropping a human’s trigger word that explains why ascribing emotion. and the emotion they do to their trigger word is irrational.
But why do you consider it important to piss people off? If you’re just doing it for fun, I’d suggest doing it on YouTube or something so that you’re not getting in the way of anything productive.
I consider it important because I am totally extreme with my opinions. I hate humans so much I correlate every aspect of them to evil. I worship what I consider to be objective good so much that I’m fucking turned on by it, which is ridiculous since a lot of it isn’t even remotely sexual. In my eyes, everything conceivable can be forced to conform to the dichotomy of good verses evil, and if something cannot be good it is evil. I want the opposing party to understand that I find their philosophy utterly disgusting if I disagree with it, and I want them to know that I want them to think like me, and to turn to me to have their questions answered. I once wanted to force the world to tend to the end that I wanted it to, but that seems not realistic. I still have my belligerence and extreme opinions, though. I would also like to affirm again that I have yet to be given a single rational reason to abstain from expressing my indignation towards anything when I feel like expressing it. Also, human morality is exclusively a consequence of emotion… it is only natural I want to affirm that I correlate evil to pain, and anger.
That looks like you’re just attempting to piss me off. It doesn’t seem to actually mean anything.
And what the niggershitting babyfuck does this mean? Do you think you formally quantify what of my post there “doesn’t actually mean anything” and why it is so? Do you think you explain why what I proposed is not a valid argument? Do you think you in any way accomplish anything with this post beyond simply ejaculating your vague, worthless, human bullshit kind of in my direction to make yourself feel better about the fact that you can’t defend yourself in argument and do not even want to try?
In that sentence, the words “And what does this mean?” were used to convey information. The words “the niggershitting babyfuck” were meant to piss me off, and did not actually add anything to the sentence. It is possible that some of your last post was meant to convey information, but it’s not as simple as removing the swearing. I can see how you could piss someone off with that, but taking it as a list of facts they’re just too silly. You consider everything to be either evil or sexually gratifying? What about the color blue? Is blue evil? And you said that anger is evil, but you admitted to trying to make people angry.
My goal is to convince all who disagree with me to think like me. My main method is argument. My expressing my indignation is just on the side, and I see no reason to stop. I already proposed my logic behind doing so(I doubt it was an actual legit “argument” that I proposed, if you don’t mind the No True Scotsman) and you did not respond to any of it beyond a vague remark.
Okay, I would like to affirm again that my opinion are actually literal satanism, and that I have not actually conveyed the fundamentals to my philosophy yet. I believe everything in this universe as we perceive it is evil, but I also have a less radical viewpoint that distinguishes between the human’s understanding of good and evil. Mate, I don’t think you understand how much I love philosophy and giving others knowledge… I live for this shit. My mental faculties and possibly literal lack thereof force me to worship this shit. I know nothing else. If I could I would argue against every human I encountered simply to convince them to think like me. If you really want me to write of my satanic views and why I believe them to be correct and all conceivable dissenting opinions to be incorrect I would love to, but I want to do so to achieve the ultimate goal of convincing you to think like me. Not you specifically necessarily, but just whatever opposing party I am across, the likes of which is you at the moment. But to answer the question, I believe the color blue is evil, yes. It is not in itself good, as I see no reason to view it as good, so it must be evil. Black, or perhaps the lack of color is what I perceive to be the objective best… because satanism, of course. It opposes everything, so obviously I think the absence of perception is the best...
I don’t think that was the implication. What I took from it is that you shouldn’t be a dick.
What would insulting/infuriating the person with whom you’re discussing possibly accomplish, besides making them less likely to cooperate?
Stop beating around the bush. I directly implied in the post of mines to which you are responding that I believe censoring myself because the human wants me to do so is irrational. You could have attempted to rebut my argument in my original post where I proposed my argument as for why I believe censorship is irrational. You could have asked me to expound something, such as perhaps why I value conforming to standards that I perceive to be the best so highly. You could have at the very least quantified what it means to “be a dick” for me and explained why I should care even a little bit about what humans perceive to be “dickish”. You did nothing of the sort.
