Open Thread 136

This is the bi-weekly visible open thread (there are also hidden open threads twice a week you can reach through the Open Thread tab on the top of the page). Post about anything you want, but please try to avoid hot-button political and social topics. You can also talk at the SSC subreddit or the SSC Discord server – and also check out the SSC Podcast. Also:

1. Thanks to everyone who’s helped organize upcoming meetups. I still need people to volunteer for the following cities: Cambridge (UK), Detroit, Dublin, Munich, Oxford, Pittsburgh. If you live in those cities and are willing to host an SSC meetup, please post below and/or email me with location, date, and time. I’ll try to have the big list of times and locations up later this week.

2. Related: the Less Wrong team now has a feature where you can add your location onto a world map and see if there are other people in your area interested in meeting up (or get notifications if someone else organizes for your area). See the thing on the top of https://www.lesswrong.com/community.

3. I’ve previously been refraining from enforcing the comment policies too hard on people who otherwise produce good content. And when conversations degenerate and everyone breaks the comment policies in a way where it’s hard to disentangle who started it, I’ve been leaving most of the people involved alone. But I think discussion quality has been degenerating here lately, so I’m revoking both those policies. The following people are now banned for multiple violations of the comment policy (linked after their names):
– Conrad Honcho indefinitely (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
– Dick indefinitely (1, 2, 3, 4)
– Matt M for three months (1, 2)
– Deiseach for three months or until you guys whine at me to reinstate her enough (1, 2, 3)

The following people are on thin ice and should consider themselves warned:
– Brad
– Le Maistre Chat
– JPNunez
– EchoChaos

4. AI safety organization Ought is looking for an engineering team lead (and, uh, offering a big referral bonus, so if you apply, mention my name).

5. I got a chance to talk to the author of the Times article I reviewed in Don’t Fear The Simulators. He wants to clarify that the presentation in the Times was necessarily condensed and simplified, and that if you’re really interested in this topic he has a paper, The Termination Risks Of Simulation Science, which explains his arguments in more detail.

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1,238 Responses to Open Thread 136

  1. Clutzy says:

    I am late to the party and late to the thread so I hope I can still get engagement.

    Aside from obvious nostalgia, I think I would credit one large factor that makes classic WOW better than modern WOW:

    The tastemaker preference for reward. I think everyone on this forum knows the term tastemaker, but, in the videogame industry I think they generally like games with relative difficulty, novelty, and reward. But the reward they like is usually not something explicitly shiny, but something they decide is a reward. This, in combination with their relative hardcoreness, means they dont mind timesinks for rewards, and don’t even care if there is nothing official about the reward. They decide what the reward is. And I think WOW progressed away from that as it tried to keep players that tastemakers lured. Subsequent games have followed suit.

    I was lured to WOW originally because two of the best Diablo 2 LOD players I’d ever PVPed against said it was awesome. I am talking about people that organized on the D2 forums competitive 4v4 tournaments, crazy hardcore challenges, etc. We all went to one server, had a horde guild, and frankly I fell way behind. I didn’t have time or dedication. I went alliance for my real world friends and enjoyed it even more, but my friends never could have convinced me to pay the monthly fee on their own. That is who WoW classic appeals to, and I think a game can succeed on that style for a long time.

    The new game is objectively better in tons of ways for a casual guy, like i have been since, and I actually want to pick it up again (im way behind) once I fix my schedule because its fun. But the old game’s style is more appealing to a certain segment, even if addons have progressed so much that it makes the old game too easy for true hardcore people.

  2. gww says:

    Let’s meet up in Oxford:

    The Gardener’s Arms
    39 Plantation Road,
    Oxford,
    OX2 6JE

    http://www.thegarden-oxford.co.uk

    Thu 19th, from 6pm.

    Apparently it’s “the only 100% vegetarian & vegan pub menu in Oxford”.

    I’ve organised one of these meetups before, in Birmingham UK, but I’m new to Oxford so feel free to suggest a better location.

  3. rahien.din says:

    Ran into this situation the other day. What would you do :

    You are going to conduct a business deal with someone at a coffeeshop. If they are not on time you will be seriously inconvenienced – to the degree that you would rather have cancelled the meeting. But you also know that if they show, even late, you will feel beholden to give them your full attention, even though it will mess up your day. If you leave now, you will probably miss them, but you’ll have the rest of the day the way you want it.

