Helianthus16

12 ms·

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by Helianthus16 16y ago
Ignoring collectivist thinking is a fault when people do in fact act in groups. It is even more so a fault when referring to the violation of rights, when rights only exist as a collectivist decision. If you were about to meet this tribe,
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
It's been running for two years on some unnamed factory before they invited 50 people over to see it, and they still don't have even an arxiv paper? science isn't done in backrooms. color me skeptic. as soon as crayola comes out with that
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
Prolly too late for you to see this, but that "[working] with not being absolutely certain" is precisely faith in its truest, most broad form. God in this faith is not the sky wizard of atheistic clap-trap, but a question: if some entity i
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
you're making the definition of calculated risk much more technical than it needs to be. I ain't saying they did a formal cost-benefit analysis of the whole thing. You seem to think that people can or ought to have an answer for every situa
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
It is about both. Debt means plunging closer towards poverty. Escaping from poverty means being careful about debt. The debate is actually about what informational tools people have available to them. This is demonstrated by your stateme
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
I hope he was talking about something a little more subtle, like the fact that we have so many Hispanic people here without citizenship and have therefore created a sort of lower subservient class. But probably not, slavery's a bit too str
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
Ok. India is now an "important" country. Burgeoning technologically and culturally, what it received from Britain was access to the intellectual firestorm of the Enlightenment. Hindu thinkers were involved in the formation of Universalism
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
I would assert that the problem is in the problem and not in Star Trek's analysis of the problem. That is to say, the problem of interference and controlling choice is not an easy one. Star Trek portrays one viewpoint and its pitfalls. Th
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
yes, he did. it's a little absurd, but I believe his main point is still valid. the inquisition &etc were as much about cultural conformity and control than about espousing a culture of violence. while ridiculous the question is not t
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
You don't know how bad schools can be. >Certainly in my childhood and young adult life there were a number of factors to my success or lack of it that had nothing to do with which school I attended. But would those factors be the same a
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
yeah, what? that's a lot of assumptions. people don't live with assumptions, they live with the realities of having a kid or a spouse or a family or even a girl they just can't get over.
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
In that story, the "irresponsible" part is that they took a gamble in order for their kids to grow up in a better neighborhood, and lost. Sounds like a somewhat calculated risk rather than irresonsibility to me. also everything people have
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
except that loyalty to a quirkiness is seen as individualistic and therefore admirable. not saying you're wrong--well, actually, i am saying you're wrong. i'm not saying there aren't valid reasons to change his screen name now or previously
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
dude, mistrust of others isn't about assuming everyone's out to get you, it's assuming that one person can ruin things for everyone, which is true.
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
The very existence of that "insult" amuses me. I miss the days when cooler than cool meant ice cold. <meta>I posted this partially to experimentally examine the downvote clumping effect I've noticed on hn, where some reasonable res
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
I honestly did not understand if you were being sarcastic in your third paragraph. I'm still not sure, but it seems you're peeved that Twitter hasn't been perfect and not impressed with Rainbird. (Right?) This is a bit unfair I think? No
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
>Faith is, fundamentally, the process of maintaining beliefs in the face of 1) absent evidence and 2) conflicting evidence. This is the tired beaten horse of atheistic criticism, taking the general principle that one must make a leap ou
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
They're both important. I'm never sure I'll use a groupon when I buy it, but I can always be talked into buying a gadget if it's cheap or a shirt if it strikes my fancy.
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
It's wasting its buzz time, then. If (that is, When) this hubbub blows over and we think of Quora as "that thing that never caught on" it will already be too late to gain traction.
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
I think that I ended on that point because it's rather telling how we still manage to take upvotes and downvotes seriously, making us much more similar to reddit than we could ever be different.
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
"Industry" is the clear term here, I think, indicating precisely who and what is dying. Will music suffer? Certainly not. Is there anyone who thinks we rely on the music industry for... well, music? The only sense we rely on the music ind
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
This topic is hilarious for demonstrating the "we don't want to be reddit" background angst that permeates Hacker News. Allow me to make the following vaguely contradictory points in quick succession: 1) The sort of commentary that assumes
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
I reject your case. Self-identification isn't even necessarily something that's public. It's as much a question of who you are to yourself. Self-identification is a broad topic. Sports fans create opposition with other self-identified fa
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
Your third paragraph is correct and I'm confused why you thought it was contrary to my point. I'm not saying that no one has any trace of stupidity. I'm saying that the concept of stupidity-intelligence is not a binary, it is a gradient. W
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
That was intentional. As he could not or did not condense the points of the paper (partly because he didn't personally agree) I did not have anything to work with; as there wasn't a link to the article, I did not have anything to read; as
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
>I'll leave it without argument that "stupidity" should not in general be a desirable state. I'm not saying we should question the concept of stupidity, I'm saying that self-identifying as a rationalist is like self-identifying as a hum
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
That was the point of my caveat, actually, the "whether they say so or not." Nihilists still act as if things are true and kinda negate their own point. That guy who wrote a tome about meaninglessness and then offed himself at Harvard wrot
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
>rather the realization that some are dumber and some are smarter. What? You think that begins with _rationalism??_ The world is divided up into people who realize this and people who do not?--for that is what defining 'rationalist' i
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
Your definition does not contest my either-or equivalence, my assertion that "rationalist" either means "human being" or "someone whose identity involves caring about other people's dumbness." Mostly it's just dressing up how people think w
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by Helianthus16 16y ago
I think your language, even in the title, indicates the problem with the question, and why, while I appreciate the goals, purposes, and actions of the lesswrong crowd, I wouldn't consider... um, "joining up." The whole premise, as I see it,

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