I like this one, for a change. I’m uncertain LW is the place for it, except insofar as it might be a useful starting point.
You could allocate more space to talking about historic rationalist figures in the church, I think, as examples to live up to; some suitable imagery about leading the world into the light might work.
I think Augustine would be an interesting candidate. John Wesley from my own denomination. Many of the early church theologians. We live with a fairly well developed system of theology and Christian belief . However, the early church had to define and articulate the faith. For this they used the methods of logical inquiry available to them based on the idea that theology had to be understandable and had to be internally consistent. So many of them used tools of logical and reason to examine the Christian faith. Were many of them rationalist in the modern sense, no but were they in their time and place yes.
He proved a theorem that LW-style rationalists are (rightly) fond of. That’s not particularly the same as being a rationalist in any useful sense.
But if you are going to use him, note that “Reverend” is supposed to accompany a person’s full name, not just their surname. You don’t say “Reverend Bayes” or even “the Reverend Bayes”; you say “the Reverend Thomas Bayes” or “Reverend T Bayes”. (I think “Reverend Thomas” is more acceptable than “Reverend Bayes”.
Also, when you write “Reverend” seven times in one short paragraph, it starts to look really odd :-).
Well, if he didn’t have an account, he therefore did not have enough karma to post, so the statement is true :-)
But regardless, he got an account just for engaging with the comments on his article, but couldn’t post the article from his own account because he didn’t have enough karma.
It seems to me that your objection here is driven mainly by a general dislike of Gleb’s contributions (and perhaps his presence on LW), rather than a sincere conviction about the importance of your point. I mean, this is a ridiculous nitpick, and the hostility of your call-out is completely disproportionate to the severity of Gleb’s supposed infraction.
While Gleb’s aside might be a “lie” by some technical definition, it certainly doesn’t match the usual connotations of the term. I see virtually zero harm in the kind of “lie” you’re focusing on here, so I’m not sure about the value of your piece of advice, other than signalling your aversion towards Gleb.
I disagree that there is zero harm in statements like the one in question. “Small lies said for no good reason”, when they are noticed, cause suspicion about a person’s motives. And if a number of LWers are already suspicious of Gleb’s motives in general, such behavior is bound to worsen their suspicions.
I’d appreciate if you avoid calling me a liar. He would have posted the article from his own account of he had enough karma, but since he just got an account, he could not post it. What’s wrong with this statement? It seems like you’re really trying to read everything I said here in the worst possible light, Lumifer. Please be more rational than that. This is so not worth it, and unlike you.
OrphanWilde a while ago gave you a useful piece of advice: learn to shut up. Evidently, it didn’t take.
LessWrong does not have a habit of re-posting blog entries by people who are not on LW. The usual way in such cases is to just provide a link—or, if the person wants to actually make the post, he comes to LW, makes an account, and then asks for enough karma to make the post. This system works quite well.
You didn’t like this approach because you wanted more than just a link, you want to copy-paste the entire text and, evidently, Caleb couldn’t be bothered to come here, make an account, and ask for karma. So you did your copypasta, but you knew that this wasn’t in line with LW customs. So you lied—you inserted a sentence that, in your mind, was a minor useful little white lie—you said that it’s you who’s posting and not Caleb because Caleb doesn’t have enough karma.
This was a lie because it was intentionally designed to mislead. The problem wasn’t the Caleb did not have enough karma as a newbie. The problem was that Caleb didn’t have an LW account at all. You knew that LW doesn’t like copy-pasted third-party posts—that’s why you bothered to attempt to create the impression that Caleb is an LW member and merely lacks karma for a post.
And it might well have worked, except that a bit later you mentioned that Caleb will be making an account to answer questions and at that point the inconsistency became rather obvious. Little lies do trip people on little details, you know.
It seems like you’re really trying to read everything I said here in the worst possible light, Lumifer.
Not necessarily. You post mostly dreck, so I react to it appropriately. If you were to post interesting texts looking like they were written by a human instead of a HuffPo bot, I would also react appropriately. In this case, however, it was just a simple matter of disliking petty gratuitous lies. I think that providing disincentives for those on LW is a rational move :-P
I never claimed that Caleb is an LW member, Lumifer. Stating that Caleb doesn’t have enough karma to post was a shorter way of saying that “Caleb does not currently have an LW account, but he wants to discuss the post on LW. Therefore, he got a new account. A new account doesn’t have enough karma to post, so therefore I am posting it on his behalf.” Why waste people’s time with those whole three sentences when I can just have a brief clause in a sentence? The fuller explanation does not carry any more benefit than the brief one, in my perception. Besides, others posted stuff on behalf of people without enough karma plenty of times, for instance here.
So please don’t go accusing me of everything negative under the sun because you don’t like my writing. Thanks!