    An afternoon shower is blowing up and you feel like they’ll wait until it is over to show, thus delaying the meeting and messing up your day.

    Their phone goes to voicemail, and the critical timepoint arrives. Do you stay or go?

    • Randy M says:

      It differs by culture. In urban America, I think you’re obliged five minutes beyond specified time, but not more. Obviously a voice or text message is required if you want to cancel.
      The implication is that the deal doesn’t profit you much, if you’d rather not attend than be delayed. So you probably leave.

    • Nick says:

      I think I’d leave them a voicemail and go.

    • zoozoc says:

      For a USA context (west coast).

      I think it is pretty normal to be late by 5, even 10, minutes. I think leaving past 10 minutes would be fine if you leave them a voicemail/text saying that you have to go. If you really need the meeting to be on time, you should mention that while setting up the meeting.

  4. Randy M says:

    Are paragraph indentations going away? When writing long form on-line I try to retain them, but WordPress, for one, really fights against that, and I think most bloggers accept this new standard.

    Will this bleed over into print, as extra ling breaks replace the thumb-width spacing before a new paragraph?

    What’s your preference as a reader? This is pretty trivial, so I understand if tempers flare, but try to be civil. Let me know if this needs to be saved for the next CW thread.

    • Aftagley says:

      Fully support.

      A hard return between paragraphs, or even taking an Fishing trip between them as randy suggests, is sufficient. We don’t need a weird indentation to let us know when we’re at the next logical grouping of sentences.

      • Randy M says:

        Of course I can’t make a post about punctuation without typos.

      • Nick says:

        an Fishing trip

        • Aftagley says:

          Ha, good catch!

          That’s the prime benefit of living in a glass house – you can see all sorts of cool people to throw stones at.

          • Randy M says:

            Ah, I asked for it

            Be gracious with typos or translation errors unless they accidentally say something really funny

            Ha, good catch!

            Intentional, I hope.

          • Nick says:

            While I’m admiring the view, here’s how I would emend your post:

            Fully support.

            A hard return between paragraphs, or even taking a fishing trip, as Randy suggests, suffices. We don’t need a weird indent to let us know when we’re at the next logical grouping of sentences.

            I can’t say that I like the term “hard return,” though. Strictly speaking, we often separate paragraphs with two hard returns, like in these comments. But a lot of styling is a single hard return with margins or padding. Microsoft Word’s dreadful default is 8pt spacing after each paragraph, for instance.

          • Randy M says:

            Dude, now you’re teasing me.

          • Nick says:

            It’s actually Aftagley I’m teasing, but I’ll tackle yours, too, if you want. 😀

          • Randy M says:

            Piles of words doubtless laden with to-my-eye invisible typos and suboptimal description of situations mundane and fantastic are but a click away.

    • DinoNerd says:

      I’m used to tech-style non-indented paragraphs, such as we see in this blog. But I’m equally happy reading normal printed material, with indented paragraphs.

      It’s possible that when reading on a screen paragraphs separated by blank lines are easier to read. In that case the e-book phenomenon may wind up killing off indented paragraphs. (Both local libraries now have material only available in e-book form, and some authors seem to be publishing some works as e-reader only.)

    • Nick says:

      I don’t know that indentations are going away; I think most printed material retains them, which I’m perfectly fine with, and if I were styling my own blog I might just retain them. The thing is that, as you say, some platforms rather aggressively push line breaks. And in other cases, we just can’t style our own text, and starting whitespace might be automatically stripped.

      I do prefer line breaks, but my preference is not firm and might be wrong.

      • Randy M says:

        And in other cases, we just can’t style our own text, and starting whitespace might be automatically stripped.

        In this case, it’s worse–it’s inconsistent stripping of extra white space. I think that comes from pasting from MS Word and only some of the invisible formatting language applies.
        Ah, smrt technology.
        Since no one seems to think going with the new trend when publishing on-line indicates a philistine ignorance of civilized custom, I’ll edit out the indentations WP decided to keep, since I can’t convince it to keep the ones I’m trying to edit in.

        • Nick says:

          Invisible formatting is my mortal enemy. You have my sympathy.

          I’ve been maintaining a little wiki for my college role-playing group. When I was comparing tools to use, a big rule was no opaque formatting wizardry. The one I went with, gollum, just needs a file type that can be rendered to html. So I store everything in markdown or html, and edit in vscode, and life is good!

