To be clear, this is a ratings site not a review site, correct? Nobody is writing up any analyses of these movies to demonstrate/show how they're woke, is that right?
It's pretty interesting! but as someone who's really out of the loop on movies, I can't even imagine how a movie like THE FOREVER PURGE is extremely woke. (and extremely racist, presumably by the most recent cynical use of the term). It's about killing zombies isn't it?
Hmmm. I see “Black Panther” listed in approximately the Top 10 and I am quite sure this is wrong. IMO, Black Panther is the most conservative blockbuster since The Dark Knight.
To briefly recap: the principal villain in the movie is a man who has suffered a tremendous injustice at the hands of a Kingdom which has drunk a little bit too deeply from its own mythology. The sin this Kingdom has committed against the man has turned him into tyrant—pathologically resentful, driven only by a desire to destroy the Kingdom. He is not redeemed at all by his status as a victim. At the point in the film villain appears to triumph, he literally burns down the Kingdom’s sacred temple—the locus of its own mythology and national self-understanding.
The hero of the story is a noble prince who believes deeply in the mythology of his own Kingdom. When he learns of the sins that his father and forefathers have committed, rather than losing hope—or defiling the memory of his father (as the tyrannical villain attempts to)—he literally takes a trip to the underworld, communes with the spirit of Kings past, comprehends his Very Human father’s sin against the villain, and then returns to land of the living dead set on ousting the tyrant and restoring the original promise/greatness of the Kingdom.
I literally left the theatre being like, “wtf, did Jordan Peterson write this movie?”
Interesting take! I agree that Black Panther is not woke. The villian advocates revolution and never forgiving his enemies, and the hero advocates forgiveness and collaboration.
Actually if you think “woke” is a good thing you’d probably rate this movie woke, since it’s black and has women who are integral and interesting. But if you dislike woke things for the reasons I’m used to hearing, then you can easily see Killmonger as an imagining of wokeness taken too far.
(Warning, I did not get very far into the movie at all; there are some movies history-and-economics people should not try to watch, take this as a grain of salt.)
My theory is that it's about a non-western society that is positively portrayed and can compete with - and, in many respects, do better than - western societies, in spite of not westernizing. That's a shining ideal for people who think that the western world is tainted and are looking for alternatives.
You have accurately described the political implications of the movie's plot. But it is inconceivable that you didn't notice, or didn't think approximately every other person in the English-speaking world would consider it significant, that approximately all of the people doing all of those things were black, and not assimilated into a white and/or western culture. And that it was a fairly blatant theme that what these non-assimilated black people had fictionally done, was better than anything white people had done.
And yet, as ramparen notes, people classically defined as "woke" seem to love it.
"Woke" as it exists in 2021, seems to be much more about adding up the Oppressed Minority Victim Points than about substantive political issues. Score enough OMVPs, and you're allowed to be a counterrevolutionary monarchist (or misogynistic religious fundamentalist or whatever) and still count as woke.
Wait a moment, that was my *point*. Woke people (apologies for any of them reading this who would object to this statement, if so please feel free to clarify) don't like our present culture, which they think is evil. Watching black people in a society untouched by whiteness succeed by playing by their own rules is appealing to woke people. Details of how the functional non-western/non-white society works are irrelevant.
All of this. Well, all of this as reasons the woke love Black Panther, I don't agree about the point scoring bit.
To tack on with a specific scene: there's a point, later in the movie, when the main characters go to the outcast tribe for help. The chief says no, and the white American CIA agent starts to talk. In a normal action movie of this type, this is where someone gives a speech and gets the powerful person on the sidelines to help the protagonist triumph. It's what most of the audience would expect at that moment. And instead the Wakandan chief shouts the agent down (hooting like an ape). And then balls him out, telling him that if he speaks again "I'll feed you to my children." He holds that for just a moment, Agent Baggins looks appropriately frightened, then breaks up laughing and says that he's kidding, his family is vegetarian.
This chunk is like a minute long, and it does two things. First, it sets up a white savior moment and then steps on it, and then it plays into expectations about darkest Africa barbarians, and steps on those. It's a beloved scene among woke fans.
I'm co-hosting a new podcast called Rock Docs: A Podcast About Movies About Music. If you're into music &/or movies, you might enjoy it. Teaser out now, first episode of season 1 comes out 10/26. Twitter & IG: @RockDocsPod https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rock-docs/id1588316475
Oh man, not to shill for shill (but I sort of really don't have anything to shill here)
I wrote an essay recently about how movies that feature music need to come back (films like all the Beatles movies, like Rock-n-Roll High School, etc)
I felt really good about it but have failed to secure a publisher. Alas! But anyway... I dig this concept
To me it's crazy that big acts like Taylor Swift don't just string 6 or 7 songs people love together with a very thin, fun plot and bang out a movie every few years. It's like leaving money on the table
I've decided to give what I write the broad label of eschatology. But I'm trying to expand it vertically to encompass secular stuff like x-risks, and vertically to encompass things like the end of nations, ideologies, and cultures. (So yes, The Singularity counts).
If you ever listened to the Slate Star Codex Podcast I was the voice of that until Solenoid Entity took it over.
Crossposting from one of your blog posts comments...
I’m a superforecaster. I did a little skimming so forgive me if I missed some of your points.
I feel like you’re arguing that people are idiots and bad at using information, so aggregating information better is bad.
You also argue that superforecasting is a bad tool for certain problems, in a way that feels like a strawman to me. Of course it’s not the right tool for every job. Who is suggesting handing innumerate people probabilities with no information about payoffs as if that were a way to make a decision? Overall it just feels like most of your gripes are with how people make decisions in general and only tangentially related to superforecasting.
It grew quite a bit beyond the original brief to include proper multi-monitor support and customisation in a way I've not seen done- you can configure it with the physical positions of your monitors to give the impression of a single, giant screen. Plus I'm going to keep updating it as I find doing this sort of thing fun.
Well right now you can upload your own LIDAR scans for the fancy LIDAR scan viewer- and soon new models for the other bits. But eventually I'll be adding generic fragment shader support either via Shadertoy or just direct upload
I have been told that people who "don't typically like this sort of thing" like this thing, so give it a try.
It's a rational take on romance, vampires, and relationships, with worldbuilding and a fantasy creature that has been read as an AI. It is a lot more accessible to people, particularly women, than things like HPMoR.
I haven't read it, but I wanted to give you praise for writing it in the first place. ~140k words is no small feat; writing a story of that size is a lot of work. Congrats for getting that out of the door!
I'm not very familiar with romance as a genre, so the thing that stood out to me most is how long the novel took to reveal the central conflict. Maybe that's common for romance, that you need some time to just chill with the characters so you understand what's at stake, but it did feel a bit meandering for the first half.
You write humourous banter well; I found these passages endeared the characters more to me than tender kissing and long walks on the beach. Would have preferred the proportions of these scenes to be flipped, though I understand that's not in character for either of them. Whether I liked them or not, I feel that all the characters were well-realized and I had no trouble following their internal narratives or actions.
Your reasoning for it being a rationalist work is that "disagreements are based on fundamental philosophical ideologies, and are communicated at length, and this communication leads to resolution and/or realisation of 'irreconcilable differences'". As the writer it's your prerogative to say that the central conflict is ideological rather than emotional or cultural. But it seems to me that the conflict wasn't cast in ideological terms until the very end of the novel, and prior to that section I would have described it as nothing more than a strong culture clash. Not sure exactly how I would describe the vampire culture as portrayed here, but it's definitely much deeper and more alien than simply "consequentialist".
Wow, I really appreciate you taking the time to read it and to write me such a beautiful, nuanced critique! I think you are right on the money.
A lot of it is because of the serialised nature of it, with me writing it over 3 years but publishing as I went. Although I knew the plot beats, things obviously developed. You've made me realise I sorely need to go through and re-edit/overhaul it because it will be much stronger.
> the thing that stood out to me most is how long the novel took to reveal the central conflict
I agree, I am not satisfied with this. There's a few problems that mean it kind of has to be had this way (William won't declare war until he falls in love with Red, and I feel like not including the interpersonal journey to bring them together is a bit 'show don't tell'). But Julias is a real game-changer for the novel, and him being introduced so late is a problem that I can't really rectify. I think I'd need to introduce more relevant content earlier on, so Julias is a crescendo of a general theme of Red not liking people serving William (e.g. finding that Paola doesn't get paid, for example).
> You write humourous banter well; I found these passages endeared the characters more to me than tender kissing and long walks on the beach. Would have preferred the proportions of these scenes to be flipped, though I understand that's not in character for either of them.
This is music to my ears! I honestly love writing the humorous banter and inserting more of it would be so much fun.
> Whether I liked them or not, I feel that all the characters were well-realized and I had no trouble following their internal narratives or actions.
That makes me really happy! I am not sure if that extends to characters like Elodia, Cassius, Lucia or Paola or the janissaries, but they all have internal narratives/actions and I'm glad it came through.
> But it seems to me that the conflict wasn't cast in ideological terms until the very end of the novel, and prior to that section I would have described it as nothing more than a strong culture clash.
Alas, this is the thing I was talking about: I realised when I'd nearly published the whole thing that William had a consequentialist viewpoint and Red a more deontologist and this summarised everything. If I'd not already published the whole thing, I would have inserted more examplese of this throughout, as you are right that this is weak and seems to come from nowhere.
>Not sure exactly how I would describe the vampire culture as portrayed here, but it's definitely much deeper and more alien than simply "consequentialist".
Yeah, vampire culture is not consequentialist, William's attitude is. I hope the culture didn't seem alien for alien's sake, as I tried my best to think it through from its origins.
Thank you again for your beautiful comment, I really appreciate it! I assume that you must have enjoyed it on some level or you wouldn't have bothered reading it all in two days, so thank you. It means a lot that someone read it, (presumably) enjoyed it, and was engaged with it.
You've made me want to grab the story and rework large segments to fill in these shortcomings. I plan to release it on kindle eventually (as a pure vanity project), so maybe for that.
I also read the whole thing, inspired by your comment in this thread - thanks for writing it!
I liked that there was a nice explanation for why William's romance with a human was new ground for him, despite his long life. This made the changes William was going through more plausible (though it did still seem a little weird/convenient to me that William came around to a more 'human' view of morality so quickly, and I might have preferred it if he stayed a bit more alien).
I liked the way you explored various difficulties in the relationship based on Red and William's differences - for example, cultural differences around clothing, Red's feelings of powerlessness, different perspectives on Julias, etc. If anything I would have liked more of this.
I sorta skimmed through some of the kissing sequences (not because they were bad, I always do that), and like Procrastinating enjoyed the banter - I thought you did a really good job with their voices. But I worry that adding more might be out of character, especially for William, and could feel phony or reduce the impact of the banter that is in there. I also agree that the beginning part was meandering plot-wise, but I didn't mind that and maybe kind of liked it. Life and romances are meandering, right?
I liked the world-building - it felt detailed and realistic, and while many of my questions remained unanswered the mystery also added to the atmosphere and ultimately I didn't mind that there were some secrets that it may yet keep.
> I realised when I'd nearly published the whole thing that William had a consequentialist viewpoint and Red a more deontologist and this summarised everything
Hopefully not everything! I like the idea of inserting some more examples of this throughout, but I wouldn't want the conflicts to boil down to a single dimension. With all the richness and complexity of the characters and the different worlds they come from, it seems too shallow and reductive if there's just this single key axis on which they differ that causes conflict.
Wow, thank you! I am humbled that two people have read an entire novel in the space of a few days and then written me such detailed responses. I appreciate it so much.
>(though it did still seem a little weird/convenient to me that William came around to a more 'human' view of morality so quickly, and I might have preferred it if he stayed a bit more alien).
FWIW, his 'human' morality is not as deep as it seems. A reader commented that Julias seems like an AI with a value function of "William's happiness", and if you look at Julias from that point of view, suddenly it becomes a bit more horrific: Julias has expertly manipulated William into either completely changing his moral viewpoint or to changing its outward appearance enough that Red would accept him.
> If anything I would have liked more [about their differences].
I feel like it's long enough without adding more, but I get where you're going! It's a theme that will continue in their relationship if I ever write the sequel.
>Life and romances are meandering, right?
Yeah, we ended up adding a whole chapter of those little moments where you fall in love with someone, as I thought going from meeting someone and having an attraction to "two months later they live together and are very comfortable" seemed too abrupt, but it really affected the pacing. Something to look into when I give it a big edit in a year or two.
>I liked the world-building - it felt detailed and realistic, and while many of my questions remained unanswered the mystery also added to the atmosphere and ultimately I didn't mind that there were some secrets that it may yet keep.
Thank you! I joke that the story is a fanfic of an actually good story because all the worldbuilding I've done implies all these epic things happening throughout history and instead we just have this squishy romance story. I also joke that the "actually good story" would be Cassius' story, despite him barely appearing in this one.
>With all the richness and complexity of the characters and the different worlds they come from, it seems too shallow and reductive if there's just this single key axis on which they differ that causes conflict.
Thank you! And no, you are absolutely right: just the philosophy tied in with Red feeling all his guilt about deserting and lying and William not giving a crap about anything as long as he and the people he cared about lived another day.
Thanks again for reading it, and this constructive criticism is an unbelievable gift.
Yes I did enjoy it! One thing I forgot to mention: Erlis is the best character and the fact he only got an interlude and a fraction of a main chapter is a federal crime. You've made it clear in your FAQ that this isn't Luminosity rehashed and you're not writing about vampires taking over the world... but hot damn I want to see Erlis take on the Queen of Atlanta. Spinoff novel when?
> If I'd not already published the whole thing, I would have inserted more examples of this throughout, as you are right that this is weak and seems to come from nowhere.
It's not weak because Julias was introduced so late, it's weak because Julias is a terrible vehicle for discussing deontologist vs. consequentialist ethics. For one thing, his situation is contrived in a way that maximally conflicts with human ideas of freedom and personhood. It's a thought experiment, a gotcha for opponents of slavery in the same way that the repugnant conclusion is used as a gotcha for utilitarians. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion
For another, Red does NOT reason like a deontologist about Julias' enslavement: he asks questions like "will being free make Julias happy?" and "can we undo the magic warping Julias' values?" These are utilitarian concerns through and through.
Compare Red's solicitousness here with the more virtue-based criticisms that Dorothy might have made against him (possibly; since he dropped two bombshells on her at once her response is all tangled up. I'm extrapolating from what I think she might have said if Red hadn't given up and left almost immediately). Homosexual relationships (in Dorothy's maybe-view) should not be acknowledged as real love. EVEN IF it were true that Red would be happiest with William and that everyone in his life were ok with it, still Red should break it off because men loving men is capital-W Wrong. In the same vein, EVEN IF one could somehow prove that Red's desertion didn't change the outcome of the battle, was not discovered and harmed no one, he should still atone and attempt to restore justice because cowardice is Wrong. There are established ways for people to deal with sin while remaining within their own moral framework but Red never considers any of these, instead wallowing in self-hatred before finally allowing William to recontextualize things for him so that he was never wrong in the first place. That's why I object to framing the conflicts in the novel as ideological, because the various deontologist viewpoints are not so much defended as lampooned and tossed aside.
Having said all that, a romance doesn't need to have rousing philosophical debates to be worth reading! One thing I liked and want expanded on is how it subverted the common tropes of romances with a sharp power differential - there was no pressure for Red to become a vampire himself, à la Twilight, nor become entirely dependent on William. I don't think any vampire romance can get away without a Let's Talk About Power Dynamics scene, but this book handled it well and livened up the first half, which was slow plot-wise.
> One thing I forgot to mention: Erlis is the best character and the fact he only got an interlude and a fraction of a main chapter is a federal crime
Oh, I agree. I love Erlis and his plan for the world. Erlis is definitely the Luminosity!Bella of the whole thing, only he starts with absolutely no support (unlike Bella) and has absolutely no power. His relationship with William will pay off though :)
> but hot damn I want to see Erlis take on the Queen of Atlanta. Spinoff novel when?
I might write up a short story on that subject. Expanding Erlis is definitely something I want to do! But, "when"? Like 3-5 years given how slow I write, sorry!
> It's not weak because Julias was introduced so late, it's weak because Julias is a terrible vehicle for discussing deontologist vs. consequentialist ethics.
Oh wow, I see your points. Yes. I struggled with Julias for that reason, but I am *guessing* that anyone with half a brain reading the story would understand that the author does not support slavery.
>[dorothy and deontology]
Huh, that's a great way of looking at it. Though Dorothy isn't a generic-christian-deontologist (the abortion scene early on, though maybe she's just a hypocrite?)
>There are established ways for people to deal with sin while remaining within their own moral framework but Red never considers any of these, instead wallowing in self-hatred before finally allowing William to recontextualize things for him so that he was never wrong in the first place.
Oh damn, I love that. Especially how it contrasts between William going to confession early in the novel (which he uses mostly as a rhetorical device to think through / talk through his feelings with someone who won't share his secrets, as he believes that all sects are heretical as they aren't dark ages catholicism, and he believes his soul is with his wife in heaven)
> don't think any vampire romance can get away without a Let's Talk About Power Dynamics scene, but this book handled it well and livened up the first half, which was slow plot-wise.
Yeah, one of my hard rules for the universe is no non-consensual sex/romance is ever visible (there's already plenty of stories featuring sexual trauma, and I don't want to write one of them), so it was very important to try to hash out the power dynamic thing. It came across a little preachier than I'd like but the alternative would be for the whole thing to be uncomfortable so you compromise?
You can count me as one more person who read this in two days due to this post! Thank you for putting it out there. I had ran across the title in r/rational, but never actually opened it.
I have to admit that from this description I wasn't expecting the romance genre at all (even though the words "romance" and "relationships" were right there). You are absolutely right that it is virtually non-existent in r/rational. I love a good romance, and I think this was it, but I would never have said it is a rational story. Not in the sense that I can point to any specific flaws, but in the sense that if I read it without any context, I would not have pattern-matched to the rational genre (and I still kinda don't?). I guess this boils down to definitions, so I'll leave it at that.
I leave you with some scattered thoughts:
I _thought_ that scene with Dorothy was alluding to an abortion, but I kept expecting a call back that made it more explicit, perhaps during that last conversation with Red. (Which was amazing, btw. It felt realistic, and even though it was heartbreaking, at least they had a hug at the end. It's hard to strike a balance between realistic and feel-good endings.)
Speaking of realism, after Red moved back to Ohio I was seriously wondering how the hell you were going to finish the story. Sometimes characters have a will of their own and it seems like the only path forward leads towards misery. I didn't really believe Julias would be successful in bringing them back together...
... and it's _so_ creepy that he did. I was actually horrified at this. It also felt like the other shoe didn't drop. We know, as readers, that Julias has very specific intentions, which are definitely alien and not wholesome. I guess wanting to make someone happy is not that bad, but he does briefly consider killing William as a solution to his depression. Red might die one day, and William might be devastated enough that Julias decides to kill him, and that possibility is never really addressed (although admittedly this is not the focus of the story). It is not clear whether Julias does have the ability to change his values enough that taking a vacation is not the worst part of his year. And the fact that William and Red are happy with this as a compromise, when it pains Julias as much... I don't know. It didn't sit well with me, and I feel like I need a whole other book about this dilema. Except there might not be a moral and narratively satisfying plot that is still realistic and doesn't boil down to "guess what, he did have the capacity to change into someone whose values don't bother us!" I dunno, you presented a moral dilema for which I don't really have an answer and I don't think the characters ended up picking a good one either.
I think you portrayed Red's internal feelings really well. The descriptions of the physical sensations he felt in his various moments of nervousness or happiness or awful certainty that he needed to leave were on point. In general I think Red's characterization is my favorite part of this story. It's a bit sad that we don't get the same view into William's sensations, but it actually works really well as a way of making him feel more alien.
Finally, I kind of want a clothing meaning glossary. I know, I know, it is a matter complex enough that not even 100 year old vampires get it right. Still kind of want it :) I was also a bit disappointed that William never taught Red (or Red never learned) the basics. Red's talent for figuring out appropriate gifts or clothes is never really explained, and I felt like it needed an explanation. Getting an outfit right one time might be attributed to chance, but it seems like he more or less consistently got it right, and yet never made an effort to learn.
Anyway, thank you for writing and sharing! I enjoyed it.
And thank *you* for your comment! The comments I've gotten have made me over the moon, thank you most sincerely.
> I love a good romance, and I think this was it, but I would never have said it is a rational story.
Yeah, I think you start getting in the weeds on definitions and it will be a long debate. In general, the key idea of a "rational" story is one that 'makes sense' with nobody doing things just because the plot requires, and the world that a story is set in making sense. There's "rationalist" which involves teaching the reader rationality, more in the style of HPMOR.
Basically, my goal in a 'rational' romance was something that didn't rely on "hilarious misunderstandings" (typical in a rom-com) and also had people acting intelligently in how they interacted with their partner. That followed the template of reforming-the-bad-boy but had him 'genuinely' reform through time and self-reflection rather than through The Power Of Love. And of course the worldbuilding which I hope is consistent. (I mean, Julias transforms the way he does and has x-ray vision because he's a 4D object projected into 3D space!)
... that was a loooong aside, sorry!
>I kept expecting a call back [to the abortion scene to make] it more explicit, perhaps during that last conversation with Red.
Yeah, she never makes it explicit, but she says "you kept my secret, I kept yours". I struggle between writing realistic dialog and exposition, but I just couldn't think of a way to have Dorothy say "ten years ago you stole Mom's jewellery and snuck me to New York to have an abortion, so I will be quiet about the deserting" without it sounding clunky and forced. IDK.
> I didn't really believe Julias would be successful in bringing them back together...... and it's _so_ creepy that he did. I was actually horrified at this.
:D I'm glad. Did you see the other commenter who said that William's about-face seemed a bit sudden? Julias as an unfriendly AI cautionary tale disguised as a golem is precisely one of the reasons I put it under the rational umbrella, even if it took a reader to comment on the parallels that were already there to really help me lean into it.
> Red might die one day, and William might be devastated enough that Julias decides to kill him, and that possibility is never really addressed (although admittedly this is not the focus of the story).
Wouldn't that be grand? The comments people are giving are making me want to write more side stories instead of the werewolf lawyer story I was going to do next. So, the list: "Erlis's rise to world domination(?????)" and "Red's mortality".
> Except there might not be a moral and narratively satisfying plot that is still realistic and doesn't boil down to "guess what, he did have the capacity to change into someone whose values don't bother us!"
I think this is the crux. I don't like to give opinions on my work as I believe in death of the author, but from my point of view, Julias starts out slightly sadder than he was with Elodia, because he is not able to dedicate every moment to helping W like he did with E. Then as William's changed values become more and more set, as he begins genuinely enjoying hearing Julias's (dishonest) stories of how much fun he had on his vacation, as he spends more time around Red who has pure and ardent desire for Julias's values to mimic standard human values and William who cares about Red's, he takes on William's new value function which includes Julias having his own human-like value function, and so begins to ENJOY spending time flying through the cliffs of Crete with his son and chasing butterflies, but he enjoys it not because he enjoys his son and his life but because William values him enjoying it. If that makes sense? It has an interesting horror undercurrent, of Julias's enjoyment coming from a source you find distasteful.
But also, Julias's value function is not exclusively William-oriented: he had a wife who he loved, and he loves his son and does value spending time with him for his own sake. The order of magnitude is just very different. He probably values pleasing William as much as a human values their own life, and he probably values his wife/son/etc as much as a kid values their job at mcdonald's that their wealthy parents made them get to teach them the value of money: non-zero, but they wouldn't go to crazy to keep it.
> In general I think Red's characterization is my favorite part of this story.
It's a co-written project and Red is my coauthor's character, and I agree, she writes him so well. I think she gives the story a soul.
> Finally, I kind of want a clothing meaning glossary.
Yeah, it's too complicated. I do need to go through all the meanings I assign to make a 'bible' for future stories for easter eggs (there was a small one where Red rolled his sleeves up to his elbow...)
> Red's talent for figuring out appropriate gifts or clothes is never really explained, and I felt like it needed an explanation.
Being able to communicate to vampires with his clothing is Red's; vampires are kind of aware that some humans are 'special' and that is why Cassius found him. All humans are 'special', just not always in ways that vampires notice.
Kind of like the witches in Luminosity.
(Because people often ask: William's small magic was he could tell how deep water is just by looking at it. I have not got a firm opinion about whether these are lost after turning into a vampire)
Fair enough, I was conflating the two. I think I would lean towards saying that a rational story in this sense is just *good* :) But well, I guess there is space for value in non-rational genres too.
> abortion scene
You are right, it wouldn't have made sense to say it outright during their final conversation.
> The comments people are giving are making me want to write more side stories
Please do! From your comments here I am realizing there is much more to the world building than was apparent in FVL. And that's the kind of thing that is at once expected and sad and solvable by writing different stories in the same universe.
> I do need to go through all the meanings I assign to make a 'bible' for future stories for easter eggs (there was a small one where Red rolled his sleeves up to his elbow...)
I did notice, and it made me inordinately happy. I wish there had been more of this kind of thing peppered around. It might be difficult to strike a balance between including such Easter eggs and not having the plot depend on them so much that a more inattentive reader gets lost. Not striking this balance might be precisely one of the things that make many rational(ist) works less accessible to people... But still, I would have loved it. Add it to the pile of things that would get a chance to shine in spin off stories.
> This is how magic works in-universe for most humans
This is interesting. Not sure how or where, but this is the kind of detail that might have been nice to include somewhere. Or in some future work. :)
More ideas: a whole other plot with different characters whose main conflict / problem is whatever William does in Sardinia; William's "origin story", including all the politics that eventually led to him being king.
Anyway, I'll follow you in AO3 and will be glad to read whatever you come up with, be it in this universe or not.
> I think I would lean towards saying that a rational story in this sense is just *good* :)
let's both go on /r/rational and get involved in the interminal discourse on this subject, lol.
> a whole other plot with different characters whose main conflict / problem is whatever William does in Sardinia
I joke that VFL is slash fanfic of a story where Cassius is the main character, and that would be the plot. I plan on VFL having a sequel that goes into the fall out of Sardinia, but it's not even on my roadmap.
> William's "origin story", including all the politics that eventually led to him being king.
God, that is a long and tricky one. I did include an interlude about him first becoming a King!
His backstory would require me to commit to one particular detail that I'm still wavering on, and writing about how he came about New Holland is something I also struggle with due to the obvious colonialism associated with the European invasion of Australia.
I do have a lot of little headcanons of things he did with his (un)life, but I don't think they'll make a terribly interesting piece together.
> Or in some future work.
Pointless background: This whole project is basically a prequel to a bunch of glowfic me and my coauthor have been writing together since 2001 (i.e. since before there was a word for it). There's a LOT there but there's SO MUCH time taken to make glowfic into something vaguely professional (with more than its share of flaws, as pointed out by the wonderful lovely other commenters). I wish I could devote more time to it, and I might try next year when I move to working 4 days a week, but I'm not sure I'm able to do it. But there's a LOT, and if you are happy to read glowfic that is not close to the same quality (fan on discord read the most polished glowfic I had and basically said it wasn't any good, as expected).
Yep! Although I have to say, so far Urbit is not living up to its promise as a replacement for the current Internet. I mean I don't seem to be able to join any groups, and the whole thing just feels like an overly ambitious chat app.
Still there are things about Urbit that feel really promising, like Hoon, so I'm sticking with the handle.
Sounds like there might be something wrong with your setup! Feel free to DM me at ~sitbus-dapsup, I might be able to help. I've been using it for years now and haven't had a problem joining a group in a very long time.
BTW in case you don't already know, the most important one to join first is ~bollug-worlus/urbit-index so you can see the directory of other groups :)
We have a new preprint on the psychology of extremist ideology online. It uses the last ten years of the RedPill Reddit group to look at how people join and integrate into the worldview.
One of our major findings is the role of behavioral modification (self-help, addiction, etc) in the early stages, vs explanation adoption (“Neoreaction”, pseudo evo psych), etc.
Another interesting finding is the key role of status concerns. This matches findings in qualitative studies of offline versions of these groups, as well as men convicted of domestic violence, and school shooters.
I hope you realise that "Neoreaction" was coined by people who dislike "reactionaries". There will always be reactionaries, they are part of the cosmic tapestry. You are kinda chasing your own tali there, buddy.
It definitely wasn't Moldbug. There's a blog post on his old blog where he says something like "I will accept the term neoreactionary" but that's it.
It might have been Nick Land who coined it, but that guy was always a kind of critic of reactionaries who was just there pretending to be part of that group for some reason.
The point is that 99% of people who talk about "neoreaction" are psychologists trying to diagnose a non-existent mental disorder, whereas actual reactionaries are quite rare and don't necessarily agree with much of what Moldbug is saying. So yeah, Moldbug gets the blame for co-opting that term quite aggressively...
What I really wanted to say is that once you start diagnosing your intellectual opponents using ignorant labels that they don't even care for themselves, and surreptitiously lumping the likes of Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn in with school shooters (!!!) you're kinda chasing your own tail.
It's certainly incorrect to say that "99% of people who talk about "neoreaction" are psychologists" — as you will see when you read the paper, two of our three citations we refer people to are social scientists, and it's their work that leads us to name the cluster that way. Indeed, for better or for worse, I've not seen any work in the psych literature that even talks about NRx as a thing; indeed, this is one reason we have such a large lit review — psych hasn't really addressed ideology as a phenomenon.
Our paper doesn't talk about Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land, Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn etc, at all. I haven't searched the archives for any of these name (IIRC, I might have tried "Moldbug") but TRP is not a site that discusses them in any detail. If you're curious, you can get a sense for what fits in our NRx cluster (see Figure one) by digging into the online appendix for sample posts.
Re: status concerns, and then domestic violence, etc — this is a connection we make to a separate cluster, "Hierarchy and Status". I encourage you to read the paper for more on what's going on there in that section of the ideology, and the discussion for references to the psych/social science literature.
`This reveals a large population of "tourists'', who leave quickly, and a smaller group of "residents'' who join the group and remain for orders of magnitude longer.`
As tourist myself I would like to offer an alternate explanation for the division between tourists and residents. TRP is basically offering step by step instructions for getting laid. That's what I came for, that's what I got, it worked, and I moved on. When you are looking for the answer to some problem and you find it and it solves the problem, you close the tab don't you?
And for some people I assume it doesn't work, or they really were looking for a worldview, and they stay.
It seems like this theory should get some attention in your paper since it was basically the original stated purpose of the subreddit.
Some complexity here. I encourage you to read the paper — you will see there's a significant chunk of PUA in the network analysis. PUA plays a similar role to the self-help cluster — they're both classed as "behavioral", rather than "explanatory" in our analysis. Your personal experience, in other words, fits our analysis rather well.
As a side note, TRP has a somewhat complex relationship with the "seduction" and PUA subreddits. Some of our (unpublished) analyses looked at these communities as they evolved in parallel, going all the way back to the USENET days. The PUA groups tended to be purely behavioral, with a little bit of froth of NLP. Only a few of the PUA figures made the transition to the more explanatory-based TRP; IIRC, I think Mystery did, although it was a bit entrepreneurial. A book called the Red Queen played a significant role.
Re: your question of why people stay. It's difficult to get at the deeper reasons people stay; we can watch the associations, but why people transition from behavior to explanation is a challenging question. We do know that it's the explanations that really keep people there, and that's something that's easier to study; we can look at both the cultural evolution of the explanations, and the learning process at the individual level.
Sorry my reply was written before I had completely read it. You actually have addressed it pretty well, and you are sticking to what the available data can tell us.
:) your username is accurate, both in the prediction and the update stages. Thanks for your remarks, and it's very helpful to hear. I'd love to hear more. It's difficult to hear reflective experiences directly from the community, particularly from the tourist component. In part because OMG the IRB that would be required.