People normally interpret other people’s statements according to the context implied. So for example, if I said, “So how come you haven’t given yourself up for committing serial murder?”, people would assume that I think you are a serial murderer, and they might even describe this by saying that I said you were, even though I would not have said that in a technical sense.
In the same way, “Caleb doesn’t have enough karma,” implies the context that he has a Less Wrong account with insufficient karma, and it would be normal to say that you said this, as Lumifer is doing, even if you did not do so in a technical sense. It was in fact quite unnecessary to do this, nor was it necessary to use three sentences. You could have simply said, “Caleb doesn’t have a Less Wrong account yet.”
That said, since he does not appear to have shown up in the comments yet, I rather suspect that you might be the motivating force here and that really he is not all that interested in posting on Less Wrong.
In saying “doesn’t have enough karma,” I was pointing to the obstacle to him posting. It’s easy to get a LW account—takes one minute—but it’s not easy to get karma sufficient to post.
I think you might have missed his comments, his LW name is RevPitkin.
“”Caleb does not currently have an LW account, but he wants to discuss the post on LW. Therefore, he got a new account.”
LOL. You’re tripping up on tenses. If Caleb “does not currently have” (present tense), he could not have “got” (past tense). He only could “be getting” (present continuous) or “will get” (future).
others posted stuff on behalf of people
I notice that the post in the thread your link leads to says “This post was collaboratively written together with...”
Sure you don’t want to reconsider taking OrphanWilde’s advice?
In saying “doesn’t have enough karma,” I was pointing to the obstacle to him posting. It’s easy to get a LW account—takes one minute—but it’s not easy to get karma sufficient to post. Anyway, I don’t think this thread is helpful to continue anymore.
It’s easy to get a LW account—takes one minute—but it’s not easy to get karma sufficient to post.
It is trivially easy. You put up a comment saying “I wish to make a post about this-and-that, but lack karma. I would appreciate gifts of karma so that I could post” and lo and behold! in a few hours at most you have sufficient karma to post.
How much would a user have to know about LW to think to do that? Heck, even I didn’t think of suggesting to Caleb to do that, as that notion didn’t occur to me. You’re failing at other minds.
How much would a user have to know about LW to think to do that?
I’ve seen it happen, and more than once, too. I think all you have to know is that you need a particular quantity of internet points and that people can give them to you for free. You just ask.
You’re failing at other minds.
I will concede that my expectations of certain LW users might have been too high :-P
I like this one, for a change. I’m uncertain LW is the place for it, except insofar as it might be a useful starting point.
You could allocate more space to talking about historic rationalist figures in the church, I think, as examples to live up to; some suitable imagery about leading the world into the light might work.
I think Augustine would be an interesting candidate. John Wesley from my own denomination. Many of the early church theologians. We live with a fairly well developed system of theology and Christian belief . However, the early church had to define and articulate the faith. For this they used the methods of logical inquiry available to them based on the idea that theology had to be understandable and had to be internally consistent. So many of them used tools of logical and reason to examine the Christian faith. Were many of them rationalist in the modern sense, no but were they in their time and place yes.
‘reverend bayes’
He proved a theorem that LW-style rationalists are (rightly) fond of. That’s not particularly the same as being a rationalist in any useful sense.
But if you are going to use him, note that “Reverend” is supposed to accompany a person’s full name, not just their surname. You don’t say “Reverend Bayes” or even “the Reverend Bayes”; you say “the Reverend Thomas Bayes” or “Reverend T Bayes”. (I think “Reverend Thomas” is more acceptable than “Reverend Bayes”.
Also, when you write “Reverend” seven times in one short paragraph, it starts to look really odd :-).
Oh, nice idea! I’ll see how Caleb feels about it for future articles.
Does Caleb have a LessWrong account?
He’s getting one to engage with the comments here.
So when you said “Caleb does not have enough karma to post, so I am posting it on his behalf”, that wasn’t exactly true, was it?
How was it not true? He indeed did not have enough karma to post.
Because he didn’t have an account to start with?
Well, if he didn’t have an account, he therefore did not have enough karma to post, so the statement is true :-)
But regardless, he got an account just for engaging with the comments on his article, but couldn’t post the article from his own account because he didn’t have enough karma.
Right, and I didn’t go to the World Economic Forum in Davos because I was otherwise occupied.
A piece of advice: try to avoid small lies said for no good reason.
It seems to me that your objection here is driven mainly by a general dislike of Gleb’s contributions (and perhaps his presence on LW), rather than a sincere conviction about the importance of your point. I mean, this is a ridiculous nitpick, and the hostility of your call-out is completely disproportionate to the severity of Gleb’s supposed infraction.
While Gleb’s aside might be a “lie” by some technical definition, it certainly doesn’t match the usual connotations of the term. I see virtually zero harm in the kind of “lie” you’re focusing on here, so I’m not sure about the value of your piece of advice, other than signalling your aversion towards Gleb.
No, I do not believe so.
And I do not agree with this either.