          • DinoNerd says:

            +100

            *sigh* Ten years ago, my employers used various wikis. All used markup languages of some kind. Now confluence pretty much owns that space – and while you can to an extent use markup to create text, it then becomes invisible, uneditable, etc.

            Now the wikimedia foundation seems to be pushing their wiki software in the same direction.

            Apparantly vendors think “normal” people are too stupid to use markup – but somehow smart enough to see and use the invisible stuff. Or perhaps they are so dumb that the only way they can modify content is to retype it all from scratch – which is pretty close to what often needs to be done with confluence, if you want a consistent appearance.

          • Viliam says:

            It is fascinating how Atlassian succeeds to replace pre-existing free open-source software with their own inferior paid proprietary products.

            Also, so horribly designed! It’s like every single button was designed by a different person; one team made a toolbar at the top of the screen, another team made a competing toolbar at the top-right, and then some jerk said “screw this” and puts his button into the page header. Clicking “edit” sometimes opens a pop-up dialog, sometimes goes to another page (with no indication of context), and sometimes inserts the extra inputs into the current page. On the other hand, pages for completely different things look visually exactly the same, as if it’s illegal to use an icon or a different color or a few words in the page title to indicate what type of object you are currently viewing.

            Confluence can’t even decide whether it wants to be a wiki, a directory structure to upload files, or a primitive database. I guess this is probably desirable from the perspective of a technically illiterate manager, who can upload their Word or Excel file and boast about editing a collaborative wiki.

          • Nick says:

            When I was looking at wiki software, I looked at Confluence briefly, then ran very fast in the opposite direction.

    • The Nybbler says:

      Space between is more readable, IMO.

    • Lambert says:

      ℐ think William Morris was correct, in that we should use little leaves as pilcows. Starting new paragraphs with illuminated letters or switching between black and red (as per the Book of Kells) are also good ways of doing things.❧ ℳodern typesetting is so boring. We need more arabesques and rubrication and little doodles of knights on snails.

      🙠 🙠 🙠 🙢 🙢 🙢

      • Randy M says:

        I’ll check WordPress settings again, I may have overlooked a “start paragraph with knights on snails” option, but I think I’d have noticed–and used–that.

        There is a “drop cap” option to make the first letter 3x bigger, but I was told once that that was annoying even once per page.

    • Viliam says:

      I visually prefer indented paragraphs with a slightly (i.e. not twice) larger space between the paragraphs — just enough to make you notice that something happened there.

    • When I write, I use a blank line instead of a paragraph indentation, then change it before publishing. I find it easier to keep track that way.

  5. gettin_schwifty says:

    Dang it, my town went my whole life without any real tornado hits, but that’s over.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/11/sioux-falls-south-dakota-tornado/2283760001/

    Quick summary: Some buildings damaged including an auto parts store losing a wall and a hospital’s behavioral health building losing a roof, some widespread outages, fortunately no deaths reported.

    Some pictures:

    https://www.keloland.com/weather/storm-damage-in-sioux-falls/amp/

    I guess every picture after a bad storm looks the same, but seeing it so close to where I grew up is about a hundred times crazier.

  6. Le Maistre Chat says:

    The percent of dogs and other domestic animals killed at shelters is plummeting. (NY Times, hopefully not paywalled for anyone.)

    Nominative determinism alert: they cite the advocacy of Bob Barker.

    • RalMirrorAd says:

      FYI It *does* requires a login, which i suspect is a foot in the door for constant email notifications and $ solicitations as well. Technically not a paywall but no thanks, No offense to the NYT.

    • j1000000 says:

      Not exactly related, I suppose, but a couple years ago I briefly explored getting a dog, and the shelters near where I live (suburban blue tribe area) were shockingly demanding — they weren’t just looking for basic assurances that you would feed and house the dog. Some wanted to do home visits, some wanted to make you sign pledges that you’d only feed your dog natural food, some wouldn’t give you a dog unless you could prove someone would be home every day, etc.

      I was surprised because they were importing a lot of these dogs from states with kill shelters, which functionally to me meant they preferred to have dogs die rather than place them in slightly sub-optimal situations.

      • Randy M says:

        That’s interesting. They probably recruit animal loving volunteers who, since they aren’t a kill shelter, don’t see the consequences of being too choosy.

      • I actually discussed that in one of my books [search on “kittens”], although my experience was cats rather than dogs.