Are you physically at CMU? If so, it might be fun to swing by and chat if I'm in the area.
A few thoughts on the paper:
* For the term "ideology", I'm fond of Ayn Rand's comment that the root word is "idea". Identifying the idea explicitly may be useful.
* The paper only seems to address people who are posters. That fails to account for people who may routinely read/absorb/adopt the ideas, but don't post. I'm uncertain how this might have an impact on the paper, but I suspect that there may be interesting phenomena here around the political socialization of norms and ideas.
* Did you address all other realms of conversation overlap? For example, did people in the 5 areas have more or less association with other conversation topics? For example, mental health? Job search? Interior decorating?
Culture War issues, mostly related to the use of the word "extremism":
* The paper spent a huge amount of time hang-wringing over the definition of "ideology" but virtually none about the relevant definition of "extremism".
* The paper applied referred to "The Red Pill" as extreme/extremism, without providing any justification for doing so.
* The use of "extremism" pretty much anywhere is a loaded term, doubly-so here because it isn't usefully distinguished from a related concept. At-best, extremism is a relative term. Ask an average resident of the Afghan hinterlands what they consider to be an extremist ideology and they might say something like "feminism" or "atheism".
* Extremism is typically used to refer to a distance from a reference point, norm or absolute truth. It might be possible to show that r/TRP is substantially further from the viewpoints of, say, the mean US voter. Was that done? Was that done for other ideologies? How about other online ideologies? Was there an attempt to evaluate how much further the ideas expressed deviated from absolute truth? At least some of the example passages seemed to be expressing conventional wisdom (the one about rhetoric and the correct way to interpret academic papers).
* Extremism needs to be separated from fanaticism. The TimeCube guy is an extremist (for at least one value of extreme). Someone who won't stop telling you that "1+1=2" is a fanatic. You can be both. See: Pythagoras.
* What are all of the examples of extremist ideology right-wing-coded? No Occupy Wall Street, socialists?
* Given that you identified the issues of status and personal significance as driving factors, how should they be addressed?
* Most anti-charitable take: Why should I take this as anything other than an excuse to put "red pill", "anti-feminism", "extremism", and "terrorism" together in a published paper?
* For the term "ideology", I'm fond of Ayn Rand's comment that the root word is "idea". Identifying the idea explicitly may be useful.
Section One has an extended discussion of ideology as it's been understood, and presents a consensus view common to political scientists and political theorists. Ayn Rand's account doesn't quite make the cut; in part because etymologies aren't particularly good guides to reality. :)
* The paper only seems to address people who are posters. That fails to account for people who may routinely read/absorb/adopt the ideas, but don't post. I'm uncertain how this might have an impact on the paper, but I suspect that there may be interesting phenomena here around the political socialization of norms and ideas.
Yes! We're in discussions with some Reddit folks about how to get the pageview data. This is something we can't currently track. In the end probably only Facebook has the eyeball tracking data after they hacked our iPhones...
* Did you address all other realms of conversation overlap? For example, did people in the 5 areas have more or less association with other conversation topics? For example, mental health? Job search? Interior decorating?
We took a look at where people went -- indeed, we had an undergrad working on this, but she ended up working on a different topic altogether (political evolution of UK Parliament...) One reason is that it's not that interesting, and ends up being "mere journalism". Some of the obvious things are there (e.g., flow into bitcoin and robinhood groups, weightlifting and diet groups, as well as just generally popular subs like askreddit.)
Culture War issues, mostly related to the use of the word "extremism":
* The paper spent a huge amount of time hang-wringing over the definition of "ideology" but virtually none about the relevant definition of "extremism".
That's a helpful point; I'll check in with my colleagues and I'd love any references to the academic literature. Work on Islamism and white supremacy tends to take it for granted. Early on we experimented with the phrase "counter cultural ideology", but this has its own baggage. In the end, because of the connections between RedPill ideology to violent terrorism, "extremism" seemed the better term. (Re: this latter point, we can talk more about it if you like.)
In the end, we're interested in the cognitive science of ideology, in cases where the ideology is sufficiently deviant from ordinary discourse that it needs to be learned from a community that finds itself in conflict with the wider culture. (That's a definition we're playing with for a different paper.)
* The paper applied referred to "The Red Pill" as extreme/extremism, without providing any justification for doing so.
I think this is a repeat of your point above, or rather that my answer above can be applied here as well.
* The use of "extremism" pretty much anywhere is a loaded term, doubly-so here because it isn't usefully distinguished from a related concept. At-best, extremism is a relative term. Ask an average resident of the Afghan hinterlands what they consider to be an extremist ideology and they might say something like "feminism" or "atheism".
I think this is a repeat of your point above, or rather that my answer above can be applied here as well.
* Extremism is typically used to refer to a distance from a reference point, norm or absolute truth. It might be possible to show that r/TRP is substantially further from the viewpoints of, say, the mean US voter. Was that done?
Very hard to do. I'm also rather skeptical of the extent to which people have good reflective access to their own beliefs -- i.e., behavior is better than recall. You might find Nick Chater's recent book "The Mind is Flat" an interesting read on this! It's very easy to get people to explain why they sincerely believe X, when they've just filled out a survey saying they believe not-X.
* Was that done for other ideologies? How about other online ideologies?
This is a case study; we're trying to get a handle on how these things work, propose some key ideas, and validate some claims in the theoretical literature. I've been in conversations with colleagues at Johns Hokpins who are trying to build a large scale survey of the digital agora, and I'm hopeful that they'll succeed!
* Was there an attempt to evaluate how much further the ideas expressed deviated from absolute truth? At least some of the example passages seemed to be expressing conventional wisdom (the one about rhetoric and the correct way to interpret academic papers).
We're interested in how people interact as both individual cognitive agents, and social beings; "absolute truth" is not something we want to adjudicate, or even something helpful to talk about. (We do make one concession, which is to use the phrase "pseudo evo psych", in part as courtesy to our colleagues in that field!)
* Extremism needs to be separated from fanaticism. The TimeCube guy is an extremist (for at least one value of extreme). Someone who won't stop telling you that "1+1=2" is a fanatic. You can be both. See: Pythagoras.
Yes, we're interested in ideology; see my remarks above about "extremism".
* What are all of the examples of extremist ideology right-wing-coded? No Occupy Wall Street, socialists?
This goes beyond the domain of our paper. To be honest, you're asking a lot of culture war questions, rather than questions about culture wars, and these tend not to be scientifically interesting.
* Given that you identified the issues of status and personal significance as driving factors, how should they be addressed?
There's some very helpful references at the end. Let me give an oblique answer that might be of interest...
Jukes' book was a real eye-opener for me; he's a therapist in the UK who works with men with domestic violence convictions referred by the courts. There, the status hierarchy is a key feature of these men's view of the world. (And of course, this is something that's found repeatedly in surveys, although seem my remarks above about the issues with reflective rather than behavioral.)
Jukes' prescription is that it is a long process to get these men beyond a view of the world in terms of status, hierarchy and power vis a vis both women and other men. One of his suggestions is group therapy, which he's found particularly effective. His claim is that when men actually describe some of their beliefs, as they play out in personal interactions with partners, in a face-to-face encounter with other men, they can be defused by being obviously ridiculous. e.g., other men in the group laugh!--but of course, have their own stories.
Jukes is *very* anti standard psychodynamic therapy. He thinks this can be useful later on, but he's concerned with early intervention. IIRC he even says that this modality can literally increase the rate of subsequent violence, perhaps because the therapeutic alliance increases non-adaptive forms of self-esteem. Even before group encounters, BTW, Jukes says you need a contract with the man not to commit more acts of physical violence -- this actually turns out to be effective, they can quit it short term easily.
Anyway, that's an answer that's somewhat oblique to yours -- talking about a more extreme case where status/hierarchy obsessions lead to state intervention. That's naturally where you're going to find the most data, but it's also not clear if the effect is linear. Psychodynamic therapy might be great for a 17 year old who's just a bit of a dick and gone off the deep end into topics labelled NRx or Status that you can see in the paper's table and online appendix.
To be clear, there's nothing wrong with thinking about these things, and I have a great deal of work on status and hierarchy! It's when these integrate into an ideology that they can cause problems.
* Most anti-charitable take: Why should I take this as anything other than an excuse to put "red pill", "anti-feminism", "extremism", and "terrorism" together in a published paper?
I do my best to obey a generalized form of Grice's Maxims, and to be charitable not only in my semantic attributions but in my attributions of pro-social motivations. I'm not always successful! In this case, trust me, and friends know, but here... you're asking me to explicitly ignore them... and I don't know what to do. :)
I am kind of astonished. You seem to take for granted a connection between red pill ideology and violent terrorism? I literally cannot think of a single incident.
Does the tiki torch protest count? Or are you talking about the capitol hill riot?
I don't associate either with the red pill ideology at all.
No. Section 2 in the paper does a brief lit review on both r/TRP and the wider manosphere, but our intention is not to litigate a direct connection between anyone on TRP and (for example) the Elliot Rogers-style shootings. The link to violence that’s famous and very commonly talked about goes via the “incels”, which are essentially a splinter group off of TRP.
Interestingly, the incel groups are basically magnifying and playing out nodes from the Hierarchy/Status cluster, which fits with the hypothesis that it’s status concerns that are driving violence, not the NRx material.
A really interesting plot we made early on was the fraction of posts that use “alpha” vs “beta”. Early PUA only talks about “alpha”; how to be the cool guy who gets the girls. TRP introduces “beta” as a theme, but it’s still outweighed by “alpha”, and both terms are used much more anyway, ie, status is more salient. The incels subs (and off-Reddit groups) are off the charts, both in terms of overall usage of the terms, and in flipping the ratio (so it’s no longer “how to be alpha” but “I am beta”.)
As I mentioned above, the NRx stuff is not as much associated directly with violence. There are certainly long-standing results on SDO (“social dominance orientation”) and endorsement of fascism, political violence etc. But this is much less studied/known, in part because violence against women is far more common than political violence.
"[The Red Pill] is a sexist ideology, under the standard definition, anchored in
pseudoscience, and is characterized by the dehumanization of women as biological machines, and a call to fight a conspiracy against “masculine” values. It has led to, among other things, more than a dozen suicide attacks against perceived supporters of the conspiracy."
You might want to cite some of the claims here, in particular that last one. I'm not aware of a single "suicide attack" associated with TRP and would love to see the list you're working from here.
Anyway, my general takeaway is that the mode of analysis itself is very interesting but your as a whole paper is unfortunately dragged down by your seemingly total lack of ideological self-awareness or objectivity. Even my colleagues who study deadly diseases like cancer or malaria, where the explicit goal of their research is to eventually eliminate the topic of their study, manage to approach their work with more scientific detachment than you do here. Perhaps the political realities of academic science make even a pretense of detachment or objectivity impossible: after all, doing so could expose you and your co-authors to ostracism and worse if a lack of strident opposition to those espousing TRP was interpreted as sympathizing with them. However it makes a hash of your ability to draw conclusions from your data. For one example, your discussion section concludes:
"[This work] also suggests that the same individuals may leave these groups when they become disenchanted by the explanations. This may be driven in part by engagement with individuals explicitly adopt a critical stance against the ideology[...]"
This statement is purely speculative and not supported at all by your published data. Which is especially egregious because your dataset and methods should be perfect for testing whether this is actually the case! All you need to do is either automatically or manually flag putative "counter-speech" comments and track how well exposure to or replying to those comments predicts exit from each node or exit generally. If you're worried about assigning things manually, have a pair of you or some schmucks from Mechanical Turk do it blindly and check the inter-rater reliability. This is something that would substantially bulk up your research not to mention giving it exactly the kind of policy implications you're clearly interested in... but because you've gone into it assuming so many of your conclusions you can't see that anything it missing.
TL;DR: Interesting and potentially useful methodology, but clearly applied to the wrong topic. If you can find an online community which you are capable of (and/or are permitted to) adopting a more neutral viewpoint towards you will be able to produce quality research. Hell, do a similar analysis of r/Feminism: I would love to see whether the same behavioral / explanatory split pops up in a more acceptably mainstream ideology or whether this is a unique feature of the Manosphere which originated in a fusion of the two very goal-oriented pickup and the father's rights movement (the goals being gaining causal sex and custody respectively).
* "[The Red Pill] is a sexist ideology, under the standard definition, anchored in
pseudoscience, and is characterized by the dehumanization of women as biological machines, and a call to fight a conspiracy against “masculine” values. It has led to, among other things, more than a dozen suicide attacks against perceived supporters of the conspiracy."
* "You might want to cite some of the claims here, in particular that last one. I'm not aware of a single "suicide attack" associated with TRP and would love to see the list you're working from here."
The first sentence is a rough summary of the highlights from the later analysis in the paper. Re: the second, we should probably make clear that we're referring to the incel shootings; I talk a little bit about this further up. The link between these groups and violence is not a controversial one, but I can see why you query it.
In general, it's difficult to know where to start with an article for a more general scholarly audience, particularly when people are coming in with very different backgrounds and knowledge bases. Trust me when I say this is a difficult paragraph to write.
* "[This work] also suggests that the same individuals may leave these groups when they become disenchanted by the explanations. This may be driven in part by engagement with individuals explicitly adopt a critical stance against the ideology[...]"
* This statement is purely speculative and not supported at all by your published data.
The first sentence is speculative, indeed -- that's why it comes at the end of the discussion section, which is traditionally where you think about the larger implications of the work. Our findings are consistent with the idea that retention is associated with sense-making drives (rather than, for example, behavioral habituation). This *suggests* that if it's "how the group makes the world make sense to people" is keeping them there, then it's a possible reason for them to exit.
The second sentence would be better phrased as "Given current interest in counter-speech, it would be interesting to see if this may be driven in part by engagement with individuals explicitly adopt a critical stance against the ideology".
* Which is especially egregious because your dataset and methods should be perfect for testing whether this is actually the case! All you need to do is either automatically or manually flag putative "counter-speech" comments and track how well exposure to or replying to those comments predicts exit from each node or exit generally. If you're worried about assigning things manually, have a pair of you or some schmucks from Mechanical Turk do it blindly and check the inter-rater reliability.
This is a great idea -- and I'm glad you've suggested it. That's kind of what discussion sections are meant to do; get people thinking about where to go next. Re: counter-speech, we have a citation to some recent work with a hand-tagged corpus (it's an article with Josh Garland on the author list).
Re: tagging. I wouldn't call MTurkers schmucks. They're nice people! When they're not bots.
* This is something that would substantially bulk up your research not to mention giving it exactly the kind of policy implications you're clearly interested in.
You really do sound like referee three, which is not such a bad thing.
* I would love to see whether the same behavioral / explanatory split pops up in a more acceptably mainstream ideology or whether this is a unique feature of the Manosphere which originated in a fusion of the two very goal-oriented pickup and the father's rights movement (the goals being gaining causal sex and custody respectively).
Yes, I think you get why this work is exciting, and I think you've grasped one of the main points (the first one, how the ideology resolves into two components). This makes me happy!
One thing you're missing here is that it's the self-help and the PUA that are the clearest "behavioral" components. MRA is actually a combination, as we say in the article (it's important not to confuse MRA with what you're calling "father's rights" -- as you can see in the MRA cluster, there's quite a bit more going on.)
Another thing you're bringing up here is the evolution of the system over time -- which chunks of the ideology are arriving first, versus later. This is a great question!
However, and this might explain why we look at the learning process, is that people in the group are at all different stages. You can't really take a snapshot of TRP at any point in time, say "that's the ideology", and then run those snapshots forward, like a flip book, to "evolve" the ideology forward.
The reason is that people are learning, and learners (newcomers) have preferences that evolve over time. So if you see the "self-help" section growing, you have to look into the people who are leading to that growth; in the end, these shifts are far more driven by demographic emigration/immigration.
* is unfortunately dragged down by your seemingly total lack of ideological self-awareness or objectivity.
This is a very strong claim, and I don't see how you've substantiated it in your remarks here. In between your thoughtful and helpful responses, there's a lot of remarks like this. You're not pointing out an error in the work.
Indeed, I think that you're quite intrigued by it—intrigued enough to suggest things for us to look at, to speculate on its wider implications, to make interesting points that we actually investigated and I can talk about, and to say you've love to see these ideas played out further. So it's a sort of bimodal response in this post.
E.g., and etc:
* but because you've gone into it assuming so many of your conclusions you can't see that anything it missing.
* you are capable of (and/or are permitted to) adopting a more neutral viewpoint towards you will be able to produce quality research. Hell, do a similar analysis of r/Feminism:
* Even my colleagues who study deadly diseases like cancer or malaria, where the explicit goal of their research is to eventually eliminate the topic of their study, manage to approach their work with more scientific detachment than you do here.
There's quite a bit of accusation by-the-by here, let's put that aside. What are you seeing that's wrong in the scientific claims in the article, in the approach, etc? I just get a real bimodal feeling, where half the time you're really engaging with the ideas and providing cogent criticism, and then the other half you're, well, somewhere else.
This is a preprint, we're circulating it among colleagues, and it's been interesting to circulate it here as well.
What you call the bimodality of my response could probably best be summed up by analogy:
Imagine that some parallel universe's Simon DeDeo had published an otherwise identical paper, using topic modeling to explore the paths individuals take when exploring the extremist ideology known online as "LGBTQ+" with the stated intention of exploring how that engagement leads adherents to child molestation.
The methods of the modeling are good, and one can find robust patterns reflective of reality in the model: maybe most posters start with behavioral "Coming Out" cluster, gravitate to the explanatory "Heteronormativity" or "Sexual Revolution" nodes, then exit after between a dozen or a score of posts. There is a pre-existing body of research that says that many convicted child molesters justify themselves with rhetoric based on that of the "Sexual Revolution," so this parallel researcher feels that it's not necessary to actually substantiate the connection. Other people in the field of extremist ideologies do the same after all, as after all 'the link between these groups and child molestation is not a controversial one.'
How would a neutral third party, reading your paper and the work of your parallel universe counterpart, determine which of them was an ideologically-blinkered crank in a politicized field and which was a thoughtful scientist engaged in free inquiry? If you can answer that question, you can answer my critique and improve the quality of your writing and thinking.
At one level, your parable rather answers itself. Your neutral third party seems clear about which parts of the paper should be trusted (all of the results it presents on the structure, the learning dynamics, etc) and which parts shouldn't (the weird stuff, about gay people being child abusers).
Indeed, that confirms our earlier exchange; you find the paper intriguing, the results interesting, etc -- but it also bothers you in some way.
So what's going on? One answer to why someone is bothered is a bit boring and obvious: this is a culture war thing.
But let me suggest to you that it's far more interesting than it first appears.
On the one hand, there's "the red pill ideology". This is what we might call a cognitive artifact -- let me suggest that you think of this in just such an abstract fashion.
On the other hand, there are the people who engage with the group that presents that cognitive artifact.
Figure One, Table One, and the Appendix are there to help make sense of the cognitive artifact, which connects a bunch of things together in a systematic fashion.
As with any artifact, people can get a grip on it -- it has many affordances. Our paper is about that artifact, its mathematical structure, and then the ways in which humans who encounter it pick it up, play with it, toss it from one person to another, etc.
The first thing you might ask is: wow, can our methods really do this? Yes. Yes they can. It's pretty wild, and it's been really exciting to see this unfold. Science is awesome.
The second thing you might ask is: OK, but the redpill is pretty niche. It's a Reddit group! Can't you run it on the cognitive artifact of "LGBTQ+", or the cognitive artifact of "Feminism" (as you suggested before), or the cognitive artifact of "The Democratic Party".
Now the answer is less satisfying. That's because (what you're calling) "LGBTQ+", "Feminism", etc is not a single artifact. It's actually a very large umbrella term for a social world that contains many, many artifacts. Indeed, even things that announce themselves as ideologies (e.g., "Marxism", "Communism") probably end up like this. Among other things, we don't know how good our methods are at boundary finding (although... it might work...) This is a whole separate and fascinating question, of course, how to run this "at scale".
All these groups also contain many, many people. People are not artifacts, but (for some reason, ask Michael Tomasello) they just love picking these things up and playing with them.
As we point out, when it comes to the redpill artifact, a lot of people come across it, pick it up by the "self-help", or "PUA" handle, and end up putting it down, pretty quickly.
There are other handles, the ones we label NRx and Status-and-Hierarchy. These handles are different. You can look at the kind of things "on" these handles in the online appendix. And of course we have a whole set of results in this "science of people playing with cognitive artifacts of this sort".
None of this is controversial, and none of this stuff is stuff you are quarreling with. Let's now get to the stuff that I think is bothering you. I'll mark the text here: ********
Who is picking up the artifact that way? Lots of people -- hundreds of thousands of people, mostly men. Is it the world's greatest artifact to handle? Probably not -- I mean, not if taken seriously. Some parts of the artifact are actually pretty not-great ways to think about the world.
For example, and this is not in the paper, but a basic principle of the ideology, found on the "explanatory" handles, is "AWALT": "all women are like that", where "that" is a characterization of women in terms of pseudo-evolutionary-psych drives that they are unable, or unwilling, to overcome.
Now, in our paper we don't actually say "this is bad" or even get much into it. But it's so obviously bad to most people, including you I think, that all we really have to do is describe it, and most people, including you I think, think that the paper is saying it's bad.
(I just want to flag right now, and repeatedly, that, none of the analyses, diagrams, graphs, results, discoveries about cognition etc depend upon agreeing that it's bad. But many people will say it's bad, just as they'd find a cognitive artifact that said "abusing children is cool" would say it's bad.)
Let's keep going. Some people do take this funny part of the artifact very seriously. We know this because they make copies of it on their manifestos they leave behind after a shooting rampage, and we even see special runes (the jargon, in particular). This is worth noticing, and it's probably telling us something interesting about the relationship between ideas and violence. Some people are skeptics about ideas, if X is going to shoot up a school, they'll find some reason to apply post-hoc, but I'm not -- ideas have power, ideas matter in behavior.
Other people we *think* take it seriously, because they spend years passing this artifact back and forth with each other, fondling it, molding and remolding it. And we have to wonder... is this going well for them? (But, of course, whether or not we do... the analysis is the same.) In an analysis we don't talk about, for example, people write "field reports" of how they're treating an intimate partner or a date, and some of this stuff does not look good. I don't want to litigate on this if you don't agree; again, this is not something in the paper. It's trying to get at the affect of being bothered.
Other people, the vast majority of the people, who are picking up the artifact in this way are just passing through. Are *they* bad? Well, the first thing to say is "who cares, that's not the point of the paper" -- and indeed that's the correct, scientific answer.
If pushed, of course, people would say, well, some of this stuff is pretty messed up, but on the other hand, just beacuse someone is saying and believing it, doesn't mean they're messed up. Minds are complicated. People go through phases. As a "civilian", I'd take that view, I think -- although I've spent enough time with political theorists to realize that even obvious things like this are actually much more interesting than they appear.
But it's this confluence of features that I think prove bothersome. The mind is taking all this information in, and using it (as minds do) to make moral judgements, and also to try to figure out (as minds do) the kinds of moral judgements other people are going to make. And it's the results of that activity, everything going on after the ******** above, that may well be bothersome.
> The first sentence is a rough summary of the highlights from the later analysis in the paper.
Then it would be better to say "Our analysis shows that 'The Red Pill' matches our defiinition above of a sexist ideology" rather than making it sound like you're just labeling them willy-nilly. But I changed "standard definition" to "our definition above" because I don't know of a "standard definition" and I don't see a third-party definition being cited.
I think one should always write such papers like this with careful attention to how it may be perceived by those who are sympathetic to that which you are criticizing, as well as to people who are neutral about a particular ideology but sensitive to signs of political bias. Obviously, those with more extreme ideology will hate the paper regardless, but try not to write in a way that less-ideological people will also dismiss the paper.
Interesting paper, Simon. I've been looking at TRP and Incels for my new book (Artificial Intimacy, which I punted in this thread) and for some papers on the geographic distribution of Incel-related tweets. I can send you a copy once it comes out (too late to put up a preprint now, I believe). Would love to see any more work you have in this area.
Hi Rob — that’s terrific. And thank you for re-shilling :) —I missed it the first time. Please do send me your papers as well; you can find me at sdedeo[at]andrew.cmu.edu
Incel geography is interesting! We looked at early USENET data on alt.seduction.* just to see which institutions were operative. We didn’t do much with this data, in the end, but I did notice that UK was over-represented compared to baseline USENET activity.
I've set up a website to explain/demystify/debullshit papers in Medical AI. We're explaining how the tech works as well as its limitations and biases. https://explainthispaper.com
Writers always welcome- drop us an email if you're interested.
Deals with the implications of human brains being computers. Typical posts include essays
- implications of predictive processing on concepts like agency (“free will” makes sense as “accumulation of evidence for the prior ‘I can accomplish my goals’)
- computation carried out at cultural and civilizational levels (war is a consensus algorithm)
That article on Sparta needs rethinking. It basically restate pure propaganda as if it was historical fact while not mentioning the rampant slavery, the sexual abuse etc. Pretty bad taste IMO. See https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/
To be fair, Brett over at acoup has a huge ideological axe to grind when it comes to Spartans, vikings or basically any historical people who are used as role models for western right-wing masculinity. Compare his treatment of the Mongols or Comanche to how he writes about Sparta or the Norse, it really is night and day.
That's not to say that he's a poor historian or that his words on the subject carry no weight. But when someone displays naked ideological bias like that you need to read them with a critical eye and seek out alternative voices.
I think Brett writes in this biased way about Sparta to act as an alternative voice to things like the Sparta article in OPs link. And that article is in much need of an alternative voice.
I don't think this is fair. In his article about Sparta, he's looking at Sparta in the popular imagination, and comparing that to what we know about actual Sparta. The Spartans don't come out well, but that's pretty much the Spartans' fault.
The other three he hasn't looked at as directly. Brett's schtick is looking at popular media versions of history and comparing them to history as it actually was (in as much as we can do that). His reasoning is that people come into his classes thinking that the Middle Ages looked like Game of Thrones, or Ancient Greece looked like 300.
For the Vikings, his frame was some video game (not a criticism, I just don't remember which), where the Vikings were the players' side, and the player could be any sort of multicultural thing and the Vikings wouldn't mind. Also, the Viking religion was both clearly superior too, and truer than, the Christianity of the Saxons. He didn't do anything like the deep dive he did into Sparta and its culture and military record, he was just contrasting the 21st century attitudes on display with the culture of the time.
Likewise for the Mongols and Comanche, who he wrote about in his series on the Dothraki. GRRM said they were based on them, so he broke down how those cultures worked and compared it (favorably) to what we're shown of the Dothraki. But his point wasn't that the Mongols were nicer or better than the Spartans. He wasn't looking at that question. It was just whether they were anything like GRRM's horse barbarians, which they basically weren't. Short version - from memory - the Dothraki are violent conquerors who disdain arts (even nice clothes) and non-violent work and refuse to eat anything but horses. The Mongols and the Comanche are - not that - both valuing art and work. And nobody tries to just eat horseflesh, it's much too valuable and takes too long to grow. Again, IIRC, there's a scene in GoT where the Dothraki slaughter a big herd of sheep as useless that really got Brett worked up. I think he spent a whole article in that series on how horse nomads fed themselves. (Mostly with sheep.)
I've read all of those articles, actually everything he's published on that site, and disagree that the distinction you're drawing is meaningful.
The Spartans in 300 (his go-to piece of media in the Spartan articles) and the Dothraki in ASOIAF and GOT both use ridiculously ahistorical-yet-badass versions of their respective fighting styles, are portrayed by oiled bodybuilders with bared chests, explicitly shun any craft or trade other than war ("Spartans! What is your profession!"), and are presented as noble despite committing heinous actions onscreen (throwing babies off a cliff and lots of rape respectively). In both cases, the historical peoples routinely practiced mass murder, slavery and institutionalized rape which would shock the modern conscience.
In the case of the Greek Spartiates, Brett presents this as a quasi-fascistic whitewashing of an inexcusably barbarous historical villain who has no redeeming qualities. With the Mongols and Comanche, this is a quasi-racist demonization of flawed but ultimately sympathetic historical peoples who were tragic victims of historical forces driving their cultures to adapt in sometimes regrettable ways. What is the difference here?
To my mind, it's that Brett's shift in focus is entirely due to the Dothraki's portrayal as a non-white coded foreign Other in contrast to the Spartans portrayal as a white-coded image of a lost part of our western heritage. Both are portrayed as having a 'badass' savage nobility, but Brett's left-liberal politics parse one as an oppressor and the other as an oppressed victim by the color of their respective actors skin. While outside of that lens, it is easy to see how both media portrayals hit essentially the same notes and the three peoples historical peoples have atrocities and achievements proportional to their scales (Sparta being a Bronze-age city state compared to the Iron-age Mongol empire).
I think you're skipping something that's more explanatory. In 300 (and that book series he talks about), the Spartans are praiseworthy. In the video game, the multicultural 21st century values having vikings are praiseworthy.
But not the Dothraki. They're honest maybe, and baddass, but their barbarity isn't played as heroic. They're so barbaric they practically wear sacks! They don't do art, just war! They kill sheep because only horses are good enough! (This is a GRRM tic, btw. He likes his fantasy larger than life and exaggerates everything. The wall is 400ft high! The Stark family line, intact, has guarded it 5000 years! The Dothraki are so baddass, the reject all civilization!)
In both cases, Brett is puncturing the image with the reality. When he does that with the positive portrayals, he naturally is going to be showing the ways those peoples don't live up to the hype. When done with a negative portrayal, it's going to look more like an apology.
But I don't think the articles are at all as biased as you suggest, nor that Brett's position is dictated by his politics. (Which, btw, I think you have at much further to the left than they likely are in real life. A military historian with a specialty in Rome is not a comfortable landing place for a member of the woke.)
Of course, I'm a member in good(ish) standing of the left, so it's possible I can't see it. Fish, water and all that.
Brett's beef or gripe or however you want to call it with GRRM and his portrayal of his invented cultures is the jumping-off point of (a) his almost throwaway comment about Tolkien's lack of realism in his worldbuilding ("But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine?" etc.) and (b) his other comment that the Dothraki were based on a mix of real-world cultures.
So he looks at how that works out in what the novels and the TV show put out there, and finds it lacking. Not alone does Martin take stereotypes of what he imagines a bad-ass nomadic quasi-Golden Horde culture would be like, he doesn't take the bits that the real-world cultures did use (decoration on clothing, pastoralism, and so forth). So the Dothraki as portrayed are an impossible culture: the killing of sheep and then leaving the carcasses to rot is one egregious example, because *what do the Dothraki eat?* Real world nomads would avail of the Sea of Grass to have large herds of animals to provide meat, milk, wool and act as markers of wealth (there was a joke post about folk music on Tumblr a couple of years back which included that Mongolian songs are such things as 'Behold My Many Ungulates'); they would have driven off the sheep and incorporated them into their own herds, not slaughtered them and left them there.
No, he's saying that the video game portrays the Vikings as multi-culti hippy-dippy tolerant of diversity types (who run around slaughtering people with axes) and that the real Vikings were not like that, apart from the slaughtering people with axes.
To celebrate the release in two weeks of __Perhaps The Stars__, the fourth and final novel in Ada Palmer's __Terra Ignota__ science fiction series, I have made a website for my fan-made board game based on the franchise. We are accepting applicants to join us in playtesting on Tabletop Simulator through Steam.
This is based on a science fiction novel that is weirder than Dune. The characters all use "they" pronouns or are genderfluid. The year 2545 considers all views on religion (both pro and con) to be unacceptable in polite company.
If you're asking if there are spoilers for book three, a few of the City cards name geographic settings that are not mentioned in the first two novels. I'm not sure if you'd consider those spoilers; I don't. The list of character cards is taken directly from the dramatis personae at the beginning of book two. All the item cards were things introduced by book two. I invented the tasks on the Task cards myself.