And this is the main issue you have been ignoring. I am trying to approach things from a purely logical standpoint. You however are proposing here that I should consider raw human emotionality, as if that means anything; as if that explains why I should do so, why doing so is good, why doing otherwise is bad etc. Basically you leave almost everything undefined to me here and nothing of this post convinces me to think like you, or even fully quantifies your position. I currently do not care about human cooperation. I care about objective good, objective bad, and being objectively good. But to answer your question, insulting/ infuriating any human with whom I am conversing would serve to convey how evil I find them or their opinions. I have yet to be given a rational reason to abstain from expressing such indignant notions.
Reputation has a lot to do with how people get treated. A bad reputation can mean anything from lost opportunities to being tortured to death.
One of the ways bad reputations are established and maintained is through insults, so it isn’t irrational for people to react negatively to at least some insults.
You say you hate people, and you’ve given some evidence of that in your writing. Considering that we’re people, is there any reason for us to want you on this blog?
Well, given that one of the purposes of LW/MIRI is to formulate morality explicitly enough to program it into an AI, attempting to explain it to a low-functioning autistic like hoodwall may be good practice.
This is the most fucking retarded website. I go to sleep, wake up, boom. I lost an additional 60 fucking karma. My account stopped being able to reply to posts “below the threshold” or whatever once I dipped bellow positive five. What the fuck. So downvoting me actually accomplishes more than vaguely masturbating one’s worthless opinion in my direction. It ensures that all replies any user makes on one of my posts they have downvote bombed “below the threshold” are exclusively masturbatory, as I am literally unable to fucking engage them in conversation. What a disgusting fucking archetype for a website. And this is supposed to be a haven for rationalists...
But about your post of argument by assertion fallacies, nigger, are you implying that you believe the literal validity of my argument and ability to defend myself in argument matters not if raw, blind human emotionality dictates that what it is I am successfully defending in argument offends them? You are implying that “rationality” to you is literally just facilitating blind human emotionality, and that questioning and defending variables matters not? You left this post as I was sleeping so I haven’t any idea how quickly you will reply to this, but if you wish to engage me, respond quickly. If this post gets downvoted by Redditards who can’t defend themselves in argument and don’t want to even try despite calling themselves rationalists and posting on a supposed “rationalist” website, I will be unable to reply to you.
You should do things that get good results. To a good approximation, that is what “rational” is used to mean around here.
Under this definition, if insulting people gets good results, it is rational to insult people. And if not insulting people gets good results, then it’s rational to not insult people.
It’s like playing League of Legends (or any other videogame that involves talking to teammates). Playing at the surface level, you just play the game by controlling your in-game pawn, and you talk to your teammates just based on what you want to say. But the things you say to your teammates are also directly impacting the game—the rational use of one’s keyboard in this situation is to try to type things that increase your chances of victory, and not type things that decrease your chances.
Are you implying that you believe objective morality bends to the whims of whatever method you need to convince a human to think like you? Are you implying that you believe the fundamental properties of the written and spoken word are just gone in certain instances where humans decide they want to be offended by them?
I am of the opinion that the written and spoken word could never be inherent evil. You appear to be implying that if a human thinks a word is inherent evil then I should treat it as if it is in order to accomplish a “good result”, if I must. What is a “good result”? If a “good result” is the objective most rational end the universe could tend to then compromising on one’s standards because the human has arbitrarily-decided they want you to absolutely does not facilitate that “good result”.
Whether or not a word is inherently evil is besides the point.
Would you please actually reformat this post so this sentence you wrote turns into an argument, and one that references the conversation this post is supposed to be a part of, because even if this single remark of yours made sense to me, were I to actually disagree with it and attempt to rebut it I will be taking presumptions and arguing against myself, as this is no argument.