        My conclusion was that part of what the shelter did to get volunteers was make the volunteers feel important, put them in the position of people handing out scarce favors to petitioners. If they just gave a cat to anyone who wanted one, probably the right decision given that the alternative to adoption was death, they would get less free labor.

  7. Jake R says:

    I’ve been shopping around for a new cell phone lately and I’ve run into an interesting problem. I really don’t care about the quality of my phone’s camera, but camera quality seems to be about half of all phone advertising and one of the main focuses of every review. I want my phone to have a camera, but I’m fine with it being the same quality camera as my phone from 2008. I can’t for the life of me see why it needs to have 3 different cameras, which seems to be the minimum. The end result is a vague feeling that I’m wasting money on any decent phone because of all the camera crap.

    I also seem to be very much in the minority here. As far as I can tell there’s not enough of a niche for anyone to bother making a decent phone with a crappy camera. It looks like the Essential Phone might have tried this and were immediately and universally blasted for their crappy camera, and have improved it in later versions.

    I recognize that cameras are one of the few hardware features for companies to compete on, but is there really no niche for people who don’t aspire to be amateur photographers? Are cameras just really cheap and don’t contribute much to the overall production cost, so why not throw in a fancy one? That would at least make me feel better about shelling out for a nice phone. I can’t help feeling like I’m missing something here.

    • Lasagna says:

      +1. +1000, actually. If you ever find it, can you post it here? I’m really getting so fed up with the expense of replacing these things (and so much of the expense seems tied up with the camera) that I’m willing to try just about anything.

    • Matt says:

      I’m with you. I have a DSLR for taking nice photos, and my cell phone camera is mostly for taking ‘notes’: Picture of hair product I want to buy more of, picture of lawnmower so I can google the oil change process, picture of dental insurance card to send to HR for reasons, picture of big scary bug I found to send to my wife and daughters, etc. I try to avoid ‘this is how I make memories forever’ photos on my phone.

      My understanding is that cell phone cameras are very good at taking video, however. Because they have more computing power than most consumer-level video cameras and can better adjust to lighting and determine the intended subject? My SLRs take video but it’s not great.

      My main disappointment with the phone market is that you can’t get a swappable battery anymore. So I still have my Galaxy S5.

    • Thomas Jorgensen says:

      Its the only hardware feature that matters to the typical user. Processor speed, memory only matters if you are shooting video, ect.

      None of that is going to make apps run noticeably faster, because processor or memory intensive apps are extremely rare, sound quality is mostly a question of how much money you spend on your headset, and the signal hardware is specified within a micron of its life.

      But a better camera matters. It gets you better pictures and better video.

      What I am saying is, if you dont care about the camera, you most likely in fact do not care about any aspect of the phone at all, except battery life and still being supported by the manufacturer, and should just buy something very cheap.

      • Jake R says:

        I think that’s where I’m coming around to. My concern is that if I buy a cheap phone general OS bloat will mean the processor won’t keep up and the phone will start to chug sooner than I would like. I mean it’s still probably the right call. A $150 phone a year is still cheaper than a $800 phone every 4 years.

        Your comment increases my confidence that I won’t regret buying a cheap phone. Now to find one that still has a headphone jack…

        • The Nybbler says:

          Your comment increases my confidence that I won’t regret buying a cheap phone. Now to find one that still has a headphone jack…

          Buy refurbished. Or just plain old used, if you don’t mind scratches and such. This puts off the headphone jack issue and can get you a cheap and good phone.

          • Jake R says:

            I’m pretty off of refurbished phones. My first smartphone was an iPhone 4 in 2011. It lasted me several years. My next 3 phones were refurbished and none of them lasted more than a year. The wifi would go out or the battery would stop working or something would go wrong. I finally gave up and bought a new 6s and it’s lasted me 4 years. I’m only looking to replace it because I dropped it and it cracked recently and the cell signal has been bad ever since. Also for other reasons I want to switch to android.

          • Dragor says:

            I can endorse used. I have used all my phones many years and I really only ran into issues when apps stopped supporting my phone—and I am not sure that was even so much my phone as a nudge to get me buying. I bought my Pixel 1 right around when the Pixel 3 came out, and, other than the horrors of how Mainland China manages to nerf that phone, I have been happy. My friend who recommended it told me he bought it because repair guys said it was the easiest to repair, but I didn’t personally speak to any repair guys, so do your own research.

