geniuslevel20

Karma: −20

geniuslevel20 29 Nov 2014 20:36 UTC
−17 points
in reply to: ike’s comment on: The Hostile Arguer
The post arrives at its conclusions by way of an example involving ultimate power. But it’s conclusions go far beyond:

“Never try to defend a proposition against a hostile arguer.[2] They do not care.”

LW denizens have turned into a clique fearful a hostile word will damage their fragile identities. They might as well be feminists.

geniuslevel20 29 Nov 2014 19:27 UTC
−11 points
in reply to: dxu’s comment on: The Hostile Arguer
No successful irony; only your special pleading. I didn’t criticize Werdifred for mind reading, which all humans are fully capable of. I criticized him for mind reading based on his mere dislike of the manner of expression employed by common_law.

What is truly ironic is indeed that Werdifred (Weird Fred?) is the epitome of what the lead essay condemns: arguing to establish personal dominance. Isn’t that plainly obvious? Can you honestly deny it, or is an actual example beyond the pale?

Let me take the opportunity to disagree with common_law on one important point. There’s nothing necessarily better about the faux-naive arguer than the “clever arguer.” Sometimes arguing a position tendentiously is a good way to test it. Take one example. Relative to E.Y., Robin Hanson is a “clever arguer.” But Hanson is the superior intellectual and is ultimately more intellectually honest.

geniuslevel20 28 Nov 2014 23:47 UTC
−14 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: The Hostile Arguer
My god, you’re a pompous ass. You read someone’s mind and accuse them of making a “dominance attempt” because you don’t like the writing style.

“You should consider” seems simply to have been an attempt to be polite. Inept, perhaps, but hardly “condescending.”

You have developed a plethora of self-protective rationalizations, hostile arguer, clever arguer, anything but your own inability to defend your positions in actual debate.

And then, so what if it were condescending? Your own dominance strivings (and chronic injustice collecting) keep you from engaging in argument honestly.

geniuslevel20 26 Oct 2014 3:11 UTC
5 points
on: Power and difficulty

As instrumental rationalists, this is the territory we want to be in. We want to beat the market rate for turning effort into influence.

Would someone be so kind as to direct me to a forum for epistemic rationalists?

[Who wants to talk to folks about important matters when they declare their willingness to deceive even themselves if it gets them what they want?]

geniuslevel20 9 Jun 2014 5:21 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: pragmatist’s comment on: [meta] Policy for dealing with users suspected/guilty of mass-downvote harassment?
That rationale for the karma system would be the rankest hypocrisy. To facilitate the upvoting of particular commenters—regardless of content—LW records karma totals.

geniuslevel20 9 Jun 2014 3:18 UTC
−13 points
on: [meta] Policy for dealing with users suspected/guilty of mass-downvote harassment?
No rule prohibited mass downvoting. Who is to say (retroactively!) that a voter cannot rationally and sincerely determine that the best signal he or she can provide is one that is negative about a particular poster, based on generalizations about the content? E.Y. has advised users that they need not have a rational reason to downvote; not liking something suffices. Well, why not dislike everything by some poster?

This site, moreover, implies that voting is anonymous. Trike arrogated the right to determine voter identity: it invaded the user’s privacy!

The karma system is inherently corrupt and manipulative. That you have to violate posters’ rights to make it work is just further proof.

geniuslevel20 8 Jun 2014 20:34 UTC
0 points
on: What should a Bayesian do given probability of proving X vs. of disproving X?
Commenters minunderstand your problem and your argument for its solution. I take your problem to be “What could the probability of a mathematical proposition be besides its comparative likelihood of proof or disproof?

Perhaps the answer is that there are reasons besides proof to believe even a mathematical proposition. Empirical reasons, that is.

geniuslevel20 6 Jun 2014 4:16 UTC
1 point
on: Willpower Depletion vs Willpower Distraction

While these are all interesting empirical findings, there’s a very similar phenomenon that’s much less debated and which could explain many of these observations, but I think gets too little popular attention in these discussions.

But you don’t explain the findings!

I once asked a room full of about 100 neuroscientists whether willpower depletion was a thing,

I don’t even know what that question is supposed to mean.

geniuslevel20 2 Sep 2013 23:37 UTC
3 points
on: How I Am Productive
You overemphasize that this worked for you and made you productive. It’s not just a matter of different strokes for different folks. It’s more basic: you really don’t know that your productivity increase is due to the particular techniques, and the nontestimonal evidence for the techniques is weak or nonexistent. (For example, commenters have pointed out that they can find nothing rigorous on prodromo.)

Anti-procrastination is like dieting. Achieving a large weight loss over eight months doesn’t make the diet effective: most people regain the lost weight.

Expect your results not only to regress to the mean but also to be subject to the same yoyo effect as dieting. You are probably creating a long-term willpower deficit that will ultimately take its toll.

Sorry for the pessimism, but you’re creating unrealistic expectations in your audience.

geniuslevel20 27 Jul 2013 7:46 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Nornagest’s comment on: The Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ
In comparing the skills of just the manufacturing jobs created and lost, you ignore the seismic and dominating change in the urban/rural ratio. The process can be seen at an accelerated rate today in China: peasants transformed into workers and getting paid higher income as the result, thus expanding the economy. Peasants to workers is a much weightier trend than skilled workers to unskilled workers.

geniuslevel20 27 Jul 2013 6:18 UTC
8 points
on: The Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ
The main question is why is automation associated with unemployment today when it wasn’t in the past. To answer, you have to consider the kinds of jobs created by and lost to automation and the determinants of workers incomes in the jobs.

Most of the industrial revolution is associated an increasing number of workers in manufacturing and fewer in farming. The industrial work force grew primarily at the expense of the peasants or farmers. Today, automation is causing manufacturing jobs to be replaced by service jobs. Farming jobs were the first to go because our need for foodstuffs is limited. Manufacturing jobs went next because manufacturing is easier to automate than services.

But manufacturing jobs paid better than farming jobs; service-industry jobs pay worse than manufacturing jobs. If the jobs pay better, there are also more of them, because well-paid citizens create greater aggregate demand. So today we have manufacturing jobs declining relative to service-industry jobs with the result that the workforce is poorer, which means fewer workers can be employed.

The explanation lies in whatever causes some jobs to be paid considerably more than others. It could be status. Manufacturing jobs are higher status than farming jobs because the city is high status compared to the sticks. And service industry is low status because of the low status of servitude. Groups of workers with higher status get paid better. It probably makes a greater difference than we realize.

geniuslevel20 29 Sep 2012 23:22 UTC
10 points
on: Introduction to Connectionist Modelling of Cognitive Processes: a chapter by chapter review
Allow me, please, to question whether a book precis should be on “Main.” An ordinary precis doesn’t represent a “top level” contribution. Putting this on Main makes it look like a “top ten” poster can get upvoted by posting almost anything, anywhere.

geniuslevel20 29 Sep 2012 21:09 UTC
10 points
in reply to: komponisto’s comment on: Mandatory Secret Identities

even if one accepted the implied unlikely propsition that no such persons exist or ever have existed, the terminological question would remain

I don’t think so: psychiatry has no need for terms that fail to refer. (On the other hand, psychiatry might have a term for something that doesn’t exist—because it once was thought to have existed.)