handoflixue

Karma: 3,205

handoflixue May 31, 2017, 12:37 AM
3 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
I’ve changed my tone and apologized.

You’ve continued to dismiss and ridicule me.

You’ve even conceded to others that I’m a cut above the “other trolls” here, and have input from others that I’m trying to raise concerns in good faith.

What more do you want?

handoflixue May 31, 2017, 12:07 AM
2 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
See, now you’re the one leaping to conclusions. I didn’t say that all of your talking points are actual talking points from actual cults. I am confused why even some of them are.

If you can point me to someone who felt “I wrote thousands of words” is, in and of itself, a solid argument for you being trustworthy, please link me to it. I need to do them an epistemic favor.

I was using “charismatic” in the sense of having enough of it to hold the group together. If he doesn’t have enough charisma to do that, then he’s kinda worthless as a commanding officer, neh?

Your claim is false. I wanted to know at what level to hold this conversation. I legitimately can’t tell if you’re waving a bunch of “this is a cult” red flags because you’re trying to be honest about the risks here, because you don’t realize they’re red flags, or because you’re playing N-Dimensional chess and these red flags are somehow all part of your plan.

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 11:57 PM
2 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
I used the word visible to make it clear that there might be some stake which is not visible to me. If you have made your stakes visible in this thread, I’ll admit I missed it—can you please provide a link?

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 10:33 PM
2 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
I notice I am very confused as to why you keep reiterating actual talking points from actual known-dangerous cults in service of “providing evidence that you’re not a cult.”

For instance, most cults have a charismatic (“well known”) second-in-command who could take over should there be some scandal involving the initial leader. Most cults have written thousands of words about how they’re different from other cults. Most cults get very indignant when you accuse them of being cults.

On the object level: Why do you think people will be reassured by these statements, when they fail to differentiate you from exist cults?

Stepping up a level: how much have you read about cults and abusive group dynamics?

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 10:28 PM
2 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
Can you elaborate on the notion that you can be overruled? Your original post largely described a top-down Authoritarian model, with you being Supreme Ruler.

How would you handle it if someone identifies the environment as abusive, and therefor refuses to suggest anyone else join such an environment?

You discuss taking a financial hit, but I’ve previously objected that you have no visible stake in this. Do you have a dedicated savings account that can reasonably cover that hit? What if the environment is found abusive, and multiple people leave?

Anyone entering your group is signing a legal contract binding them to pay rent for six months. What legal commitments are you willing to make regarding exit protocols?

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 10:21 PM
4 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
You seem to feel that publicly shaming me is important. Should participants in your group also expect to be publicly shamed if they fall short of your standards / upset you?

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 9:48 PM
2 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
And just to be clear: I don’t give a shit about social dominance. I’m not trying to bully you. I’m just blunt and skeptical. I wouldn’t be offended in the least if you mirrored my tone. What does offend me is the fact that you’ve spent all this time blustering about my tone, instead of addressing the actual content.

(I emphasize “me” because I do acknowledge that you have offered a substantial reply to other posters)

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 9:40 PM
2 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
Alright. As a test of epistemic uncertainty:

I notice that you didn’t mention a way for participants to end the experiment, if it turns out abusive / cult-like. How do you plan to address that?

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 9:15 PM
5 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
Also, this is very important: You’re asking people to sign a legal contract about finances without any way to to terminate the experiment if it turns out you are in fact a cult leader. This is a huge red flag, and you’ve refused to address it.

I would be vastly reassured if you could stop dodging that one single point. I think it is a very valid point, no matter how unfair the rest of my approach may or may not be.

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 9:12 PM
3 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
In the absence of a sound rebuttal to the concerns that I brought up, you’re correct: I’m quite confident that you are acting in a way that is dangerous to the community.

I had, however, expected you to have the fortitude to actually respond to my criticisms.

In the absence of a rebuttal, I would hope you have the ability to update on this being more dangerous than you originally assumed.

Bluntly: After reading your responses, I don’t think you have the emotional maturity necessary for this level of authority. You apparently can’t handle a few paragraphs of criticism from an online stranger with no investment in the situation. Why should I possibly expect you to be more mature when dealing with an angry participant whose housing depends on your good will?

On the off chance that you’re actually open to feedback, and not just grandstanding to look good...