            Afterthought: I Actually did look at the Samsung J line, and they seemed ok. They have a dual sim function, and mainland China doesn’t nerf them to hell—both features I would have loved living in China.

            EDIT:My pixel was refurbished though, so maybe it’s not what you are looking for. New J7 is quite cheap. Same price as a refurbished Pixel last I checked.

    • Steven J says:

      “Are cameras just really cheap and don’t contribute much to the overall production cost, so why not throw in a fancy one?”

      This is the case. In the bill-of-materials breakdowns I’ve seen, the camera module typically accounts for only 5-10% of the manufacturing costs (and an even smaller fraction of the retail price). The incremental cost of a fancy camera over a crappy seems to be less than $10 in most cases. The expensive components are the display, flash memory, and the processors (applications processor and the baseband processor).

      • Jake R says:

        Well now that cancels out all the confidence I got from Thomas Jorgensen’s post above. The display and the processor are basically all I care about. It’s possible you’re both right but that still leaves me with no idea whether I could make do with a cheap phone or not.

      • zoozoc says:

        As someone in the industry, I can attest that the camera quality is a very small part of the total expense of the phone.

        As someone with a cheap phone as well (I got a $60 BLU phone from Amazon when they had those), I highly recommend getting a cheap phone. You don’t have to go that cheap, but it is almost always better to get a cheaper phone and upgrade it as you see fit rather than spend a ton of money up front and sit on it for several years. The hardware is still getting better year after year and prices are still going down (the same hardware gets cheaper by a lot as time goes on). So paying a premium for the latest, cutting edge phone is not worth it from my perspective.

        Though if you do get a cheap phone, make sure to get a case/cover (that probably applies to all phones, but definitely more so with cheaper ones).

    • Dragor says:

      Woah…yeah. I had the same problem before I bought my pixel. I basically want a phone that will run modern (but not fancy—no gaming or anything) apps and allow me to function in modern society. I need a camera good enough to text a photo to a friend; it doesn’t need to be HD.

      …I ultimately learned from other people the camera on my Pixel was pretty good, bit the fact I learned from other people tells you something.

    • DinoNerd says:

      I watched part of Apple’s new product announcements yesterday. Apparantly one selling point of their new phones is that buyers get to own cameras with which professional photographers can do wonderful things. I think the idea is for Joe Random to imagine he’s a professional photographer.

      Meanwhile, I took an iPhone XR on vacation with me a couple of weeks ago, and repeatedly wished I had a cheap analog camera from 20 years ago. It’s really “smart” – like a dog that does what it wants rather than what you tell it to. It emphasizes and enhances anything it thinks is a face; the new ones will do the same for some common house pets. By default it produces not still photos, but something called a “live” photo. The control to change that behaviour is an icon that means nothing to me. The button to take pictures has extra effects depending on whether it thinks you pressed it, or pressed and held it; the newer iPhones have *different* effects from the same “gesture”.

      The interface to look at your photos seems to autonomously upload them when it has internet access – and delete them from the phone, so you can’t see photos you took that morning, if you’ve gone on and then offline since. (But I can’t be sure of that, because simply displaying [thumbnails of] all the photos I took this morning, in the order I took them, requires knowing exactly which settings to pick in the photos UI – otherwise it tries to create an interesting visual effect/mosaic of thumbnails, varying sizes and order.) The actual mechanics of taking photos routinely switched modes on me, so I wound up with videos and I don’t know what all else, even after I figured out “live” mode and disabled it. This interface also creates “memories” for you – and then the search function produces memories ahead of single photos. The “memories” appear to be created by an AI which has no model whatsoever of how I would really group my photos, perhaps because I’ve never used their album UI. So I get its defaults, which are useless to me, and they get priority of placement over things I actually control.

      I presume android cameras are just as frustrating, but haven’t tried to use one recently.

      • 6jfvkd8lu7cc says:

        On Android there is F-Droid open-source app repository, which carries OpenCamera, and this application is not a quickly-changing one. On most phones it works without problems. No idea what is the state of the dark art for the manufacturer-installed camera apps…

    • Falacer says:

      The gold standard for finding a phone you want is GSMArena. They have a phone finder form that lets you select from an exhaustive list of details that you want, down to chipset or 4G band support.

    • Lurker says:

      if you find a decent phone with a crappy camera, please share! I have the exact same problem each time I need a new one.