Prophet hoofwall, you have witnessed for the truth at the reddit of the rationalists, and you see the results. The promised land for you is somewhere on Tumblr.
Listen, I see this post and was going to ignore it until I refreshed and saw you got upvoted, but between Poe’s law and my autism I cannot tell whether or not this post is to be taken at face value. I will however say that this community, if this thread is any indication, does not appear to actually champion rational thought. They champion argument by assertion fallacies, masturbatory remarks, refusing to define arguments, passive aggressive downvotes and downvote bombs because they can’t defend themselves in argument and don’t want to, and general bullshittery. Fuck this community. Are you serious? This entire “rationalist” thing is nothing but a gross circlejerk if you care not for even quantifying your fuckdamn argument when you see one as aggressive as I begging for your shitdamn opinion. Those more unfortunate than I would not even have the capacity to ask questions, as they would be indoctrinated. None of you actually care for maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. None of you actually care for winning any argument whatsoever. If this thread is anything to go by you are all humans and nothing more. It has been bred into your psyche from generation after generation of humans doing stupid shit they care not for defending like breeding more humans as worthless as them to be as worthless as you all are. You will live and die incapable of truly grasping the objective breadth of rationality, since you are all human, and you suck some serious human dick. Go fuck yourselves.
Naturally, if any of you even decide to read this you will grossly disagree with me. But what will you do? Will you engage me in argument to defend your dissenting voice within, to convince me to think like you, thus making me forever abstain from expressing the opinions I have, and from ever doing what you believe to be wrong? Of course not! You are all human! What you will do instead is passive-aggressively downvote me without even showing your face, because you believe simply vaguely masturbating your disagreeing with me is the best and most rational course of action. You will be proud of your inability to even quantify your disagreeing with me, and you will fuck a human in your lifetime, and you will conceive a human child just a worthless as you are. And then the cycle of human circlejerking will continue.
Dude, chill. We don’t define and quantify everything we say because that’s massively impractical. But if you insist, we can do that.
Let’s start with your post. I want you to take your argument against censorship and formalize it mathematically. If you do that, it’ll be clear if your argument is logically sound. If it turns out that it is logically sound, we can get to empirically verifying the assumptions of your model.
How does the scientific method sound to you?
If you find this difficult for whatever reason, perhaps there are things about formal reasoning you don’t know. Go read a math book, or a philosophy book, or even the sequences.
Finally, let me just point out that if your goal was to have a productive conversation you’re clearly not doing so well. Around here, we define rationality to be what lets us achieve our goals (more or less). By that standard, your chosen tactics aren’t very rational.
I suggest for all who have a pet crank theory to share, get to the point quickly if you want any engagement with your ideas.
The quality of argument in this post is awful, but the closest thing to a main point that I can extract from it is “there is no rational reason for human nudity taboos”, which is amusing because it’s probably true. Not important, but still true. Also, hoofwall, how did you even find this website? It’s not the sort of website that people who haven’t picked up a book since 8th grade usually find, let alone care to post on.
I’ve banned hoofwall, so there’s no point in asking them.
It’s probably a good idea to ask new people how they found the site, just to find out how its reputation is spreading.
That was why I was curious: presumably they didn’t get here through any of the usual channels, so LW’s reputation has gone somewhere I wouldn’t expect. Ah well, just as well they’re gone, should’ve asked faster.
You have this almost exactly backwards. Discriminating against people, a.k.a., applying Baysian priors, is in fact rational, despite modern hangups against saying this publicly. In fact you probably do actually discriminate, i.e., use evidence about people in making decisions. For example, let’s say you need someone to help you fix your computer, you probably want someone who’s intelligent and knows about computers, thus you will not be happy if a literal retard shows up.
Up to a point. While you focus on the example the “literal retard” that’s not where the problem comes in. The problem here is that people use the evidence more strongly than they should. Essentially this is the Screening off evidence problem. If I know say someone’s standardized test scores and GPA that will be overwhelmingly more useful for predicting how intelligent they are than any weak prior based on race, gender or socioeconomic class. But humans often don’t act that way.
