If she only did that once in many hundred days, on that night in particular, then that could be a very huge amount of evidence.
....No. Not even slightly. This line of questioning MIGHT be relevant if you didn’t already have the killer identified, with overwhelming physical evidence pointing towards them. You don’t need to explain why Knox turned her phone off, because you already have the killer and every single piece of physical evidence at the crime scene accounted for.
I can’t attend this one, but I can possibly attend in the future. The Dallas area is a 2 hour drive for me, but I make it up there every couple of months or so. (Incidentally, I’ll be there on Saturday night, but not in time for this meetup.)
I don’t think her reaction makes a tremendous amount of sense, at least as she explains it.
I do, and I didn’t have any kind of dysfunctional upbringing. I agree with your friend, and if such a place existed, I would enjoy participating there.
It’s possible to be intelligent and interested in rationality, but uninterested in being constantly graded and judged.
I do feel like LW is cold, and I’d rather not say “unfriendly”, which to me sounds explicitly hostile, but it’s non-friendly. Commenting here feels like Coming to Work, not like hanging out with friends. You know, where I need to remember to mind all of my manners. Seeing the orange envelope fills me with panic, as I am sure there is someone there just waiting to chew me out for violating some community norm or just being Wrong.
Truthfully, I think it is the lack of “small talk” that makes it feel unfriendly to me. It has the air of, “we’re not interested in you personally, we’re here to get things done”. I want things to be personal. I want to make friends.
The main reason I am interested in a LW-related environment (other than it really being my only online “community”) is because I know there’s been talk here before about people switching fields to become programmers. That’s a group of particular interest to me, since I’m one of them. I also know of at least one other person here who is working on becoming a programmer through self-study. There was a post a while back about encouraging more people to become computer programmers, so I’m betting that there are more of us out there.
There’s been some talk recently of the need for programmers and how people that are unsatisfied with their current employment can find work in that area while making a decent living. Does there exist some sort of virtual meet-up for people that are working towards becoming programmers? I’d like to form, or be part of, a support group of LW-ers that are beginning programming. There may be something like this around that I’ve just missed because I mostly lurk and not even that regularly anymore. (Hoping to change that, though.)
What evidence I have seen does not give me much confidence in the critical thinking ability of posters here as a group, to put it politely. Not much different from “anonymous internet posters” in general.
Just in this instance, or in general?
I’m not sure that’s the way to put it, but let me ask you this: How much stock do you put in the unsupported assertion of an anonymous person on the internet?
How much stock do you put in the supported assertion of an anonymous person on the internet? I think that’s a more relevant question here. To what degree does a poster’s anonymity detract from his argument?
I’m in all three. I second the LW study group formation.
A victory for rationality, today. I feel truly happy about this.
This is just the way I like to relate to myself but I’d decide I was allowed to switch to poly if it was a good idea but that I’m not allowed to date poly-inspiration-X. For at least as long as a limerance period could be expected to interfere with judgement and also long enough that I could see if poly worked for me without the interference. That way my infatuation biases don’t get to subvert my decision making either by temptation or by defensive reaction.
That’s completely reasonable, I’ll agree with that.
I find this very interesting. Polyamory is something that I’ve toyed with intellectually for a while, but I have several ugh fields around it. Namely, and this one has been borne out by this very post, that “going polyamorous” seems like the kind of thing monogamous females do in order to acquire polyamorous males. Perhaps if one was a sufficiently status-y female, one would be able to convert the polyamorous male to being monogamous. Of course, this comes with all sorts of issues (namely, making the polyamorous partner unhappy). I just haven’t been sufficiently convinced that being polyamorous would make me happy for any reasons other than using that polyamory to attract a high-status mate that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to attract. I, like you Alicorn, have been too long seduced by the monogamy aesthetic.
Now, I will try to imagine the conditions sufficient in order for me to hack myself into being polyamorous. I imagine that they would be thus:
I would have to decide, for myself, that I wanted to be polyamorous before meeting some polyamorous male that I desired. That is the only way that I can reasonably trust myself to make a decision in my own best interest.
I would have to be convinced that there was no asymmetry. I believe this is my primary repulsion to polyamory. I envision myself in a situation where I want primary access to a partner who does not similarly wish primary access to me. I also envision lots of emotions and stress involved in deciding what “primary” even means.
I need to be convinced, for myself, that becoming polyamorous is not a status-lowering move.
I’m concerned about the exponential increase in exposure to STI’s as well. Of course, I’ve had partners cheat on me in so-called monogamous relationships, so I’m aware that this is not something that a monogamous relationship necessarily shields me from.
As it stands, I haven’t been in a monogamous relationship wherein I desired within that relationship that it was open so that I could date others. I also haven’t yet desired someone who was (to my knowledge) polyamorous. I have already decided that I do not want the latter condition to be the catalyst for changing my worldview, so right now, I consider myself open to the possibility in the future, should I find myself in a situation where I wanted to date multiple partners. So thanks Alicorn, I am now significantly more luminous!
I vote “ad signatures are okay on posts but not on comments”.
Okay great. I can’t make it there this time, but if you all are meeting every week, I can definitely make it sometimes. I live up near Ft Worth so it’s quite the drive for a day trip! Are you using google groups to communicate or anything?
Is this happening again this Saturday, the 11th?
Any chance of a regular meetup getting started in the DFW area?
Edit: Before anyone tells me to start one myself, my intention with asking this question was polling to see if anyone else actually lives there.
It sounds like she needs therapy. Antidepressants and exercise will help take the edge off until she can get the therapy, but mental illness needs to be treated by a medical professional.
Do you exercise?
Slate Star Codex fulfills this niche for me.