astray

• astrayApr 16, 2009, 2:10 PM

  11 points

  0

  in reply to: divia’s comment on: Of Gen­der and Rationality

  I’m in a similar situation—I comment (sometimes) on reddit and HNews, and have occasionally posted a few sentences to OB, but I am much less likely to comment here. The high quality of the posts and comments leads me to agonize a bit overmuch about every part of a comment, and sometimes I will write, edit, and rewrite a comment before deciding to just not comment at all. I, too, often feel I would not be contributing anything original.

  (I should also note in this comment that I am male.)

• astrayApr 16, 2009, 1:59 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: HughRistik’s comment on: Of Gen­der and Rationality

  It is an answer short on patience, but it was a comment short on insight. In response to a post relayed in short as: ‘The common definition of rationality is stupid. Here is a new proposal that is a basic tenet of most of my writing. (Implicitly, keep this in mind when you see me talk about rationality.)‘, the poster simply added ‘Well, I think the original definition of rationality is right, and I’ve said this before.’

  The inciting comment seems just like the responses (on Fark, HNews, etc.) to Pullum’s article about Strunk & White- people who like what they learned flatly deny any counterargument.

• astrayApr 3, 2009, 4:29 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity is Sys­tem­atized Winning

  It runs into problems elsewhere, but what about “Rationalism should win” ?

• astrayMar 19, 2009, 7:31 PM

  9 points

  in reply to: Psy-Kosh’s comment on: The Least Con­ve­nient Pos­si­ble World

  The souped up Pascal’s Wager seems like the thousand door version of Monty Hall.

• astrayMar 18, 2009, 4:29 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: Ra­tional Me or We?

  Your torture vs. pie experiment makes me think of another potential experiment. Is torture ever preferable to making, say, 3^^^3 people never have pie again? (In the sense of dust specks, the never eating pie is to be the entire consequence of the action. The potential pie utility is just gone, nothing else.)

• astrayMar 18, 2009, 4:14 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Ra­tional Me or We?

  Another method may be to list the top 10 achievements first and then check whether a specialist or a generalist. I imagine Prometheus was a generalist.

• astrayMar 18, 2009, 4:11 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Ra­tional Me or We?

  Darwin was almost preempted by Wallace. Newton and Leibniz arrived at the same calculus independently, and similar work was done by Seki Kowa at the same time. They were merely there first and most prominently, but not uniquely. I think to satisfy importance, we want cut vertex scientists and academics.