For those Less Wrongians who watch anime/read manga, I have a question: What would you consider the top three that you watch/read and why?
Edit: Upon reading gwern’s comment, I see how kinda far off topic that was, even for an open thread. So change the question to what anime/manga was most insightful into LW-style thinking and problems?
Wow, I can’t believe I missed that. Although, if that is the only thing relevant to “LW-style thinking and problems” in HnG, then Death Note compares favorably to it.
If you mean in general (ie. ‘I really liked Evangelion and thought that Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei was hysterical!’), I think that’s a wee bit too far off-topic. Might as well ask what’s everyone’s favorite poet.
If you mean, ‘what anime/manga was most insightful into LW-style thinking and problems’, that’s a little more challenging.
Death Note comes to mind as a possible exemplar of what humans really can do in the realm of action & thought, and perhaps what an AI in a box could do. Otaku no Video is useful as a cautionary tale about geekdom. And to round it off, I have a personal theory that Aria depicts a post-Singularity sysop scenario with humans who have chosen to live a nostalgic low-tech lifestyle* because that turns out to be la dolce vita.
* The high tech is there when it’s really needed. Like how the Amish make full use of modern medicine, surgery, and tech when they need to.
The second half arguably does have some fast and loose play by the writer, case in point being how Mikami was found by Near—arrgh, this has nothing to do with LW!
How about up until Y’f qrngu*, can we compromise on that?
* ROT-13 encoded to spare LW’s delicate sensibilities. Here’s a decoder.
I was mostly referring to how the reasoning had to deal a gradually accreting set of rules, each one constructed in the service of narrative (that is, fun) instead of being a realistic constraint. I really did mean Calvinball.
Calvinball is temporally inconsistent; it’s been a while since I read DN but I don’t remember any of the later rules making me think ‘if only Light had known that rule, he would totally have owned his opponents!’ Most of the later rules seemed to just be clarifications and hole-fixing.
When I apply the statute, my justification is along the lines of “people usually only care about spoilers if they’re watching a series or planning to watch it soon, which are unlikely given a random person and a random series”. Hariant’s comment could easily be interpreted as asking for recommendations of anime to watch, in which case “planning to watch (considering watching) it” would be a given.
We cannot meaningfully discuss how DN & ilk hold lessons for LW without discussing plot events; funnily enough, spoilers tend to be about plots. And as I said, applying the principal of charity means not interpreting Hariant’s comment that way.
I had to look that up; Wikipedia says that “In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity requires interpreting a speaker’s statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.”. I thought I was applying it by assuming that you hadn’t considered that interpretation of the comment, rather than that you were ignoring it, so I’m not sure what you mean.
Also, I don’t know what you mean by “as you said”.
Which is more charitable: to interpret someone’s comment as typical social fluff inappropriate for even the open threads, or to interpret it as an attempt to collate useful fictional examinations & introductions to LW-related material?
Please edit both of the above to avoid having your comments deleted. It’s great that you have that opinion, but some people may not share it, and also there’s this incredible amazing technology called rot13 which is really useful for having your cake and eating it too in the case of this conflict. And we can all consider that official LW policy from this point forward.
I know a couple people that claim to have unintentionally learned to read rot13 to the point where it is no longer a spoiler protection. (I can read it, but it’s not automatic.)
The actual intent was to point out that embargoing references past a certain point truly is ridiculous. Referencing a 69 year old movie (EDIT: several hundred year old play) is an attempt at a reductio ad absurdum, made more visceral by technically violating the norm Eliezer is imposing.
Certainly there’s no real need to discuss specific plot points of recent manga or anime on this site. This, in fact, holds for any specific example one cares to name. On the other hand, the cumulative cutting off all our cultural references to fiction does impose a real harm to the discourse.
References to fiction let us compress our communications more effectively by pointing at examples of what we mean. My words alone can’t have nearly the effect a full color motion picture with surround sound can—but I can borrow it, if I’m allowed to reference works that most people are broadly familiar with.
I don’t think that most recent works count—they reach too small a segment of LW, and so are the least useful to reference, and the ones most likely to upset those who are spoiler averse. The question is where the line should be set, and that requires context and judgment, not universal bans.
While I admit that the benefit was not in the same class as the ones discussed in my point above, clearly I thought it had some benefit in making my point.
And yes, it had costs—it needed to, in order to make the point. Of course, ceteris paribus, the better the job at illustrating the reductio-ad-absurdum, the smaller the cost. I tried to choose an example with the smallest cost I reasonably could.
If you have a popular and well-known, older work that has what is truly a spoiler, but that (a) most people already know, and (b) the work is short enough that a huge time-investment isn’t likely to be ruined (why I chose a movie, rather than a book), I’d be willing to change the example to that.
Did you pick that movie for that reason, or because that’s what TV Tropes used? Because I’ve never seen it, but I do know that Macduff was not of woman born—and Macbeth is rather better known.
Edit: Better still is “Romeo and Juliet die at the end”.
[Not written by me; I have no record of where I obtained it.]
