In retrospect, I’m really really sad we didn’t have a “city” question (along with country) this year. In talking to other Australian organisers, we occasionally wonder about which cities to target with “come to your local LessWrong meetup” notifications… that time we had city in the survey was useful for knowing that there was a body of local people who were interested, but we hadn’t reached.
So I’d like to request that next year we add that question back, please :)
BTW—in case anyone’s curious, I spent my first month’s budget on fitness stuff:
Zombies run! (couch to 5K version)
new pants for running
music that I like and has a good beat for running
I picked Zombies-run because it’s a fun way to gamify fitness in a meaningful way—and ingress worked really well for me last time, whereas other simple “record what you did” sites don’t seem to be as effective for me. So far I’ve gone out twice and will be going again today, and I’m looking forward to it. All the rest is to make it more comfortable to support me doing it—also in the past I was using “but my exercise pants are dirty” as an excuse (so now I have two pairs).
I agree that actual words explaining why you gave a downvote is far more beneficial than simple silent shunning. I strongly endorse giving useful feedback whenever you downvote on a post here.
However I disagree that the usual kind of youtube-comment vitirol is useful data. Profanity-filled ad-hominem does not give you useful information to update upon. I’d rather five silent downvotes from a community whose opinions I trust than five unhelpful youtube comments. YMMV
To be clear—neither was I
It is my understanding that pjeby’s comment was not specifically about sex, but about conditioning consent upon correct intentions… the sex example was simply an easy example to give where it is clear that deliberate concealment of bad-intention causes lots of nasty things.
My feeling was the fact that Lumifer then engaged with the sex-example, rather than what pjeby was actually trying to convey about informed consent, meant that he was evading the intent of the comment.
and the side-track we’ve gone down about whether I actually think that lumifer buys sex is likewise irrelevant to the original point.
personally—I think that the difference between personal and commercial transactions (from the point of view of whether intentions matter to them), is in practice fairly small.
You make a contract—whether physical or verbal, whether backed by the government, or backed by your future goodwill and status. There is an exchange—whether or fiat-currency or expectations of future return in kind, or just more goodwill. If somebody later finds out that the intentions were lies… people try to get recompense—whether by taking the person to court, or by shunning them in future, or telling all their friends that they lie for self-gain.
The fact that commercial vs personal exchanges are held to be separate magisteria is, I think, the point here—and while I agree there are differences… the idea of informed consent is important in both.
Soaking and slowly roasting nuts takes more than the time to just open the packet and eat.. so it probably won’t happen. I could force myself to do it—but I don’t see enough value in doing it to do it… (only something that was likely to kill me would make that change) because I have other fish to fry. Thanks for the explanation though—it is interesting to know :)
From my perspective—convenience is a big factor in the food I eat. I like good-tasting food… I really like easy food. That includes easy-to-find (it’s much easier to just go to the local butcher than to hunt down grass-fed beef). and the inertia that comes from this is a hurdle big enough that there has to be a really good reason to get over it. I have other things I’d like to spend my “could I be bothered” points on first ;)
re: woo-woo urk that does sound awful—yeah I don’t think I’d put up with that for long either.
re: timing me too… ;) plus—too many channels, too many things to do...
Yes, I am aware that snack/fiddling is probably a signal that I’m not hungry (thanks, though, I might not have been). I will also drink a glass of water rather than snack if I think I’m actually hungry… but I’m quite aware that I’m not hungry when I’m snacking.
The point of these snacks isn’t to ingest nutrition. In this case—i have been snacking as a way of fiddling (I think). I figured that if I was going to fiddle/snack anyway—I might as well make it less-unhealthy—because I have other things that are more important to work on than in stopping this particular habit (I’ll come back to it, but as stop-gap measure… healthier snacks is better than unhealthy snacks.
I also take pomodoro breaks—but it doesn’t entirely negate the snacking need...
Yes I have no explicit knowledge of Lumifer’s sex life. If Lumifer is asexual then my statement is strictly incorrect.
If Lumifer, however, does have sex at all, they probably have to negotiate sex with a partner… which means that there is some exchange—most likely just the exchange of like-for-like (ie the other person gets sex too)… which is a purchase in kind… which was my point.
Also I should point out that my comment was intended as just as facile as the comment I was replying-to. That was why I used that form. Lumifer was’t engaging with the point of the previous comment and just throwing up a random thought-stopper. I intended to throw up a facile comment that was to make them think again about what they’d just said.
Yes you do… just not with money
Maybe you should work on that aversion ;)
“a large subculture of nonworking religious scholars, supported by state welfare”
sounds suspiciously like an abbey to me… just “the state” instead of “the king/pope”
(note: lots of the other bits don’t sound quite the same… but still, there are some similarities)
My immediate thought is: but if I don’t get a flu shot, I’m likely to catch the flu more than once in a year… each flu shot saves me more than once. Your value for “I get the flu and don’t die” only seems to count the price of losing out on work once…
I am downvoting mainly because nothing in this comment adds to the discussion and it is derogatory to americans without any real cause.
Secondly because it happens to be wrong.
I have experience with the Australian job environment and the British job environment. Both locations try to get you to disclose your past salaries in this way. In my experience, they don’t force you to, by using online app forms or refusing interviews to those who don’t tell past-salary, but perhaps I’m not applying for the same kinds of jobs as the author of this post. They do, however, ask—all the time… and they make you squirm if you try to avoid the question, even though they have no particular right to the information.
“guilt trip” ?
spectacularly unpleasant for others. Having a second-best solution is still valuable for those of us who experience unstructured meetings with strangers as roughly equivalent to being dropped in the shark tank at the aquarium.
They are spectacularly unpleasant for me too, but I still go them because I want to have a decent salary and choice of job options. Also: don’t forget you can network online in chat fora/mailing lists etc (where you can do your networking without being face-to-face).
Likewise: it’s possible you just haven’t found the right meetups etc to go to… there are a lot of aspie CS people around, and they still tend to like learning new stuff at tech meetups… find the ones that are very specific to your geekiest technology (avoid the ones that are like “web entrepreneurs” and instead choose something for your programming language, or even more specific—some really-specific toolset for your industry… the more geeky you get, the fewer random strangers you find, and the more people just like you—who are also not highly sociable, but will be more likely to be interested in your topics, and help you out when in need.
Also: you don’t have to thoroughly enjoy the experience… you just have to endure it and fake being social for one night a month… and practice makes perfect here (or fake-it-til-you-make-it)
they ought to try and prove me incorrect
it’s up to you to find the truth, not up to other people to pound it into your head for you.
Your views aren’t really what’s at issue here, but how you are saying what you are saying. A number of times you have resorted to pure ad hominem (and sometimes it’s downright rude). I know you must understand that this is going to be frowned upon on a site like this.
gjm has given a very excellent description of the kinds of things that have been downvoted and why that is likely. It’s well worth a read… it will help you on other sites than this one. From my experience,, LW is a very forgiving group compared to others—where here you get a gentle nudge through a downvote—others will simply spew vitriol your way. I think you shouldn’t interpret our downvotes as “we don’t like your views”—but “hey, that could have been kinder/more rational/more to the point—why don’t you think about it”
If you respond in a more considered, more rational way (not your views, but your tone), then you will likely see an improvement in your karma.
hey—any chance I can get books for distribution at our Australia-wide meetup (in July, no rush)? I’m happy to pay for postage of the books to me.