I'd like to think we cover a lot of interesting topics in The Discourse, but with an unusual focus on drilling down into the depths of the issue and getting the right experts to talk about their areas.
My podcast: https://soundcloud.com/user-519115521. I mostly have discussions with Greg Cochran. Our Scott once wrote "First, a bunch of generic smart people on Twitter who got things exactly right – there are too many of these people to name, but Scott Aaronson highlights “Bill Gates, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham, Greg Cochran, Robin Hanson, Sarah Constantin, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Nicholas Christakis.” None of these people (except Greg Cochran) are domain experts, and none of them (except Greg Cochran) have creepy oracular powers."
We are half way through our Kickstarter for our Cthulhu Mythos RPG, ‘Weird of Hali, which is an alternative for everything you think you know about the world of HP Lovecraft.
The pitch doesn't mention much about rules other than it's based on Mythras. Is this more similar to traditional RPGs like D&D or freeform games or more structured games like Blades in the Dark?
My friend who is a journalist in Munich has recently started a blog where she writes about urban planning, building codes, local politics and the like. I thought this might be interesting for some of you. Maybe if you have always wondered why there are no skyscrapers in Munich: https://theschlafgang.substack.com/
Seems the jaw-muscle-relaxing is purely anecdotal, and it took up a lot of space in the kit. We sell magnesium gum on the site if you are interested in it though!
If you're a startup founder, consider a serious executive coach/consultant who understands the startup world.
I will be the one person you can be transparent with --who has no direct skin in your game-- neither equity, employment nor a board member.
Try a (free) introductory session!
Visit https://Beyondetter.io . While you're there, subscribe to the blog, or contact me to submit your own article on leadership, strategy or organizational scale and change for inclusion in our 5000 plus, biweekly mailing.
I'm looking for business strategy /materials science / metals people / industrial sales people for www.graphmatech.com.
We're working on fixing one small part of global excessive use of earth's resources.
Results: 40% more conductive copper. The composite metal is stronger, tougher, and has better thermal conduction as well. 28% less copper to conduct the same amount of electricity. Could be useful when the world electrifies.
Silver/graphene switches that are as conductive as the theoretical max of pure silver. That's better than real life pure silver switches.
Steel that's 30% more thermally conductive.
etc.
Yes, we have patents.
Our cheap, bulk graphene comes mostly from China, some from Europe.
We're scaling up our upcycling process from spent lithium - ion batteries to graphene.
But so far, only 3D printing / Hipping results. Small projects with huge industrial companies for tailored materials. Those projects take lots of calendar time. What are we doing wrong? What can we do better?
We add about 2 kilos of functionalized graphene per ton of metal powder. Yes, unit economics work. well.
Not one of the people you are looking for, but a potential customer. Who is your target audience? We're a small company that manufactures a specific product, but in our supply chain is a custom metal current transformer that might benefit from your product. We currently use molybdenum infused steel, copper wire, and then spray a dry moly coat on to add lubrication. But the moly steel has proven hard to source outside of China and we're wanting to move that part of the supply chain to another country.
hmm well a shot in the dark. But if it's better than copper then I think they are still using resistive magnets* (copper coils, water cooled) at the high field magnet lab in florida. If you could make a better magnet...?
My law firm renders legal advice on a broad range of subjects of interest to very, very smart people, including tax and estate planning, asset protection and intellectual property. We do litigation, too, although we mostly help smart people avoid it.
We are a tiny company specializing in visualization for bioinformaticians and biologists. We have some questions regarding IP, patents, and trademarks. Can your firm help us with some (or all !) of these issues ? You can email me if you are interested (I am "bugmaster" at gmail), but as I said, we're a tiny company, so we probably don't have the kind of budget that larger companies tend to have...
I write detailed book reviews, as well as posts about economics, philosophy, effective altruism, jazz and films. One of the posts I'm most proud of was about antidepressants: https://samenright.com/2021/06/09/book-review-lost-connections/. I get featured sometimes on Marginal Revolution. Hope you enjoy.
I'm taking a break from programming to make some art, and am open to commissions for oil paintings. Some samples are here: art.scyy.fi
I'm fondest of multipanel paintings that take up space interestingly (see first image), which I haven't seen much of in the wild even though I think it looks great.
doh! Will add on website today. Email at scydereal@gmail.com -- pricing will be pegged to material cost + $15*[expected hours]. The first large painting on that site was $1100.
Learn how to become a person with more honesty, courage, self-control, respect for others, piety, loyalty, compassion, wisdom, temperance, fitness, sincerity, justice, industriousness, duty, prudence, know-how, honor, moderation, patience, care, attention, amiability, simplicity, forgiveness, integrity, humility, hope, good temper, fairness, endurance, benevolence, ambition, perseverance, kindness, frugality, dignity, courtesy, chastity, judgment, and/or gratitude... and more when I can find the time to research & write.
The new season of Hi-Phi Nation will begin with a mini-series on the life and works of David Kellogg Lewis, one of the great philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. The series will be released beginning October 16th, 2021, subscribe or follow now to get all episodes. www.hiphination.org.
I liked the story and I thought it was quite well written, but I'm sort of confused:
Ubj vf vg cbffvoyr gb eha rnpu fhpprffvir fvzhyngvba (vaqrrq, na nccneragyl vasvavgr ahzore bs fhpu fvzhyngvbaf) ng n snfgre fcrrq guna gung bs vgf ubfg, *jvgubhg* ybff bs svqryvgl ? Va bhe jbeyq, fvzhyngvbaf pna eha fvtavsvpnagyl snfgre ol qvfpneqvat veeryrinag qrgnvyf, be ol qenfgvpnyyl yvzvgvat gur fpbcr, ohg gurer'f ab vaqvpngvba gung guvf vf tbvat ba va gur fgbel. Va snpg, gur qenzngvp erirny ng gur raq frrzf gb qverpgyl pbagenqvpg guvf.
I have recently moved my long-running blog over to substack. I've been writing mostly about forecasting and modeling covid. I occasionally write about various other topics, including travel, linguistics, education, politics, social issues, and other issues which fall broadly into the social sciences.
My latest post is about a statistical technique called the "synthetic control model" - a way of conducting a quasi-controlled "experiment" using data from multiple groups to build a predictive model that acts as a control group in situations where a real control group is unavailable.
The case study for the post is a model of a covid wave in Georgia (the country) which I argue shows that the country's lack of timely intervention resulted in one of the world's highest covid waves. I've taken the model from a report by other researchers who came to a different conclusion - that the cause of the excess cases and deaths was an election held in 2020. I think the technique is worth looking at whether you end up agreeing with my conclusions or those of the original authors - or disagreeing with both.
For something completely different, this post is a series of vignettes about the five languages I use and/or encounter on a daily basis, living as an expat and a parent of multilingual children.
I recently met a fellow called "Benjamin the Dream Wizard" on Twitter - he does a dream interpretation podcast and we're going to collaborate in the near future.
“Conversations in Critical Psychiatry" is my interview series for Psychiatric Times that explores critical and philosophical perspectives in psychiatry and engages with prominent commentators within and outside the profession who have made meaningful criticisms of the status quo.
Have you seen any linkages between GHB and long-term memory? Anecdotally: I had high-performing memory before the age of 20, and average-performing memory after the age of 20. GHB was my drug of choice around the age of 20. I don't have any history with regular use of other drugs. I have always wondered if there's a chance that GHB had an impact on my memory.
I hadn't, but I just did some research and here's what I found.
There's one study* that looks at three groups with 27 subjects each: GHB users who have had >=4 GHB-comas, GHB users who haven't had a GHB-coma, and non users. It finds that the GHB-coma group has a lower IQ and does worse on a verbal memory test; no significant difference is found between the GHB-NoComa and No-GHB groups. This is just an observational study and there are some plausible non-causal explanations for the worse performance of GHB-coma group. (Note that this study uses 'coma' to mean ~'no motor, verbal, or eye response'.)
Then there are multiple rat studies^ that show that GHB causes impairment in learning and spatial memory in rats. Not sure what to make of these.
Overall it seems plausible that GHB negatively affects memory (alcohol does, right?) though my cursory search reveals a lack of evidence either way. If it does, the effect size is probably pretty small unless you're really abusing it; I doubt the culprit was GHB in your case.
I've been taking Xyrem under prescription at a lowish dose for over a decade and noticed no decrease in memory function; my baseline is having a much higher than average long term recall for all kinds of useless trivia. Actually after going on Xyrem my *short term* memory got way better because I actually got decent sleep for the first time in my life.
2. 2x doses of 2.25 grams, one at bedtime, one halfway through the night. Used to be higher ( but I'm always nervous around strong drugs so I asked my neurologist if we could stay at the lowest dose possible so long as my symptoms were being managed.
3. I don't *think* so, if by that you mean withdrawal symptoms when I'm off it. I have three kids, so when each was born I had to go off of it so that I could be reliably woken in the middle of the night to take my shift with the newborn. I felt miserable during those times but I a) felt miserable before I was on Xyrem and b) tending to newborns makes you feel miserable no matter what your brain is like. In any case there's been stretches where I've missed nights and not noticed anything that struck me as "gee I'm addicted." If by tolerance you mean I need stronger and stronger dosages to get an effect, all I can say is I've been on it at the minimum dosage for 10+ years and it still works great. I can sometimes stay awake despite its very obvious effects sitting in but the difference in sleepability when I'm off it and on it are as clear as day.
4. It's a miracle drug. Manages my symptoms incredibly well. For context I also have Tourette's syndrome, and was diagnosed with that at 14. I also had been having what I now know to be classic narcolepsy with cataplexy symptoms since even earlier than that, but with the big Tourette's diagnosis everything got interpreted through that lens. So when I was falling over and losing control of my body that got interpreted as some kind of weird "full-body tic" when actually it was just cataplexy. And then also I was just really tired all the time and could never sleep. Growing up, at any sleepover I would *always* be the last one asleep by a margin of hours. I was chronically tired. When I got the Tourette's diagnosis they put me on all kinds of medications and none of them worked. When I got my Narcolepsy diagnosis and got the Xyrem prescription, getting good sleep started making my cataplexy almost disappear, and the lack of stress and anxiety from that caused my Tourette's symptoms to get much better (b/c they're brought on by stress). Changed my life. Not sure I could live without it.
5. What's the rebound effect?
6. It definitely makes you feel kind of giddy and happy, but it took me stupidly long to realize it was the medicine. I would regularly read books as I was falling asleep and I would be get really emotional reading like, a dry nonfiction book.
Apart from that when it kicks in, at the doses I was taking it makes you feel really sleepy. You can feel it coming on you like a wave and it becomes impossible to resist until you're asleep.
Thanks for the response! The rebound effect is energy and wakefulness that comes ~4 hours after taking GHB (which not all users experience). It's impressive that 2.25g has been working for so long -- can I ask how much you weigh? And how many hours do you sleep per night?
I weigh 182 pounds last I weighed myself. I try to sleep about 8 hours.
As for the rebound effect, I dunno. The way they dose me is I'm supposed to take the first dose when I go to bed, and the second dose 4 hours later. So maybe that's designed around the rebound effect. The stated reason given to me was that the drug doesn't stay in the body for very long at all and so to get a constant dose throughout the night you have to take it in two doses.
One thing I can say is that a really common problem I have is sleeping through my 4:00 AM alarm and missing my second dose. Didn't used to happen but after I had kids (and thus various nighttime interruptions) then it started happening more often.
I'm interested in collaboratively homesteading somewhere out west, probably Colorado or Washington.
To me that means pooling financial resources to buy land where a small number of people are interested in building homesteads and also hopefully building a small community of people who would support each other.
I have a non trivial amount of my own resources ready to devote to this project.
I'm a PhD student in computational neuroscientist with a background in cognitive science and I'm writing about things like developmental neuroscience, AI Safety, large language models & digital people over at my Substack: https://universalprior.substack.com/
I imagine there could be a lot of overlap of interests between people reading Scott's work and what I write (although I'm by far not as funny or as much of a generalist)
Have you used an MRI machine to image the thymus gland before and are interested in trying to replicate those images using a cheaper device? Ping me
Are you a good radiologist that wants to look at 3x scans and give a non-legally binding opinion? Ping me (unrelated to above, paid via paypal/card/bitcoin and requested rate)
Are you a digital nomad considering teaming up with people to travel to various places? Ping me
Are you interested in an engineer, community management or marketing job at a company building open source machine learning tools that play well with databases? Ping me
I'm a freelance editor specializing in science fiction and fantasy; I've worked with a number of other fiction genres, and occasionally interesting non-fiction, but that's my core specialty. I have a slightly odd pricing pattern: I don't charge for hours, I charge for (500-word) pages ($2-$8/page, depending on how much editing is required - $2 is "a little polishing", $8 is "one page took me half an hour"), so it's easy for me to tell you the exact price as soon as I've received the document. I also have a 5-free-pages offer; if you have never hired me before, send me the first five pages (2,500 words) of whatever you want edited, and I will edit and return them for free. This lets you see what you'll be getting, and also allows me to tell you what pricing category the work falls into. Second and later passes are half price. For more information please see my website (http://arpistaediting.com/) - I know it's running slowly at the moment, sorry about that.
I am a grad student studying epidemiology, and am looking for EA (preferably biosecurity) related researcher or organizations to do a Practicum (basically an internship) or a Capstone (thesis or some other project with an end result). I'm linking to a google sheet of some ideas that I've brainstormed so far, but many of my ideas are limited to the school I go to and the researchers I've come into contact with. I have experience in research and research design, as well as R, SAS, and some Python. I would be very willing to travel- please, if you have ideas, either comment below or update my google sheet. Thanks!!
PSA: if you’re looking for a side job, it will likely never in our lifetimes be easier of get hired at a restaurant than it is now. In my area (HCOL) places are offering $8-15/hour PLUS TIPS, even with zero experience and limited availability.
I'm a science fiction writer who does a substack that sends original stories and sci fi culture directly to your email, once a week. Here's a link to my latest story:
I love the story and imagery in this poem, but I think the metre could be improved.
The second and fourth lines of each stanza are by and large good; lines like "The flowers are set on the table" or "Yes now that you mention, I'm freezing!" roll right off the tongue and are perfect for the sort of light-hearted tone you're going for. Amphibrachic trimeter (da DUM da / da DUM da / da DUM da) is great for that, which is why it's so popular in limericks, and cutting off the final unstressed syllable doesn't upset the flow, so that you can have both one- and two-syllable rhymes for variety.
The issue is that the first and third lines of most of your stanzas don't have a similarly consistent metre, and those make the poem awkward to read aloud. The fifth stanza is a good example of this. Reading it at a natural cadence (with American pronunciation of 'temperature'), it reads:
I'm FEEL-ing FO-cused while SCROLL-ing on-LINE,
ALL of my a-TTEN-tion it's SEIZ-ing.
The SUN then goes DOWN, TEM-per-ature de-CLINE,
Yes NOW that you MEN-tion, I'm FREE-zing!
The fourth line is three perfect amphibrachs, and the second lines varies the metre without breaking it, so both are good. But the third line has 'down', which is naturally stressed, and then the first syllable of 'temperature', which is also naturally stressed, back to back without any unstressed syllables in between, followed by three unstressed in a row (or four with British pronunciation) without any stresses. Because both of these things happen in a row, they together dominate the way the line is pronounced, and the reader loses the rhythm of the stanza and comes to an awkward brief halt at the end of the third line.
The first line is iambic for the first half and anapestic for the second half. In isolation, this is fine; if the third line were either iambic or anapestic, we could infer the other half. But, without a strong third line, there aren't any clues to help out. The same thing happens with the previous stanza ("a BAN-quet of SCENTS should de-LIGHT my NOSE"), but in that case, the first line ("My WIFE in the KI-tchen is ROAST-ing a ROAST") is strong enough that the rhythm remains intact.
Taken to the extremes, the fifth stanza written as alternating anapestic (da da DUM) tetrameter and amphibrachic (da DUM da) trimeter would look something like this:
I am deep in the zone while I'm scrolling online,
And all my attention it's seizing.
As the temperature drops and the moon starts to shine,
Yes, now that you mention, I'm freezing!
Alternatively, alternating amphibrachic tetrameter for the first and third lines with amphibrachic trimeter for the second and fourth would look something like this:
I'm focused while scrolling and clicking on pages,
And all my attention it's seizing.
The temperature drops, it's been dark out for ages -
Yes, now that you mention, I'm freezing!
Going to either extreme is probably not necessary; having some variety in metre is not only fine but desirable for longer poems. But it's still helpful to have a perfect metre in mind when writing so that you can consciously decide for each stanza how close or far you want to be from it.
Overall, I enjoyed it, so thank you for writing. And if you write any more for your poetry tag, do include them in the next Classifieds thread.
Thanks so much for the careful reading and detailed comment! I seriously appreciate it!
I've read this over carefully and I definitely understand what you mean. I'll keep it in mind if the urge to write a poem appears again, and I'll be sure to share it too. :)
I'm a leadership coach, and I love working with Rationalist and Rationalist-adjacent clients. I'm here to help you think clearly about how to be effective in complex, messy human systems. www.presencetree.com
I've had an interest in private cryptocurrency for a while now, especially Monero and ZCash. When I saw a post by an acquaintance of mine, Joshua Goldbard, talking about the technology behind MobileCoin, I recognized instantly that it was an important achievement. (Josh is the founder). They've used a similar signing protocol to Monero for private transactions, but replaced proof-of-work with Stellar Consensus Protocol. This means that transactions complete within five seconds, with the same privacy protections and very small fees.
After experimenting with the project for a few weeks, and contributing some open source software to it, I was hired as a contractor, then later as a full-time employee.
We've been integrated into Signal messenger, although U.S. release is still not ready yet. I'm really excited for this project, so please check it out:
The Lost War: Historical reenactors are flung into a fantasy world where they must struggle to survive amid monsters who regard them as prey . . . or worse. Not least among their problems is trying to cooperate while organized for playing pretend, not real problems.
I'm a digital artist and painter based in Brooklyn, NY. I've got a new selection of limited edition prints and NFTs which are being shown this Friday, October 8th at a group show in Williamsburg. In addition to the conventional art, there will be immersive digital experiences, live music, and an open bar. Tickets can be found here: https://www.themynt.io/event-details/influences-friday-ticket
Do you like Stephen King novels, and the Dark Tower specifically? Check out Kingslingers, a Dark Tower close reading podcast! It's a readalong format, so you can read the books along with the podcast and not worry that we'll spoil future information. Currently in Season 2, we are reading all the other King novels with Dark Tower connections: https://www.doofmedia.com/kingslingers/
Are you a big reader in general? Check out our monthly livestreamed book club. We have covered over 40 books, including many SFF classics you may be familiar with, though we also read literary fiction. This month we're reading Ancillary Justice. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCW6KR4MVOXbdi8iG72oCwOHCBDMyY7RL
Hi! Your invited to come see my art and maybe do a little holiday shopping at ArtFair 14C at the Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey Nov. 12-14. Go to my website at https://www.margaretwithers.com/upcoming-exhibits-/view/2719357/0/5241554 for information and a link to some comp tickets for the event. Send me an email if you have any questions about my art! I hope to meet you there!
The blog exists in what could be described as the rationalist adjacent adjacent space, with some occasional deep dives and general philosophy stuff. I've been pretty hard on Scott in the past there, although I think I've probably just about worked that out of my system.
Bright, shy, old-fashioned girl seeks bright, interesting boy. Purpose: matrimony. (Or rather, courting hopefully, if compatible, leading to matrimony.) Not poly, not interested in casual sex. For more information, see OKCupid profile (https://www.okcupid.com/profile/17435752182960911079/) or email rebeccaanne3 at gmail dot com.
It appears you need an OKCupid account to view profiles. You may want to include more about yourself, to motivate people who don't already have an account to make one.
As a married guy who is very happy in marriage, I want to impress on the young, single men to really think hard about the quality, rarity and specific implications implied by a young lady who is actively looking for marriage/to be married. The difference between someone who just kind accidentally got to the point where marriage was ok, they guess and someone who is actively looking to be a husband/wife and prepared to fit their lifestyle to that is profound.
... oh, dear, that was silly of me. Yes and no - you're quite right that I am in the Bay Area, but what it actually meant was that I forgot people cared about physical location.
I'm not looking to date, but now I'm curious: how does matrimony work without shared physical location ? Is virtual matrimony finally going mainstream ?
Nope! But virtual dating is, or at least, spending some time exchanging messages with someone who doesn't live in the same place as you, maybe video chatting, and then considering meeting up is not considered completely crazy. Especially if one of you is OK with moving if it takes off. I'm not sure this is new; my parents spent several years of their courtship long-distance (though starting long distance is rarer, of course.) It would certainly be more convenient to interact with someone close by (one of the people I forgot cared about physical location was me, even if I only care so much), but I don't think distance is necessarily a dealbreaker.
Hey, so I work for Truffle, we make blockchain development tools, primarily focused on Ethereum; I figure a few people here have likely heard of us so I thought this would be a good place to post this.
I should post here more, I guess I'll start with dating preferences. I'm a man in my early 30's in NJ open to a woman. I'm interested in any kind of relationship -- that means friends, too! -- and odds are that you're smarter than me, because it seems like everybody here is! Like, dang.
Feel free to message me if you're a guy, too. I'm not interested in men, but I love to conversate and learn.
Hi Folks, I've been doing a lot of photography lately and am interested in gigs or specific requests. Last time I posted I had fun helping some get some images they wanted, so I thought I'd post again. I mostly do wildlife, but I'm happy to attempt to photograph whatever you want. You can check out a partial portfolio and contact info at drethelin.com
I'm also interested in longer term projects if anyone is looking for a photojournalist or wildlife photographer to accompany them for something. I can also do some videography but I'm much less practiced at that.
FWIW, I like your photos, but I have trouble browsing your portfolio on mobile: most of the photos show up as the "gray stop sign" error icons. Actually, I just tried it on PC and got the same thing.
Edit: I just re-visited the site, and the missing photos did load. Perhaps this is some sort of a timeout/throughput issue ? Since I have the previously loaded photos cached, the server probably got fewer requests per second than during my first visit.
I’m the founder of Science is WEIRD, a company that helps hungry kids fall in love with ALL the sciences.
We do live, hyper-interactive classes with kids on four continents (and counting) — with the biggest fraction in the Valley. We specialize in 2e kids: more than half are gifted/talented; more than half are also ADHD.
Each lesson is a riddle wrapped in a game; the class works together to solve it. The teacher facilitates the fast-paced discussion, and drops hints (metaphors, images, stories, etc).
These… aren’t typical science classes. We use a mundane topic (we just finished our “Crows are Weird” month) to unveil big ideas —
* taxons vs. clades (Linnaeus vs. Darwin)
* endothermy vs. exothermy (and why it matters that birds are dinosaurs)
* sexual selection and monogamy in birds
* the difference between reptiles and mammals (it’s probably not what you think)
* the adaptiveness of intelligence
* the social lives of crows (more complex than anyone would guess)
If those sound dull, I promise they’re FASCINATING (and that the classes are maximally goofy). Along the way, kids learn some of the most wonderfully odd things, and each lesson crescendos with an insight that turns their conceptual world upside down.
Classes meet twice a week (but some of our families stream them to watch later).
Throughout this year, we’ll plunge into other disciplines: dirt (chemistry), the Moon (astronomy), onions (botany), hills (geology), mushrooms (mycology), nuclear power (physics), neurodiversity (psychology), and mosquitoes (zoology, again).
I’d be happy to offer a free month of “Dirt is Weird” (which starts next week) to anyone in the ACX community — just use the code “ACX” at the checkout.
I'm a Software Engineer with 9 years of experience and I'm looking for work either in Chicago or remote. I've mostly worked in JVM languages, though Clojure is my favorite. I strongly believe in ownership of the entire lifecycle of services (development, testing, operations) and am well versed in k8s. I have a passion for search and continuous improvement. My most recent project was speeding up an ETL job from 43 hours to 10 hours (though sadly we can't move it from Akka-Streams to Spark since it's expected to be sunset in a year).
You can contact me at `{My Name} . b . mcg at gmail` (replace My Name the name from my substack profile).
I have a blog ( https://sablegm.substack.com ) about analyzing tabletop RPGs in general and DnD specifically from a rationalist-ish perspective, which might be interesting to people here. Core topics involve analyzing group dynamics, core GM skills, advice on setting construction, and whatever else I feel like writing.
Most recently, I've been doing a sequence of posts on de- and then re- constructing DnD magic. Goals are partly to help people resolve what happens when magic is used in a-typical ways, partly to solidify worldbuilding, partly to write down my own thoughts about magic. I numbered the posts, but I think so far they can be read mostly independently of one another:
Is this looking at D&D style RPGs, or are you also going to discuss RPGs that codify the table dynamic more, like Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, etc?
Currently it has mostly been generalities that should apply to pretty much everything. Only the most recent sequence is DnD-focused, as that's a system with a pretty developed magic system, and one I know well. I may talk later about various more freeform RPGs, but frankly, I haven't played them enough, and generally I don't think there is much analysis to be had there.
That's why I was asking about the more structured RPGs (Burning Wheel, Apoc World, Blades in the Dark, Bliss Stage), there's likely a lot more room for analysis there, especially as they were generally created with an analytical mind for how they would affect table state.
But from reading a few of your articles in the magic sequence it seems that your focus is less on RPGs and more on the world D&D-style RPGs describe. Maybe your other posts have a different thrust though.
I'm gradually turning the ideas from fifteen years of blog posts into chapters for a book or books. As I finish the draft for each section, I web it for comments. I am trying, in the first draft, to use almost all of my blog posts, so expect to end up with more material than I actually want to include, so it would be particularly useful if commenters could tell me what chapters, or sections within chapters, I ought to drop, which I definitely ought not to drop.
Four sections are already up. I am almost finished with the economics section, which will probably be the longest, and expect to web it shortly.
Not really a shill, but looking to hire a doctor or medical professional to do a few hours of research to decide if a particular medical procedure is legitimate or not. Email me at maksym.morawski@gmail.com
I have written three novels, one published by Baen, two self published. One of the comments I get on Amazon is that my characters are too rational, so people here might enjoy them. _Harald_ was marketed as fantasy but is really a historical novel with invented history and geography — no magic, elves, dwarves, etc. _Salamander_ and its sequel _Brothers_ are fantasies. The setting is about fifty years after the magical equivalent of Newton, who started the process of converting magic from a craft to a science.
None of them is a political polemic, all reflect in various ways my world view as both a libertarian and an economist.
Currently, as a side hustle, I'm building an online platform for creating or joining campaigns for collective action in adversarial situations - using concepts like Assurance Contracts to solve game-theoretic coordination problems.
Think “Kickstarter,” but instead of crowdfunding products, it’s for safely recruiting and organizing participants for any project that requires a group effort, like workplace organizing, whistleblowing, open letters, direct action, formation of parallel institutions, etc.
I know this is not an entirely novel concept - many of the underlying principles have been validated by other successful platforms like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Change.org, and The Point, (before it pivoted to become Groupon).
Unlike those other platforms, my focus is not fundraising or self-expression, but the formation and enablement of group coordination for specific collective actions in the real world. The aim is to increase the expected value of organizing around concealed preferences by lowering the courage requirements for taking action (from heroic to average) and reducing individual actors’ risks (from potentially catastrophic to marginal).
To preemptively address some common points of feedback:
- Spartacus will prohibit any campaign encouraging illegal actions or violence of any kind.
The app will have several mechanisms built in to abate the risk of trolls, spammers, or bad faith actors sabotaging or gaming the system.
- The explicit ideological position of the app is one of J.S Mill style liberal pluralism, and it will be defended as such. It will be politically agnostic. Both “blue” and “red” campaigns will be equally welcome. That said, campaign curation will strike for balance to try to avoid the app taking on a partisan valence. Also, absolutely no Nazis.
Project Status:
I’m currently looking to recruit people for proof of concept and beta testing.
I’d also love to connect with the following sorts of people in general:
Anyone with a strong social science background who wants to be involved and/or offer input.
Anyone who thinks they might be a potential user of the app, and/or has an idea for a good use case.
Anyone who wants to support this project through signal boosting online.
Hanging With History is a podcast focused on a very roundabout explanation/investigation of the causes of the Great Enrichment, Industrial Revolution.
The perspective is mainly libertarian/conservative/rationalist history and economics.
Unfortunately, the first 60 episodes have sort of a folksy tone that many people find annoying. Still if you like your English history with economics and philosophy you might enjoy it. The current episode is on the Nine Years War/War of the Grand Alliance and the origins of the War of the Spanish Succession.
If you enjoyed my Orwell review in the ACX contest, and are interested in rationalist-ish book reviews of a wide range of stuff, ranging from classic novels to contemporary self-help and nonfiction, that's what I'm doing over at my blog, https://whimsi.substack.com/p/book-review-the-emperor. Right now I've got write ups on Kafka, Kapuscinski, and comments responding to my Orwell review. Next review will likely be on David Cullen's 'Columbine'.
I'm working on a new language for web development called Argil. It's very early in the process but the goal of the language is to remove redundancy from the development process and decrease development time.
I am a qualified and experienced counsellor and psychotherapist trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and incorporating other modalities including elements of Positive Psychology, Compassion Focussed Therapy and Mindfulness.
I provide evidence based techniques for managing stress and anxiety and more effective methods of self motivating than self criticism. I remind my clients how to be a good friend to themselves and more, to cherish and celebrate themselves (without becoming narcissists). It’s the magic switch that makes you automatically raise your inner thermostat setting to allow more of the good stuff into your life and to recognise and end any self sabotaging behaviour.
I have space for 2 more clients at the moment, so have a look at my website, read the reviews by previous clients and contact me for a free initial meeting if what you read resonates with you. I am based in the U.K. and work internationally on Zoom.
It's designed by a bunch of mathematicians and it's about turning beans into monsters. It's cute, it's challenging, and the main character has a pet bunny.
The demo is available until October 11 and we're releasing the full game later this year. The demo is Windows only, but the full game will likely also have Mac and Linux versions. If you like puzzle games, give it a try!
I'm working on building a product that makes it easier for dev teams to deploy new product features, gather high quality data from those product features, and optimize those features through A/B tests or machine learning models. My co-founders and I are looking to show engineers and/or product managers what we've been working on and get feedback. You can either email me at christina at causallabs dot io or you can set up time to talk with us here: https://book.vimcal.com/p/Csz2aDmxgSBXyyTH.
I will note that our product is particularly useful for folks working in building online machine learning models. That's what we worked on together in our previous jobs, so that's generally been top of mind for us in designing the product. I'd say the capsule summary for ML folks specifically is: "get the training data you need without ever writing another ETL + deploy your models without waiting on engineering."
I want to connect with psychiatrists interested in working in the ketamine space. My two partners and I are concerned about some of the trends we're seeing of sending medications home for people to essentially do on their own (e.g. Mindbloom, My Ketamine Home). Doesn't feel responsible to have people undergo their first psychedelic experiences essentially on their own. On the other hand, many people aren't interested or ready for bull-blown ketamine assisted psychotherapy. We're interested in bridging that gap by training somatic therapists, massage therapists, and other folks to be responsible sitters and to help with preparation and integration. We're interested in finding a psychiatrist partner to develop this project. Would love to connect if that's you!
I'm a psychotherapist who had similar concerns and have been doing my own trial of at-home ketamine as precursor to providing support to selected clients for same. I have prior experience with psychedelics and have been following the ketamine research closely as well as some of the material around in-office KAP. Am developing some clinical opinions about benefit of at-home protocol and ways to provide support for at-home experiences.
I'd be happy to be in touch with you all as you develop your project.
