So raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways!
Pink, virtually alone among the pop-singer community in her early endorsement of the post-rationality movement.
(Epistemic status: frivolous wordplay on the different meanings of “wrong.”)
B_For_Bandana
Karma: 794
The code of the shepherds is terrible and stern. One sheep, one pebble, hang the consequences. They have been known to commit fifteen, and twenty-one, and even even, rather than break it.
There were sixteen other students in the class. For all we know, theses about fun things could have been in the majority.
Yeah, maybe.
If you accept what I wrote in the GP, where do you see a contradiction in the four statements? And if you don’t, could you try to articulate why?
No, no I don’t think you had a contradiction either. I was just saying that you could do the same thing with “fun.” And maybe other kids did, as you say.
Sure, but the point is that the same argument applies to the flipside: everyone could’ve written essays like “X is fun” or “Y is fun” without contradiction. But they chose “hard” instead. Why?
I want to climb a mountain, not so I can get to the top, but because I want to hang out at base camp. That seems fun as shit. You sleep in a colorful tent, grow a beard, drink hot chocolate, walk around… ‘Hey, you going to the top?’ . . . ‘Soon.’
Mitch Hedberg on fun theory and the complexity of human values.
One of the replies there is,
@RachelHaywire diverse sci/astro ppl I follow, male+female believe far more women driven from phys sci by harassment than men by geekshaming.
Reminds me of Twain’s comparison of the two Reigns of Terror.
Edit: Not to mention that we didn’t lose Matt Taylor. He still has the same job as a scientist with the ESA.
An escalator can never break—it can only become stairs. You should never see an “Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order” sign, just “Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience. We apologize for the fact that you can still get up there.”
Mitch Hedberg, on designing systems to fail gracefully
Some people seem terribly smug about being right about one thing. It makes me wonder if this is, in fact, the only thing they’ve ever gotten right in their whole lives.
For GiveWell in particular, if you do not believe they can do this, why do you think they can evaluate other charities’ effectiveness?
Yeah, I think that’s right. I’m the same as people who don’t want to give to charities who have too much “overhead,” leading to perverse incentives, as you say. GiveWell itself can be looked at as overhead for the charities it recommends, even though technically it’s a different organization. As such they deserve to be supported too.
Will click “Unrestricted” in the future.
I didn’t read your comment carefully enough. Yes, we agree.
Right, but we don’t think of a tennis ball falling in a vacuum as gaining thermal energy or rising in temperature. It is “only” gaining mechanical kinetic energy; a high school student would say that “this is not a thermal energy problem,” even though the ball does have an average kinetic energy (kinetic energy, divided by 1 ball). But if temperature of something that we do think of as hot is just average kinetic energy, then there is a sense in which the entire universe is “not a thermal energy problem.”
When you go to GiveWell’s Donate page, one of the questions is,
How should we use your gift? We may use unrestricted gifts to support our operations or to make grants, at our discretion:
And you can choose the options:
Grants to recommended charities
Unrestricted donation
I notice I’m reluctant to pick “Unrestricted,” fearing my donation might be “wasted” on GiveWell’s operations, instead of going right to the charity. But that seems kind of strange. Choosing “Unrestricted” gives GiveWell strictly more options than choosing “Grants to recommended charities” because “Unrestricted” allows them to use the money either for their own operations, or just send it to the charities anyway. So as long as I trust GiveWell’s decision-making process, “Unrestricted” is the best choice. And I presumably do trust GiveWell’s decision-making, since I’m giving away some money based on their say-so. But I’m nevertheless inclined to hit “Grants to recommended charities,” despite, like, mathematical proof that that’s not the best option.
Can we talk about this a little? How can I get less confused?
An alternate phrasing (which I think makes it clearer) would be: “the distinction between mechanical and thermal energy is in the mind, and because we associate temperature with thermal but not mechanical energy, it follows that two observers of the same system can interpret it as having two different temperatures without inconsistency.”
In other words, if you fall into the sun, your atoms will be strewn far and wide, yes, but your atoms will be equally strewn far and wide if you fall into an ice-cold mechanical woodchipper. The distinction between the types of energy used for the scattering process is what is subjective.
Whether this is intentional is not clear to me, probably not.
I think it was intentional—other characters frequently remark on how dumb she is. My impression is that Swan’s character was some kind of artistic/political statement by Robinson—that the adventures of a screwed-up, clueless person are just as valid and meaningful as those of more traditional heroes, or something. I wasn’t too impressed by this, but the book’s worldbuilding was amazing and that made up for everything else.
Wait a minute, there’s such a thing as fan fiction of fan fiction? What a time to be alive.
When you get to a fork in the road, take it.
(I will keep doing this. I have no shame.)
I just finished Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, which I bought because of this review on Slate Star Codex. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting mix of history and fiction about the Soviet Union in the late 1950′s and early 1960′s, when it was actually plausible to hope that politicians and scientists could get central planning right and build an economy that provided a first-world standard of living to everyone. (Spoiler alert) it doesn’t work out, and Red Plenty gives you a good look at how and why it failed.
I’m not usually a person given to intense patriotic emotions; I don’t get choked up when “The Star Spangled Banner” is played or anything. But as an interesting side effect of reading this book, I love America a lot right now. I’m in the mood of people who get off planes and kiss the ground.
Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t go to yours.
Yogi Berra, on Timeless Decision Theory.
That makes sense.
High school is hard.