Seconded. This whole conversation appears to be the result of someone stepping on a social land mine, by using an incorrect pronoun. We’ve got people arguing he should have known it was there and detoured around it (presupposing gender is bad); people arguing that he acted correctly because the land mine was on the shortest path to his destination (Spivak pronouns are awkward); people arguing that it ought not to be a social land mine in the first place (the offense taken was disproportionate).
And now, it seems, we’ve gone meta and somehow produced an analogy to Newcomb’s problem. I still don’t understand that one.
I’m embarrassed to note that I misread “presupposing gender is bad” as (presupposing (gender is bad)) rather than ((presupposing gender) is bad), and was halfway through a comment pointing out that nobody was presupposing any such thing before I realized I was being an idiot.
The post I replied to was so ridiculous that I was forced to be the unreasonable one in order to fully communicate my distaste to JGWeissman.
As it turned out, it appears I misjudged—my comment was not as far out of line as I had thought it would be. If I could do this again, I would not have put the parenthetical disclaimer in.
All in the service of bizarrely attempting to refute my point, which is an elementary point about word meanings that any English speaker should be be aware of, that the word “correct” has more than one meaning, and that “factually true” is only one, and clearly not the one meant.
Did Eliezer write any post about the abuse of cleverness to promote stupidity? Seeing as citing Eliezer posts seems to be a shortcut to karma fortune.
(I’ll gladly take the downvotes for this.)
what the hell is this crap
Seconded. This whole conversation appears to be the result of someone stepping on a social land mine, by using an incorrect pronoun. We’ve got people arguing he should have known it was there and detoured around it (presupposing gender is bad); people arguing that he acted correctly because the land mine was on the shortest path to his destination (Spivak pronouns are awkward); people arguing that it ought not to be a social land mine in the first place (the offense taken was disproportionate).
And now, it seems, we’ve gone meta and somehow produced an analogy to Newcomb’s problem. I still don’t understand that one.
I’m embarrassed to note that I misread “presupposing gender is bad” as (presupposing (gender is bad)) rather than ((presupposing gender) is bad), and was halfway through a comment pointing out that nobody was presupposing any such thing before I realized I was being an idiot.
I feel oddly compelled to confess to this.
I parsed it the same way, and did not even catch the mistake.
Where does this post fit into your ideas about community norms and indignation?
The post I replied to was so ridiculous that I was forced to be the unreasonable one in order to fully communicate my distaste to JGWeissman.
As it turned out, it appears I misjudged—my comment was not as far out of line as I had thought it would be. If I could do this again, I would not have put the parenthetical disclaimer in.
It would not surprise me if, had you posted it without the disclaimer, it would have been downvoted. Of course, I have no data to back that up.
I expect so too, but I would have gladly taken the downvotes for it, disclaimer or no.
All in the service of bizarrely attempting to refute my point, which is an elementary point about word meanings that any English speaker should be be aware of, that the word “correct” has more than one meaning, and that “factually true” is only one, and clearly not the one meant.
Did Eliezer write any post about the abuse of cleverness to promote stupidity? Seeing as citing Eliezer posts seems to be a shortcut to karma fortune.
Knowing about biases can hurt people is the first thing that comes to mind.