I disagree that there is zero harm in statements like the one in question. “Small lies said for no good reason”, when they are noticed, cause suspicion about a person’s motives. And if a number of LWers are already suspicious of Gleb’s motives in general, such behavior is bound to worsen their suspicions.
I’d appreciate if you avoid calling me a liar. He would have posted the article from his own account of he had enough karma, but since he just got an account, he could not post it. What’s wrong with this statement? It seems like you’re really trying to read everything I said here in the worst possible light, Lumifer. Please be more rational than that. This is so not worth it, and unlike you.
Then you should avoid telling lies.
OrphanWilde a while ago gave you a useful piece of advice: learn to shut up. Evidently, it didn’t take.
LessWrong does not have a habit of re-posting blog entries by people who are not on LW. The usual way in such cases is to just provide a link—or, if the person wants to actually make the post, he comes to LW, makes an account, and then asks for enough karma to make the post. This system works quite well.
You didn’t like this approach because you wanted more than just a link, you want to copy-paste the entire text and, evidently, Caleb couldn’t be bothered to come here, make an account, and ask for karma. So you did your copypasta, but you knew that this wasn’t in line with LW customs. So you lied—you inserted a sentence that, in your mind, was a minor useful little white lie—you said that it’s you who’s posting and not Caleb because Caleb doesn’t have enough karma.
This was a lie because it was intentionally designed to mislead. The problem wasn’t the Caleb did not have enough karma as a newbie. The problem was that Caleb didn’t have an LW account at all. You knew that LW doesn’t like copy-pasted third-party posts—that’s why you bothered to attempt to create the impression that Caleb is an LW member and merely lacks karma for a post.
And it might well have worked, except that a bit later you mentioned that Caleb will be making an account to answer questions and at that point the inconsistency became rather obvious. Little lies do trip people on little details, you know.
Not necessarily. You post mostly dreck, so I react to it appropriately. If you were to post interesting texts looking like they were written by a human instead of a HuffPo bot, I would also react appropriately. In this case, however, it was just a simple matter of disliking petty gratuitous lies. I think that providing disincentives for those on LW is a rational move :-P
I never claimed that Caleb is an LW member, Lumifer. Stating that Caleb doesn’t have enough karma to post was a shorter way of saying that “Caleb does not currently have an LW account, but he wants to discuss the post on LW. Therefore, he got a new account. A new account doesn’t have enough karma to post, so therefore I am posting it on his behalf.” Why waste people’s time with those whole three sentences when I can just have a brief clause in a sentence? The fuller explanation does not carry any more benefit than the brief one, in my perception. Besides, others posted stuff on behalf of people without enough karma plenty of times, for instance here.
So please don’t go accusing me of everything negative under the sun because you don’t like my writing. Thanks!
People normally interpret other people’s statements according to the context implied. So for example, if I said, “So how come you haven’t given yourself up for committing serial murder?”, people would assume that I think you are a serial murderer, and they might even describe this by saying that I said you were, even though I would not have said that in a technical sense.
In the same way, “Caleb doesn’t have enough karma,” implies the context that he has a Less Wrong account with insufficient karma, and it would be normal to say that you said this, as Lumifer is doing, even if you did not do so in a technical sense. It was in fact quite unnecessary to do this, nor was it necessary to use three sentences. You could have simply said, “Caleb doesn’t have a Less Wrong account yet.”
That said, since he does not appear to have shown up in the comments yet, I rather suspect that you might be the motivating force here and that really he is not all that interested in posting on Less Wrong.
In saying “doesn’t have enough karma,” I was pointing to the obstacle to him posting. It’s easy to get a LW account—takes one minute—but it’s not easy to get karma sufficient to post.
I think you might have missed his comments, his LW name is RevPitkin.
As I said, “intentionally designed to mislead”.
LOL. You’re tripping up on tenses. If Caleb “does not currently have” (present tense), he could not have “got” (past tense). He only could “be getting” (present continuous) or “will get” (future).
I notice that the post in the thread your link leads to says “This post was collaboratively written together with...”
Sure you don’t want to reconsider taking OrphanWilde’s advice?
In saying “doesn’t have enough karma,” I was pointing to the obstacle to him posting. It’s easy to get a LW account—takes one minute—but it’s not easy to get karma sufficient to post. Anyway, I don’t think this thread is helpful to continue anymore.
It is trivially easy. You put up a comment saying “I wish to make a post about this-and-that, but lack karma. I would appreciate gifts of karma so that I could post” and lo and behold! in a few hours at most you have sufficient karma to post.
How much would a user have to know about LW to think to do that? Heck, even I didn’t think of suggesting to Caleb to do that, as that notion didn’t occur to me. You’re failing at other minds.
I’ve seen it happen, and more than once, too. I think all you have to know is that you need a particular quantity of internet points and that people can give them to you for free. You just ask.
I will concede that my expectations of certain LW users might have been too high :-P