Put it in your bookmarks bar in most web browsers, and when you click it it will display the rot13 of the selected text, or prompt you for text if there isn’t any selection. In Safari the first entries in the bookmarks bar get shortcuts ⌘1, ⌘2, …, so it ends up that to rot13 something on a web page I just need to select it and press ⌘3.
Stuff that’s not really part of the mainstream popular culture is more spoilable. Cowboy Bebop came out before The Sixth Sense, but I’d still assume open spoilers for The Sixth Sense wouldn’t be as bad as ones for Cowboy Bebop on an English-language forum.
Assuming the general social norms for spoilers thing for “spoilability”, not whether it actually ruins entertainment for those who don’t know the story yet or not.
If Death Note counts, then Haruhi might count as well. Deals with anthropics and weird AIs in a tangential way. The anime is awesome, but not as good as it could have been.
For those Less Wrongians who watch anime/read manga, I have a question: What would you consider the top three that you watch/read and why?
Edit: Upon reading gwern’s comment, I see how kinda far off topic that was, even for an open thread. So change the question to what anime/manga was most insightful into LW-style thinking and problems?
Hikaru no Go, of course.
Okay, so I’m 10 episodes into HnG and...where is the “LW-style thinking and problems”?
Hence the origin of the phrase, “tsuyoku naritai”.
Wow, I can’t believe I missed that. Although, if that is the only thing relevant to “LW-style thinking and problems” in HnG, then Death Note compares favorably to it.
That seems to be about as likely as “hyakunen hayai” or “isshoukenmei” or “ninja” or “mahou-tsukau uchuujin” originating from an anime.
(OK… not as likely as the last one.)
Well, that’s where I got it.
If you mean in general (ie. ‘I really liked Evangelion and thought that Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei was hysterical!’), I think that’s a wee bit too far off-topic. Might as well ask what’s everyone’s favorite poet.
If you mean, ‘what anime/manga was most insightful into LW-style thinking and problems’, that’s a little more challenging.
Death Note comes to mind as a possible exemplar of what humans really can do in the realm of action & thought, and perhaps what an AI in a box could do. Otaku no Video is useful as a cautionary tale about geekdom. And to round it off, I have a personal theory that Aria depicts a post-Singularity sysop scenario with humans who have chosen to live a nostalgic low-tech lifestyle* because that turns out to be la dolce vita.
* The high tech is there when it’s really needed. Like how the Amish make full use of modern medicine, surgery, and tech when they need to.
I think Death Note was a little too close to Calvinball to be truly instructive.
The second half arguably does have some fast and loose play by the writer, case in point being how Mikami was found by Near—arrgh, this has nothing to do with LW!
How about up until Y’f qrngu*, can we compromise on that?
* ROT-13 encoded to spare LW’s delicate sensibilities. Here’s a decoder.
I was mostly referring to how the reasoning had to deal a gradually accreting set of rules, each one constructed in the service of narrative (that is, fun) instead of being a realistic constraint. I really did mean Calvinball.
Calvinball is temporally inconsistent; it’s been a while since I read DN but I don’t remember any of the later rules making me think ‘if only Light had known that rule, he would totally have owned his opponents!’ Most of the later rules seemed to just be clarifications and hole-fixing.
Please edit above to avoid spoilers.
The manga finished nearly half a decade ago, and Y qvrq* before the half-way point. “There’s a statute of limitations on this shit, man.”
* ROT-13 encoded; decoder
When I apply the statute, my justification is along the lines of “people usually only care about spoilers if they’re watching a series or planning to watch it soon, which are unlikely given a random person and a random series”. Hariant’s comment could easily be interpreted as asking for recommendations of anime to watch, in which case “planning to watch (considering watching) it” would be a given.
We cannot meaningfully discuss how DN & ilk hold lessons for LW without discussing plot events; funnily enough, spoilers tend to be about plots. And as I said, applying the principal of charity means not interpreting Hariant’s comment that way.
I had to look that up; Wikipedia says that “In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity requires interpreting a speaker’s statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation.”. I thought I was applying it by assuming that you hadn’t considered that interpretation of the comment, rather than that you were ignoring it, so I’m not sure what you mean.
Also, I don’t know what you mean by “as you said”.
(Message edited once.)
Which is more charitable: to interpret someone’s comment as typical social fluff inappropriate for even the open threads, or to interpret it as an attempt to collate useful fictional examinations & introductions to LW-related material?
Please edit both of the above to avoid having your comments deleted. It’s great that you have that opinion, but some people may not share it, and also there’s this incredible amazing technology called rot13 which is really useful for having your cake and eating it too in the case of this conflict. And we can all consider that official LW policy from this point forward.
I know a couple people that claim to have unintentionally learned to read rot13 to the point where it is no longer a spoiler protection. (I can read it, but it’s not automatic.)
It’s all well and good to have some character of the founder rub off on the site, but not every fetish.
I don’t think you understand the degree to which people who don’t want spoilers, don’t want to hear them.
Spoilers for a classic movie here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1s4/open_thread_february_2010_part_2/1ndd
Since the actual intent of the comment was to spoiler it can probably be deleted without further discussion.
