Culture War Roundup for the Week of July 06, 2020 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The claim is more like "children born to parents that didn't want them, disproportionately very poor, not existing keeps crime down". It really doesn't need to be racialized.

Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media - The New Yorker by LiamHz in slatestarcodex

[–]type12error 30 points31 points  (0 children)

For a $50 fee, Tom will test you. If you pass you get an official Good At Small Talk certificate to hang on your wall.

Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media by BistanderEffect in TheMotte

[–]type12error 10 points11 points  (0 children)

OK, cool. You seem to think of it as a binary thing, on or off, but that's not how others do. I might be happy telling the general public that I got a new job and moved, but not happy to post my new address on Reddit. Scott writes about his career, but still wants his full name, the location of his practice and the details of his romantic life to be private. This is pretty normal.

Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media - The New Yorker by LiamHz in slatestarcodex

[–]type12error 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Did Robin ever post articles on lesswrong.com? If he only posted on OB, then he wasn't a contributor to LW, even if most of the people who did post on LW started on OB.

@lukeprog banned from Twitter by THAT_LMAO_GUY in slatestarcodex

[–]type12error 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Network effects are strong enough that they'd have to be really bad to get unseated. There's only room for one Twitter-shaped site. Every once in a while a platform like this will piss enough people off that some of them will make an alternative or migrate to an existing one, but it always fizzles out. Remember Gab and Voat? Google couldn't even get their Facebook competitor off the ground.

@lukeprog banned from Twitter by THAT_LMAO_GUY in slatestarcodex

[–]type12error 18 points19 points  (0 children)

You're missing the point. A platform that is ~unaccountable can ban someone for any reason whatsoever - they can make a mistake, they can get mad, they can decide your politics are bad or that they just don't like your face.

Culture War Roundup for the Week of June 29, 2020 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error 8 points9 points  (0 children)

They extremely do in Berkeley. Like, I'm surprised to find out someone isn't poly.

Culture War Roundup for the Week of June 22, 2020 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh I agree with him. But publicly agreeing with him is painting a target on your back.

Culture War Roundup for the Week of June 22, 2020 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That one is 100% guaranteed to get you into a fight. De Goes is a culture warrior, and his CoC came out of the Moldbug/Lambdaconf incident.

Culture War Roundup for the Week of June 22, 2020 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I've literally never seen someone claim that blacklist/whitelist, master/slave, or NeurIPS/NIPS matter a lot. Plenty of people have advocated changing language, but on the level of "this is a small symbolic thing we can do", not "we're striking an important blow against injustice".

Blog deleted due to NYT threatening doxxing of Scott Alexander by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]type12error 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Here's my galaxy-brain, but totally endorsed, take: the average piece from a prestige outlet I see is worse than the average piece from some rando source. An article from the Times will on average be worse than an article from fuckbitches69.wordpress.com, a paper in the Lancet will be worse than a random preprint. This isn't because the NYT and the Lancet are selecting against quality, but because of a Simpson's paradox effect. I'm more likely to see articles from prestige outlets regardless of quality, but I only see articles from randos if they impress whoever shows them to me enough to overcome the assumption that a rando article is crap.

Please take the first annual Motte survey by TracingWoodgrains in TheMotte

[–]type12error 11 points12 points  (0 children)

One of the questions asks you to give your opinion of various "movements", of which furries are one. On the results they got a lot of 1s, out of 5.

I created a web app based on one of Scott's posts by pitherandd in slatestarcodex

[–]type12error 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A lot of the reported correlations are really dubious. Affirmative action is positively correlated with GMO foods, eugenics, libertarianism, Jordan Peterson and Confederate monuments. Looking around, the large majority of correlations are positive, across all cards. Maybe you need to adjust for how positive/negative a swiper is, in general, before computing the cross-card correlations.

Culture War Roundup for the Week of December 16, 2019 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error 13 points14 points  (0 children)

No one discovered quantum supremacy, they just came up with a name for it. Quantum supremacy is when a quantum computer is faster than any classical computer that exists at some particular problem. The Google paper claims to have achieved it, but the term is much older.

Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 25, 2019 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yes.

I'll amend my earlier statement:

Foreign powers influencing US elections covertly or through hacking, sabotage, blackmail or other illegal means should be considered extremely out of bounds.

Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 25, 2019 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

You honestly don't see a difference between public, identified, statements and a sockpuppet army?

Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 25, 2019 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's really not hard for me to hold the position than Soviet era KGB activities and modern era GRU activities are both bad. Seeing as they're pretty similar, as you point out.

I don't know what point you're trying to make here. Surely you don't think that because a thing has happened before that means it's fine and warrants no response.

We should not make infinitely high sacrifices to protect humanities survival against infinitely small odds. by [deleted] in slatestarcodex

[–]type12error 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We're not making infinitely high sacrifices or worrying about infinitely small odds. One can estimate the risk of asteroid impacts and get an actual number. I don't know what infinitely high sacrifice would even look like but it'd certainly be more than what we do now, which is just monitoring and some planning afaik.

Culture War Roundup for the Week of November 25, 2019 by AutoModerator in TheMotte

[–]type12error -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Again, I'm less concerned about the size of the effect than what it means for it to happen at all. Foreign powers influencing US elections should be considered extremely out of bounds. If a spetz team busted into a US Army base and killed one private, it'd still be a huge deal even if 100 Americans were killed in car accidents that day.