I go over the history of broadcast copyright law, and how some weird implications of legal loopholes induced cable providers to waste exabytes of storage, pumping over a million tons of co2 into the air every year.
Book review of another work from James C. Scott (of Seeing Like a State fame). This one focuses on the subversive strategies deployed by the oppressed. Plenty of neat historical anecdotes if you're into that sort of thing.
schlaugh.com is a social media website where you get to post at most once a day. It's not mine, but I happily remind people it exists at irregular intervals.
It is low-traffic and low-tech (metaphorically speaking, it's run by one chap out of his basement); you may have to fight it a little sometimes. Post markup is in an HTML derivate, for example. But it's a nice, quiet corner of the internet, and the 24 hour interval makes debates not nearly as hot-headed as they would be elsewhere.
Presently most schlusers (the community likes tacking "sch" onto various words, so here I am, giving you a taste of that) use the site as a journal plus a little low-frequency social interaction.
"So, I signed up. Where's the content? Where do I find other people?" You find other people by them linking you to their schlaugh profiles, or because they made a post using a tag you follow. The closest thing to a "public" stream is the tag "milkshake", for historic reasons. This sort of thing is covered by the site FAQ, though, which is both enlightening and amusing to read.
"Does this have anything to do with rationality?" No, not really.
"Why should I join?" Maybe you're tired of Facebook, Twitter, et al. Maybe you're just curious. In any case, I don't think there's much of a 'should' about it. Personally, I tried it out of curiosity and stayed for the company, as well as for the useful habit of writing a little bit every day, which has e.g. helped me combat feelings of 'but I didn't get anything done today', clobbering myself over the head with large lists of things I did in fact do.
I honestly don't know, since I don't use RSS myself. A private message to the user 'staff' (or public post tagging '@staff') might get you answers (or RSS implemented), though!
https://www.schlaugh.com/gyrodiot writes about his own psychology a lot, which has proven insightful for me to read and reflect on mine. He also spent time sharing partly-in-character insights into a world-building project, which he made a separate schlaugh account for: https://www.schlaugh.com/phenn
I think those are the big ones that immediately come to mind. But it's still a small community, so it's easy to, with a bit of attention to what people you already know about write and whom they write to, get in touch with just about all schlaughers over the course of a few days, and then curate your content stream from there.
If you are into investment research, have some hands-on experience in some real business, and are a great writer we might be able to use (and level-up your skills) over at IPO Candy. You can see what we do at ipocandy.com and you can send me an email if you get fired up (kris@).
Woman seeking human for romance etc! Serious relationship preferred, but also open to friendship.
Strong preferences:
- I’m open to all genders, but people capable of siring kids are preferred (ie cis men or pre-transition trans women — I’m a cis woman).
- My age (32), +/-5 years.
- I like people who are very honest and very kind. Smart is cool or whatever, but compassion, integrity, and grace are a lot more important to me.
Dealbreakers:
- Must want to have children (I have none, but would like them in the next few years)
- Must be okay with living in New England long-term (I’m currently in Boston)
Bonus points if you’re:
- An effective altruist
- An atheist
- Mostly or entirely sober (I’m an occasional social drinker, but that’s it)
- Interested in group houses / communal living
- Monogamous (I’m kinda sorta open to poly with people who do it extremely carefully, but I mostly prefer not to add that complexity to my life)
- Someone who likes other people + likes being alive
More about me: I’m a tall software engineer who lives in a group house with my childhood best friend. I like reading, cooking, hanging out with my siblings and niblings, solving riddles and word games, learning to juggle, starting and not finishing knitting projects, and (some) board games.
If you want to introduce yourself, you can email me at rip.my.inbox at gmail. No need to send anything too long — I’d prefer to meet up in person rather than go through a ton of back-and-forth online.
(If you want ideas, you could introduce yourself with any of the following:
- a link to your blog / Reddit profile
- a book recommendation
- a link to your favorite Wikipedia article
- a link to a dating profile
- a project you’ve done or code you’ve written
- a controversial opinion you have
- an unappealing fact about yourself
- a good riddle
- a bad riddle
- any of the above, but ciphered)
Thanks for reading all this!
PS: I’m taking a few months off dating, (until December / January), so I may not respond to emails for a bit. Just putting this out there now because the classified posts don’t come around that often!
Thank you! I’ll add it to my list. If you’d like a rec, I’m enjoying “The Rise of Wolf 8” a lot right now, which I think has a bit in common with HifH.
that's a great dating profile! you inspired me to post my own! I am nowhere near Boston, unfortunately. Have you heard the riddle: walk a mile south, a mile east, and a mile north. you end up in the same place. You didn't see a bear, and no bear saw you. Where in the world could you be?
I evaluate grants for the the Near ecosystem. We're enthusiastic about stuff that can be done with DAOs, Prediction markets, NFTs and more. If you need a bouncing board, I'll be glad to help you sort out an idea. It's very easy for me to hand out grants in the 10-20k USD range right now to anyone remotely qualified, if that's you, you might like to apply.
You are welcome to buy some prints/coasters/magnets from the site, if you feel like it (I get a shiny nickel for each purchase made !), but what I'm really looking for is some kind of brutal yet actionable critique. Talent can't be taught, obviously, but perhaps I could improve my skill at least a little.
I like your composition quite a bit -- the way the angles and lines establish different spaces on each photo are interesting, and you're capturing some brilliant colors that complement each other well.
My biggest complaint is that there is not enough contrast in which parts of each photo receive a soft or hard focus. Some of the photos (Woolly Shores) have almost the entire frame in the same washed out sort-of-focus, and some of the photos (A Glimpse of Neon) have two kinds of focus that seem to be split up more or less at random. Like, the trees all the way on the left-edge of A Glimpse of Neon are crisper than the trees in the center or on the right. Meanwhile, the right-hand edge of the mountain is crisper than the left-hand edge of the mountain. Why? Are you trying to say something about the landscape, or did the focus just happen to come out that way?
One photo that doesn't have this problem is Apocalypse Soon -- it makes sense that the featureless grey clouds are out of focus; they're just there for scale and to add ominousness. It's interesting that the hill that's furthest from shore is in less focus than the hill that's closest to shore; that suggests a sense of deepening mystery. The rippling water is captured in impressively good detail given the low-light conditions; I enjoyed having my attention drawn to the ripples because most photographers don't take many shots of such dimly lit water, so it was a fresh and interesting choice of what to highlight.
I think these pictures are pretty good. I'd like to use one of them on my website which is commercial so I'm not sure if the license would work for that or not? I put images in for posts to make them look cooler not to sell them or anything. We mostly write about investment stuff so that's what people pay for.
I can't speak for DeviantArt, but I personally don't mind if you use my photos as backgrounds or illustrations, although it would be nice if you gave me credit (e.g. via an unobtrusive link to the photo somewhere on your website). For most photos, you can also buy uncompressed PNGs, which might be more convenient for website design.
Agreed; even though I'm not planning of taking advantage of many offers here, the sheer variety is a fascinating window into a maddening vista of the minds of ACX readers :-)
Are you bored, now that Scott's traveling? Do you want to read something interesting, especially some interesting fiction?
Well, I'm writing stories and I could really use helpful comments and criticism on them, and I see opportunities for what economists call 'gains from trade'.
I think I'm well above average as writers go, and, in particular, well above average at writing intelligent, reasonable characters taking actions for motives that make sense. (Also at superpowered fight scenes.) If anyone's interested in signing up as an alpha reader for my fiction, I'm happy to add you to my mailing list - I just finished a new story for the EA contest, and I'd like to get some feedback on it before I submit it. If you're bored and looking for something to read, we can help each other out!
I can get endorsements from David and Rebecca Friedman, but they're relatives of mine and so potentially highly biased.
My E-mail address is (rot13) nrilyzne@tznvy.pbz; send me a message or give me your E-mail address, and I'd be happy to send you a link!
Bisexual polyamorous guy in his late 20s seeking romantic partners, friends, co-hackers, and possibly you :D
current location: Lisbon, soon (january 2022) SF
More about me: I'm a cryptographic engineer originally from California; I've been living outside of the US for a couple of years, soon to be returning for a six-month experimental stint in SF.
Identity constructions: I claim to value honesty, intellectual curiosity, self reflection, love, community creation, and first-principles thinking above other things. I'm tend extraverted. The better part of my energy goes toward learning and building projects, participating in crypto and open-source communities, and in creating real-world communities. I'm an advocate for privacy and alternative communities/lifestyle practices.
Religion: I was raised Episcopal Christian; I discarded that tradition about ten years ago, though I maintain a respect for some religious practices.
Sex and romance: Growing up, I didn't have positive romantic role models. I now internally frame all encounters as social with capacity to become romantic later if it feels right (usually after several times hanging out or extended correspondence). I currently live with a partner who is also polyamorous. Am switch, enjoy kink. I'd like kids one day, probably not in the next 5-10 years.
Health: very active, do yoga, run, climb. Semi-regularly go through meditation phases. Reduced meat diet, drink occassionally, enjoy psychedelics and other drugs too.
Three of my favorite books are East of Eden, The Diamond Age, and Sirens of Titan. I tend to read 25-30 books a year, lots of sci-fi, programming-related stuff, economics, and philosophy.
A plausibly unappealing thing about me is that I'm limited in my capacity for empathy, particularly toward people who fall outside my ingroups. I sometimes practice growing my capacity for empathy and love.
I work at Zoba, a startup building optimization software for the cities of the future. Right now we help micromobility operators decide how to allocate their fleets to better serve users and generate more revenue. We're growing rapidly, both in the sense of "new products" and "new people."
Check out https://www.zoba.com/careers for job postings. We've got openings in software engineering, data science, machine learning, economics, semi-technical roles in operations (e.g. consulting background is a nice match), sales, customer success, marketing, ...
Hi everyone, I work a day job as a TEFL teacher but I'd really like to find work as an illustrator. I work in various styles. If you have something you'd like me to illustrate (paid),please contact me and I'll happily consider it.
Neat! I'd be interested in some concept art for a tabletop RPG I'm working on. This page has some good examples of the ballpark style I'd be interested in:
Hi Dan- yes, the price sounds fine and your project sounds really interesting. Can you please reach out to me at the email address on the website and we can talk a bit further then.
On SSC, Scott wrote a post about Puritan spotting, and one of the items to look for was someone starting a religion. Scott asked where these people have gone. Well, fear not, because Oa has called me out of the wilderness to start a new religion: The Way. Broadly speaking, we Wayfarers believe in Enlightenment values like tolerance and use of the scientific method, but also find value in community, ritual, and well, religion. I bring up these points and more in the introductory post on the substack that I hope will serve to expand and support the soon-to-be community of Wayfarers: https://windingway.substack.com/p/introduction
As I think I suggested last time, this would work better if it were in fact classified, and it's quite easy to do. When you put it up, make a set of top level comments: Jobs, Blogs and Books, Looking for Work, Dating, ... . Ask each person to post his ad as a reply to the appropriate top level comment.
Good idea, the obvious way to do it would to it like you said, though I wonder if some of the engineers at substack could be persuaded to experiment with implementing a different comment format.
I do a FREE LIVE weekly 40-min science chat and acoustic singalong on Zoom under the nom d'espace of 'Super blurry astronaut' – mostly on a Thursday but this week's was Wednesday on the theme of 'Nobel sentiments', to celebrate this week’s Nobel prizes.
Given the Medicine awards, it was truly sensational, so 🎸 Touch me 🙌🏾 Sensual world 💃🏻 Tender 😘 Feeling good 👼🏼 I wanna hold your hand 🐙 etc.
Every Monday, I post the details on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PatrickEasterbunny as well as various mostly UK-based science communication networks, and folk share ideas for songs and general chat.
I don't know if this counts as shilling, but in for a penny...
Best regards,
Patrick
Nature NEWS 04 October 2021
Medicine Nobel goes to scientists who discovered biology of senses
David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian share the award for identifying receptors that allow the body’s cells to sense temperature and touch.
Two researchers who discovered the molecular basis for our ability to sense temperature and touch have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Physiologist David Julius at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) used capsaicin — the compound that gives chilli peppers their gustatory kick — to track down a protein called TRPV1 that responds to painful heat.
Molecular neurobiologist Ardem Patapoutian at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, identified receptors in skin and other organs that respond to mechanical forces, such as those generated by touch and pressure.
I write a blog, https://www.navalgazing.net/, about naval history and technology. It started in the comments at SSC and has now been running for nearly four years. I've looked at everything from the basic technical aspects of battleship design to overviews of warship development to an in-depth look at the Falklands War.
> only six CGEL pronouns were assigned to the k-groups determinatives cluster. These include one reciprocal pronoun "one another" (though not "each other")
How did this happen? The dendrogram from the same data correctly identifies that "one another" and "each other" are the same thing, putting them in their own tiny taxon. As far as the dendrogram is concerned, both forms are determinatives.
> a branch with seven dependent genitive pronouns (e.g., "_my_ time") and a branch with eight independent genitive pronouns (e.g., "mine"), the odd one out being "his", which is both dependent and independent.
This is a weird aspect of your data. You say you wanted to use word forms because word form are what are actually used. Fair enough. But your data painstakingly separates different aspects of identical word forms, such as "her acc[usative]" / "her dep[endent]" or "it plain" / "it dum[my]". The distinction is real, of course, and it's very easy to do this separation and coding reliably. But the distinction between dependent "his" and independent "his" is just as real and just as easy to make. Why did you collapse them when you separated everything else?
(Actually, the question should be phrased the other way around. If you're trying to establish whether there's a difference between pronouns and determinatives, why risk begging the question by *imposing* distinctions on your processed data that aren't present in the raw data? Maybe if the data didn't start off by assuming there's a difference in essence between "you pron[oun]" and "you det[erminative]", the results wouldn't show such a clear separation between pronouns and determinatives!)
----
Consider the quantifiers: "something", "anything", "nothing", and "everything" all quantify _things_ in four different ways. (Two existential, two universal.) They also vary along another dimension: "something", "somebody", and "somewhere" are all positive-polarity existential quantifiers, but they respectively quantify things, people, and places.
The dendrogram has taken the surreal position that they belong to four taxa: the "things" cluster of (something, nothing, anything); the "people" cluster of (somebody, nobody, anybody); the "places" cluster of (somewhere, nowhere, anywhere), and the "positive universal" cluster of (everything, everybody, everywhere). How did this happen?
(My instinct here is that this is tabular data and a dendrogram is just an inherently inappropriate representation. [I'm talking specifically about the quantifiers. I like the dendrogram in general, though the collapse of "his" also causes problems with it.])
> Almost all the other features were taken from CGEL, but other sources were included where a particular concept seemed relevant. Sometimes these came from the literature (e.g., must be outranked by a coindexed element, SAG; WASOW; BENDER, 2003, p. 292) and sometimes they were just features that struck me as possibly relevant (e.g., starts with /ð/).
This is a dangerous practice; introducing features will cause the word forms exhibiting that feature to come closer together. By choosing features judiciously, you could make the results look however you wanted. I suggest that the fact that "the" (determinative) and "there" (pronoun) both start with /ð/ has no influence on their usage, and therefore the existence of the feature is polluting your data and lowering the quality of your results. The sound pronounced at the beginning of a word is relevant to some questions, but not to this question.
1. I don't know why the k-groups assignments of "one another" and "each other" differ, especially given the dendrogram has them in their own taxon, as you point out. I mentioned it in the text because it seems like a problem and because I hoped some reader with a better handle on the math than me would be able to makes some sense of it.
If I had to speculate, I would guess that it is some artifact of the k-groups algorithm and the way the input was randomized. k-means is a greedy algorithm, and I assume that k-groups is too, though that is not stated explicitly in Li's work, and I don't understand the underlying math well enough to say. The algorithm only iterated 3 times (though as you can see in the R code, it is set to max out at 10 iterations). But it could be that if you ran it again, there would be small changes in the assignments, depending on the initial randomization of the data.
2a. The collapsing of dependent and independent "his" seems unmotivated. It's been quite a few years since I created the table, and I don't remember this, nor do I find any notes on it. Similarly, dependent and independent "its" are also collapsed. I didn't even notice this differing application of rules when I wrote that line pointing out that "his" is both dependent and independent, so thank you for pointing it out!
2b. I certainly considered this potential criticism. I started with the CGEL assignments as my base model. CGEL posits two words with the shapes "you" and "we", a determinative and a pronoun each and three word with the shape of "one", a pronoun, a determinative, and a noun. If you collapse all of these, then there is no possible solution that matches the model. If you separate them out, then at least both outcomes are possible, though, as you say, the mere act of separating them could risk begging the question. I have made all my data available in the hope that others will try similar experiments with different assumptions.
3. Syntax, morphology, and semantics have all be encoded here, so the fact that the "-where" words are locative, for example could make a difference. There are also examples of genitives for the "-thing", "-one", and "-body" words, such as "for anyone's benefit", which didn't appear for the "-where" words.
4. I'll just preface this by saying that I collected and coded the data and then I ran the analysis. I didn't add or drop individual columns and then rerun the data to see if that changed the outcome.
So, in this particular example, it seemed to me that the wh- words in particular seemed like a salient group, so I coded that. That sent me looking for other phonological regularities, which led me to th-, which also codes for the historical relationship between "the" and "that/this". As I say in the paper, I try to include whatever seems like it could possibly be relevant without prejudging. A good next step would be to look at the contribution of each feature and to see what might be excluded.
My new book, "Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World," pulls six leadership lessons from complexity science. I believe these lessons can help leaders deal with increasing complexity in their public and private lives. My goal: readers gain a gut-level understanding that most of life takes place in organized systems where no one is in control - and thus leaders should seek influence, rather than control. https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Out-Control-Emergent-Leadership-ebook/dp/B09G4V4WLZ/
I write logic puzzles sometimes: https://primepuzzles.wordpress.com/ I enjoy external constraints and writing puzzles for people who actually want to solve them, so if anyone wants to "commission" a puzzle like these (for free), just give me some rules to work with (e.g. what type of puzzle? do you want the clues to spell your name or something? etc) and I'll give it a shot. (I am guessing there will be 0-2 takers; I may have to re-evaluate this plan if there are many more.)
Don't know if anyone will still see this, but I translate Russian to English, with particular emphasis on scientific papers. If interested, email this gmail: ebtranslationsetc
I work on Copilot (copilot.github.com), an AI-powered programming assistant that can write code for you. We're currently hiring developers with experience/interest in developer tools as well as ML engineers and more. If you'd like to help shape the future of AI-assisted programming (and make it safe and human-aligned), send your resume to mtaran@github.com. It's a bonus that GitHub is remote-first, hiring all over the world, and the team is awesome to work with!
I build stuff from LEGO bricks - mostly small models that look well on a bookshelf. I'm mostly interested in sci-fi themes, with some builds based on works of fiction in the genre. You can see most of my creations here: https://linktr.ee/john.carter (choose your preferred platform), including instructions for several of them.
I do commissions, so if you're interested in having custom designed LEGO model contact me at john.carter.workshop [at gmail]. I can deliver either a finished model, or instructions and list of required parts and help you order parts yourself (the second is preferable if you're based outside of EU).
So I'm at sea trying to get my book in front of the right kinds of readers. I'll spare you the litany of frustrations, but I really think many readers here would be interested in it. It's called "Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers and Algorithmic Matchmakers" https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intimacy-Virtual-Algorithmic-Matchmakers/dp/0231200943
It considers what happens when evolved human nature has to operate in a world of robotics, VR and artificial intelligence. I'd obviously like people to buy it, and to post about it on social media etc. Even more, however, if you have a podcast/youtube/blog, I'm always up for interviews - there's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about it.
Not sure if anybody's still looking at this thread, but: the startup I work for is looking for more software engineers. It's a smart, friendly, collaborative team trying to revolutionize software testing -- I personally have grown more as an engineer here than everywhere else I've worked at put together. We have more than a few ACX/MR/Money Stuff readers, and come from a variety of political viewpoints and academic/career backgrounds.
The catch is that we *really* don't want engineers working remote when we don't have to, so you have to be willing to relocate to Northern Virginia (Metro DC) and join our fully-vaccinated office.
We're not extremely picky about your tech specialization (most of us work on a variety of fairly-different projects over our time here), but we're definitely most enthusiastic about senior-ish people right now.
I'm an interview coach and a general career/executive coach. I work with a fair few folks in (especially) tech to improve communication skills and help people to sell themselves. Free 15-min consultation to see if it's a good fit. https://www.smithinterviewcoaching.com/
We are working on governance protocol design, which is a bit like designing a new tiny nation, and we are seeking new teammates to help with that design process. This is a long-term, patient project, which requires careful and extended thinking about intricate mechanisms, political coordination, credit assignment, and other such topics. Thus, we need people capable of precise thinking, with very long attention spans, at least in this domain. We don't have a job ad up for this role since we don't expect to find anyone for it online, but this community is a bit different. Pay for this role is significant, as it is very important and we value it highly.
We're also hiring in many other domains: engineering, design, strategy, filmmaking, and recruiting, for example.
Reserve is a cryptocurrency project. We have a stablecoin protocol on Ethereum, and a mobile app for using our USD stablecoin in Venezuela, Argentina, and Colombia. The app has 50k active users (100k weekly app visitors, but 50k we count as financially active), and we are aiming to get past 100k by end of year. Over the last few months we've scaled our team to handle customer support – eng+product is still only 16 people, but total team is 160. The project is complicated, risky, and stressful, and since earlier this year when we began concretely serving a meaningful number of people who are dealing with hyperinflation, it's become pretty rewarding as well.
It's not about tech or futurism or AI or psychology or rationality.
It's about my life as a winemaker-turned-distiller with blended senses (a weird variant of auditory-olfactory synesthesia). Check it out if you're interested in neurodiversity, and if you like reading other people's personal stories :) www.chromaticaromatic.com
In other news, I'm doing monthly online wine and beer tastings via zoom with a synethesia theme. I co-host with Sean Day, president of the International Association of Synesthetes, Artists, and Scientists. We get together, talk about synesthesia, and taste beverages following a theme. The ticket is $35, all proceeds go to fund the Synesthesia Society of Africa, and it's limited to eight people. Neurotypical people are always welcome. If you think this would be fun and interesting, please reply to this post and I'll hook you up.
Hello! I'm writing about play-and-earn and play-to-earn game design on Metaversus. If you're interested to learn more, I think this is a great place to start.
Dear all, my name is Thomas Prosser and I'm a politics academic at Cardiff University in the UK. In my Substack, I write about politics from a heterodox perspective, avoiding groupthink. I do so with reference to theories of institutions, values and ideology, these being areas of academic expertise. My influences include Scott Alexander, Ronald Inglehart, Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan. Here's the link: https://thomasprosser.substack.com/
Please check it out! It's free and I'm always so grateful for subscribers :-)
To be clear, this is a ratings site not a review site, correct? Nobody is writing up any analyses of these movies to demonstrate/show how they're woke, is that right?
It's pretty interesting! but as someone who's really out of the loop on movies, I can't even imagine how a movie like THE FOREVER PURGE is extremely woke. (and extremely racist, presumably by the most recent cynical use of the term). It's about killing zombies isn't it?
Hmmm. I see “Black Panther” listed in approximately the Top 10 and I am quite sure this is wrong. IMO, Black Panther is the most conservative blockbuster since The Dark Knight.
To briefly recap: the principal villain in the movie is a man who has suffered a tremendous injustice at the hands of a Kingdom which has drunk a little bit too deeply from its own mythology. The sin this Kingdom has committed against the man has turned him into tyrant—pathologically resentful, driven only by a desire to destroy the Kingdom. He is not redeemed at all by his status as a victim. At the point in the film villain appears to triumph, he literally burns down the Kingdom’s sacred temple—the locus of its own mythology and national self-understanding.
The hero of the story is a noble prince who believes deeply in the mythology of his own Kingdom. When he learns of the sins that his father and forefathers have committed, rather than losing hope—or defiling the memory of his father (as the tyrannical villain attempts to)—he literally takes a trip to the underworld, communes with the spirit of Kings past, comprehends his Very Human father’s sin against the villain, and then returns to land of the living dead set on ousting the tyrant and restoring the original promise/greatness of the Kingdom.
I literally left the theatre being like, “wtf, did Jordan Peterson write this movie?”
Interesting take! I agree that Black Panther is not woke. The villian advocates revolution and never forgiving his enemies, and the hero advocates forgiveness and collaboration.
Actually if you think “woke” is a good thing you’d probably rate this movie woke, since it’s black and has women who are integral and interesting. But if you dislike woke things for the reasons I’m used to hearing, then you can easily see Killmonger as an imagining of wokeness taken too far.
(Warning, I did not get very far into the movie at all; there are some movies history-and-economics people should not try to watch, take this as a grain of salt.)
My theory is that it's about a non-western society that is positively portrayed and can compete with - and, in many respects, do better than - western societies, in spite of not westernizing. That's a shining ideal for people who think that the western world is tainted and are looking for alternatives.
You have accurately described the political implications of the movie's plot. But it is inconceivable that you didn't notice, or didn't think approximately every other person in the English-speaking world would consider it significant, that approximately all of the people doing all of those things were black, and not assimilated into a white and/or western culture. And that it was a fairly blatant theme that what these non-assimilated black people had fictionally done, was better than anything white people had done.
And yet, as ramparen notes, people classically defined as "woke" seem to love it.
"Woke" as it exists in 2021, seems to be much more about adding up the Oppressed Minority Victim Points than about substantive political issues. Score enough OMVPs, and you're allowed to be a counterrevolutionary monarchist (or misogynistic religious fundamentalist or whatever) and still count as woke.
Wait a moment, that was my *point*. Woke people (apologies for any of them reading this who would object to this statement, if so please feel free to clarify) don't like our present culture, which they think is evil. Watching black people in a society untouched by whiteness succeed by playing by their own rules is appealing to woke people. Details of how the functional non-western/non-white society works are irrelevant.
"Irrelevant" is probably an overstatement, replace that with "of secondary importance."
All of this. Well, all of this as reasons the woke love Black Panther, I don't agree about the point scoring bit.
To tack on with a specific scene: there's a point, later in the movie, when the main characters go to the outcast tribe for help. The chief says no, and the white American CIA agent starts to talk. In a normal action movie of this type, this is where someone gives a speech and gets the powerful person on the sidelines to help the protagonist triumph. It's what most of the audience would expect at that moment. And instead the Wakandan chief shouts the agent down (hooting like an ape). And then balls him out, telling him that if he speaks again "I'll feed you to my children." He holds that for just a moment, Agent Baggins looks appropriately frightened, then breaks up laughing and says that he's kidding, his family is vegetarian.
This chunk is like a minute long, and it does two things. First, it sets up a white savior moment and then steps on it, and then it plays into expectations about darkest Africa barbarians, and steps on those. It's a beloved scene among woke fans.
LOL! Great analysis!
I'm co-hosting a new podcast called Rock Docs: A Podcast About Movies About Music. If you're into music &/or movies, you might enjoy it. Teaser out now, first episode of season 1 comes out 10/26. Twitter & IG: @RockDocsPod https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rock-docs/id1588316475
Oh man, not to shill for shill (but I sort of really don't have anything to shill here)
I wrote an essay recently about how movies that feature music need to come back (films like all the Beatles movies, like Rock-n-Roll High School, etc)
I felt really good about it but have failed to secure a publisher. Alas! But anyway... I dig this concept
To me it's crazy that big acts like Taylor Swift don't just string 6 or 7 songs people love together with a very thin, fun plot and bang out a movie every few years. It's like leaving money on the table
Yeah, I used to love watching Elvis’ movies. Can I read your essay? Firstlast gmail
sure I'll send it. It's p fun I think!
One of the reasons why I like movies in the 40s-50s they would feature songs, sometimes smoothly inserted and sometimes oddly inserted. I love it -- check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uuAjwvtxEM and also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jwPVe_sWa8
Ricky Nelson, forever underrated.
My blog/podcast:
wearenotsaved.com
I've decided to give what I write the broad label of eschatology. But I'm trying to expand it vertically to encompass secular stuff like x-risks, and vertically to encompass things like the end of nations, ideologies, and cultures. (So yes, The Singularity counts).
If you ever listened to the Slate Star Codex Podcast I was the voice of that until Solenoid Entity took it over.
I'll have a look. Could you recommend some posts to start with (most read, personal favourites, et.c.) or should I just dive in?
If you like stuff that's really long, I think this might be one of my best pieces:
https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/08/26/justice-mercy-data-evidence-blm-and-qanon/
If you want to see me disagreeing with Scott you can see disagreeing his prediction methodology here:
https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/04/18/pandemic-uncovers-the-ridiculousness-of-superforecasting/
https://wearenotsaved.com/2020/05/30/my-final-case-against-superforecasting-with-criticisms-considered-objections-noted-and-assumptions-buttressed/
A fair amount of my writing is on how traditional ways of doing things can be the most rational, think cultural evolution:
https://wearenotsaved.com/2019/06/22/traditions-separating-the-important-from-the-inconsequential/
And if you like book reviews I just published the reviews for all the books I read in September (which I do every month):
https://wearenotsaved.com/2021/10/06/the-9-books-i-finished-in-september/
And I will say that I'm grateful in advance for any time you spend reading my stuff. It's always an honor.
Crossposting from one of your blog posts comments...
I’m a superforecaster. I did a little skimming so forgive me if I missed some of your points.
I feel like you’re arguing that people are idiots and bad at using information, so aggregating information better is bad.
You also argue that superforecasting is a bad tool for certain problems, in a way that feels like a strawman to me. Of course it’s not the right tool for every job. Who is suggesting handing innumerate people probabilities with no information about payoffs as if that were a way to make a decision? Overall it just feels like most of your gripes are with how people make decisions in general and only tangentially related to superforecasting.
I responded to your comment on my blog. Thanks for taking the time to leave it and for reading (or even skimming) my stuff.
My lockdown project was to learn C++ and OpenGL properly, so I started writing some generative art screensavers with OpenFrameworks. I've put the result- The Jean-Paul Software Screen Explosion- on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1631280/The_JeanPaul_Software_Screen_Explosion/
It grew quite a bit beyond the original brief to include proper multi-monitor support and customisation in a way I've not seen done- you can configure it with the physical positions of your monitors to give the impression of a single, giant screen. Plus I'm going to keep updating it as I find doing this sort of thing fun.
£4, PC only, get it while it's hot.
How possible is it to add workshop support for users to create their own screensavers?
Well right now you can upload your own LIDAR scans for the fancy LIDAR scan viewer- and soon new models for the other bits. But eventually I'll be adding generic fragment shader support either via Shadertoy or just direct upload
I've written a 140,000 word vampire romance novel: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13710744/chapters/31496223
I have been told that people who "don't typically like this sort of thing" like this thing, so give it a try.
It's a rational take on romance, vampires, and relationships, with worldbuilding and a fantasy creature that has been read as an AI. It is a lot more accessible to people, particularly women, than things like HPMoR.
If you want to read me selling it in long-form, check this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/p4j8ll/rthfcrom_vampire_flower_language_epilogue_all/h8z1olx/
Would greatly appreciate constructive criticism, praise, and/or further questions.
I haven't read it, but I wanted to give you praise for writing it in the first place. ~140k words is no small feat; writing a story of that size is a lot of work. Congrats for getting that out of the door!
Thank you, I appreciate it!
Just read the whole thing, glad I gave it a try!
I'm not very familiar with romance as a genre, so the thing that stood out to me most is how long the novel took to reveal the central conflict. Maybe that's common for romance, that you need some time to just chill with the characters so you understand what's at stake, but it did feel a bit meandering for the first half.
You write humourous banter well; I found these passages endeared the characters more to me than tender kissing and long walks on the beach. Would have preferred the proportions of these scenes to be flipped, though I understand that's not in character for either of them. Whether I liked them or not, I feel that all the characters were well-realized and I had no trouble following their internal narratives or actions.
