Comments on: Open Thread 7: The Hunt For Thread October

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 22:36:23 +0000

When I start working, then give up in frustration after five minutes, do I stop eating the custard slice? Indeed the very act of eating it means I’ve stopped focusing on work.

Report comment

By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 05:08:51 +0000

A first warning for Nikias

Report comment

By: Matt C

Matt C — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 00:46:44 +0000

Thanks, Paul.

Report comment

By: Paul Torek

Paul Torek — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 02:54:29 +0000

I couldn’t find the one I semi-remembered, but this looks pretty good, especially figure 7.5. It’s not truly back-of-the-envelope. You still need a computer and the HITRAN database, to estimate the additional opacity of the atmosphere in the IR due to a doubling of CO2.

Report comment

By: libra

libra — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 01:25:46 +0000

I see that the LW-community contains many people who subscribe to FAI-Singularity ideas, which I think are 90% nonsense.

Sure but

1) It has a lot of really smart people

2) I’ve gone to other communities but I’m turned off because of their simplistic visions, intolerance and bias

3) I *do* strongly subscribe to having a zero rate of pure time preference even if I’m not sure what practical consequences that leads to

4) None of this implies LessWrong is a good use of your time, especially if you’re sick of politics/causes in general like me

Report comment

By: aquila

aquila — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 00:15:29 +0000

I guess I’m thinking here of abortion and contraception policy as a stand-in for fertility rates. There does seem a strong association between fertility and traditional values.

I would tentatively assume that…

1) Conservative policies thrive in low GDP per capita nations
2) Reducing fertility will increase GDP per capita and so decrease conservatism
3) The easiest way to reduce total future global GDP is to reduce fertility
4) The easiest way to preserve ecosystems is to reduce future global GDP, because humans mostly don’t care about nature

Report comment

By: Anonymous`

Anonymous` — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 00:11:10 +0000

…I had no idea this happened. I thought people cringed at puns because stereotypical puns are pretty simplistic and low-talent, and that reaction spread to good puns too because it became a fun tradition or something.

Report comment

By: Cauê

Cauê — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 00:01:45 +0000

I meant the “Gamers are Dead” articles, 14 in the same day, which basically turned gamergate into this thing capable of breaking 3 million tweets.

I’m uncomfortable talking about it here, because apparently people don’t want it. But I’ve been following it pretty closely since I think Aug 29 (not especially proud of this), and my hyper-summarized take on it is “the last time the most widespread narrative got quite this close to being 100% false was perhaps during the satanic abuse panic of the 80’s”.

Report comment

By: Randall Randall

Randall Randall — Mon, 03 Nov 2014 23:47:04 +0000

To your first paragraph, David D. Friedman, the economist and libertarian writer, calls you a modern Orwell over at his blog: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-modern-orwell.html

Edit: Oh. If only I’d clicked through to those comments, I would have known that you probably know this.