1) I apologize if my tone was too harsh. You are attempting something very dangerous, on a path littered with skulls. I had expected you were prepared for criticism.

2) Commit to posting a second draft or addendum, which addresses the criticisms raised here.

3) Reply to my original post, point by point. Linking me to other places in the thread is fine.

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 8:50 PM
3 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
Because basically every cult has a 30 second boilerplate that looks exactly like that?

When I say “discuss safety”, I’m looking for a standard of discussion that is above that provided by actual, known-dangerous cults. Cults routinely use exactly the “check-ins” you’re describing, as a way to emotionally manipulate members. And the “group” check-ins turn in to peer pressure. So the only actual safety valve ANYWHERE in there is (D).

You’re proposing starting something that looks like the cult. I’m asking you for evidence that you are not, in fact, a cult leader. Thus far, almost all evidence you’ve provided has been perfectly in line with “you are a cult leader”.

If you feel this is an unfair standard of discussion, then this is probably not the correct community for you.

Also, this is very important: You’re asking people to sign a legal contract about finances without any way to to terminate the experiment if it turns out you are in fact a cult leader. This is a huge red flag, and you’ve refused to address it.

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 7:49 PM
1 point
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)

Similarly, I think the people-being-unreliable thing is a bullshit side effect

You may wish to consider that this community has a very high frequency of disabilities which render one non-consensually unreliable.

You may wish to consider that your stance is especially insulting towards those members of our community.

You may wish to reconsider making uncharitable comments about those members of our community. In case it is unclear: “this one smacks the most of a sort of self-serving, short-sighted immaturity” is not a charitable statement.

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 7:43 PM
0 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
Speaking entirely for myself: You are proposing a dangerous venture. The path is littered with skulls. Despite this, you have not provided any concrete discussion of safety. When people have brought the subject up, you’ve deflected.

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 7:24 PM
2 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
I have absolutely no confidence that I’m correct in my assertions. In fact, I was rather expecting your response to address these things. Your original post read as a sketch, with a lot of details withheld to keep things brief.

The whole point of discussion is for us to identify weak points, and then you go in to more detail to reassure us that this has been well addressed (and opening those solutions up to critique where we might identify further weak points). If you can’t provide more detail right now, you could say “that’s in progress, but it’s definitely something we will address in the Second Draft” and then actually do that.

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 7:23 PM
2 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
I would be much more inclined to believe you if you would actually discuss those solutions, instead of simply insisting we should “just trust you”.

handoflixue May 30, 2017, 11:10 AM
9 points
on: Dragon Army: Theory & Charter (30min read)
First, you seem to think that “Getting Useful Things Done” and “Be 99.99% Reliable” heavily correlate. The military is infamous for bloated budgets, coordination issues, and high rates of sexual abuse and suicide. High-pressure startups largely fail, and are well known for burning people out. There is a very obvious failure state to this sort of rigid, high pressure environment and… you seem unaware of it.

Second, you seem really unaware of alternate organizational systems that actually DO get things done. The open source community is largely a loose model of “80% reliable” components, and yet great things get built by these collaborations. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Linux.

“we often convince ourselves that 90% or 99% is good enough, when in fact what’s needed is something like 99.99%.”

Third, and most bluntly: I don’t think you have the slightest knowledge of Fault Tolerant Design, or how to handle Error Cases, if you would say something like this. I write software that can rely on it’s inputs working maybe 80% of the time. This is accounting software, so it is NOT allowed to fuck up on corner cases. And I do it just fine. 80% is perfectly sufficient, if you know how to build a system that fails safely.

I think this makes you a uniquely bad candidate for this sort of endeavor, because the first iteration of this experiment is going to be running at maybe 80% reliability. You’re going to have a ton of bugs to iron out, and the first run needs to be someone who can work with 80%. And you seem pretty blunt that you’re inept in that area.

Fourth, your thresholds for success are all nebulous. I’d really expect testable predictions, ideally ones that are easy for the community to evaluate independent of your own opinions. It seems like the goal of this exercise should be to produce data, more than results.

All that said, I do value the focus on iteration. I think you will be prone to making more mistakes, and inflicting more unnecessary suffering on participants, but I do not think you have any sort of malicious intent. And with no one else really stepping up to run this sort of experiment… well, if people are willing to make that sacrifice, I’m happy to learn from them?