Your reasoning for it being a rationalist work is that "disagreements are based on fundamental philosophical ideologies, and are communicated at length, and this communication leads to resolution and/or realisation of 'irreconcilable differences'". As the writer it's your prerogative to say that the central conflict is ideological rather than emotional or cultural. But it seems to me that the conflict wasn't cast in ideological terms until the very end of the novel, and prior to that section I would have described it as nothing more than a strong culture clash. Not sure exactly how I would describe the vampire culture as portrayed here, but it's definitely much deeper and more alien than simply "consequentialist".
Wow, I really appreciate you taking the time to read it and to write me such a beautiful, nuanced critique! I think you are right on the money.
A lot of it is because of the serialised nature of it, with me writing it over 3 years but publishing as I went. Although I knew the plot beats, things obviously developed. You've made me realise I sorely need to go through and re-edit/overhaul it because it will be much stronger.
> the thing that stood out to me most is how long the novel took to reveal the central conflict
I agree, I am not satisfied with this. There's a few problems that mean it kind of has to be had this way (William won't declare war until he falls in love with Red, and I feel like not including the interpersonal journey to bring them together is a bit 'show don't tell'). But Julias is a real game-changer for the novel, and him being introduced so late is a problem that I can't really rectify. I think I'd need to introduce more relevant content earlier on, so Julias is a crescendo of a general theme of Red not liking people serving William (e.g. finding that Paola doesn't get paid, for example).
> You write humourous banter well; I found these passages endeared the characters more to me than tender kissing and long walks on the beach. Would have preferred the proportions of these scenes to be flipped, though I understand that's not in character for either of them.
This is music to my ears! I honestly love writing the humorous banter and inserting more of it would be so much fun.
> Whether I liked them or not, I feel that all the characters were well-realized and I had no trouble following their internal narratives or actions.
That makes me really happy! I am not sure if that extends to characters like Elodia, Cassius, Lucia or Paola or the janissaries, but they all have internal narratives/actions and I'm glad it came through.
> But it seems to me that the conflict wasn't cast in ideological terms until the very end of the novel, and prior to that section I would have described it as nothing more than a strong culture clash.
Alas, this is the thing I was talking about: I realised when I'd nearly published the whole thing that William had a consequentialist viewpoint and Red a more deontologist and this summarised everything. If I'd not already published the whole thing, I would have inserted more examplese of this throughout, as you are right that this is weak and seems to come from nowhere.
>Not sure exactly how I would describe the vampire culture as portrayed here, but it's definitely much deeper and more alien than simply "consequentialist".
Yeah, vampire culture is not consequentialist, William's attitude is. I hope the culture didn't seem alien for alien's sake, as I tried my best to think it through from its origins.
Thank you again for your beautiful comment, I really appreciate it! I assume that you must have enjoyed it on some level or you wouldn't have bothered reading it all in two days, so thank you. It means a lot that someone read it, (presumably) enjoyed it, and was engaged with it.
You've made me want to grab the story and rework large segments to fill in these shortcomings. I plan to release it on kindle eventually (as a pure vanity project), so maybe for that.
I also read the whole thing, inspired by your comment in this thread - thanks for writing it!
I liked that there was a nice explanation for why William's romance with a human was new ground for him, despite his long life. This made the changes William was going through more plausible (though it did still seem a little weird/convenient to me that William came around to a more 'human' view of morality so quickly, and I might have preferred it if he stayed a bit more alien).
I liked the way you explored various difficulties in the relationship based on Red and William's differences - for example, cultural differences around clothing, Red's feelings of powerlessness, different perspectives on Julias, etc. If anything I would have liked more of this.
I sorta skimmed through some of the kissing sequences (not because they were bad, I always do that), and like Procrastinating enjoyed the banter - I thought you did a really good job with their voices. But I worry that adding more might be out of character, especially for William, and could feel phony or reduce the impact of the banter that is in there. I also agree that the beginning part was meandering plot-wise, but I didn't mind that and maybe kind of liked it. Life and romances are meandering, right?
I liked the world-building - it felt detailed and realistic, and while many of my questions remained unanswered the mystery also added to the atmosphere and ultimately I didn't mind that there were some secrets that it may yet keep.
> I realised when I'd nearly published the whole thing that William had a consequentialist viewpoint and Red a more deontologist and this summarised everything
Hopefully not everything! I like the idea of inserting some more examples of this throughout, but I wouldn't want the conflicts to boil down to a single dimension. With all the richness and complexity of the characters and the different worlds they come from, it seems too shallow and reductive if there's just this single key axis on which they differ that causes conflict.
Wow, thank you! I am humbled that two people have read an entire novel in the space of a few days and then written me such detailed responses. I appreciate it so much.
>(though it did still seem a little weird/convenient to me that William came around to a more 'human' view of morality so quickly, and I might have preferred it if he stayed a bit more alien).
FWIW, his 'human' morality is not as deep as it seems. A reader commented that Julias seems like an AI with a value function of "William's happiness", and if you look at Julias from that point of view, suddenly it becomes a bit more horrific: Julias has expertly manipulated William into either completely changing his moral viewpoint or to changing its outward appearance enough that Red would accept him.
> If anything I would have liked more [about their differences].
I feel like it's long enough without adding more, but I get where you're going! It's a theme that will continue in their relationship if I ever write the sequel.
>Life and romances are meandering, right?
Yeah, we ended up adding a whole chapter of those little moments where you fall in love with someone, as I thought going from meeting someone and having an attraction to "two months later they live together and are very comfortable" seemed too abrupt, but it really affected the pacing. Something to look into when I give it a big edit in a year or two.
>I liked the world-building - it felt detailed and realistic, and while many of my questions remained unanswered the mystery also added to the atmosphere and ultimately I didn't mind that there were some secrets that it may yet keep.
Thank you! I joke that the story is a fanfic of an actually good story because all the worldbuilding I've done implies all these epic things happening throughout history and instead we just have this squishy romance story. I also joke that the "actually good story" would be Cassius' story, despite him barely appearing in this one.
>With all the richness and complexity of the characters and the different worlds they come from, it seems too shallow and reductive if there's just this single key axis on which they differ that causes conflict.
Thank you! And no, you are absolutely right: just the philosophy tied in with Red feeling all his guilt about deserting and lying and William not giving a crap about anything as long as he and the people he cared about lived another day.
Thanks again for reading it, and this constructive criticism is an unbelievable gift.
Yes I did enjoy it! One thing I forgot to mention: Erlis is the best character and the fact he only got an interlude and a fraction of a main chapter is a federal crime. You've made it clear in your FAQ that this isn't Luminosity rehashed and you're not writing about vampires taking over the world... but hot damn I want to see Erlis take on the Queen of Atlanta. Spinoff novel when?
> If I'd not already published the whole thing, I would have inserted more examples of this throughout, as you are right that this is weak and seems to come from nowhere.
It's not weak because Julias was introduced so late, it's weak because Julias is a terrible vehicle for discussing deontologist vs. consequentialist ethics. For one thing, his situation is contrived in a way that maximally conflicts with human ideas of freedom and personhood. It's a thought experiment, a gotcha for opponents of slavery in the same way that the repugnant conclusion is used as a gotcha for utilitarians. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/repugnant-conclusion
For another, Red does NOT reason like a deontologist about Julias' enslavement: he asks questions like "will being free make Julias happy?" and "can we undo the magic warping Julias' values?" These are utilitarian concerns through and through.
Compare Red's solicitousness here with the more virtue-based criticisms that Dorothy might have made against him (possibly; since he dropped two bombshells on her at once her response is all tangled up. I'm extrapolating from what I think she might have said if Red hadn't given up and left almost immediately). Homosexual relationships (in Dorothy's maybe-view) should not be acknowledged as real love. EVEN IF it were true that Red would be happiest with William and that everyone in his life were ok with it, still Red should break it off because men loving men is capital-W Wrong. In the same vein, EVEN IF one could somehow prove that Red's desertion didn't change the outcome of the battle, was not discovered and harmed no one, he should still atone and attempt to restore justice because cowardice is Wrong. There are established ways for people to deal with sin while remaining within their own moral framework but Red never considers any of these, instead wallowing in self-hatred before finally allowing William to recontextualize things for him so that he was never wrong in the first place. That's why I object to framing the conflicts in the novel as ideological, because the various deontologist viewpoints are not so much defended as lampooned and tossed aside.
Having said all that, a romance doesn't need to have rousing philosophical debates to be worth reading! One thing I liked and want expanded on is how it subverted the common tropes of romances with a sharp power differential - there was no pressure for Red to become a vampire himself, à la Twilight, nor become entirely dependent on William. I don't think any vampire romance can get away without a Let's Talk About Power Dynamics scene, but this book handled it well and livened up the first half, which was slow plot-wise.
Ha, wow! Thank you :)
> One thing I forgot to mention: Erlis is the best character and the fact he only got an interlude and a fraction of a main chapter is a federal crime
Oh, I agree. I love Erlis and his plan for the world. Erlis is definitely the Luminosity!Bella of the whole thing, only he starts with absolutely no support (unlike Bella) and has absolutely no power. His relationship with William will pay off though :)
> but hot damn I want to see Erlis take on the Queen of Atlanta. Spinoff novel when?
I might write up a short story on that subject. Expanding Erlis is definitely something I want to do! But, "when"? Like 3-5 years given how slow I write, sorry!
> It's not weak because Julias was introduced so late, it's weak because Julias is a terrible vehicle for discussing deontologist vs. consequentialist ethics.
Oh wow, I see your points. Yes. I struggled with Julias for that reason, but I am *guessing* that anyone with half a brain reading the story would understand that the author does not support slavery.
>[dorothy and deontology]
Huh, that's a great way of looking at it. Though Dorothy isn't a generic-christian-deontologist (the abortion scene early on, though maybe she's just a hypocrite?)
>There are established ways for people to deal with sin while remaining within their own moral framework but Red never considers any of these, instead wallowing in self-hatred before finally allowing William to recontextualize things for him so that he was never wrong in the first place.
Oh damn, I love that. Especially how it contrasts between William going to confession early in the novel (which he uses mostly as a rhetorical device to think through / talk through his feelings with someone who won't share his secrets, as he believes that all sects are heretical as they aren't dark ages catholicism, and he believes his soul is with his wife in heaven)
> don't think any vampire romance can get away without a Let's Talk About Power Dynamics scene, but this book handled it well and livened up the first half, which was slow plot-wise.
Yeah, one of my hard rules for the universe is no non-consensual sex/romance is ever visible (there's already plenty of stories featuring sexual trauma, and I don't want to write one of them), so it was very important to try to hash out the power dynamic thing. It came across a little preachier than I'd like but the alternative would be for the whole thing to be uncomfortable so you compromise?
Thanks again. Really love your insight!
You can count me as one more person who read this in two days due to this post! Thank you for putting it out there. I had ran across the title in r/rational, but never actually opened it.
I have to admit that from this description I wasn't expecting the romance genre at all (even though the words "romance" and "relationships" were right there). You are absolutely right that it is virtually non-existent in r/rational. I love a good romance, and I think this was it, but I would never have said it is a rational story. Not in the sense that I can point to any specific flaws, but in the sense that if I read it without any context, I would not have pattern-matched to the rational genre (and I still kinda don't?). I guess this boils down to definitions, so I'll leave it at that.
I leave you with some scattered thoughts:
I _thought_ that scene with Dorothy was alluding to an abortion, but I kept expecting a call back that made it more explicit, perhaps during that last conversation with Red. (Which was amazing, btw. It felt realistic, and even though it was heartbreaking, at least they had a hug at the end. It's hard to strike a balance between realistic and feel-good endings.)
Speaking of realism, after Red moved back to Ohio I was seriously wondering how the hell you were going to finish the story. Sometimes characters have a will of their own and it seems like the only path forward leads towards misery. I didn't really believe Julias would be successful in bringing them back together...
... and it's _so_ creepy that he did. I was actually horrified at this. It also felt like the other shoe didn't drop. We know, as readers, that Julias has very specific intentions, which are definitely alien and not wholesome. I guess wanting to make someone happy is not that bad, but he does briefly consider killing William as a solution to his depression. Red might die one day, and William might be devastated enough that Julias decides to kill him, and that possibility is never really addressed (although admittedly this is not the focus of the story). It is not clear whether Julias does have the ability to change his values enough that taking a vacation is not the worst part of his year. And the fact that William and Red are happy with this as a compromise, when it pains Julias as much... I don't know. It didn't sit well with me, and I feel like I need a whole other book about this dilema. Except there might not be a moral and narratively satisfying plot that is still realistic and doesn't boil down to "guess what, he did have the capacity to change into someone whose values don't bother us!" I dunno, you presented a moral dilema for which I don't really have an answer and I don't think the characters ended up picking a good one either.
I think you portrayed Red's internal feelings really well. The descriptions of the physical sensations he felt in his various moments of nervousness or happiness or awful certainty that he needed to leave were on point. In general I think Red's characterization is my favorite part of this story. It's a bit sad that we don't get the same view into William's sensations, but it actually works really well as a way of making him feel more alien.
Finally, I kind of want a clothing meaning glossary. I know, I know, it is a matter complex enough that not even 100 year old vampires get it right. Still kind of want it :) I was also a bit disappointed that William never taught Red (or Red never learned) the basics. Red's talent for figuring out appropriate gifts or clothes is never really explained, and I felt like it needed an explanation. Getting an outfit right one time might be attributed to chance, but it seems like he more or less consistently got it right, and yet never made an effort to learn.
Anyway, thank you for writing and sharing! I enjoyed it.
And thank *you* for your comment! The comments I've gotten have made me over the moon, thank you most sincerely.
> I love a good romance, and I think this was it, but I would never have said it is a rational story.
Yeah, I think you start getting in the weeds on definitions and it will be a long debate. In general, the key idea of a "rational" story is one that 'makes sense' with nobody doing things just because the plot requires, and the world that a story is set in making sense. There's "rationalist" which involves teaching the reader rationality, more in the style of HPMOR.
Basically, my goal in a 'rational' romance was something that didn't rely on "hilarious misunderstandings" (typical in a rom-com) and also had people acting intelligently in how they interacted with their partner. That followed the template of reforming-the-bad-boy but had him 'genuinely' reform through time and self-reflection rather than through The Power Of Love. And of course the worldbuilding which I hope is consistent. (I mean, Julias transforms the way he does and has x-ray vision because he's a 4D object projected into 3D space!)
... that was a loooong aside, sorry!
>I kept expecting a call back [to the abortion scene to make] it more explicit, perhaps during that last conversation with Red.
Yeah, she never makes it explicit, but she says "you kept my secret, I kept yours". I struggle between writing realistic dialog and exposition, but I just couldn't think of a way to have Dorothy say "ten years ago you stole Mom's jewellery and snuck me to New York to have an abortion, so I will be quiet about the deserting" without it sounding clunky and forced. IDK.
> I didn't really believe Julias would be successful in bringing them back together...... and it's _so_ creepy that he did. I was actually horrified at this.
:D I'm glad. Did you see the other commenter who said that William's about-face seemed a bit sudden? Julias as an unfriendly AI cautionary tale disguised as a golem is precisely one of the reasons I put it under the rational umbrella, even if it took a reader to comment on the parallels that were already there to really help me lean into it.
> Red might die one day, and William might be devastated enough that Julias decides to kill him, and that possibility is never really addressed (although admittedly this is not the focus of the story).
Wouldn't that be grand? The comments people are giving are making me want to write more side stories instead of the werewolf lawyer story I was going to do next. So, the list: "Erlis's rise to world domination(?????)" and "Red's mortality".
> Except there might not be a moral and narratively satisfying plot that is still realistic and doesn't boil down to "guess what, he did have the capacity to change into someone whose values don't bother us!"
I think this is the crux. I don't like to give opinions on my work as I believe in death of the author, but from my point of view, Julias starts out slightly sadder than he was with Elodia, because he is not able to dedicate every moment to helping W like he did with E. Then as William's changed values become more and more set, as he begins genuinely enjoying hearing Julias's (dishonest) stories of how much fun he had on his vacation, as he spends more time around Red who has pure and ardent desire for Julias's values to mimic standard human values and William who cares about Red's, he takes on William's new value function which includes Julias having his own human-like value function, and so begins to ENJOY spending time flying through the cliffs of Crete with his son and chasing butterflies, but he enjoys it not because he enjoys his son and his life but because William values him enjoying it. If that makes sense? It has an interesting horror undercurrent, of Julias's enjoyment coming from a source you find distasteful.
But also, Julias's value function is not exclusively William-oriented: he had a wife who he loved, and he loves his son and does value spending time with him for his own sake. The order of magnitude is just very different. He probably values pleasing William as much as a human values their own life, and he probably values his wife/son/etc as much as a kid values their job at mcdonald's that their wealthy parents made them get to teach them the value of money: non-zero, but they wouldn't go to crazy to keep it.
> In general I think Red's characterization is my favorite part of this story.
It's a co-written project and Red is my coauthor's character, and I agree, she writes him so well. I think she gives the story a soul.
> Finally, I kind of want a clothing meaning glossary.
Yeah, it's too complicated. I do need to go through all the meanings I assign to make a 'bible' for future stories for easter eggs (there was a small one where Red rolled his sleeves up to his elbow...)
> Red's talent for figuring out appropriate gifts or clothes is never really explained, and I felt like it needed an explanation.
Oh, right! I will explain that for you.
This is how magic works in-universe for most humans: https://imgur.com/EVfY3eF.jpg
Being able to communicate to vampires with his clothing is Red's; vampires are kind of aware that some humans are 'special' and that is why Cassius found him. All humans are 'special', just not always in ways that vampires notice.
Kind of like the witches in Luminosity.
(Because people often ask: William's small magic was he could tell how deep water is just by looking at it. I have not got a firm opinion about whether these are lost after turning into a vampire)
> rational vs rationalist
Fair enough, I was conflating the two. I think I would lean towards saying that a rational story in this sense is just *good* :) But well, I guess there is space for value in non-rational genres too.
> abortion scene
You are right, it wouldn't have made sense to say it outright during their final conversation.
> The comments people are giving are making me want to write more side stories
Please do! From your comments here I am realizing there is much more to the world building than was apparent in FVL. And that's the kind of thing that is at once expected and sad and solvable by writing different stories in the same universe.
> I do need to go through all the meanings I assign to make a 'bible' for future stories for easter eggs (there was a small one where Red rolled his sleeves up to his elbow...)
I did notice, and it made me inordinately happy. I wish there had been more of this kind of thing peppered around. It might be difficult to strike a balance between including such Easter eggs and not having the plot depend on them so much that a more inattentive reader gets lost. Not striking this balance might be precisely one of the things that make many rational(ist) works less accessible to people... But still, I would have loved it. Add it to the pile of things that would get a chance to shine in spin off stories.
> This is how magic works in-universe for most humans
This is interesting. Not sure how or where, but this is the kind of detail that might have been nice to include somewhere. Or in some future work. :)
More ideas: a whole other plot with different characters whose main conflict / problem is whatever William does in Sardinia; William's "origin story", including all the politics that eventually led to him being king.
Anyway, I'll follow you in AO3 and will be glad to read whatever you come up with, be it in this universe or not.
> I think I would lean towards saying that a rational story in this sense is just *good* :)
let's both go on /r/rational and get involved in the interminal discourse on this subject, lol.
> a whole other plot with different characters whose main conflict / problem is whatever William does in Sardinia
I joke that VFL is slash fanfic of a story where Cassius is the main character, and that would be the plot. I plan on VFL having a sequel that goes into the fall out of Sardinia, but it's not even on my roadmap.
> William's "origin story", including all the politics that eventually led to him being king.
God, that is a long and tricky one. I did include an interlude about him first becoming a King!
His backstory would require me to commit to one particular detail that I'm still wavering on, and writing about how he came about New Holland is something I also struggle with due to the obvious colonialism associated with the European invasion of Australia.
I do have a lot of little headcanons of things he did with his (un)life, but I don't think they'll make a terribly interesting piece together.
> Or in some future work.
Pointless background: This whole project is basically a prequel to a bunch of glowfic me and my coauthor have been writing together since 2001 (i.e. since before there was a word for it). There's a LOT there but there's SO MUCH time taken to make glowfic into something vaguely professional (with more than its share of flaws, as pointed out by the wonderful lovely other commenters). I wish I could devote more time to it, and I might try next year when I move to working 4 days a week, but I'm not sure I'm able to do it. But there's a LOT, and if you are happy to read glowfic that is not close to the same quality (fan on discord read the most polished glowfic I had and basically said it wasn't any good, as expected).
https://anjel.blog/
My new blog, which covers subjects that people here might find interesting.
Urbit name! Fun
Yep! Although I have to say, so far Urbit is not living up to its promise as a replacement for the current Internet. I mean I don't seem to be able to join any groups, and the whole thing just feels like an overly ambitious chat app.
Still there are things about Urbit that feel really promising, like Hoon, so I'm sticking with the handle.
I tried Urbit like a year ago and it was def a disaster
but you know...
they are trying to build all of computing from scratch
It will take a while
I don't think they pretend like it's all ready to go yet
i am sort of curious how far it's come in a year
Sounds like there might be something wrong with your setup! Feel free to DM me at ~sitbus-dapsup, I might be able to help. I've been using it for years now and haven't had a problem joining a group in a very long time.
BTW in case you don't already know, the most important one to join first is ~bollug-worlus/urbit-index so you can see the directory of other groups :)
We have a new preprint on the psychology of extremist ideology online. It uses the last ten years of the RedPill Reddit group to look at how people join and integrate into the worldview.
One of our major findings is the role of behavioral modification (self-help, addiction, etc) in the early stages, vs explanation adoption (“Neoreaction”, pseudo evo psych), etc.
Another interesting finding is the key role of status concerns. This matches findings in qualitative studies of offline versions of these groups, as well as men convicted of domestic violence, and school shooters.
Comments very welcome. It’s at https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.00626
I hope you realise that "Neoreaction" was coined by people who dislike "reactionaries". There will always be reactionaries, they are part of the cosmic tapestry. You are kinda chasing your own tali there, buddy.
Is that true? I thought Moldbug coined the term.
It definitely wasn't Moldbug. There's a blog post on his old blog where he says something like "I will accept the term neoreactionary" but that's it.
It might have been Nick Land who coined it, but that guy was always a kind of critic of reactionaries who was just there pretending to be part of that group for some reason.
The point is that 99% of people who talk about "neoreaction" are psychologists trying to diagnose a non-existent mental disorder, whereas actual reactionaries are quite rare and don't necessarily agree with much of what Moldbug is saying. So yeah, Moldbug gets the blame for co-opting that term quite aggressively...
What I really wanted to say is that once you start diagnosing your intellectual opponents using ignorant labels that they don't even care for themselves, and surreptitiously lumping the likes of Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn in with school shooters (!!!) you're kinda chasing your own tail.
A few thoughts here:
It's certainly incorrect to say that "99% of people who talk about "neoreaction" are psychologists" — as you will see when you read the paper, two of our three citations we refer people to are social scientists, and it's their work that leads us to name the cluster that way. Indeed, for better or for worse, I've not seen any work in the psych literature that even talks about NRx as a thing; indeed, this is one reason we have such a large lit review — psych hasn't really addressed ideology as a phenomenon.
Our paper doesn't talk about Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land, Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn etc, at all. I haven't searched the archives for any of these name (IIRC, I might have tried "Moldbug") but TRP is not a site that discusses them in any detail. If you're curious, you can get a sense for what fits in our NRx cluster (see Figure one) by digging into the online appendix for sample posts.
Re: status concerns, and then domestic violence, etc — this is a connection we make to a separate cluster, "Hierarchy and Status". I encourage you to read the paper for more on what's going on there in that section of the ideology, and the discussion for references to the psych/social science literature.
Nice!
"Come for the self-help; stay for the oppression narrative"
`This reveals a large population of "tourists'', who leave quickly, and a smaller group of "residents'' who join the group and remain for orders of magnitude longer.`
As tourist myself I would like to offer an alternate explanation for the division between tourists and residents. TRP is basically offering step by step instructions for getting laid. That's what I came for, that's what I got, it worked, and I moved on. When you are looking for the answer to some problem and you find it and it solves the problem, you close the tab don't you?
And for some people I assume it doesn't work, or they really were looking for a worldview, and they stay.
It seems like this theory should get some attention in your paper since it was basically the original stated purpose of the subreddit.
Some complexity here. I encourage you to read the paper — you will see there's a significant chunk of PUA in the network analysis. PUA plays a similar role to the self-help cluster — they're both classed as "behavioral", rather than "explanatory" in our analysis. Your personal experience, in other words, fits our analysis rather well.
As a side note, TRP has a somewhat complex relationship with the "seduction" and PUA subreddits. Some of our (unpublished) analyses looked at these communities as they evolved in parallel, going all the way back to the USENET days. The PUA groups tended to be purely behavioral, with a little bit of froth of NLP. Only a few of the PUA figures made the transition to the more explanatory-based TRP; IIRC, I think Mystery did, although it was a bit entrepreneurial. A book called the Red Queen played a significant role.
Re: your question of why people stay. It's difficult to get at the deeper reasons people stay; we can watch the associations, but why people transition from behavior to explanation is a challenging question. We do know that it's the explanations that really keep people there, and that's something that's easier to study; we can look at both the cultural evolution of the explanations, and the learning process at the individual level.
Sorry my reply was written before I had completely read it. You actually have addressed it pretty well, and you are sticking to what the available data can tell us.
:) your username is accurate, both in the prediction and the update stages. Thanks for your remarks, and it's very helpful to hear. I'd love to hear more. It's difficult to hear reflective experiences directly from the community, particularly from the tourist component. In part because OMG the IRB that would be required.
Are you physically at CMU? If so, it might be fun to swing by and chat if I'm in the area.
A few thoughts on the paper:
* For the term "ideology", I'm fond of Ayn Rand's comment that the root word is "idea". Identifying the idea explicitly may be useful.
* The paper only seems to address people who are posters. That fails to account for people who may routinely read/absorb/adopt the ideas, but don't post. I'm uncertain how this might have an impact on the paper, but I suspect that there may be interesting phenomena here around the political socialization of norms and ideas.
* Did you address all other realms of conversation overlap? For example, did people in the 5 areas have more or less association with other conversation topics? For example, mental health? Job search? Interior decorating?
Culture War issues, mostly related to the use of the word "extremism":
* The paper spent a huge amount of time hang-wringing over the definition of "ideology" but virtually none about the relevant definition of "extremism".
* The paper applied referred to "The Red Pill" as extreme/extremism, without providing any justification for doing so.
* The use of "extremism" pretty much anywhere is a loaded term, doubly-so here because it isn't usefully distinguished from a related concept. At-best, extremism is a relative term. Ask an average resident of the Afghan hinterlands what they consider to be an extremist ideology and they might say something like "feminism" or "atheism".
* Extremism is typically used to refer to a distance from a reference point, norm or absolute truth. It might be possible to show that r/TRP is substantially further from the viewpoints of, say, the mean US voter. Was that done? Was that done for other ideologies? How about other online ideologies? Was there an attempt to evaluate how much further the ideas expressed deviated from absolute truth? At least some of the example passages seemed to be expressing conventional wisdom (the one about rhetoric and the correct way to interpret academic papers).
* Extremism needs to be separated from fanaticism. The TimeCube guy is an extremist (for at least one value of extreme). Someone who won't stop telling you that "1+1=2" is a fanatic. You can be both. See: Pythagoras.
* What are all of the examples of extremist ideology right-wing-coded? No Occupy Wall Street, socialists?
* Given that you identified the issues of status and personal significance as driving factors, how should they be addressed?
* Most anti-charitable take: Why should I take this as anything other than an excuse to put "red pill", "anti-feminism", "extremism", and "terrorism" together in a published paper?
Hi Garrett
* For the term "ideology", I'm fond of Ayn Rand's comment that the root word is "idea". Identifying the idea explicitly may be useful.
Section One has an extended discussion of ideology as it's been understood, and presents a consensus view common to political scientists and political theorists. Ayn Rand's account doesn't quite make the cut; in part because etymologies aren't particularly good guides to reality. :)
* The paper only seems to address people who are posters. That fails to account for people who may routinely read/absorb/adopt the ideas, but don't post. I'm uncertain how this might have an impact on the paper, but I suspect that there may be interesting phenomena here around the political socialization of norms and ideas.
Yes! We're in discussions with some Reddit folks about how to get the pageview data. This is something we can't currently track. In the end probably only Facebook has the eyeball tracking data after they hacked our iPhones...
* Did you address all other realms of conversation overlap? For example, did people in the 5 areas have more or less association with other conversation topics? For example, mental health? Job search? Interior decorating?
We took a look at where people went -- indeed, we had an undergrad working on this, but she ended up working on a different topic altogether (political evolution of UK Parliament...) One reason is that it's not that interesting, and ends up being "mere journalism". Some of the obvious things are there (e.g., flow into bitcoin and robinhood groups, weightlifting and diet groups, as well as just generally popular subs like askreddit.)
Culture War issues, mostly related to the use of the word "extremism":
* The paper spent a huge amount of time hang-wringing over the definition of "ideology" but virtually none about the relevant definition of "extremism".
That's a helpful point; I'll check in with my colleagues and I'd love any references to the academic literature. Work on Islamism and white supremacy tends to take it for granted. Early on we experimented with the phrase "counter cultural ideology", but this has its own baggage. In the end, because of the connections between RedPill ideology to violent terrorism, "extremism" seemed the better term. (Re: this latter point, we can talk more about it if you like.)
In the end, we're interested in the cognitive science of ideology, in cases where the ideology is sufficiently deviant from ordinary discourse that it needs to be learned from a community that finds itself in conflict with the wider culture. (That's a definition we're playing with for a different paper.)
* The paper applied referred to "The Red Pill" as extreme/extremism, without providing any justification for doing so.
I think this is a repeat of your point above, or rather that my answer above can be applied here as well.
* The use of "extremism" pretty much anywhere is a loaded term, doubly-so here because it isn't usefully distinguished from a related concept. At-best, extremism is a relative term. Ask an average resident of the Afghan hinterlands what they consider to be an extremist ideology and they might say something like "feminism" or "atheism".
I think this is a repeat of your point above, or rather that my answer above can be applied here as well.
* Extremism is typically used to refer to a distance from a reference point, norm or absolute truth. It might be possible to show that r/TRP is substantially further from the viewpoints of, say, the mean US voter. Was that done?
Very hard to do. I'm also rather skeptical of the extent to which people have good reflective access to their own beliefs -- i.e., behavior is better than recall. You might find Nick Chater's recent book "The Mind is Flat" an interesting read on this! It's very easy to get people to explain why they sincerely believe X, when they've just filled out a survey saying they believe not-X.
* Was that done for other ideologies? How about other online ideologies?
This is a case study; we're trying to get a handle on how these things work, propose some key ideas, and validate some claims in the theoretical literature. I've been in conversations with colleagues at Johns Hokpins who are trying to build a large scale survey of the digital agora, and I'm hopeful that they'll succeed!
* Was there an attempt to evaluate how much further the ideas expressed deviated from absolute truth? At least some of the example passages seemed to be expressing conventional wisdom (the one about rhetoric and the correct way to interpret academic papers).
We're interested in how people interact as both individual cognitive agents, and social beings; "absolute truth" is not something we want to adjudicate, or even something helpful to talk about. (We do make one concession, which is to use the phrase "pseudo evo psych", in part as courtesy to our colleagues in that field!)
* Extremism needs to be separated from fanaticism. The TimeCube guy is an extremist (for at least one value of extreme). Someone who won't stop telling you that "1+1=2" is a fanatic. You can be both. See: Pythagoras.
Yes, we're interested in ideology; see my remarks above about "extremism".