EDIT: the edit is a big improvement. It used to be an actual spoiler.
The actual intent was to point out that embargoing references past a certain point truly is ridiculous. Referencing a 69 year old movie (EDIT: several hundred year old play) is an attempt at a reductio ad absurdum, made more visceral by technically violating the norm Eliezer is imposing.
Certainly there’s no real need to discuss specific plot points of recent manga or anime on this site. This, in fact, holds for any specific example one cares to name. On the other hand, the cumulative cutting off all our cultural references to fiction does impose a real harm to the discourse.
References to fiction let us compress our communications more effectively by pointing at examples of what we mean. My words alone can’t have nearly the effect a full color motion picture with surround sound can—but I can borrow it, if I’m allowed to reference works that most people are broadly familiar with.
I don’t think that most recent works count—they reach too small a segment of LW, and so are the least useful to reference, and the ones most likely to upset those who are spoiler averse. The question is where the line should be set, and that requires context and judgment, not universal bans.
I think there’s a cost/benefit tradeoff, and that comment is all cost, no benefit.
While I admit that the benefit was not in the same class as the ones discussed in my point above, clearly I thought it had some benefit in making my point.
And yes, it had costs—it needed to, in order to make the point. Of course, ceteris paribus, the better the job at illustrating the reductio-ad-absurdum, the smaller the cost. I tried to choose an example with the smallest cost I reasonably could.
If you have a popular and well-known, older work that has what is truly a spoiler, but that (a) most people already know, and (b) the work is short enough that a huge time-investment isn’t likely to be ruined (why I chose a movie, rather than a book), I’d be willing to change the example to that.
I refer you in that case to the canonical example...
Roger Ebert responding to a reader about [edit: the “spoiler” in the title of] The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. (Warning: contains a Sixth Sense spoiler.)
Upvoted for pun.
If there’s a pun I’m afraid it’s unintentional—are you referring to the literal meaning of “canon” in this context?
Indeed.
Did you pick that movie for that reason, or because that’s what TV Tropes used? Because I’ve never seen it, but I do know that Macduff was not of woman born—and Macbeth is rather better known.
Edit: Better still is “Romeo and Juliet die at the end”.
I did not know that TV Tropes used it, but I have seen other people use it for the same sort of point.
I’ll change it.
Of course not—interpersonal utility comparison is impossible.
Downvoted for not addressing the parent comment’s points.
In that case can we have a little rot-13 widget built into LW? Or is there a Firefox plugin I should be using?
(Personally I think the whole “spoilers” thing is ridiculous, but I’m fine with this as site policy if it’s easy to do.)
I use this “bookmarklet”:
javascript:inText=window.getSelection()+″;if(inText==″)%7Bvoid(inText=prompt(‘Phrase...‘,″))%7D;if(!inText)%7BoutText=‘No%20text%20selected’%7Delse%7BoutText=″;for(i=0;i%3CinText.length;i++)%7Bt=inText.charCodeAt(i);if((t%3E64&&t%3C78)%7C%7C(t%3E96&&t%3C110))%7Bt+=13%7Delse%7Bif((t%3E77&&t%3C91)%7C%7C(t%3E109&&t%3C123))%7Bt-=13%7D%7DoutText+=String.fromCharCode(t)%7D%7Dalert(outText)
[Not written by me; I have no record of where I obtained it.]
Put it in your bookmarks bar in most web browsers, and when you click it it will display the rot13 of the selected text, or prompt you for text if there isn’t any selection. In Safari the first entries in the bookmarks bar get shortcuts ⌘1, ⌘2, …, so it ends up that to rot13 something on a web page I just need to select it and press ⌘3.
Excellent, thank you.
www.rot13.com ?
Good, although having to open a new tab still seems less than maximally convenient.
(Actually, doing a hidden-text thing like TVTropes does would be pretty good, come to think of it.)
Downvoted for sarcasm.
I love that comic, but I think the statute of limitations takes more than five years to expire...
Stuff that’s not really part of the mainstream popular culture is more spoilable. Cowboy Bebop came out before The Sixth Sense, but I’d still assume open spoilers for The Sixth Sense wouldn’t be as bad as ones for Cowboy Bebop on an English-language forum.
I don’t think that’s true either. The people in the study were specifically screened to not have heard of the stories used.
Assuming the general social norms for spoilers thing for “spoilability”, not whether it actually ruins entertainment for those who don’t know the story yet or not.
EDIT: Romeo and Juliet die at the end.
http://www.threadless.com/product/844/Spoilt
Bruce Willis was dead all along.
Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood has (SPOILER):
an almost literally unboxed unfriendly “AI” as main bad guy. Made by pseudomagical (“alchemy”) means, but still.
It bugs me that people don’t think of this one more often. It’s basically an anime about how science affects the world and its practitioners.
(Disclaimer: Far too many convenient coincidences/idiot balls IIRC. It’s a prime target for a rationalist rewrite.)
If Death Note counts, then Haruhi might count as well. Deals with anthropics and weird AIs in a tangential way. The anime is awesome, but not as good as it could have been.