  8. Enkidum says:

    I just crushed and boiled ~48 cups of grapes because there are a bunch of vines in our backyard and why leave them for the mangy raccoons? After straining, I have a gallon or so of very hot juice sitting in my fridge, which I will turn into jam tomorrow. Never done it before, hopefully it’s not too awful.

    • GearRatio says:

      Isn’t the PB&J stuff with just the juice jelly? I’m not 100% up on my fruit goo but I think it needs chunks to be jam.

    • Robin says:

      Cultural difference: In Europe, people don’t put anything hot into the fridge, because they think it costs a lot of electricity, the fridge will break, the other food in the fridge will heat up, or other drama.
      In America, they do, because they think outside the fridge the food will be infested with dangerous bacteria, and a different drama.

      Why cool it down, just to heat it up again tomorrow with the jam sugar? Just make the jelly immediately. Some people add the jam sugar, let it sit overnight and boil the next day.

      Don’t worry, it won’t be awful. It’s hard to spoil jam. Maybe add a little lemon juice as antioxidant (to preserve nice color).

      • acymetric says:

        Anecdote: I partially thawed all the stuff in my freezer once by putting in a bunch of burritos I had cooked up in there without letting them cool down enough first. It was a lot of burritos though, like 2 drawers full plus some overlflow…probably ~30% of the freezer volume.

        Most of the food refroze seemingly without issue, but the bread I had in there was never the same.

      • DragonMilk says:

        I’m in America, and I tell everyone not to put hot things in the fridge/freezer.

        Reason being that fridges/freezers don’t cool very effectively, so the hot item might raise the temperature of the whole thing before the cooling is finally done. Might as well put it on the radiator with the fan on etc.

        Temperature is different from wattage/change in temperature!

      • The Nybbler says:

        I let stuff with high thermal mass (e.g. large portions of sauces) cool down before putting them in the fridge, and I’m American.

      • quanta413 says:

        I too try to avoid putting hot things in the fridge.

        But you’re not wrong either. I also worry about dying horribly of dangerous bacteria. So I try to choose what to do based upon how hot the item is, how big it is, how long it needs to be left out, and what it is. Either way, I can’t win. :p

      • FLWAB says:

        I once worked in a cafeteria style kitchen (in America) and was required to get my “Food Card” which meant going through food safety training with the state. Though the training was about a lot of basic food safety topics, one of the most prominent and hammered in concepts was about food temperature. All food must be kept at above 145 F (63 C) while being served. Once food service is over the food must IMMEDIATELY be put into shallow pans (so they cool faster) and placed in a fridge or freezer. Any food temperature between 41 and 145 F (5 and 63 C) was called the “danger zone” and we were required to minimize the amount of time spent in the danger zone as much as possible. This was repeated in multiple ways, and was one of the main things they asked us about during the test at the end of the training.

        I wonder if European commercial food safety standards are as stringent?

        • Aftagley says:

          How serious are those warnings?

          Does your average home chef actually have to be worried about that kind of temperature control for food safety, or is this just a case of “the odds of it happening are low, but we don’t want to be sued”?

          • FLWAB says:

            Well since we were serving food to about 200 children on a regular basis, it pays to be extra cautious. Food poisoning is no joke. If it happens to you at home, well, you only have yourself to blame and the damage is probably limited. But if a commercial kitchen lets the mac-and cheese go bad and several hundred people get food poisoning…well that’s bad for everyone. So the food card safety program was pretty extreme, I think.

            In my personal life I don’t follow those recommendations at all. I leave food out for hours after cooking, chillin’ in the danger zone. I get by just fine: I don’t think I’ve ever given myself food poisoning. But then again, that’s my risk to take. When you sell food people expect it not to poison them.

        • Viliam says:

          The safety standards for preparing food probably reflect the safety standards for selling food — the worse stuff you can legally sell, the more careful you have to be at handling it.

          For example, in USA the meat industry is powerful enough to make selling salmonella-infected chicken legal. [1] [2] The reasoning is approximately that getting rid of salmonella would be too costly for the producers, and if you are really really really careful you can process the meat safely anyway. You just need to operate your kitchen like a biohazard lab — it’s technically possible, so everyone can do it, except for the stupidest 99.9% of the population. It is your duty as a customer to educate yourself how to survive being sold infected food. (And your duty as a restaurant worker, to avoid poisoning your customers with the infected food you were sold.)