But I think you dramatically over-estimate your ability, and you’re selling short how badly the first version is going to go. There are going to be bugs. You are going to need to learn to deal with the 80% that you get.

And on top of that, well, the consequences for failure are actually worse than being homeless, since you’re also responsible for finding a replacement. That’s a really huge risk to ask people to take, when you yourself have absolutely nothing at stake.

I think your heart may well be in the right place, but the idea as currently conceived is actively harmful, and desperately needs to build in much better safety protocols. It also needs to be much clearer that this is an initial draft, that it will go badly as people try to figure this out, and that initial participants are going to be suffering through an unoptimized process.

Finally: You don’t have a fail safe for if the whole idea proves non-viable. As it stands right now, you kick everyone out but leave them on the hook for rent until they’ve run 3 replacement candidates by you. In the meantime, you enjoy a rent free house.

It really feels like it needs an “ABORT” button where the participants can pull the plug if things get out of control; if you turn out power mad; or if it just turns out a significant number of participants badly estimated how this would go.

The fact that you have nothing on the line, and no fail-safe / abort clause… really, really worries me?

TL;DR: Your plan is dangerous and you haven’t given nearly enough thought to keeping people safe. Scrap what you have and rebuilt it from the ground up with the notion of this being a safe experiment (and I want to emphasis both the word “safe” and the word “experiment”—you should be expecting the initial version of this to fail at producing results, and instead largely produce data on how to do this better in the future)

handoflixue Nov 7, 2014, 11:18 AM
0 points
on: Solstice 2014 - Kickstarter and Megameetup
Does contact information exist for the San Francisco one, or is that one aimed entirely at people already active in the local community? It’s a city I visit occasionally, and would love it if I could attend something like this :)

handoflixue Jan 20, 2014, 5:01 AM
0 points
in reply to: ChrisHallquist’s comment on: I Will Pay $500 To Anyone Who Can Convince Me To Cancel My Cryonics Subscription
The average college graduate is 26, and I was estimating 25, so I’d assume that by this community’s standards, you’re probably on the younger side. No offense was intended :)

I would point out that by the nature of it being LIFE insurance, it will generally not be used for stuff YOU need, nor timed to “when the need arises”. That’s investments, not insurance :)

(And if you have 100K of insurance for $50/month that lets you early-withdrawal AND isn’t term insurance… then I’d be really curious how, because that sounds like a scam or someone misrepresenting what your policy really offers :))

handoflixue Jan 20, 2014, 2:11 AM
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Literature-review on cognitive effects of modafinil (my bachelor thesis)
“Has anyone come up with a motivation enhancer?”

Vyvanse (perscription-only ADD medication) is… almost unbelievably awesome for me there. I suspect it only works if your issue is somewhere in the range of ADD, though, as it doesn’t do anything for my motivation if I’m depressed.

I’ve found that in general, “sustained release” options work a LOT better for motivation. Caffeine helps a tiny bit, but 8-hour sustained-release caffeine can help a lot. My motivation seems to really hate dealing with peaks and valleys throughout the day. Oddly, if I take Vyvanse one day, then skip it the next, my motivation completely crashes, but this doesn’t seem to affect the value of Vyvanse for giving me very motivated days—it’s the ups and downs within a day, not my long-term variation, that seems to disrupt motivation.

handoflixue Jan 19, 2014, 9:26 AM
0 points
in reply to: MugaSofer’s comment on: I Will Pay $500 To Anyone Who Can Convince Me To Cancel My Cryonics Subscription
http://www.alcor.org/cases.html A loooot of them include things going wrong, pretty clear signs that this is a novice operation with minimal experience, and so forth. Also notice that they don’t even HAVE case reports for half the patients admitted prior to ~2008.

It’s worth noting that pretty much all of these have a delay of at LEAST a day. There’s one example where they “cryopreserved” someone who had been buried for over a year, against the wishes of the family, because “that is what the member requested.” (It even includes notes that they don’t expect it to work, but the family is still $50K poorer!)

I’m not saying they’re horrible, but they really come off as enthusiastic amateurs, NOT professionals. Cryonics might work, but the modern approach is … shoddy at best, and really doesn’t strike me as matching the optimistic assumptions of people who advocate for it.