Because it’s a fully general counterargument against caring about or doing anything. That you shouldn’t care about something because it is temporary is poison. I can’t even imagine the hell we would live in if views like this were widely and earnestly adopted.
tim
Karma: 624
I am probably misunderstanding something here, but doesn’t this
Then the correct guess, if you don’t know whether a given question is “easy” or “hard”...
Basically say, “if you have no calibration whatsoever?” If there are distinct categories of questions (easy and hard) and you can’t tell which questions belong to which category, then simply guessing according to your overall base rate will make your calibration look terrible—because it is
But what are you basing that that off of? There are a ridiculous number of confounding factors that might explain why a particular website doesn’t conform to the latest studies in web usability (money, time, the site gets tons of hits already, management is hard to talk to, etc) outside of “professional web designers don’t seem to use [empirical web design data].”
And if you go beyond the web designers themselves then you are really just asking why companies/corporations don’t tirelessly invest in making the best website possible.
Is the premise that modern sites do not take studies on aesthetics/usability/effectiveness into account even true? I’ve moved into web development over the past 8 months or so and I regularly search for topics such as “log in vs sign in,” “ok cancel button placement” and “optimal web page navigation.”
It seems to me that there is no shortage of studies, opinions and hard evidence on display regarding the (in)effectiveness of particular web design choices. Granted not every google hit is going to cite a formal study, but a surprising amount do. Googling the above over the past ten minutes or so has given me references to a study on optimal text layout, a study on label placement/alignment, why dropdown menus apparently suck, and how presenting users with too many choices is detrimental to user engagment (admittedly this one was generalized to the web after the fact).
Regardless of the content of either of those sites, the first is clearly more aesthetically pleasing despite the lack of shit moving around on the page. Scrolling to the bottom of the second (which shouldn’t even be a thing at all: it’s like a <100px scroll on a standard monitor and even hiding the taskbar and bookmarks toolbar in Chrome still leaves a miniscule amount of vertical scroll) reveals a copyright footer (and “top” link!) that is almost comically out of place after viewing the content above it. I would be very surprised if this site worked because of its modern web facade rather than in spite of it.
Clarity, you have a large number of comments with incorrect Wikipedia links. Your “introspective illusion” comment directly above this one does it correctly. You clearly are capable of generating functional links to Wikipedia pages.
Please take a few minutes to make your recent comments less frustrating to read. It is frankly astounding that so many people have given you this feedback and you are still posting these broken links.
There’s this extremely intelligent alien species that has evolved a distinct sense of morality very similar to our own, just more rigid. So rigid that they are incapable of even comprehending the way we might think. And we view killing them just as we view recycling computers.
What happens next?
Are you confused as to why politicians would repeat a phrase that reliably energizes their political base even though it may not represent reality completely accurately?
They don’t create a new discussion post drawing attention to an old thread once a week, no. Whether there is one person a week who would make the same post in a less obtrusive thread dedicated to such posts is another question.
The existence of the Open Thread complicates the issue a bit as well.
I believe you’re supposed to link to a past post you feel is valuable enough that people who missed its initial appearance in discussion should go back and read it. The idea of this thread being that you don’t have to create a new post and clutter up discussion to do so.
Complicating factor: if maintaining a good relationship with my parent might slightly increase the amount I expect to be able to donate to effective charities at the cost of (in expectation) making me less happy, does this change my obligations?
I can’t lend you any specific advice here, but I’m pretty confident that this is an insane thing to even consider considering in the situation you describe.
On the face of it, I don’t feel that this particular risk differentiates itself enough from “what if [insert subtle end-of-times scenario here]?” to be worthy of specific consideration. It’s a lot of what ifs and perhapses.
While I agree that the process seems absurd on the face of it, I don’t think it’s as nonsensical as it appears at first glance.
It’s way, way easier to have a small group of people re-interpret a static text over and over than it is to have a larger group of people, accountable to an even larger group of constituents, write new text that they all agree on over and over.
edit: I guess basically what I’m saying is that democracy is hard and this is a nice out?
This a great example of a question that belongs in the Open Thread.
Re: the linked site. Browsing the homepage raises so many red flags that it’s borderline overwhelming.
Offering me a free 45-page report? - Awesome, what do I get if I pay you money?
16 Happiness Ideas That Really Work! - Um, good? Is this seriously BuzzFeed style clickbait?
Direct Brain Stimulation, a Trillion Dollar Invention? - Wow that’s a lot of money, I’d better start reading right now!
And this overtly manipulative style continues for basically the entire first page of posts.
Admittedly everything that I’ve pointed out is entirely unrelated to the actual content—it may be well researched and worthy of a second chance. But there are so many blatant attempts to manipulate the reader to click click click that I find it extremely difficult to take seriously right from the start. The broken links in the OP don’t help at all.
This is not directly related to the wording of the introduction, but to the accessibility of the homepage to new users.