          Nanny socialist states like EU simply ban selling salmonella-infected chicken, just like they love to ban so many things. As a result, Europeans don’t have to use a flamethrower every time they take something out of the fridge.

          • Mark V Anderson says:

            @Viliam
            I read both of those links, and I understand neither one. Both of them say that salmonella is illegal in some of their comments, and the opposite elsewhere. In the Guardian article, the proponents of US law state that it is impossible to completely eliminate bacteria, which sounds reasonable to me, but the Guardian implies that the law allows producers to sell meat with salmonella, with the implication that the producer knows the salmonella exists. The lawyer appears a little more nuanced, but he also seems to say opposite things.

            I wonder if there is a another link with a clearer view of the law.

      • Mark Atwood says:

        And the food safety people want it cold as fast as possible. And a standard consumer refrigerator is not cold enough to get hot food cold enough fast enough to prevent bacteria to grow in the food and thus create toxins that survive being cold. But it’s still better and safer than letting it cool down in the ambient air. The Europeans are wrong.

        My hands-on experience in this was prepping food for some burning man camps that were large enough to require Nevada Div of Public Health certification.

        The process is after the food is cooked, it’s put into a *salted ice bath*, with a thermometer stuck into it and timers set.

        There are charts and formula that specify the minimum time spent in the danger zone, and specify the minimum dT/dt of the temperature T as it’s crash chilling.

        If there was a economically sane magic machine that could drop the temperature of large pots of hot food from 230F to 0F in one second, every department of health in the US would immediately mandate it’s use. Until then: ice water.

        As soon as the food is down to the saltbath 28F it gets transferred to the chest freezer to get it down to below 0F or lower, or a kitchen freezer to get it down to 20F if you don’t have a chest freezer. Which is where it is supposed to stay until it’s pulled out and reheated.

        The Nevada DPBH is getting more and more strict, because it’s discovered that it can’t trust rando Burners to not take this stuff as seriously as they should, and both the DPBH and the more serious people in the BM kitchen lead “club” all know the day is coming when some camp that didnt take this stuff as seriously as they should give a bunch of people botulism poisoning.

      • JustToSay says:

        Well I’m an American who fits the American description there. I give things a bit of time to cool down, especially if it’s four quarts of chicken stock or half a lasagna or something, but I am pretty obsessive about most foods not spending time between 40 and 140. I worked in food service, and I’ve almost lost someone to food poisoning, so I don’t mess around.

        If I put something hot in the fridge though, I move several ice packs from the freezer to the fridge – near, but not touching, the hot items. Later I’ll put the ice packs back in the freezer to re-freeze. In my mind, I’m balancing out the thermal mass and helping it cool more quickly. No idea if it helps, really.

      • Enkidum says:

        Late to this reply, but you’re supposed to cool it in order to prevent crystals forming. I should have waited until it cooled to near room temperature for sure, though.

  9. Well... says:

    This is tangential to the banning discussion:

    I was banned from the SSC Discord server about two and a half years ago. The ban was over something stupid, and I didn’t receive fair warning. The ban was supposed to last a month but whoever admins the channel never unbanned me — probably out of forgetfulness, but who knows.

    The catch is: I have a problem with self-control in certain parts of the internet, and chatrooms are particularly trappy to me, so that wrongful ban was very good for me in the end. It gave me a lot of my life back.

    I don’t know if that speaks to anyone else, and I suppose there’s no way for any of the banned people to tell me if it speaks to them, but I hope it does and that being banned gives them the push they need to go do important things in meatspace (like clean their houses, or spend time with loved ones, or read actual books, or get work done) rather than sit around typing messages on a blog for hours each night the way losers like me do.

    • Dogeared says:

      I got banned from my football club’s forum for speaking my mind – best thing that could have happened in retrospect. It was a place full of cynicism and depression even after winning. My suspicion was that it was heavily infiltrated by other club’s fans, but then again, no one can whine like a football fan.

  10. BBA says:

    I agree with the bans – although, out of sheer morbid curiosity, I wonder if we could give Dei a furlough of a few days in late October (or whenever Brexit gets delayed).

    I also would like to apologize for using my mental health issues to garner sympathy around here. I find it unseemly when others do it, and it’s wrong when I do it too.

  11. Tenacious D says:

    or until you guys whine at me to reinstate her enough

    Or whinge?