Discrimination of the kind that gets legislated against in fact isnt.
Um, no.
Forcing employers to judge employees by their ability to do their job is forcing them to be rational.
Except the burden is on the employer to “prove” (using only legal evidence) that the test is relevant.
How does that impact my stated point?
“You can use evidence relevant to the person’s ability to do their job” and “you can use evidence that you can ‘prove’ is relevant to the person’s ability to do their job” (where ‘prove’ in quotes is not the same as actual proof) are very different.
The teacup in which this stormlet is occurring shrinks with every iteration.
what
I suppose I wouldn’t want someone incompetent for a certain task to accomplish that certain task but what I meant was, I do not actively hate any of those things I mentioned as distinguished from just the idea of the human.
Then why did you use the word “discriminate” when you meant “hate”?
Words may ultimately be arbitrary in some sense, but a language constitutes a consensus mapping of arbitrary symbols to things in the real world, and if you want to have a conversation with someone, it’s helpful to follow the mapping. Or worse use the same word for two different things and slip between the two meanings when making an argument, it is even possible to confuse oneself this way.
This problem is not restricted to you, in our culture there is a tendency to do this with the word “hate”.
Because I thought if that excerpt of mines were to be taken literally it would be understood as my simply not treating a retard, a black human, or a gay any differently from any other human were I to approach them for instance, or were I even to just consider them. I don’t ascribe negative emotion to my understanding of them so I don’t scowl when I think of them, for instance. I’ve also seen “discrimination” as a word used as I used it, and assumed my thought would be understood. A lot of what I say is to be taken something less than literally, such as the fact that I even use the word “retard” as an insult when I haven’t anything against literal retards, but my expression makes sense to me.
Except as we’ve just established you would (and should treat them differently).
“Discriminate” is another word that’s sometimes used in a confused manner. Although, here it’s less about confusing two meanings and more about ritually saying statements perceived as socially desirable even if it would be insane to actually act on the literal advice. This by the way is not just a harmless word game, it means that anybody could be accused of hypocrisy (or usually worse) by noting a specific instance where they do in fact discriminate.
Excuse me? Did you miss the part of the excerpt of mines you quoted in this post where I said “were I to approach them for instance, or were I even to just consider them”? I said I would not discriminate against those subset of human were I to approach them, or consider them, and that is what I expected my original remark to be understand as. Without adding variables you have no reason to consider from the excerpt itself, when simply considering me and a retard, a black human, or a gay, I would not treat them any differently than I would any other human.
I don’t really understand this but I would like to affirm that I do not very much care for social constructs. I care for argument, and I care for reason. As I am probably autistic, I cannot understand many social constructs and have yet to be given rational reason to even consider them, so I don’t. If you wish you convince me to heed social constructs in any way please provide an argument defending your notion.
I don’t know if you’re still reading this, but the answer is “the rational reason to consider them is that if you don’t, you will get very hurt, and you don’t want to get very hurt”.
This is one of the only lesswrong posts I’ve ever read where I basically agree with nothing you wrote. You really should read the “rationality bible” though. Definitely before you keep posting here.
Is it that crazy to expect that a moderator remove posts like this? I don’t mind that the quality is not very good, but the inclusion of racial slurs should make it over the line.
At this moment, the post is at −19. That is moderation removing it, round these parts.
You seem to be opposed to the nature of your species. This can’t be very good for your self-esteem.
I upvoted this for a few reasons. One reason is because right now I’m winning the least Karma award. I have −200 karma! It seems that you have enough raw natural talent to easily steal this prestigious award from me. So that’s one reason that I gave you an upvote. In fact, I’m going to go through and upvote all your posts.
Another reason that I gave you an upvote is that it’s really rare to find someone who seems to have fired their “editor” or removed their facade.
And another reason is because I hate censorship too.
I wanted to upvote you for amusing me, but I changed my vote to one I think you would prefer.