I have been an avid lurker/reader of LW since the beginning. Over the past year or two, I have almost exclusively read the discussion forum due to it’s high turnover rate and greater density of “bite-size” ideas that tend to require less time to process and understand than promoted posts.
Only recently I’ve realized that a noticeable part of the reason I immediately click “Discussion” after navigating to my http://lesswrong.com/ bookmark is
My eyes glaze over the “Less Wrong is...” section which I find overly verbose and unnecessary (e.g. Less Wrong --> bullet points: community blog --> discussion board --> rationality materials—communicates the same information in a much more clear and upfront fashion. No one stumbling upon this site cares if the blog is “curated” or that our rationality materials are “edited”—they want to see the content).
This may seem like a minor thing but: the two sections below the LessWrong banner are “MAIN” and “DISCUSSION” (are we LessWrong or Less Wrong? The banner and says one thing and the text below says another. There is a lot of variability just in the posts below). The “MAIN” link is rendered in bold by default. I click the “unvisited” link that indicates that it will take me to different content. After the layout change it took me many visits to realize that clicking “MAIN” took me to http://lesswrong.com/promoted/ which displays the actual content + previews of promoted posts. I really really think that the “MAIN” link on the homepage should not be in bold type unless you are on the ~/promoted or ~/comments pages.
She may very well have magical powers, but the assumption that she is using them solely for his benefit and not misleading or manipulating him to her own ends is primarily what I take issue with.
Unless I missed an extremely large piece of evidence regarding the red-lord-of-light-lady’s trustworthiness, I don’t think we can say any assessment is “completely justified.” My impression of Stannis’ new advisor is someone with a nice looking bag of tricks that likes to take credit when things go right and likes to counsel faith and patience when things go wrong.
She could also be the real thing. She could also be the real thing but have her own selfish motives. She could be westerosi-satan tempting Stannis in preparation to suck him into eternal damnation.
While condemning Stannis solely on the “ick” factor of his actions is inadequate, so is calculating the utility of those actions starting from “the red lady is telling the truth.”
Exactly this. I am a big fish in a small pond. I have been seriously programming for about a year now and I am far and away the most technically skilled person at my (completely-non-technically-focused) business.
I have learned more in this past year than I did through all 4.5 years of college. I am given a tremendous amount of freedom in the approach I take to solving problems which allows me to constantly say to myself, “hey, the way I’ve been doing this before works...but I bet I can take an hour and learn a better way.”
Initially I was writing VBA macros to automate the more menial aspects of my job. That eventually became insufficient for what I wanted to do and I moved on to C# and wrote a sizeable WinForms application which expanded my automation to other departments within the company. This eventually led to a promotion to a more formally technical position and I now have the pleasure of learning the ropes of ASP.NET, JavaScript, CSS to continue the development of our online inventory tracking system—used by employees, clients and various business partners.
(I use “pleasure” a bit loosely as web programming is turning out to be far more absurd than anything I’ve done in desktop development. I’ve spent hours and hours working around various quirks that only affect specific versions of IE under certain circumstances. Which I’m sure is par for the course but holy hell what a culture shock.)
I have gotten better at dealing with internal bureaucracy and politics; I’ve learned how to speak slower and give effective, understandable presentations; and I’ve become proficient at learning the ins and outs of a business that I have no inherent interest in outside of the fact that understanding it allows me to design more effective software for the people I work with day in and day out.
While my situation is certainly not the norm, being a “big fish in a small pond” can open many doors for personal growth and learning if you are fortunate enough to find yourself in a job where you are able, willing and allowed to exploit your position to relentlessly learn and improve your skills throughout the course of everyday activity.
edit: more in the spirit of the thread, this sort of position can lead to a lot of undeserved self confidence and leads to some harsh wakeup calls when you run across a big fish in a big pond. It can also get rather lonely when you don’t have a mentor figure to turn to on a daily basis and more or less have to wing things you don’t quite understand yet. I’ve had several moments of intense embarrassment where, leaning on past successes, I pushed my position far too aggressively and ended up unnecessarily costing myself and my company time and money that could have been better spent elsewhere.
Not really buying the analogy between massive wealth and superlongevity. Virtually unlimited access to super-stimulation such as fame, drugs and any other rush you could want to get your hands on doesn’t seem all that comparable to an unlimited supply of everyday normal life.
The everyday reality of living forever isn’t going to be shockingly more exciting than regular ol’ not living forever. There will be new awesome and crazy stuff, but you’ll have had lifetimes to grow used to them. People born into them will think of them like how we currently think of small handheld computers that can connect us to almost everyone we’ve ever known and effortlessly tap into a huge reservoir of collected human knowledge.
Seems more analogous to looking at the average level of wealth/lifespan in 1700 and wondering how our brains could ever handle the lavish living conditions and doubled life expectancy of 2015.