* What are all of the examples of extremist ideology right-wing-coded? No Occupy Wall Street, socialists?
This goes beyond the domain of our paper. To be honest, you're asking a lot of culture war questions, rather than questions about culture wars, and these tend not to be scientifically interesting.
* Given that you identified the issues of status and personal significance as driving factors, how should they be addressed?
There's some very helpful references at the end. Let me give an oblique answer that might be of interest...
Jukes' book was a real eye-opener for me; he's a therapist in the UK who works with men with domestic violence convictions referred by the courts. There, the status hierarchy is a key feature of these men's view of the world. (And of course, this is something that's found repeatedly in surveys, although seem my remarks above about the issues with reflective rather than behavioral.)
Jukes' prescription is that it is a long process to get these men beyond a view of the world in terms of status, hierarchy and power vis a vis both women and other men. One of his suggestions is group therapy, which he's found particularly effective. His claim is that when men actually describe some of their beliefs, as they play out in personal interactions with partners, in a face-to-face encounter with other men, they can be defused by being obviously ridiculous. e.g., other men in the group laugh!--but of course, have their own stories.
Jukes is *very* anti standard psychodynamic therapy. He thinks this can be useful later on, but he's concerned with early intervention. IIRC he even says that this modality can literally increase the rate of subsequent violence, perhaps because the therapeutic alliance increases non-adaptive forms of self-esteem. Even before group encounters, BTW, Jukes says you need a contract with the man not to commit more acts of physical violence -- this actually turns out to be effective, they can quit it short term easily.
Anyway, that's an answer that's somewhat oblique to yours -- talking about a more extreme case where status/hierarchy obsessions lead to state intervention. That's naturally where you're going to find the most data, but it's also not clear if the effect is linear. Psychodynamic therapy might be great for a 17 year old who's just a bit of a dick and gone off the deep end into topics labelled NRx or Status that you can see in the paper's table and online appendix.
To be clear, there's nothing wrong with thinking about these things, and I have a great deal of work on status and hierarchy! It's when these integrate into an ideology that they can cause problems.
* Most anti-charitable take: Why should I take this as anything other than an excuse to put "red pill", "anti-feminism", "extremism", and "terrorism" together in a published paper?
I do my best to obey a generalized form of Grice's Maxims, and to be charitable not only in my semantic attributions but in my attributions of pro-social motivations. I'm not always successful! In this case, trust me, and friends know, but here... you're asking me to explicitly ignore them... and I don't know what to do. :)
I am kind of astonished. You seem to take for granted a connection between red pill ideology and violent terrorism? I literally cannot think of a single incident.
Does the tiki torch protest count? Or are you talking about the capitol hill riot?
I don't associate either with the red pill ideology at all.
No. Section 2 in the paper does a brief lit review on both r/TRP and the wider manosphere, but our intention is not to litigate a direct connection between anyone on TRP and (for example) the Elliot Rogers-style shootings. The link to violence that’s famous and very commonly talked about goes via the “incels”, which are essentially a splinter group off of TRP.
Interestingly, the incel groups are basically magnifying and playing out nodes from the Hierarchy/Status cluster, which fits with the hypothesis that it’s status concerns that are driving violence, not the NRx material.
A really interesting plot we made early on was the fraction of posts that use “alpha” vs “beta”. Early PUA only talks about “alpha”; how to be the cool guy who gets the girls. TRP introduces “beta” as a theme, but it’s still outweighed by “alpha”, and both terms are used much more anyway, ie, status is more salient. The incels subs (and off-Reddit groups) are off the charts, both in terms of overall usage of the terms, and in flipping the ratio (so it’s no longer “how to be alpha” but “I am beta”.)
As I mentioned above, the NRx stuff is not as much associated directly with violence. There are certainly long-standing results on SDO (“social dominance orientation”) and endorsement of fascism, political violence etc. But this is much less studied/known, in part because violence against women is far more common than political violence.
"[The Red Pill] is a sexist ideology, under the standard definition, anchored in
pseudoscience, and is characterized by the dehumanization of women as biological machines, and a call to fight a conspiracy against “masculine” values. It has led to, among other things, more than a dozen suicide attacks against perceived supporters of the conspiracy."
You might want to cite some of the claims here, in particular that last one. I'm not aware of a single "suicide attack" associated with TRP and would love to see the list you're working from here.
Anyway, my general takeaway is that the mode of analysis itself is very interesting but your as a whole paper is unfortunately dragged down by your seemingly total lack of ideological self-awareness or objectivity. Even my colleagues who study deadly diseases like cancer or malaria, where the explicit goal of their research is to eventually eliminate the topic of their study, manage to approach their work with more scientific detachment than you do here. Perhaps the political realities of academic science make even a pretense of detachment or objectivity impossible: after all, doing so could expose you and your co-authors to ostracism and worse if a lack of strident opposition to those espousing TRP was interpreted as sympathizing with them. However it makes a hash of your ability to draw conclusions from your data. For one example, your discussion section concludes:
"[This work] also suggests that the same individuals may leave these groups when they become disenchanted by the explanations. This may be driven in part by engagement with individuals explicitly adopt a critical stance against the ideology[...]"
This statement is purely speculative and not supported at all by your published data. Which is especially egregious because your dataset and methods should be perfect for testing whether this is actually the case! All you need to do is either automatically or manually flag putative "counter-speech" comments and track how well exposure to or replying to those comments predicts exit from each node or exit generally. If you're worried about assigning things manually, have a pair of you or some schmucks from Mechanical Turk do it blindly and check the inter-rater reliability. This is something that would substantially bulk up your research not to mention giving it exactly the kind of policy implications you're clearly interested in... but because you've gone into it assuming so many of your conclusions you can't see that anything it missing.
TL;DR: Interesting and potentially useful methodology, but clearly applied to the wrong topic. If you can find an online community which you are capable of (and/or are permitted to) adopting a more neutral viewpoint towards you will be able to produce quality research. Hell, do a similar analysis of r/Feminism: I would love to see whether the same behavioral / explanatory split pops up in a more acceptably mainstream ideology or whether this is a unique feature of the Manosphere which originated in a fusion of the two very goal-oriented pickup and the father's rights movement (the goals being gaining causal sex and custody respectively).
* "[The Red Pill] is a sexist ideology, under the standard definition, anchored in
pseudoscience, and is characterized by the dehumanization of women as biological machines, and a call to fight a conspiracy against “masculine” values. It has led to, among other things, more than a dozen suicide attacks against perceived supporters of the conspiracy."
* "You might want to cite some of the claims here, in particular that last one. I'm not aware of a single "suicide attack" associated with TRP and would love to see the list you're working from here."
The first sentence is a rough summary of the highlights from the later analysis in the paper. Re: the second, we should probably make clear that we're referring to the incel shootings; I talk a little bit about this further up. The link between these groups and violence is not a controversial one, but I can see why you query it.
In general, it's difficult to know where to start with an article for a more general scholarly audience, particularly when people are coming in with very different backgrounds and knowledge bases. Trust me when I say this is a difficult paragraph to write.
* "[This work] also suggests that the same individuals may leave these groups when they become disenchanted by the explanations. This may be driven in part by engagement with individuals explicitly adopt a critical stance against the ideology[...]"
* This statement is purely speculative and not supported at all by your published data.
The first sentence is speculative, indeed -- that's why it comes at the end of the discussion section, which is traditionally where you think about the larger implications of the work. Our findings are consistent with the idea that retention is associated with sense-making drives (rather than, for example, behavioral habituation). This *suggests* that if it's "how the group makes the world make sense to people" is keeping them there, then it's a possible reason for them to exit.
The second sentence would be better phrased as "Given current interest in counter-speech, it would be interesting to see if this may be driven in part by engagement with individuals explicitly adopt a critical stance against the ideology".
* Which is especially egregious because your dataset and methods should be perfect for testing whether this is actually the case! All you need to do is either automatically or manually flag putative "counter-speech" comments and track how well exposure to or replying to those comments predicts exit from each node or exit generally. If you're worried about assigning things manually, have a pair of you or some schmucks from Mechanical Turk do it blindly and check the inter-rater reliability.
This is a great idea -- and I'm glad you've suggested it. That's kind of what discussion sections are meant to do; get people thinking about where to go next. Re: counter-speech, we have a citation to some recent work with a hand-tagged corpus (it's an article with Josh Garland on the author list).
Re: tagging. I wouldn't call MTurkers schmucks. They're nice people! When they're not bots.
* This is something that would substantially bulk up your research not to mention giving it exactly the kind of policy implications you're clearly interested in.
You really do sound like referee three, which is not such a bad thing.
* I would love to see whether the same behavioral / explanatory split pops up in a more acceptably mainstream ideology or whether this is a unique feature of the Manosphere which originated in a fusion of the two very goal-oriented pickup and the father's rights movement (the goals being gaining causal sex and custody respectively).
Yes, I think you get why this work is exciting, and I think you've grasped one of the main points (the first one, how the ideology resolves into two components). This makes me happy!
One thing you're missing here is that it's the self-help and the PUA that are the clearest "behavioral" components. MRA is actually a combination, as we say in the article (it's important not to confuse MRA with what you're calling "father's rights" -- as you can see in the MRA cluster, there's quite a bit more going on.)
Another thing you're bringing up here is the evolution of the system over time -- which chunks of the ideology are arriving first, versus later. This is a great question!
However, and this might explain why we look at the learning process, is that people in the group are at all different stages. You can't really take a snapshot of TRP at any point in time, say "that's the ideology", and then run those snapshots forward, like a flip book, to "evolve" the ideology forward.
The reason is that people are learning, and learners (newcomers) have preferences that evolve over time. So if you see the "self-help" section growing, you have to look into the people who are leading to that growth; in the end, these shifts are far more driven by demographic emigration/immigration.
* is unfortunately dragged down by your seemingly total lack of ideological self-awareness or objectivity.
This is a very strong claim, and I don't see how you've substantiated it in your remarks here. In between your thoughtful and helpful responses, there's a lot of remarks like this. You're not pointing out an error in the work.
Indeed, I think that you're quite intrigued by it—intrigued enough to suggest things for us to look at, to speculate on its wider implications, to make interesting points that we actually investigated and I can talk about, and to say you've love to see these ideas played out further. So it's a sort of bimodal response in this post.
E.g., and etc:
* but because you've gone into it assuming so many of your conclusions you can't see that anything it missing.
* you are capable of (and/or are permitted to) adopting a more neutral viewpoint towards you will be able to produce quality research. Hell, do a similar analysis of r/Feminism:
* Even my colleagues who study deadly diseases like cancer or malaria, where the explicit goal of their research is to eventually eliminate the topic of their study, manage to approach their work with more scientific detachment than you do here.
There's quite a bit of accusation by-the-by here, let's put that aside. What are you seeing that's wrong in the scientific claims in the article, in the approach, etc? I just get a real bimodal feeling, where half the time you're really engaging with the ideas and providing cogent criticism, and then the other half you're, well, somewhere else.
This is a preprint, we're circulating it among colleagues, and it's been interesting to circulate it here as well.
What you call the bimodality of my response could probably best be summed up by analogy:
Imagine that some parallel universe's Simon DeDeo had published an otherwise identical paper, using topic modeling to explore the paths individuals take when exploring the extremist ideology known online as "LGBTQ+" with the stated intention of exploring how that engagement leads adherents to child molestation.
The methods of the modeling are good, and one can find robust patterns reflective of reality in the model: maybe most posters start with behavioral "Coming Out" cluster, gravitate to the explanatory "Heteronormativity" or "Sexual Revolution" nodes, then exit after between a dozen or a score of posts. There is a pre-existing body of research that says that many convicted child molesters justify themselves with rhetoric based on that of the "Sexual Revolution," so this parallel researcher feels that it's not necessary to actually substantiate the connection. Other people in the field of extremist ideologies do the same after all, as after all 'the link between these groups and child molestation is not a controversial one.'
How would a neutral third party, reading your paper and the work of your parallel universe counterpart, determine which of them was an ideologically-blinkered crank in a politicized field and which was a thoughtful scientist engaged in free inquiry? If you can answer that question, you can answer my critique and improve the quality of your writing and thinking.
Please respond to this criticism, it is exactly the same issue I have with your post and I'd love an answer.
At one level, your parable rather answers itself. Your neutral third party seems clear about which parts of the paper should be trusted (all of the results it presents on the structure, the learning dynamics, etc) and which parts shouldn't (the weird stuff, about gay people being child abusers).
Indeed, that confirms our earlier exchange; you find the paper intriguing, the results interesting, etc -- but it also bothers you in some way.
So what's going on? One answer to why someone is bothered is a bit boring and obvious: this is a culture war thing.
But let me suggest to you that it's far more interesting than it first appears.
On the one hand, there's "the red pill ideology". This is what we might call a cognitive artifact -- let me suggest that you think of this in just such an abstract fashion.
On the other hand, there are the people who engage with the group that presents that cognitive artifact.
Figure One, Table One, and the Appendix are there to help make sense of the cognitive artifact, which connects a bunch of things together in a systematic fashion.
As with any artifact, people can get a grip on it -- it has many affordances. Our paper is about that artifact, its mathematical structure, and then the ways in which humans who encounter it pick it up, play with it, toss it from one person to another, etc.
The first thing you might ask is: wow, can our methods really do this? Yes. Yes they can. It's pretty wild, and it's been really exciting to see this unfold. Science is awesome.
The second thing you might ask is: OK, but the redpill is pretty niche. It's a Reddit group! Can't you run it on the cognitive artifact of "LGBTQ+", or the cognitive artifact of "Feminism" (as you suggested before), or the cognitive artifact of "The Democratic Party".
Now the answer is less satisfying. That's because (what you're calling) "LGBTQ+", "Feminism", etc is not a single artifact. It's actually a very large umbrella term for a social world that contains many, many artifacts. Indeed, even things that announce themselves as ideologies (e.g., "Marxism", "Communism") probably end up like this. Among other things, we don't know how good our methods are at boundary finding (although... it might work...) This is a whole separate and fascinating question, of course, how to run this "at scale".
All these groups also contain many, many people. People are not artifacts, but (for some reason, ask Michael Tomasello) they just love picking these things up and playing with them.
As we point out, when it comes to the redpill artifact, a lot of people come across it, pick it up by the "self-help", or "PUA" handle, and end up putting it down, pretty quickly.
There are other handles, the ones we label NRx and Status-and-Hierarchy. These handles are different. You can look at the kind of things "on" these handles in the online appendix. And of course we have a whole set of results in this "science of people playing with cognitive artifacts of this sort".
None of this is controversial, and none of this stuff is stuff you are quarreling with. Let's now get to the stuff that I think is bothering you. I'll mark the text here: ********
Who is picking up the artifact that way? Lots of people -- hundreds of thousands of people, mostly men. Is it the world's greatest artifact to handle? Probably not -- I mean, not if taken seriously. Some parts of the artifact are actually pretty not-great ways to think about the world.
For example, and this is not in the paper, but a basic principle of the ideology, found on the "explanatory" handles, is "AWALT": "all women are like that", where "that" is a characterization of women in terms of pseudo-evolutionary-psych drives that they are unable, or unwilling, to overcome.
Now, in our paper we don't actually say "this is bad" or even get much into it. But it's so obviously bad to most people, including you I think, that all we really have to do is describe it, and most people, including you I think, think that the paper is saying it's bad.
(I just want to flag right now, and repeatedly, that, none of the analyses, diagrams, graphs, results, discoveries about cognition etc depend upon agreeing that it's bad. But many people will say it's bad, just as they'd find a cognitive artifact that said "abusing children is cool" would say it's bad.)
Let's keep going. Some people do take this funny part of the artifact very seriously. We know this because they make copies of it on their manifestos they leave behind after a shooting rampage, and we even see special runes (the jargon, in particular). This is worth noticing, and it's probably telling us something interesting about the relationship between ideas and violence. Some people are skeptics about ideas, if X is going to shoot up a school, they'll find some reason to apply post-hoc, but I'm not -- ideas have power, ideas matter in behavior.
Other people we *think* take it seriously, because they spend years passing this artifact back and forth with each other, fondling it, molding and remolding it. And we have to wonder... is this going well for them? (But, of course, whether or not we do... the analysis is the same.) In an analysis we don't talk about, for example, people write "field reports" of how they're treating an intimate partner or a date, and some of this stuff does not look good. I don't want to litigate on this if you don't agree; again, this is not something in the paper. It's trying to get at the affect of being bothered.
Other people, the vast majority of the people, who are picking up the artifact in this way are just passing through. Are *they* bad? Well, the first thing to say is "who cares, that's not the point of the paper" -- and indeed that's the correct, scientific answer.
If pushed, of course, people would say, well, some of this stuff is pretty messed up, but on the other hand, just beacuse someone is saying and believing it, doesn't mean they're messed up. Minds are complicated. People go through phases. As a "civilian", I'd take that view, I think -- although I've spent enough time with political theorists to realize that even obvious things like this are actually much more interesting than they appear.
But it's this confluence of features that I think prove bothersome. The mind is taking all this information in, and using it (as minds do) to make moral judgements, and also to try to figure out (as minds do) the kinds of moral judgements other people are going to make. And it's the results of that activity, everything going on after the ******** above, that may well be bothersome.
> The first sentence is a rough summary of the highlights from the later analysis in the paper.
Then it would be better to say "Our analysis shows that 'The Red Pill' matches our defiinition above of a sexist ideology" rather than making it sound like you're just labeling them willy-nilly. But I changed "standard definition" to "our definition above" because I don't know of a "standard definition" and I don't see a third-party definition being cited.
I think one should always write such papers like this with careful attention to how it may be perceived by those who are sympathetic to that which you are criticizing, as well as to people who are neutral about a particular ideology but sensitive to signs of political bias. Obviously, those with more extreme ideology will hate the paper regardless, but try not to write in a way that less-ideological people will also dismiss the paper.
Interesting paper, Simon. I've been looking at TRP and Incels for my new book (Artificial Intimacy, which I punted in this thread) and for some papers on the geographic distribution of Incel-related tweets. I can send you a copy once it comes out (too late to put up a preprint now, I believe). Would love to see any more work you have in this area.
Hi Rob — that’s terrific. And thank you for re-shilling :) —I missed it the first time. Please do send me your papers as well; you can find me at sdedeo[at]andrew.cmu.edu
Incel geography is interesting! We looked at early USENET data on alt.seduction.* just to see which institutions were operative. We didn’t do much with this data, in the end, but I did notice that UK was over-represented compared to baseline USENET activity.
I've set up a website to explain/demystify/debullshit papers in Medical AI. We're explaining how the tech works as well as its limitations and biases. https://explainthispaper.com
Writers always welcome- drop us an email if you're interested.
Fare more poetic than rational: bartkus.substack.com
My blog:
https://apxhard.com/
Deals with the implications of human brains being computers. Typical posts include essays
- implications of predictive processing on concepts like agency (“free will” makes sense as “accumulation of evidence for the prior ‘I can accomplish my goals’)
- computation carried out at cultural and civilizational levels (war is a consensus algorithm)
As well as occasional poetry and short stories.
New publication I'm involved in:
The Classical Futurist: A vision of the future inspired by classical antiquity.
https://classicalfuturist.com/
That article on Sparta needs rethinking. It basically restate pure propaganda as if it was historical fact while not mentioning the rampant slavery, the sexual abuse etc. Pretty bad taste IMO. See https://acoup.blog/category/collections/this-isnt-sparta/
To be fair, Brett over at acoup has a huge ideological axe to grind when it comes to Spartans, vikings or basically any historical people who are used as role models for western right-wing masculinity. Compare his treatment of the Mongols or Comanche to how he writes about Sparta or the Norse, it really is night and day.
That's not to say that he's a poor historian or that his words on the subject carry no weight. But when someone displays naked ideological bias like that you need to read them with a critical eye and seek out alternative voices.
I think Brett writes in this biased way about Sparta to act as an alternative voice to things like the Sparta article in OPs link. And that article is in much need of an alternative voice.
I don't think this is fair. In his article about Sparta, he's looking at Sparta in the popular imagination, and comparing that to what we know about actual Sparta. The Spartans don't come out well, but that's pretty much the Spartans' fault.
The other three he hasn't looked at as directly. Brett's schtick is looking at popular media versions of history and comparing them to history as it actually was (in as much as we can do that). His reasoning is that people come into his classes thinking that the Middle Ages looked like Game of Thrones, or Ancient Greece looked like 300.
For the Vikings, his frame was some video game (not a criticism, I just don't remember which), where the Vikings were the players' side, and the player could be any sort of multicultural thing and the Vikings wouldn't mind. Also, the Viking religion was both clearly superior too, and truer than, the Christianity of the Saxons. He didn't do anything like the deep dive he did into Sparta and its culture and military record, he was just contrasting the 21st century attitudes on display with the culture of the time.
Likewise for the Mongols and Comanche, who he wrote about in his series on the Dothraki. GRRM said they were based on them, so he broke down how those cultures worked and compared it (favorably) to what we're shown of the Dothraki. But his point wasn't that the Mongols were nicer or better than the Spartans. He wasn't looking at that question. It was just whether they were anything like GRRM's horse barbarians, which they basically weren't. Short version - from memory - the Dothraki are violent conquerors who disdain arts (even nice clothes) and non-violent work and refuse to eat anything but horses. The Mongols and the Comanche are - not that - both valuing art and work. And nobody tries to just eat horseflesh, it's much too valuable and takes too long to grow. Again, IIRC, there's a scene in GoT where the Dothraki slaughter a big herd of sheep as useless that really got Brett worked up. I think he spent a whole article in that series on how horse nomads fed themselves. (Mostly with sheep.)
I've read all of those articles, actually everything he's published on that site, and disagree that the distinction you're drawing is meaningful.
The Spartans in 300 (his go-to piece of media in the Spartan articles) and the Dothraki in ASOIAF and GOT both use ridiculously ahistorical-yet-badass versions of their respective fighting styles, are portrayed by oiled bodybuilders with bared chests, explicitly shun any craft or trade other than war ("Spartans! What is your profession!"), and are presented as noble despite committing heinous actions onscreen (throwing babies off a cliff and lots of rape respectively). In both cases, the historical peoples routinely practiced mass murder, slavery and institutionalized rape which would shock the modern conscience.
In the case of the Greek Spartiates, Brett presents this as a quasi-fascistic whitewashing of an inexcusably barbarous historical villain who has no redeeming qualities. With the Mongols and Comanche, this is a quasi-racist demonization of flawed but ultimately sympathetic historical peoples who were tragic victims of historical forces driving their cultures to adapt in sometimes regrettable ways. What is the difference here?
To my mind, it's that Brett's shift in focus is entirely due to the Dothraki's portrayal as a non-white coded foreign Other in contrast to the Spartans portrayal as a white-coded image of a lost part of our western heritage. Both are portrayed as having a 'badass' savage nobility, but Brett's left-liberal politics parse one as an oppressor and the other as an oppressed victim by the color of their respective actors skin. While outside of that lens, it is easy to see how both media portrayals hit essentially the same notes and the three peoples historical peoples have atrocities and achievements proportional to their scales (Sparta being a Bronze-age city state compared to the Iron-age Mongol empire).
I think you're skipping something that's more explanatory. In 300 (and that book series he talks about), the Spartans are praiseworthy. In the video game, the multicultural 21st century values having vikings are praiseworthy.
But not the Dothraki. They're honest maybe, and baddass, but their barbarity isn't played as heroic. They're so barbaric they practically wear sacks! They don't do art, just war! They kill sheep because only horses are good enough! (This is a GRRM tic, btw. He likes his fantasy larger than life and exaggerates everything. The wall is 400ft high! The Stark family line, intact, has guarded it 5000 years! The Dothraki are so baddass, the reject all civilization!)
In both cases, Brett is puncturing the image with the reality. When he does that with the positive portrayals, he naturally is going to be showing the ways those peoples don't live up to the hype. When done with a negative portrayal, it's going to look more like an apology.
But I don't think the articles are at all as biased as you suggest, nor that Brett's position is dictated by his politics. (Which, btw, I think you have at much further to the left than they likely are in real life. A military historian with a specialty in Rome is not a comfortable landing place for a member of the woke.)
Of course, I'm a member in good(ish) standing of the left, so it's possible I can't see it. Fish, water and all that.
Brett's beef or gripe or however you want to call it with GRRM and his portrayal of his invented cultures is the jumping-off point of (a) his almost throwaway comment about Tolkien's lack of realism in his worldbuilding ("But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine?" etc.) and (b) his other comment that the Dothraki were based on a mix of real-world cultures.
So he looks at how that works out in what the novels and the TV show put out there, and finds it lacking. Not alone does Martin take stereotypes of what he imagines a bad-ass nomadic quasi-Golden Horde culture would be like, he doesn't take the bits that the real-world cultures did use (decoration on clothing, pastoralism, and so forth). So the Dothraki as portrayed are an impossible culture: the killing of sheep and then leaving the carcasses to rot is one egregious example, because *what do the Dothraki eat?* Real world nomads would avail of the Sea of Grass to have large herds of animals to provide meat, milk, wool and act as markers of wealth (there was a joke post about folk music on Tumblr a couple of years back which included that Mongolian songs are such things as 'Behold My Many Ungulates'); they would have driven off the sheep and incorporated them into their own herds, not slaughtered them and left them there.
Once again, Tolkien wins by comparison 😁
No, he's saying that the video game portrays the Vikings as multi-culti hippy-dippy tolerant of diversity types (who run around slaughtering people with axes) and that the real Vikings were not like that, apart from the slaughtering people with axes.
If anyone's interested in learning about computational biology, I have a Youtube channel with tutorials on it, mostly in Python:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCti8KSLHdoVd7K0VZwUZk_g
Stasha.dev - makes it easy to curate and share content
To celebrate the release in two weeks of __Perhaps The Stars__, the fourth and final novel in Ada Palmer's __Terra Ignota__ science fiction series, I have made a website for my fan-made board game based on the franchise. We are accepting applicants to join us in playtesting on Tabletop Simulator through Steam.
https://dreadedmajority.games/
This is based on a science fiction novel that is weirder than Dune. The characters all use "they" pronouns or are genderfluid. The year 2545 considers all views on religion (both pro and con) to be unacceptable in polite company.
"but that future sounds awful" It kind of is and that's great!
Is your game made with the context of the first three books in mind, or...?
In what way would it not be? Are you asking if there are spoilers for book four? There are not.
In my case I have not yet read book 3, but I wanted to ask a more general question.
If you're asking if there are spoilers for book three, a few of the City cards name geographic settings that are not mentioned in the first two novels. I'm not sure if you'd consider those spoilers; I don't. The list of character cards is taken directly from the dramatis personae at the beginning of book two. All the item cards were things introduced by book two. I invented the tasks on the Task cards myself.
Check out the Neoliberal Podcast!
It's a podcast on policy and politics from a neoliberal perspective. We've done interviews with
* Nobel Prize winning economists - https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-neoliberal/kidney-matching-ft-dr-alvin-S7shLNOA1FJ/
* Pulitzer Prize winning journalists - https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/the-uighur-genocide-ft-megha-rajagopalan-alison-killing/id1390384827?i=1000509494674&l=en
* Rationalist favorites like Julia Galef - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-scout-mindset-ft-julia-galef/id1390384827?i=1000523003248
I'd like to think we cover a lot of interesting topics in The Discourse, but with an unusual focus on drilling down into the depths of the issue and getting the right experts to talk about their areas.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-scout-mindset-ft-julia-galef/id1390384827?i=1000523003248
My podcast: https://soundcloud.com/user-519115521. I mostly have discussions with Greg Cochran. Our Scott once wrote "First, a bunch of generic smart people on Twitter who got things exactly right – there are too many of these people to name, but Scott Aaronson highlights “Bill Gates, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham, Greg Cochran, Robin Hanson, Sarah Constantin, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Nicholas Christakis.” None of these people (except Greg Cochran) are domain experts, and none of them (except Greg Cochran) have creepy oracular powers."
I run an indie yarn business. All of our products are made from undyed, naturally colored fibers.
https://gothfarmyarn.com/shop/
We are half way through our Kickstarter for our Cthulhu Mythos RPG, ‘Weird of Hali, which is an alternative for everything you think you know about the world of HP Lovecraft.
Check it out here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aeongames/weird-of-hali-rpg
The pitch doesn't mention much about rules other than it's based on Mythras. Is this more similar to traditional RPGs like D&D or freeform games or more structured games like Blades in the Dark?
Hi it plays a lot like Call of Cthulhu and other d100 games which I guess is quite traditional.
My friend who is a journalist in Munich has recently started a blog where she writes about urban planning, building codes, local politics and the like. I thought this might be interesting for some of you. Maybe if you have always wondered why there are no skyscrapers in Munich: https://theschlafgang.substack.com/
rollkit.net - a complete supplement kit for when you take MDMA. Based off of u/MisterYouAreSoDumb and rollsafe.org's recommendations.
Discount code SSC for 15% off your purchase
I wonder if people will switch over to ACX at some point or if I'm doomed to be affiliated with my old brand forever.
Discount ACX for 12% off your purchase
This made me laugh way too much.
Moloch! In you I sit at a 3% cost premium!
When you dream, is it ACX or still SSC?
Whoa, a few months ago you were considering going back to Wordpress, did things improve on Substack's end?
I'm surprised by the lack of magnesium -- any reason that you chose not to include it?
Seems the jaw-muscle-relaxing is purely anecdotal, and it took up a lot of space in the kit. We sell magnesium gum on the site if you are interested in it though!
If you're a startup founder, consider a serious executive coach/consultant who understands the startup world.
I will be the one person you can be transparent with --who has no direct skin in your game-- neither equity, employment nor a board member.
Try a (free) introductory session!
Visit https://Beyondetter.io . While you're there, subscribe to the blog, or contact me to submit your own article on leadership, strategy or organizational scale and change for inclusion in our 5000 plus, biweekly mailing.
I am unable to access the link
Ah. Hardly noticeable typo. 🙄Thank you so much for the heads up. Here's the correct url.
https://BeyondBetter.io .
I'm looking for business strategy /materials science / metals people / industrial sales people for www.graphmatech.com.
We're working on fixing one small part of global excessive use of earth's resources.
Results: 40% more conductive copper. The composite metal is stronger, tougher, and has better thermal conduction as well. 28% less copper to conduct the same amount of electricity. Could be useful when the world electrifies.
Silver/graphene switches that are as conductive as the theoretical max of pure silver. That's better than real life pure silver switches.
Steel that's 30% more thermally conductive.
etc.
Yes, we have patents.
Our cheap, bulk graphene comes mostly from China, some from Europe.
We're scaling up our upcycling process from spent lithium - ion batteries to graphene.
But so far, only 3D printing / Hipping results. Small projects with huge industrial companies for tailored materials. Those projects take lots of calendar time. What are we doing wrong? What can we do better?
We add about 2 kilos of functionalized graphene per ton of metal powder. Yes, unit economics work. well.
I'm jane@walerud.com.
Not one of the people you are looking for, but a potential customer. Who is your target audience? We're a small company that manufactures a specific product, but in our supply chain is a custom metal current transformer that might benefit from your product. We currently use molybdenum infused steel, copper wire, and then spray a dry moly coat on to add lubrication. But the moly steel has proven hard to source outside of China and we're wanting to move that part of the supply chain to another country.
Great, thanks, I'll put you in contact with the right person at Graphmatech.
If you have not heard of https://theprepared.org/ this might be a community who would be interested / related
thanks, looking into it, looks very possible
hmm well a shot in the dark. But if it's better than copper then I think they are still using resistive magnets* (copper coils, water cooled) at the high field magnet lab in florida. If you could make a better magnet...?
https://nationalmaglab.org/
*https://nationalmaglab.org/user-facilities/dc-field/instruments-dcfield/resistive-magnets
Thanks! It’s a good idea!
