I made no claim that those are the only two possibilities.
On reflection, I see that you’re right; I inferred too much from your comment. What you said was that you’d be interested in an explanation of your error, if and only if you committed one; followed by asking the separate, largely independent question of whether Eugine/Azathoth/Ra/Lion was punishing you for not being right-wing enough again. I erroneously read your comment as saying that you’d be interested in (1) an explanation of your error or (2) the absence of such an explanation, which would prove the Eugine hypothesis by elimination. Sorry for jumping the gun and forcing you into a bunch of unnecessary analysis.
Indeed I was not claiming that the absence of an explanation would prove it was Eugine. It might simply mean that whoever downvoted me didn’t read what I wrote, or that for whatever reason they didn’t think it would be worth their while to explain. Or the actual reason for the downvote could be one of those low-probability ones.
One correction, though: I would be interested in an explanation of my error if and only if whoever downvoted me thinks I committed one. Even if in fact I didn’t, it would be good to know if I failed to communicate clearly, and good for them to discover their error.
And now I shall drop the subject. (Unless someone does in fact indicate that they downvoted me for making a mistake and some sort of correction or clarification seems useful.)
Ah, I hadn’t taken in that the person complaining rudely that I hadn’t considered all the possibilities for why I got downvoted might be the person who downvoted me. In retrospect, I should have.
Anyway (and with some trepidation since I don’t much relish getting into an argument with someone who may possibly just take satisfaction in causing petty harm): no, it doesn’t look to me as if casebash’s arguments are much like 2+2=5, nor do I think my comments are as obvious as pointing out that actually it’s 4. The sort of expected-utility-maximizing that’s generally taken around these parts to be the heart of rationality really does have difficulties in the presence of infinities, and that does seem like it’s potentially a problem, and whether or not casebash’s specific objections are right they are certainly pointing in the direction of something that could use more thought.
I do not think I have ever encountered any case in which deliberately making a problem worse to draw attention to it has actually been beneficial overall. (There are some kinda-analogous things in realms other than human affairs, such as vaccination, or deliberately starting small forest fires to prevent bigger ones, but the analogy isn’t very close.)
If indeed LW has become irredeemably shit, then amplifying the problem won’t fix it (see: definition of “irredeemably”) so you might as well just fuck off and do something less pointless with your time. If it’s become redeemably shit, adding more shit seems unlikely to be the best way of redeeming it so again I warmly encourage you to do something less useless instead. But these things seem so obvious—dare I say it, so much like pointing out that 2+2=4? -- that I wonder whether, deep down, under the trollish exterior, there lurks a hankering for something better. Come to the Light Side! We have cookies.
On reflection, I see that you’re right; I inferred too much from your comment. What you said was that you’d be interested in an explanation of your error, if and only if you committed one; followed by asking the separate, largely independent question of whether Eugine/Azathoth/Ra/Lion was punishing you for not being right-wing enough again. I erroneously read your comment as saying that you’d be interested in (1) an explanation of your error or (2) the absence of such an explanation, which would prove the Eugine hypothesis by elimination. Sorry for jumping the gun and forcing you into a bunch of unnecessary analysis.
No problem.
Indeed I was not claiming that the absence of an explanation would prove it was Eugine. It might simply mean that whoever downvoted me didn’t read what I wrote, or that for whatever reason they didn’t think it would be worth their while to explain. Or the actual reason for the downvote could be one of those low-probability ones.
One correction, though: I would be interested in an explanation of my error if and only if whoever downvoted me thinks I committed one. Even if in fact I didn’t, it would be good to know if I failed to communicate clearly, and good for them to discover their error.
And now I shall drop the subject. (Unless someone does in fact indicate that they downvoted me for making a mistake and some sort of correction or clarification seems useful.)
(retracted)
Ah, I hadn’t taken in that the person complaining rudely that I hadn’t considered all the possibilities for why I got downvoted might be the person who downvoted me. In retrospect, I should have.
Anyway (and with some trepidation since I don’t much relish getting into an argument with someone who may possibly just take satisfaction in causing petty harm): no, it doesn’t look to me as if casebash’s arguments are much like 2+2=5, nor do I think my comments are as obvious as pointing out that actually it’s 4. The sort of expected-utility-maximizing that’s generally taken around these parts to be the heart of rationality really does have difficulties in the presence of infinities, and that does seem like it’s potentially a problem, and whether or not casebash’s specific objections are right they are certainly pointing in the direction of something that could use more thought.
I do not think I have ever encountered any case in which deliberately making a problem worse to draw attention to it has actually been beneficial overall. (There are some kinda-analogous things in realms other than human affairs, such as vaccination, or deliberately starting small forest fires to prevent bigger ones, but the analogy isn’t very close.)
If indeed LW has become irredeemably shit, then amplifying the problem won’t fix it (see: definition of “irredeemably”) so you might as well just fuck off and do something less pointless with your time. If it’s become redeemably shit, adding more shit seems unlikely to be the best way of redeeming it so again I warmly encourage you to do something less useless instead. But these things seem so obvious—dare I say it, so much like pointing out that 2+2=4? -- that I wonder whether, deep down, under the trollish exterior, there lurks a hankering for something better. Come to the Light Side! We have cookies.
I’ll let the rest of your comment stand, but:
2 + 2 = 2 + 2 + 0. A number subtracted from itself equals 0, and infinity is a number, so 2 + 2 = 2 + 2 + ∞ - ∞. Infinity plus one is still infinity, so 2 + 2 = 2 + 2 + (∞ + 1) - ∞ = 2 + 2 + (1 + ∞) - ∞ = (2 + 2 + 1) + (∞ - ∞) = 2 + 2 + 1 + 0 = 5. So nyah.
(Sorry, casebash, but it was too good a setup to ignore.)
LOL.
(retracted)
I can has raisin?