Unfortunately, we only make better copper with 3D printing or HIPping so far, and our results are better than •similarly produced• copper.
We don’t have resources to test the high volume manufacturing methods yet.
Silver works with extrusion… so there is definitely reason for hope.
Just not yet.
/Jane
My law firm renders legal advice on a broad range of subjects of interest to very, very smart people, including tax and estate planning, asset protection and intellectual property. We do litigation, too, although we mostly help smart people avoid it.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hbmiller/
We are a tiny company specializing in visualization for bioinformaticians and biologists. We have some questions regarding IP, patents, and trademarks. Can your firm help us with some (or all !) of these issues ? You can email me if you are interested (I am "bugmaster" at gmail), but as I said, we're a tiny company, so we probably don't have the kind of budget that larger companies tend to have...
I'll email you privately. Thank you for responding.
My blog: https://samenright.com/
I write detailed book reviews, as well as posts about economics, philosophy, effective altruism, jazz and films. One of the posts I'm most proud of was about antidepressants: https://samenright.com/2021/06/09/book-review-lost-connections/. I get featured sometimes on Marginal Revolution. Hope you enjoy.
I'm taking a break from programming to make some art, and am open to commissions for oil paintings. Some samples are here: art.scyy.fi
I'm fondest of multipanel paintings that take up space interestingly (see first image), which I haven't seen much of in the wild even though I think it looks great.
doh! Will add on website today. Email at scydereal@gmail.com -- pricing will be pegged to material cost + $15*[expected hours]. The first large painting on that site was $1100.
I'm composing a sequence of LW posts on the human virtues and how to strengthen them, here: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/xqgwpmwDYsn8osoje
Learn how to become a person with more honesty, courage, self-control, respect for others, piety, loyalty, compassion, wisdom, temperance, fitness, sincerity, justice, industriousness, duty, prudence, know-how, honor, moderation, patience, care, attention, amiability, simplicity, forgiveness, integrity, humility, hope, good temper, fairness, endurance, benevolence, ambition, perseverance, kindness, frugality, dignity, courtesy, chastity, judgment, and/or gratitude... and more when I can find the time to research & write.
I'd appreciate your feedback & corrections.
The new season of Hi-Phi Nation will begin with a mini-series on the life and works of David Kellogg Lewis, one of the great philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. The series will be released beginning October 16th, 2021, subscribe or follow now to get all episodes. www.hiphination.org.
I wrote a short story on nested simulations: https://markmywords.substack.com/p/short-fiction-the-infinite-drop
This was interesting, I enjoyed it!
I liked the story and I thought it was quite well written, but I'm sort of confused:
Ubj vf vg cbffvoyr gb eha rnpu fhpprffvir fvzhyngvba (vaqrrq, na nccneragyl vasvavgr ahzore bs fhpu fvzhyngvbaf) ng n snfgre fcrrq guna gung bs vgf ubfg, *jvgubhg* ybff bs svqryvgl ? Va bhe jbeyq, fvzhyngvbaf pna eha fvtavsvpnagyl snfgre ol qvfpneqvat veeryrinag qrgnvyf, be ol qenfgvpnyyl yvzvgvat gur fpbcr, ohg gurer'f ab vaqvpngvba gung guvf vf tbvat ba va gur fgbel. Va snpg, gur qenzngvp erirny ng gur raq frrzf gb qverpgyl pbagenqvpg guvf.
Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! I have more plotted out in my head if people are interested.
Gur phgr nafjre jbhyq or fbzr grpuabonooyr bs fbzr rkbgvp sbez bs culfvpf jurer fcnpr-gvzr qvzrafvbaf pna or sbyqrq ba gurzfryirf vasvavgryl, n ernyvfgvp nafjre jbhyq or V jnf vafcverq ol Vaprcgvba-ybtvp jurer rnpu yriry bs fvzhyngvba vf nppryrengrq jvgubhg ybff bs svqryvgl, naq fbzr bs gur jrveq pbafrdhraprf gung onfvp nffhzcgvba nyybjf sbe, yvxr tvivat lbh vasvavgr gvzr gb fbyir n ceboyrz vs lbh xrrc nppryrengvat.
Fair point -- one can't argue with artistic license.
This is excellent, and I hope you continue it!
I have recently moved my long-running blog over to substack. I've been writing mostly about forecasting and modeling covid. I occasionally write about various other topics, including travel, linguistics, education, politics, social issues, and other issues which fall broadly into the social sciences.
https://nealzupancic.substack.com/
My latest post is about a statistical technique called the "synthetic control model" - a way of conducting a quasi-controlled "experiment" using data from multiple groups to build a predictive model that acts as a control group in situations where a real control group is unavailable.
The case study for the post is a model of a covid wave in Georgia (the country) which I argue shows that the country's lack of timely intervention resulted in one of the world's highest covid waves. I've taken the model from a report by other researchers who came to a different conclusion - that the cause of the excess cases and deaths was an election held in 2020. I think the technique is worth looking at whether you end up agreeing with my conclusions or those of the original authors - or disagreeing with both.
https://nealzupancic.substack.com/p/elections-covid-and-synthetic-control
For something completely different, this post is a series of vignettes about the five languages I use and/or encounter on a daily basis, living as an expat and a parent of multilingual children.
https://nealzupancic.substack.com/p/life-in-five-languages
Feedback and comments always appreciated!
I make 3D digital art, and I often like to depict imagery from my dreams: https://www.instagram.com/patrickdfarley_art/
I recently met a fellow called "Benjamin the Dream Wizard" on Twitter - he does a dream interpretation podcast and we're going to collaborate in the near future.
I made some videos explaining the basics of economics:
https://www.youtube.com/user/gideonmagnus/videos
For more materials, see my website:
www.gideonmagnus.com
“Conversations in Critical Psychiatry" is my interview series for Psychiatric Times that explores critical and philosophical perspectives in psychiatry and engages with prominent commentators within and outside the profession who have made meaningful criticisms of the status quo.
https://awaisaftab.blogspot.com/2019/12/conversations-in-critical-psychiatry.html
Thanks. Very engaging.
Sorry Scott, but I beat you to it -- GHB: Much More Than You Wanted To Know. https://existential-vertigo.com/ghb-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
All jokes aside, GHB is a fascinating drug and I think it warrants more professional/scientific/medicinal research.
Have you seen any linkages between GHB and long-term memory? Anecdotally: I had high-performing memory before the age of 20, and average-performing memory after the age of 20. GHB was my drug of choice around the age of 20. I don't have any history with regular use of other drugs. I have always wondered if there's a chance that GHB had an impact on my memory.
I hadn't, but I just did some research and here's what I found.
There's one study* that looks at three groups with 27 subjects each: GHB users who have had >=4 GHB-comas, GHB users who haven't had a GHB-coma, and non users. It finds that the GHB-coma group has a lower IQ and does worse on a verbal memory test; no significant difference is found between the GHB-NoComa and No-GHB groups. This is just an observational study and there are some plausible non-causal explanations for the worse performance of GHB-coma group. (Note that this study uses 'coma' to mean ~'no motor, verbal, or eye response'.)
Then there are multiple rat studies^ that show that GHB causes impairment in learning and spatial memory in rats. Not sure what to make of these.
Overall it seems plausible that GHB negatively affects memory (alcohol does, right?) though my cursory search reveals a lack of evidence either way. If it does, the effect size is probably pretty small unless you're really abusing it; I doubt the culprit was GHB in your case.
* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037687161830334X
^ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3137190/
I've been taking Xyrem under prescription at a lowish dose for over a decade and noticed no decrease in memory function; my baseline is having a much higher than average long term recall for all kinds of useless trivia. Actually after going on Xyrem my *short term* memory got way better because I actually got decent sleep for the first time in my life.
I have narcolepsy with cataplexy and take Xyrem under prescription. Ask me anything.
Oh, great!
1. How long have you been taking Xyrem? Do you take any other meds?
2. What's your dosage?
3. Have you noticed any tolerance to Xyrem?
4. In general does it 'work' for your narcolepsy symptoms?
5. Do you experience the rebound effect? What does your sleep schedule look like?
6. What does the drug feel like to you?
Lesse ---
1. At least a decade. Maybe 11 years?
2. 2x doses of 2.25 grams, one at bedtime, one halfway through the night. Used to be higher ( but I'm always nervous around strong drugs so I asked my neurologist if we could stay at the lowest dose possible so long as my symptoms were being managed.
3. I don't *think* so, if by that you mean withdrawal symptoms when I'm off it. I have three kids, so when each was born I had to go off of it so that I could be reliably woken in the middle of the night to take my shift with the newborn. I felt miserable during those times but I a) felt miserable before I was on Xyrem and b) tending to newborns makes you feel miserable no matter what your brain is like. In any case there's been stretches where I've missed nights and not noticed anything that struck me as "gee I'm addicted." If by tolerance you mean I need stronger and stronger dosages to get an effect, all I can say is I've been on it at the minimum dosage for 10+ years and it still works great. I can sometimes stay awake despite its very obvious effects sitting in but the difference in sleepability when I'm off it and on it are as clear as day.
4. It's a miracle drug. Manages my symptoms incredibly well. For context I also have Tourette's syndrome, and was diagnosed with that at 14. I also had been having what I now know to be classic narcolepsy with cataplexy symptoms since even earlier than that, but with the big Tourette's diagnosis everything got interpreted through that lens. So when I was falling over and losing control of my body that got interpreted as some kind of weird "full-body tic" when actually it was just cataplexy. And then also I was just really tired all the time and could never sleep. Growing up, at any sleepover I would *always* be the last one asleep by a margin of hours. I was chronically tired. When I got the Tourette's diagnosis they put me on all kinds of medications and none of them worked. When I got my Narcolepsy diagnosis and got the Xyrem prescription, getting good sleep started making my cataplexy almost disappear, and the lack of stress and anxiety from that caused my Tourette's symptoms to get much better (b/c they're brought on by stress). Changed my life. Not sure I could live without it.
5. What's the rebound effect?
6. It definitely makes you feel kind of giddy and happy, but it took me stupidly long to realize it was the medicine. I would regularly read books as I was falling asleep and I would be get really emotional reading like, a dry nonfiction book.
Apart from that when it kicks in, at the doses I was taking it makes you feel really sleepy. You can feel it coming on you like a wave and it becomes impossible to resist until you're asleep.
Thanks for the response! The rebound effect is energy and wakefulness that comes ~4 hours after taking GHB (which not all users experience). It's impressive that 2.25g has been working for so long -- can I ask how much you weigh? And how many hours do you sleep per night?
I weigh 182 pounds last I weighed myself. I try to sleep about 8 hours.
As for the rebound effect, I dunno. The way they dose me is I'm supposed to take the first dose when I go to bed, and the second dose 4 hours later. So maybe that's designed around the rebound effect. The stated reason given to me was that the drug doesn't stay in the body for very long at all and so to get a constant dose throughout the night you have to take it in two doses.
One thing I can say is that a really common problem I have is sleeping through my 4:00 AM alarm and missing my second dose. Didn't used to happen but after I had kids (and thus various nighttime interruptions) then it started happening more often.
I'm interested in collaboratively homesteading somewhere out west, probably Colorado or Washington.
To me that means pooling financial resources to buy land where a small number of people are interested in building homesteads and also hopefully building a small community of people who would support each other.
I have a non trivial amount of my own resources ready to devote to this project.
Feel free to reach out at andrew.n.max@protonmail.com
I think a one-pager on your vision for the homestead/community would be very helpful.
Agreed! Interested but want to know more
Andrew, it's possible that spartacus.app could help you organize this. Reach out if interested.
I'm a PhD student in computational neuroscientist with a background in cognitive science and I'm writing about things like developmental neuroscience, AI Safety, large language models & digital people over at my Substack: https://universalprior.substack.com/
I imagine there could be a lot of overlap of interests between people reading Scott's work and what I write (although I'm by far not as funny or as much of a generalist)
Have you used an MRI machine to image the thymus gland before and are interested in trying to replicate those images using a cheaper device? Ping me
Are you a good radiologist that wants to look at 3x scans and give a non-legally binding opinion? Ping me (unrelated to above, paid via paypal/card/bitcoin and requested rate)
Are you a digital nomad considering teaming up with people to travel to various places? Ping me
Are you interested in an engineer, community management or marketing job at a company building open source machine learning tools that play well with databases? Ping me
email is george at cerebralab.com
I'm a freelance editor specializing in science fiction and fantasy; I've worked with a number of other fiction genres, and occasionally interesting non-fiction, but that's my core specialty. I have a slightly odd pricing pattern: I don't charge for hours, I charge for (500-word) pages ($2-$8/page, depending on how much editing is required - $2 is "a little polishing", $8 is "one page took me half an hour"), so it's easy for me to tell you the exact price as soon as I've received the document. I also have a 5-free-pages offer; if you have never hired me before, send me the first five pages (2,500 words) of whatever you want edited, and I will edit and return them for free. This lets you see what you'll be getting, and also allows me to tell you what pricing category the work falls into. Second and later passes are half price. For more information please see my website (http://arpistaediting.com/) - I know it's running slowly at the moment, sorry about that.
I am a grad student studying epidemiology, and am looking for EA (preferably biosecurity) related researcher or organizations to do a Practicum (basically an internship) or a Capstone (thesis or some other project with an end result). I'm linking to a google sheet of some ideas that I've brainstormed so far, but many of my ideas are limited to the school I go to and the researchers I've come into contact with. I have experience in research and research design, as well as R, SAS, and some Python. I would be very willing to travel- please, if you have ideas, either comment below or update my google sheet. Thanks!!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12zGGgVhz5Vf1Ea9LFDc2neYFuGgagwUYMOVHEAiwcZY/edit?usp=sharing
PS-This is a copy of the original, so please do feel free to edit or comment on the sheet.
Here is a record I made (instrumental) inspired mainly on ideas around set theory
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1kaxgeEJLsEs56Y7XMSUT4?si=vCnurPTDRd6kmV_N39eiMQ&dl_branch=1
PSA: if you’re looking for a side job, it will likely never in our lifetimes be easier of get hired at a restaurant than it is now. In my area (HCOL) places are offering $8-15/hour PLUS TIPS, even with zero experience and limited availability.
I'm a science fiction writer who does a substack that sends original stories and sci fi culture directly to your email, once a week. Here's a link to my latest story:
https://ogwiseman.substack.com/p/story-20-the-asteroid
You can also subscribe from there. Thanks to anybody who checks it out!
I wrote a poem and posted to my blog; it's a sort of ode to mindfulness. Some of you may enjoy it. :)
https://www.metalevelup.com/post/notice
I love the story and imagery in this poem, but I think the metre could be improved.
The second and fourth lines of each stanza are by and large good; lines like "The flowers are set on the table" or "Yes now that you mention, I'm freezing!" roll right off the tongue and are perfect for the sort of light-hearted tone you're going for. Amphibrachic trimeter (da DUM da / da DUM da / da DUM da) is great for that, which is why it's so popular in limericks, and cutting off the final unstressed syllable doesn't upset the flow, so that you can have both one- and two-syllable rhymes for variety.
The issue is that the first and third lines of most of your stanzas don't have a similarly consistent metre, and those make the poem awkward to read aloud. The fifth stanza is a good example of this. Reading it at a natural cadence (with American pronunciation of 'temperature'), it reads:
I'm FEEL-ing FO-cused while SCROLL-ing on-LINE,
ALL of my a-TTEN-tion it's SEIZ-ing.
The SUN then goes DOWN, TEM-per-ature de-CLINE,
Yes NOW that you MEN-tion, I'm FREE-zing!
The fourth line is three perfect amphibrachs, and the second lines varies the metre without breaking it, so both are good. But the third line has 'down', which is naturally stressed, and then the first syllable of 'temperature', which is also naturally stressed, back to back without any unstressed syllables in between, followed by three unstressed in a row (or four with British pronunciation) without any stresses. Because both of these things happen in a row, they together dominate the way the line is pronounced, and the reader loses the rhythm of the stanza and comes to an awkward brief halt at the end of the third line.
The first line is iambic for the first half and anapestic for the second half. In isolation, this is fine; if the third line were either iambic or anapestic, we could infer the other half. But, without a strong third line, there aren't any clues to help out. The same thing happens with the previous stanza ("a BAN-quet of SCENTS should de-LIGHT my NOSE"), but in that case, the first line ("My WIFE in the KI-tchen is ROAST-ing a ROAST") is strong enough that the rhythm remains intact.
Taken to the extremes, the fifth stanza written as alternating anapestic (da da DUM) tetrameter and amphibrachic (da DUM da) trimeter would look something like this:
I am deep in the zone while I'm scrolling online,
And all my attention it's seizing.
As the temperature drops and the moon starts to shine,
Yes, now that you mention, I'm freezing!
Alternatively, alternating amphibrachic tetrameter for the first and third lines with amphibrachic trimeter for the second and fourth would look something like this:
I'm focused while scrolling and clicking on pages,
And all my attention it's seizing.
The temperature drops, it's been dark out for ages -
Yes, now that you mention, I'm freezing!
Going to either extreme is probably not necessary; having some variety in metre is not only fine but desirable for longer poems. But it's still helpful to have a perfect metre in mind when writing so that you can consciously decide for each stanza how close or far you want to be from it.
Overall, I enjoyed it, so thank you for writing. And if you write any more for your poetry tag, do include them in the next Classifieds thread.
Thanks so much for the careful reading and detailed comment! I seriously appreciate it!
I've read this over carefully and I definitely understand what you mean. I'll keep it in mind if the urge to write a poem appears again, and I'll be sure to share it too. :)
I'm a leadership coach, and I love working with Rationalist and Rationalist-adjacent clients. I'm here to help you think clearly about how to be effective in complex, messy human systems. www.presencetree.com
Welcome to the resistance: https://freedomfighter.shop/
I've had an interest in private cryptocurrency for a while now, especially Monero and ZCash. When I saw a post by an acquaintance of mine, Joshua Goldbard, talking about the technology behind MobileCoin, I recognized instantly that it was an important achievement. (Josh is the founder). They've used a similar signing protocol to Monero for private transactions, but replaced proof-of-work with Stellar Consensus Protocol. This means that transactions complete within five seconds, with the same privacy protections and very small fees.
After experimenting with the project for a few weeks, and contributing some open source software to it, I was hired as a contractor, then later as a full-time employee.
We've been integrated into Signal messenger, although U.S. release is still not ready yet. I'm really excited for this project, so please check it out:
https://mobilecoin.com/
https://community.mobilecoin.foundation/t/mobilecoin-official-signal-group-now-online/550
Cool! I like the project. That I know the ED of the foundation helped my trust in it a lot.
The Lost War: Historical reenactors are flung into a fantasy world where they must struggle to survive amid monsters who regard them as prey . . . or worse. Not least among their problems is trying to cooperate while organized for playing pretend, not real problems.
Available as ebook, paperback, and audiobook:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QKHZCZP/
I'm a digital artist and painter based in Brooklyn, NY. I've got a new selection of limited edition prints and NFTs which are being shown this Friday, October 8th at a group show in Williamsburg. In addition to the conventional art, there will be immersive digital experiences, live music, and an open bar. Tickets can be found here: https://www.themynt.io/event-details/influences-friday-ticket
My work can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/charlesbentley/
Complice declares war on Beeminder, adds commitment contracts!
https://blog.beeminder.com/microcommitments/
Signal boost!
Do you like Stephen King novels, and the Dark Tower specifically? Check out Kingslingers, a Dark Tower close reading podcast! It's a readalong format, so you can read the books along with the podcast and not worry that we'll spoil future information. Currently in Season 2, we are reading all the other King novels with Dark Tower connections: https://www.doofmedia.com/kingslingers/
Do you like Wildbow's stories? Check out We've Got Worm, a podcast about the web serial Worm: https://www.doofmedia.com/weve-got-worm/
Are you a big reader in general? Check out our monthly livestreamed book club. We have covered over 40 books, including many SFF classics you may be familiar with, though we also read literary fiction. This month we're reading Ancillary Justice. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCW6KR4MVOXbdi8iG72oCwOHCBDMyY7RL
Hi! Your invited to come see my art and maybe do a little holiday shopping at ArtFair 14C at the Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey Nov. 12-14. Go to my website at https://www.margaretwithers.com/upcoming-exhibits-/view/2719357/0/5241554 for information and a link to some comp tickets for the event. Send me an email if you have any questions about my art! I hope to meet you there!
I'm signed up. Thanks!
Great!
I never pass up a good opportunity to shill my blog: https://residentcontrarian.substack.com
The blog exists in what could be described as the rationalist adjacent adjacent space, with some occasional deep dives and general philosophy stuff. I've been pretty hard on Scott in the past there, although I think I've probably just about worked that out of my system.
You would think, but I'm also *sort of an asshole*, so you never know.
As I'd said previously, you need to write more things :-/
Man, writing is hard. Or at least topics.
Bright, shy, old-fashioned girl seeks bright, interesting boy. Purpose: matrimony. (Or rather, courting hopefully, if compatible, leading to matrimony.) Not poly, not interested in casual sex. For more information, see OKCupid profile (https://www.okcupid.com/profile/17435752182960911079/) or email rebeccaanne3 at gmail dot com.
It appears you need an OKCupid account to view profiles. You may want to include more about yourself, to motivate people who don't already have an account to make one.
Thank you for the advice!
As a married guy who is very happy in marriage, I want to impress on the young, single men to really think hard about the quality, rarity and specific implications implied by a young lady who is actively looking for marriage/to be married. The difference between someone who just kind accidentally got to the point where marriage was ok, they guess and someone who is actively looking to be a husband/wife and prepared to fit their lifestyle to that is profound.
Purely out of curiosity, does the lack of location data in your comment imply that you're in the Bay Area?
... oh, dear, that was silly of me. Yes and no - you're quite right that I am in the Bay Area, but what it actually meant was that I forgot people cared about physical location.
I'm not looking to date, but now I'm curious: how does matrimony work without shared physical location ? Is virtual matrimony finally going mainstream ?
Nope! But virtual dating is, or at least, spending some time exchanging messages with someone who doesn't live in the same place as you, maybe video chatting, and then considering meeting up is not considered completely crazy. Especially if one of you is OK with moving if it takes off. I'm not sure this is new; my parents spent several years of their courtship long-distance (though starting long distance is rarer, of course.) It would certainly be more convenient to interact with someone close by (one of the people I forgot cared about physical location was me, even if I only care so much), but I don't think distance is necessarily a dealbreaker.
Hey, so I work for Truffle, we make blockchain development tools, primarily focused on Ethereum; I figure a few people here have likely heard of us so I thought this would be a good place to post this.
Anyway we're looking to hire more people, both for software development and for more management-y things. Link for open positions is https://consensys.net/open-roles/?discipline=32535
(Yeah Truffle isn't actually an independent company, we're part of Consensys, but Consensys basically lets us do what we want, so, yeah)
(Also yes I posted exactly this same thing last time, but it's still true, so...)
I should post here more, I guess I'll start with dating preferences. I'm a man in my early 30's in NJ open to a woman. I'm interested in any kind of relationship -- that means friends, too! -- and odds are that you're smarter than me, because it seems like everybody here is! Like, dang.
Feel free to message me if you're a guy, too. I'm not interested in men, but I love to conversate and learn.
Hi Folks, I've been doing a lot of photography lately and am interested in gigs or specific requests. Last time I posted I had fun helping some get some images they wanted, so I thought I'd post again. I mostly do wildlife, but I'm happy to attempt to photograph whatever you want. You can check out a partial portfolio and contact info at drethelin.com
I'm also interested in longer term projects if anyone is looking for a photojournalist or wildlife photographer to accompany them for something. I can also do some videography but I'm much less practiced at that.
FWIW, I like your photos, but I have trouble browsing your portfolio on mobile: most of the photos show up as the "gray stop sign" error icons. Actually, I just tried it on PC and got the same thing.
Hmm, they work fine for me on both. What browsers are you using?
Opera and Brave on mobile, and Firefox on desktop.
Edit: I just re-visited the site, and the missing photos did load. Perhaps this is some sort of a timeout/throughput issue ? Since I have the previously loaded photos cached, the server probably got fewer requests per second than during my first visit.
Edit #2: I just opened the page in a private tab, and got the same errors, so there's definitely something going on...
I’m the founder of Science is WEIRD, a company that helps hungry kids fall in love with ALL the sciences.
We do live, hyper-interactive classes with kids on four continents (and counting) — with the biggest fraction in the Valley. We specialize in 2e kids: more than half are gifted/talented; more than half are also ADHD.
Each lesson is a riddle wrapped in a game; the class works together to solve it. The teacher facilitates the fast-paced discussion, and drops hints (metaphors, images, stories, etc).
These… aren’t typical science classes. We use a mundane topic (we just finished our “Crows are Weird” month) to unveil big ideas —
* taxons vs. clades (Linnaeus vs. Darwin)
* endothermy vs. exothermy (and why it matters that birds are dinosaurs)
* sexual selection and monogamy in birds
* the difference between reptiles and mammals (it’s probably not what you think)
* the adaptiveness of intelligence
* the social lives of crows (more complex than anyone would guess)
If those sound dull, I promise they’re FASCINATING (and that the classes are maximally goofy). Along the way, kids learn some of the most wonderfully odd things, and each lesson crescendos with an insight that turns their conceptual world upside down.
Classes meet twice a week (but some of our families stream them to watch later).
Throughout this year, we’ll plunge into other disciplines: dirt (chemistry), the Moon (astronomy), onions (botany), hills (geology), mushrooms (mycology), nuclear power (physics), neurodiversity (psychology), and mosquitoes (zoology, again).
I’d be happy to offer a free month of “Dirt is Weird” (which starts next week) to anyone in the ACX community — just use the code “ACX” at the checkout.
scienceisWEIRD.com
I'm a Software Engineer with 9 years of experience and I'm looking for work either in Chicago or remote. I've mostly worked in JVM languages, though Clojure is my favorite. I strongly believe in ownership of the entire lifecycle of services (development, testing, operations) and am well versed in k8s. I have a passion for search and continuous improvement. My most recent project was speeding up an ETL job from 43 hours to 10 hours (though sadly we can't move it from Akka-Streams to Spark since it's expected to be sunset in a year).
You can contact me at `{My Name} . b . mcg at gmail` (replace My Name the name from my substack profile).
I have a blog ( https://sablegm.substack.com ) about analyzing tabletop RPGs in general and DnD specifically from a rationalist-ish perspective, which might be interesting to people here. Core topics involve analyzing group dynamics, core GM skills, advice on setting construction, and whatever else I feel like writing.
Most recently, I've been doing a sequence of posts on de- and then re- constructing DnD magic. Goals are partly to help people resolve what happens when magic is used in a-typical ways, partly to solidify worldbuilding, partly to write down my own thoughts about magic. I numbered the posts, but I think so far they can be read mostly independently of one another:
1. Problem description and why it's important ( https://sablegm.substack.com/p/reductionist-magic-1-the-problem )
2. Basic properties of magic and spells ( https://sablegm.substack.com/p/reductionist-magic-2-magic-fundamentals )
3. Soul-body models, how to use them to figure out spell interactions, and some notes on illusion magic ( https://sablegm.substack.com/p/reductionist-magic-souls-and-illusions )
4. Scanning divination spells, object penetration, radiology, and the magical TSA ( https://sablegm.substack.com/p/reductionist-magic-magical-sight )
5. Trying to define what is an "object" as rigorously as I can, because a lot of spells refer to this concept. ( https://sablegm.substack.com/p/reductionist-magic-5-objects-and )
6. Overview of the general spell properties such as range, navigation and target selection as well as some notes on relativity and area of effect. ( https://sablegm.substack.com/p/reductionist-magic-6-general-spell )
Is this looking at D&D style RPGs, or are you also going to discuss RPGs that codify the table dynamic more, like Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, etc?
Currently it has mostly been generalities that should apply to pretty much everything. Only the most recent sequence is DnD-focused, as that's a system with a pretty developed magic system, and one I know well. I may talk later about various more freeform RPGs, but frankly, I haven't played them enough, and generally I don't think there is much analysis to be had there.
That's why I was asking about the more structured RPGs (Burning Wheel, Apoc World, Blades in the Dark, Bliss Stage), there's likely a lot more room for analysis there, especially as they were generally created with an analytical mind for how they would affect table state.
Curse lack of edit.
But from reading a few of your articles in the magic sequence it seems that your focus is less on RPGs and more on the world D&D-style RPGs describe. Maybe your other posts have a different thrust though.
I'm gradually turning the ideas from fifteen years of blog posts into chapters for a book or books. As I finish the draft for each section, I web it for comments. I am trying, in the first draft, to use almost all of my blog posts, so expect to end up with more material than I actually want to include, so it would be particularly useful if commenters could tell me what chapters, or sections within chapters, I ought to drop, which I definitely ought not to drop.
Four sections are already up. I am almost finished with the economics section, which will probably be the longest, and expect to web it shortly.
The drafts are located at:
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Ideas%20I/Ideas%20I_%20A%20Book%20from%20Blogs.html
Economics section now webbed, minus two or three chapters that still need revision.
All chapters now up.
As always, check out my webcomic about fantasy / science fiction books! "Sort of like Penny Arcade for books," one SSC reader raved. This link goes to our one about HPMOR: https://involuntarybookclub.thecomicseries.com/comics/15/#content-start
Not really a shill, but looking to hire a doctor or medical professional to do a few hours of research to decide if a particular medical procedure is legitimate or not. Email me at maksym.morawski@gmail.com
I have written three novels, one published by Baen, two self published. One of the comments I get on Amazon is that my characters are too rational, so people here might enjoy them. _Harald_ was marketed as fantasy but is really a historical novel with invented history and geography — no magic, elves, dwarves, etc. _Salamander_ and its sequel _Brothers_ are fantasies. The setting is about fifty years after the magical equivalent of Newton, who started the process of converting magic from a craft to a science.
None of them is a political polemic, all reflect in various ways my world view as both a libertarian and an economist.
Hi Everyone,
Currently, as a side hustle, I'm building an online platform for creating or joining campaigns for collective action in adversarial situations - using concepts like Assurance Contracts to solve game-theoretic coordination problems.
Think “Kickstarter,” but instead of crowdfunding products, it’s for safely recruiting and organizing participants for any project that requires a group effort, like workplace organizing, whistleblowing, open letters, direct action, formation of parallel institutions, etc.
It's called https://spartacus.app/. The Twitter account at https://twitter.com/AppSpartacus.
I know this is not an entirely novel concept - many of the underlying principles have been validated by other successful platforms like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, Change.org, and The Point, (before it pivoted to become Groupon).
Unlike those other platforms, my focus is not fundraising or self-expression, but the formation and enablement of group coordination for specific collective actions in the real world. The aim is to increase the expected value of organizing around concealed preferences by lowering the courage requirements for taking action (from heroic to average) and reducing individual actors’ risks (from potentially catastrophic to marginal).
To preemptively address some common points of feedback:
- Spartacus will prohibit any campaign encouraging illegal actions or violence of any kind.
The app will have several mechanisms built in to abate the risk of trolls, spammers, or bad faith actors sabotaging or gaming the system.
- The explicit ideological position of the app is one of J.S Mill style liberal pluralism, and it will be defended as such. It will be politically agnostic. Both “blue” and “red” campaigns will be equally welcome. That said, campaign curation will strike for balance to try to avoid the app taking on a partisan valence. Also, absolutely no Nazis.
Project Status:
I’m currently looking to recruit people for proof of concept and beta testing.
I’d also love to connect with the following sorts of people in general:
Anyone with a strong social science background who wants to be involved and/or offer input.
Anyone who thinks they might be a potential user of the app, and/or has an idea for a good use case.
Anyone who wants to support this project through signal boosting online.
If you’d like to participate, you can fill out this form: https://forms.gle/ECyUAUc54TtjMExz8
If you have questions, you can contact me in the thread, through the intake form on the site, or via Twitter @AppSpartacus
Thanks!
Hanging With History is a podcast focused on a very roundabout explanation/investigation of the causes of the Great Enrichment, Industrial Revolution.
The perspective is mainly libertarian/conservative/rationalist history and economics.
Unfortunately, the first 60 episodes have sort of a folksy tone that many people find annoying. Still if you like your English history with economics and philosophy you might enjoy it. The current episode is on the Nine Years War/War of the Grand Alliance and the origins of the War of the Spanish Succession.
If you enjoyed my Orwell review in the ACX contest, and are interested in rationalist-ish book reviews of a wide range of stuff, ranging from classic novels to contemporary self-help and nonfiction, that's what I'm doing over at my blog, https://whimsi.substack.com/p/book-review-the-emperor. Right now I've got write ups on Kafka, Kapuscinski, and comments responding to my Orwell review. Next review will likely be on David Cullen's 'Columbine'.
I'm working on a new language for web development called Argil. It's very early in the process but the goal of the language is to remove redundancy from the development process and decrease development time.
If you want to get on the ground floor and help design a new language and transpiler: https://gitlab.com/argil/kiln
A readme with "What this is, why it is different and better, and here is a use-case/demo/example" would be helpful!
Thank you! I've been writing the logic mostly so tonight I'll work more on the public read me!
www.onlinecounsellingtherapist.com
I am a qualified and experienced counsellor and psychotherapist trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and incorporating other modalities including elements of Positive Psychology, Compassion Focussed Therapy and Mindfulness.
I provide evidence based techniques for managing stress and anxiety and more effective methods of self motivating than self criticism. I remind my clients how to be a good friend to themselves and more, to cherish and celebrate themselves (without becoming narcissists). It’s the magic switch that makes you automatically raise your inner thermostat setting to allow more of the good stuff into your life and to recognise and end any self sabotaging behaviour.
I have space for 2 more clients at the moment, so have a look at my website, read the reviews by previous clients and contact me for a free initial meeting if what you read resonates with you. I am based in the U.K. and work internationally on Zoom.
I've a set of Thoreau's 1st editions put together over the last 2 decades and I'm looking to sell them. My email is davidpovey at hotmail.
The puzzle game I'm working on with some friends has a demo available as part of Steam Next Fest:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1706090/Bean_and_Nothingness/
It's designed by a bunch of mathematicians and it's about turning beans into monsters. It's cute, it's challenging, and the main character has a pet bunny.
The demo is available until October 11 and we're releasing the full game later this year. The demo is Windows only, but the full game will likely also have Mac and Linux versions. If you like puzzle games, give it a try!
I'm working on building a product that makes it easier for dev teams to deploy new product features, gather high quality data from those product features, and optimize those features through A/B tests or machine learning models. My co-founders and I are looking to show engineers and/or product managers what we've been working on and get feedback. You can either email me at christina at causallabs dot io or you can set up time to talk with us here: https://book.vimcal.com/p/Csz2aDmxgSBXyyTH.
I will note that our product is particularly useful for folks working in building online machine learning models. That's what we worked on together in our previous jobs, so that's generally been top of mind for us in designing the product. I'd say the capsule summary for ML folks specifically is: "get the training data you need without ever writing another ETL + deploy your models without waiting on engineering."
I want to connect with psychiatrists interested in working in the ketamine space. My two partners and I are concerned about some of the trends we're seeing of sending medications home for people to essentially do on their own (e.g. Mindbloom, My Ketamine Home). Doesn't feel responsible to have people undergo their first psychedelic experiences essentially on their own. On the other hand, many people aren't interested or ready for bull-blown ketamine assisted psychotherapy. We're interested in bridging that gap by training somatic therapists, massage therapists, and other folks to be responsible sitters and to help with preparation and integration. We're interested in finding a psychiatrist partner to develop this project. Would love to connect if that's you!
I think this is also an area ripe for VR/AR applications.
I'm a psychotherapist who had similar concerns and have been doing my own trial of at-home ketamine as precursor to providing support to selected clients for same. I have prior experience with psychedelics and have been following the ketamine research closely as well as some of the material around in-office KAP. Am developing some clinical opinions about benefit of at-home protocol and ways to provide support for at-home experiences.
I'd be happy to be in touch with you all as you develop your project.
Hi Radar, I'd love to stay in touch. I'm at Sharon@kat.network, and you?
A Twitter bot I built to share rationalist/effective altruism type content with the aim to open peoples minds to more quality ACX like content.
https://twitter.com/RationalReads
Code is here https://github.com/l0x6c/TwitterRSSBot on GitHub if anyone is interested.
another blog shill: https://ravik.substack.com
I write mostly book-review style posts on economics, history, technology, etc. Here are a couple of posts I think might have some appeal:
1. https://ravik.substack.com/p/a-795m-analogy
I go over the history of broadcast copyright law, and how some weird implications of legal loopholes induced cable providers to waste exabytes of storage, pumping over a million tons of co2 into the air every year.
2. https://ravik.substack.com/p/book-review-domination-and-the-arts
Book review of another work from James C. Scott (of Seeing Like a State fame). This one focuses on the subversive strategies deployed by the oppressed. Plenty of neat historical anecdotes if you're into that sort of thing.
Please subscribe if you find these interesting!
Found all five articles very good. Subscribed!
schlaugh.com is a social media website where you get to post at most once a day. It's not mine, but I happily remind people it exists at irregular intervals.
It is low-traffic and low-tech (metaphorically speaking, it's run by one chap out of his basement); you may have to fight it a little sometimes. Post markup is in an HTML derivate, for example. But it's a nice, quiet corner of the internet, and the 24 hour interval makes debates not nearly as hot-headed as they would be elsewhere.
Presently most schlusers (the community likes tacking "sch" onto various words, so here I am, giving you a taste of that) use the site as a journal plus a little low-frequency social interaction.
"So, I signed up. Where's the content? Where do I find other people?" You find other people by them linking you to their schlaugh profiles, or because they made a post using a tag you follow. The closest thing to a "public" stream is the tag "milkshake", for historic reasons. This sort of thing is covered by the site FAQ, though, which is both enlightening and amusing to read.
"Does this have anything to do with rationality?" No, not really.
"Why should I join?" Maybe you're tired of Facebook, Twitter, et al. Maybe you're just curious. In any case, I don't think there's much of a 'should' about it. Personally, I tried it out of curiosity and stayed for the company, as well as for the useful habit of writing a little bit every day, which has e.g. helped me combat feelings of 'but I didn't get anything done today', clobbering myself over the head with large lists of things I did in fact do.
Is there a way to read via RSS?
I honestly don't know, since I don't use RSS myself. A private message to the user 'staff' (or public post tagging '@staff') might get you answers (or RSS implemented), though!
I like this site too. Thank you for sharing it. I don't think I would have discovered it otherwise!
Do you have a list of recommended users to follow?
With the note that it's all fairly whimsical at the moment:
https://www.schlaugh.com/arctanpi writes about math sometimes.
https://www.schlaugh.com/nash owns the Peculiar Holiday calendar ( https://www.nashhigh.com/misc/peculiar-holiday-calendar ) that a bunch of schlusers celebrate and sometimes does creative and unusual things with schlaugh, like this post: https://www.schlaugh.com/~/NUjZkvV
https://www.schlaugh.com/Hexephre posts their art occasionally; I enjoy looking at it.
https://www.schlaugh.com/gyrodiot writes about his own psychology a lot, which has proven insightful for me to read and reflect on mine. He also spent time sharing partly-in-character insights into a world-building project, which he made a separate schlaugh account for: https://www.schlaugh.com/phenn
I think those are the big ones that immediately come to mind. But it's still a small community, so it's easy to, with a bit of attention to what people you already know about write and whom they write to, get in touch with just about all schlaughers over the course of a few days, and then curate your content stream from there.
Thanks for the recs! Am giving it a try https://www.schlaugh.com/iporphyry
Awesome, excited to see where you'll go with it. :) I hope you will find your stay on schlaugh enjoyable!
If you are into investment research, have some hands-on experience in some real business, and are a great writer we might be able to use (and level-up your skills) over at IPO Candy. You can see what we do at ipocandy.com and you can send me an email if you get fired up (kris@).
Woman seeking human for romance etc! Serious relationship preferred, but also open to friendship.
Strong preferences:
- I’m open to all genders, but people capable of siring kids are preferred (ie cis men or pre-transition trans women — I’m a cis woman).
- My age (32), +/-5 years.
- I like people who are very honest and very kind. Smart is cool or whatever, but compassion, integrity, and grace are a lot more important to me.
Dealbreakers:
- Must want to have children (I have none, but would like them in the next few years)
- Must be okay with living in New England long-term (I’m currently in Boston)
Bonus points if you’re:
- An effective altruist
- An atheist
- Mostly or entirely sober (I’m an occasional social drinker, but that’s it)
- Interested in group houses / communal living
- Monogamous (I’m kinda sorta open to poly with people who do it extremely carefully, but I mostly prefer not to add that complexity to my life)
- Someone who likes other people + likes being alive
More about me: I’m a tall software engineer who lives in a group house with my childhood best friend. I like reading, cooking, hanging out with my siblings and niblings, solving riddles and word games, learning to juggle, starting and not finishing knitting projects, and (some) board games.
If you want to introduce yourself, you can email me at rip.my.inbox at gmail. No need to send anything too long — I’d prefer to meet up in person rather than go through a ton of back-and-forth online.
(If you want ideas, you could introduce yourself with any of the following:
- a link to your blog / Reddit profile
- a book recommendation
- a link to your favorite Wikipedia article
- a link to a dating profile
- a project you’ve done or code you’ve written
- a controversial opinion you have
- an unappealing fact about yourself
- a good riddle
- a bad riddle
- any of the above, but ciphered)
Thanks for reading all this!
PS: I’m taking a few months off dating, (until December / January), so I may not respond to emails for a bit. Just putting this out there now because the classified posts don’t come around that often!
TIL what "nibling" means. It is a delightful word. Thank you.
I don't match your preferences, but I'm always happy to recommend books. I loved "H is for Hawk." Helen Macdonald is beautiful writer.
Thank you! I’ll add it to my list. If you’d like a rec, I’m enjoying “The Rise of Wolf 8” a lot right now, which I think has a bit in common with HifH.
that's a great dating profile! you inspired me to post my own! I am nowhere near Boston, unfortunately. Have you heard the riddle: walk a mile south, a mile east, and a mile north. you end up in the same place. You didn't see a bear, and no bear saw you. Where in the world could you be?
Any number of places!
I evaluate grants for the the Near ecosystem. We're enthusiastic about stuff that can be done with DAOs, Prediction markets, NFTs and more. If you need a bouncing board, I'll be glad to help you sort out an idea. It's very easy for me to hand out grants in the 10-20k USD range right now to anyone remotely qualified, if that's you, you might like to apply.
email: thor at near dot foundation
If you’re looking for a remote job or to hire remote talent check out: https://himalayas.app
I indulge in landscape photography from time to time. Unfortunately, I have neither skill nor talent:
https://www.deviantart.com/omnibug
You are welcome to buy some prints/coasters/magnets from the site, if you feel like it (I get a shiny nickel for each purchase made !), but what I'm really looking for is some kind of brutal yet actionable critique. Talent can't be taught, obviously, but perhaps I could improve my skill at least a little.
I like your composition quite a bit -- the way the angles and lines establish different spaces on each photo are interesting, and you're capturing some brilliant colors that complement each other well.
My biggest complaint is that there is not enough contrast in which parts of each photo receive a soft or hard focus. Some of the photos (Woolly Shores) have almost the entire frame in the same washed out sort-of-focus, and some of the photos (A Glimpse of Neon) have two kinds of focus that seem to be split up more or less at random. Like, the trees all the way on the left-edge of A Glimpse of Neon are crisper than the trees in the center or on the right. Meanwhile, the right-hand edge of the mountain is crisper than the left-hand edge of the mountain. Why? Are you trying to say something about the landscape, or did the focus just happen to come out that way?
One photo that doesn't have this problem is Apocalypse Soon -- it makes sense that the featureless grey clouds are out of focus; they're just there for scale and to add ominousness. It's interesting that the hill that's furthest from shore is in less focus than the hill that's closest to shore; that suggests a sense of deepening mystery. The rippling water is captured in impressively good detail given the low-light conditions; I enjoyed having my attention drawn to the ripples because most photographers don't take many shots of such dimly lit water, so it was a fresh and interesting choice of what to highlight.
Yes, that's a good point about the focus -- I should definitely keep it more organized, especially when taking panoramas. Thanks, that is good advice.
I think these pictures are pretty good. I'd like to use one of them on my website which is commercial so I'm not sure if the license would work for that or not? I put images in for posts to make them look cooler not to sell them or anything. We mostly write about investment stuff so that's what people pay for.
I can't speak for DeviantArt, but I personally don't mind if you use my photos as backgrounds or illustrations, although it would be nice if you gave me credit (e.g. via an unobtrusive link to the photo somewhere on your website). For most photos, you can also buy uncompressed PNGs, which might be more convenient for website design.
You've certainly took the "no talent" humble brag to new heights.
These ACX classified threads are weirdly fascinating. Thank you, and please keep doing this.
Agreed; even though I'm not planning of taking advantage of many offers here, the sheer variety is a fascinating window into a maddening vista of the minds of ACX readers :-)
My band's new music video came out today https://youtu.be/6XwihrJSZnA
Are you bored, now that Scott's traveling? Do you want to read something interesting, especially some interesting fiction?
Well, I'm writing stories and I could really use helpful comments and criticism on them, and I see opportunities for what economists call 'gains from trade'.
I think I'm well above average as writers go, and, in particular, well above average at writing intelligent, reasonable characters taking actions for motives that make sense. (Also at superpowered fight scenes.) If anyone's interested in signing up as an alpha reader for my fiction, I'm happy to add you to my mailing list - I just finished a new story for the EA contest, and I'd like to get some feedback on it before I submit it. If you're bored and looking for something to read, we can help each other out!
I can get endorsements from David and Rebecca Friedman, but they're relatives of mine and so potentially highly biased.
My E-mail address is (rot13) nrilyzne@tznvy.pbz; send me a message or give me your E-mail address, and I'd be happy to send you a link!
Bisexual polyamorous guy in his late 20s seeking romantic partners, friends, co-hackers, and possibly you :D
current location: Lisbon, soon (january 2022) SF
More about me: I'm a cryptographic engineer originally from California; I've been living outside of the US for a couple of years, soon to be returning for a six-month experimental stint in SF.
Identity constructions: I claim to value honesty, intellectual curiosity, self reflection, love, community creation, and first-principles thinking above other things. I'm tend extraverted. The better part of my energy goes toward learning and building projects, participating in crypto and open-source communities, and in creating real-world communities. I'm an advocate for privacy and alternative communities/lifestyle practices.
Politics: I lean anarcho-libertarian, though the rise of multi-trillion dollar companies has pushed me farther left. I quite liked this post https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/.
Religion: I was raised Episcopal Christian; I discarded that tradition about ten years ago, though I maintain a respect for some religious practices.
Sex and romance: Growing up, I didn't have positive romantic role models. I now internally frame all encounters as social with capacity to become romantic later if it feels right (usually after several times hanging out or extended correspondence). I currently live with a partner who is also polyamorous. Am switch, enjoy kink. I'd like kids one day, probably not in the next 5-10 years.
Health: very active, do yoga, run, climb. Semi-regularly go through meditation phases. Reduced meat diet, drink occassionally, enjoy psychedelics and other drugs too.
Three of my favorite books are East of Eden, The Diamond Age, and Sirens of Titan. I tend to read 25-30 books a year, lots of sci-fi, programming-related stuff, economics, and philosophy.
A plausibly unappealing thing about me is that I'm limited in my capacity for empathy, particularly toward people who fall outside my ingroups. I sometimes practice growing my capacity for empathy and love.
My semi-active blog: https://thork.net/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cryptograthor
Github: https://github.com/thor314
Qualities I admire: Open-mindedness, honesty, ethical self-examination, community-centrism, creativity, curiosity, self-knowledge, good boundaries
Qualities I don't care about: travel-propensity, nature-enjoyment, adventurosity, artistic talent (though I admire creativity)
Qualities I dislike: high (>2hrs/day) social media/phone usage, excessive hedonism, being a total dingus
Woah, you got all the way here!? You should send me an email! thorck at protonmail dot com
I work at Zoba, a startup building optimization software for the cities of the future. Right now we help micromobility operators decide how to allocate their fleets to better serve users and generate more revenue. We're growing rapidly, both in the sense of "new products" and "new people."
Check out https://www.zoba.com/careers for job postings. We've got openings in software engineering, data science, machine learning, economics, semi-technical roles in operations (e.g. consulting background is a nice match), sales, customer success, marketing, ...
Hi everyone, I work a day job as a TEFL teacher but I'd really like to find work as an illustrator. I work in various styles. If you have something you'd like me to illustrate (paid),please contact me and I'll happily consider it.
My website is here: https://www.berryillustrator.com/
Neat! I'd be interested in some concept art for a tabletop RPG I'm working on. This page has some good examples of the ballpark style I'd be interested in:
https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22446171/blades-in-the-dark-rpg-review-evil-hat
If 50-200$ is a fair price for a piece resembling that, then I think we've got a zone of possible agreement :)
Hi Dan- yes, the price sounds fine and your project sounds really interesting. Can you please reach out to me at the email address on the website and we can talk a bit further then.
thx
I translate poetry! From Norwegian into English and vice-versa. A good sample here:
https://odysee.com/@kom-poetry-channel:1/London-(Nordahl-Grieg,-1940):b
And my whole channel here:
https://odysee.com/@kom-poetry-channel:1
More content every six months or so. True art cannot be rushed.
My blog: https://paranoidenough.com/
Some rationality, technology, finance/crypto, and general philosophical musings :)
On SSC, Scott wrote a post about Puritan spotting, and one of the items to look for was someone starting a religion. Scott asked where these people have gone. Well, fear not, because Oa has called me out of the wilderness to start a new religion: The Way. Broadly speaking, we Wayfarers believe in Enlightenment values like tolerance and use of the scientific method, but also find value in community, ritual, and well, religion. I bring up these points and more in the introductory post on the substack that I hope will serve to expand and support the soon-to-be community of Wayfarers: https://windingway.substack.com/p/introduction
> Oa has called me out of the wilderness to start a new religion: The Way.
I hate to say it, but this name is already taken.
As I think I suggested last time, this would work better if it were in fact classified, and it's quite easy to do. When you put it up, make a set of top level comments: Jobs, Blogs and Books, Looking for Work, Dating, ... . Ask each person to post his ad as a reply to the appropriate top level comment.
I agree.
Good idea, the obvious way to do it would to it like you said, though I wonder if some of the engineers at substack could be persuaded to experiment with implementing a different comment format.
Agreed.
I'm a co-founder of a small crypto software engineering agency. We're initially focusing on NFTs, but we're interested in working on any smart contract projects! Website: https://www.northwestnfts.com/ and our blog: https://medium.com/northwest-nfts
You can reach us here: contact at northwestnfts.com
I do a FREE LIVE weekly 40-min science chat and acoustic singalong on Zoom under the nom d'espace of 'Super blurry astronaut' – mostly on a Thursday but this week's was Wednesday on the theme of 'Nobel sentiments', to celebrate this week’s Nobel prizes.
Given the Medicine awards, it was truly sensational, so 🎸 Touch me 🙌🏾 Sensual world 💃🏻 Tender 😘 Feeling good 👼🏼 I wanna hold your hand 🐙 etc.
Every Monday, I post the details on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/PatrickEasterbunny as well as various mostly UK-based science communication networks, and folk share ideas for songs and general chat.
I don't know if this counts as shilling, but in for a penny...
Best regards,
Patrick
Nature NEWS 04 October 2021
Medicine Nobel goes to scientists who discovered biology of senses
David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian share the award for identifying receptors that allow the body’s cells to sense temperature and touch.
Two researchers who discovered the molecular basis for our ability to sense temperature and touch have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Physiologist David Julius at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) used capsaicin — the compound that gives chilli peppers their gustatory kick — to track down a protein called TRPV1 that responds to painful heat.
Molecular neurobiologist Ardem Patapoutian at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, identified receptors in skin and other organs that respond to mechanical forces, such as those generated by touch and pressure.
I write a blog, https://www.navalgazing.net/, about naval history and technology. It started in the comments at SSC and has now been running for nearly four years. I've looked at everything from the basic technical aspects of battleship design to overviews of warship development to an in-depth look at the Falklands War.
The first edition of A student's introduction to English grammar by Huddleston & Pullum came out in 2005. A second edition is finally coming out next month and I'm a co-author. https://www.amazon.ca/Students-Introduction-English-Grammar/dp/1009088017
Also, surprisingly (or not), even today linguists disagree on seemingly simple questions like what qualifies as an English pronoun. I used math to answer the question: https://cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/cadernos/article/view/399
I have several questions.
> only six CGEL pronouns were assigned to the k-groups determinatives cluster. These include one reciprocal pronoun "one another" (though not "each other")
How did this happen? The dendrogram from the same data correctly identifies that "one another" and "each other" are the same thing, putting them in their own tiny taxon. As far as the dendrogram is concerned, both forms are determinatives.
> a branch with seven dependent genitive pronouns (e.g., "_my_ time") and a branch with eight independent genitive pronouns (e.g., "mine"), the odd one out being "his", which is both dependent and independent.
This is a weird aspect of your data. You say you wanted to use word forms because word form are what are actually used. Fair enough. But your data painstakingly separates different aspects of identical word forms, such as "her acc[usative]" / "her dep[endent]" or "it plain" / "it dum[my]". The distinction is real, of course, and it's very easy to do this separation and coding reliably. But the distinction between dependent "his" and independent "his" is just as real and just as easy to make. Why did you collapse them when you separated everything else?
(Actually, the question should be phrased the other way around. If you're trying to establish whether there's a difference between pronouns and determinatives, why risk begging the question by *imposing* distinctions on your processed data that aren't present in the raw data? Maybe if the data didn't start off by assuming there's a difference in essence between "you pron[oun]" and "you det[erminative]", the results wouldn't show such a clear separation between pronouns and determinatives!)
----
Consider the quantifiers: "something", "anything", "nothing", and "everything" all quantify _things_ in four different ways. (Two existential, two universal.) They also vary along another dimension: "something", "somebody", and "somewhere" are all positive-polarity existential quantifiers, but they respectively quantify things, people, and places.
The dendrogram has taken the surreal position that they belong to four taxa: the "things" cluster of (something, nothing, anything); the "people" cluster of (somebody, nobody, anybody); the "places" cluster of (somewhere, nowhere, anywhere), and the "positive universal" cluster of (everything, everybody, everywhere). How did this happen?
(My instinct here is that this is tabular data and a dendrogram is just an inherently inappropriate representation. [I'm talking specifically about the quantifiers. I like the dendrogram in general, though the collapse of "his" also causes problems with it.])
> Almost all the other features were taken from CGEL, but other sources were included where a particular concept seemed relevant. Sometimes these came from the literature (e.g., must be outranked by a coindexed element, SAG; WASOW; BENDER, 2003, p. 292) and sometimes they were just features that struck me as possibly relevant (e.g., starts with /ð/).
This is a dangerous practice; introducing features will cause the word forms exhibiting that feature to come closer together. By choosing features judiciously, you could make the results look however you wanted. I suggest that the fact that "the" (determinative) and "there" (pronoun) both start with /ð/ has no influence on their usage, and therefore the existence of the feature is polluting your data and lowering the quality of your results. The sound pronounced at the beginning of a word is relevant to some questions, but not to this question.
Thank you for engaging with this, Michael!
1. I don't know why the k-groups assignments of "one another" and "each other" differ, especially given the dendrogram has them in their own taxon, as you point out. I mentioned it in the text because it seems like a problem and because I hoped some reader with a better handle on the math than me would be able to makes some sense of it.
If I had to speculate, I would guess that it is some artifact of the k-groups algorithm and the way the input was randomized. k-means is a greedy algorithm, and I assume that k-groups is too, though that is not stated explicitly in Li's work, and I don't understand the underlying math well enough to say. The algorithm only iterated 3 times (though as you can see in the R code, it is set to max out at 10 iterations). But it could be that if you ran it again, there would be small changes in the assignments, depending on the initial randomization of the data.
2a. The collapsing of dependent and independent "his" seems unmotivated. It's been quite a few years since I created the table, and I don't remember this, nor do I find any notes on it. Similarly, dependent and independent "its" are also collapsed. I didn't even notice this differing application of rules when I wrote that line pointing out that "his" is both dependent and independent, so thank you for pointing it out!
2b. I certainly considered this potential criticism. I started with the CGEL assignments as my base model. CGEL posits two words with the shapes "you" and "we", a determinative and a pronoun each and three word with the shape of "one", a pronoun, a determinative, and a noun. If you collapse all of these, then there is no possible solution that matches the model. If you separate them out, then at least both outcomes are possible, though, as you say, the mere act of separating them could risk begging the question. I have made all my data available in the hope that others will try similar experiments with different assumptions.
3. Syntax, morphology, and semantics have all be encoded here, so the fact that the "-where" words are locative, for example could make a difference. There are also examples of genitives for the "-thing", "-one", and "-body" words, such as "for anyone's benefit", which didn't appear for the "-where" words.
4. I'll just preface this by saying that I collected and coded the data and then I ran the analysis. I didn't add or drop individual columns and then rerun the data to see if that changed the outcome.
So, in this particular example, it seemed to me that the wh- words in particular seemed like a salient group, so I coded that. That sent me looking for other phonological regularities, which led me to th-, which also codes for the historical relationship between "the" and "that/this". As I say in the paper, I try to include whatever seems like it could possibly be relevant without prejudging. A good next step would be to look at the contribution of each feature and to see what might be excluded.
---
Thank you again for this useful feedback!
My new book, "Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World," pulls six leadership lessons from complexity science. I believe these lessons can help leaders deal with increasing complexity in their public and private lives. My goal: readers gain a gut-level understanding that most of life takes place in organized systems where no one is in control - and thus leaders should seek influence, rather than control. https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Out-Control-Emergent-Leadership-ebook/dp/B09G4V4WLZ/
I write logic puzzles sometimes: https://primepuzzles.wordpress.com/ I enjoy external constraints and writing puzzles for people who actually want to solve them, so if anyone wants to "commission" a puzzle like these (for free), just give me some rules to work with (e.g. what type of puzzle? do you want the clues to spell your name or something? etc) and I'll give it a shot. (I am guessing there will be 0-2 takers; I may have to re-evaluate this plan if there are many more.)
Don't know if anyone will still see this, but I translate Russian to English, with particular emphasis on scientific papers. If interested, email this gmail: ebtranslationsetc
I work on Copilot (copilot.github.com), an AI-powered programming assistant that can write code for you. We're currently hiring developers with experience/interest in developer tools as well as ML engineers and more. If you'd like to help shape the future of AI-assisted programming (and make it safe and human-aligned), send your resume to mtaran@github.com. It's a bonus that GitHub is remote-first, hiring all over the world, and the team is awesome to work with!
I build stuff from LEGO bricks - mostly small models that look well on a bookshelf. I'm mostly interested in sci-fi themes, with some builds based on works of fiction in the genre. You can see most of my creations here: https://linktr.ee/john.carter (choose your preferred platform), including instructions for several of them.
I do commissions, so if you're interested in having custom designed LEGO model contact me at john.carter.workshop [at gmail]. I can deliver either a finished model, or instructions and list of required parts and help you order parts yourself (the second is preferable if you're based outside of EU).
So I'm at sea trying to get my book in front of the right kinds of readers. I'll spare you the litany of frustrations, but I really think many readers here would be interested in it. It's called "Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers and Algorithmic Matchmakers" https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intimacy-Virtual-Algorithmic-Matchmakers/dp/0231200943
It considers what happens when evolved human nature has to operate in a world of robotics, VR and artificial intelligence. I'd obviously like people to buy it, and to post about it on social media etc. Even more, however, if you have a podcast/youtube/blog, I'm always up for interviews - there's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about it.
Not sure if anybody's still looking at this thread, but: the startup I work for is looking for more software engineers. It's a smart, friendly, collaborative team trying to revolutionize software testing -- I personally have grown more as an engineer here than everywhere else I've worked at put together. We have more than a few ACX/MR/Money Stuff readers, and come from a variety of political viewpoints and academic/career backgrounds.
The catch is that we *really* don't want engineers working remote when we don't have to, so you have to be willing to relocate to Northern Virginia (Metro DC) and join our fully-vaccinated office.
We're not extremely picky about your tech specialization (most of us work on a variety of fairly-different projects over our time here), but we're definitely most enthusiastic about senior-ish people right now.
If anybody's interested, job postings are here: https://antithesis.breezy.hr/
Happy to answer questions, with the disclaimer that this post is more "I'm allowed to try" than "official messaging".
I'm an interview coach and a general career/executive coach. I work with a fair few folks in (especially) tech to improve communication skills and help people to sell themselves. Free 15-min consultation to see if it's a good fit. https://www.smithinterviewcoaching.com/
Reserve is hiring.
We are working on governance protocol design, which is a bit like designing a new tiny nation, and we are seeking new teammates to help with that design process. This is a long-term, patient project, which requires careful and extended thinking about intricate mechanisms, political coordination, credit assignment, and other such topics. Thus, we need people capable of precise thinking, with very long attention spans, at least in this domain. We don't have a job ad up for this role since we don't expect to find anyone for it online, but this community is a bit different. Pay for this role is significant, as it is very important and we value it highly.
We're also hiring in many other domains: engineering, design, strategy, filmmaking, and recruiting, for example.
Reserve is a cryptocurrency project. We have a stablecoin protocol on Ethereum, and a mobile app for using our USD stablecoin in Venezuela, Argentina, and Colombia. The app has 50k active users (100k weekly app visitors, but 50k we count as financially active), and we are aiming to get past 100k by end of year. Over the last few months we've scaled our team to handle customer support – eng+product is still only 16 people, but total team is 160. The project is complicated, risky, and stressful, and since earlier this year when we began concretely serving a meaningful number of people who are dealing with hyperinflation, it's become pretty rewarding as well.
More on us, and our open engineering roles: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28776980
Feel free to email me or others on the team directly about the governance design role, firstname.lastname@reserve.org.
I have a blog and some people might like it.
It's not about tech or futurism or AI or psychology or rationality.
It's about my life as a winemaker-turned-distiller with blended senses (a weird variant of auditory-olfactory synesthesia). Check it out if you're interested in neurodiversity, and if you like reading other people's personal stories :) www.chromaticaromatic.com
In other news, I'm doing monthly online wine and beer tastings via zoom with a synethesia theme. I co-host with Sean Day, president of the International Association of Synesthetes, Artists, and Scientists. We get together, talk about synesthesia, and taste beverages following a theme. The ticket is $35, all proceeds go to fund the Synesthesia Society of Africa, and it's limited to eight people. Neurotypical people are always welcome. If you think this would be fun and interesting, please reply to this post and I'll hook you up.
I enjoyed your post on Bordeaux, it was charming 😊
Hello! I'm writing about play-and-earn and play-to-earn game design on Metaversus. If you're interested to learn more, I think this is a great place to start.
https://metaversus.substack.com/p/introducing-metaversus
Dear all, my name is Thomas Prosser and I'm a politics academic at Cardiff University in the UK. In my Substack, I write about politics from a heterodox perspective, avoiding groupthink. I do so with reference to theories of institutions, values and ideology, these being areas of academic expertise. My influences include Scott Alexander, Ronald Inglehart, Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan. Here's the link: https://thomasprosser.substack.com/
Please check it out! It's free and I'm always so grateful for subscribers :-)