  12. Doctor Mist says:

    Is it possible to see which (if any) of my comments have been reported?

  13. Le Maistre Chat says:

    There’s something in fiction I’ll call the Expanded Universe Principle, where every member of an alien species turns out to be just like the one from the original story. Named of course for print Star Wars stories where every Wookie was enslaved by the Empire because Chewbacca once wore chains in A New Hope, every Hutt is a crime boss, every male of Greedo’s race is a bounty hunter, etc.
    What a boring waste! Imagine how much more interesting the aliens from Predator would be if it turned out that the hunters from the original movies were as peripheral to their way of life as hunters are to First World humans.

    • Nornagest says:

      I just thought of this, but: why is Jabba “the Hutt”, anyway? He’s a Hutt, sure, but Chewie’s formal name isn’t “Chewbacca the Wookie”, now is it?

      • Snickering Citadel says:

        Maybe so he wouldn’t be confused with Jabba the jawa or Jabba the human.

      • Randy M says:

        Well he was one of only two on the planet, right? Seems cromulent to me.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        @Nornagest: I would guess that George Lucas intended Hutt to be a title (i.e. if the same person was King of France he’d be Jabba le Roi, species name undefined) and other writers applied it to all giant slugs with opposable thumbs as they introduced them. Evidence would require a deeper lore dive than I could give a damn about, though.

        • Lillian says:

          Jabba was originally cast as a fat human, but the scene was cut from the original Star Wars, and only reintroduced (with CGI) in the Special Edition. So it may indeed be the case that it was originally a title rather than species name.

      • bullseye says:

        I figure the Hutts are a crime family who happen to be the only surviving members of their species.

        Side note, in the prequels they look like they’re the actual ruling family of Tatooine, even though everyone still calls them gangsters.

        • TakatoGuil says:

          I don’t think that such a portrayal is entirely inconsistent – Tattooine in the prequel era may well be an interstellar Tortuga. Or perhaps the Galactic Republic, myopic as it is, is entirely willing to cast any governments beyond its control as little more than barbarian chiefs who abuse their hordes.

          • bullseye says:

            I think it would be fair, for example, to call Kim Jong Un a mob boss, but it’s not the most important thing about him.

            In the tv shows and comics, it’s made clear that the Hutts are crime bosses, but also that they control a large area of space. Jabba in particular seems too important to be dealing directly with a small-timer like Han.

    • Viliam says:

      Imagine how much more interesting the aliens from Predator would be if it turned out that the hunters from the original movies were as peripheral to their way of life as hunters are to First World humans.

      So the next movie would be about humanity factory-farmed for meat? Nice.

      (Spoilers: Gur Cebzvfrq Arireynaq)

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        I mean, yes. That’s a good horror premise.
        One of the last SF TV shows I tried to get into before moving out on my own and killing my TV was Stargate: Atlantis. I’d been enjoying the first Stargate series, so I tuned into the pilot and… the evil aliens (“the Wraith”) were hunter-gatherers with FTL and teleporters whose diet consisted entirely of humans. So when there weren’t enough wild humans, they all put themselves on ice. In other words, they never learned to farm.
        I checked out in disbelief by the time the pilot’s credits rolled.

        • Nick says:

          For me the Wraiths might have been the weakest part of that show. Was never a fan of them as Big Bads.

        • Protagoras says:

          The Wraith are terrible villains. But the protagonists on SG:Atlantis are, I think, the most interesting set of protagonists of the various SG series. So I put up with the Wraith.

        • Gerry Quinn says:

          They WERE farming. Large human populations take a long time to grow, so they hibernated until harvest time.

    • Lillian says:

      One of my disappointments on that vein is to learn that as far as the Expanded Universe is concerned, Toydarians are generally resistant to Force mental manipulation, because Watto proved strong willed enough resist Qui-Gonn and proclaimed, “I am Toydarian, mind-tricks don’t work on me, only money.” Like if a guy saw through a scam and said, “I’m an Englishman, confidence tricks don’t work on me!” you wouldn’t assume that Englishmen in general are immune to cons, just that this Englishman in particular was hard to trick. Yet when an alien says something about his species, people assume he is automatically both correct and truthful.

      • EchoChaos says:

        I think the TV Tropes for that is Planet of Hats

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        One of my disappointments on that vein is to learn that as far as the Expanded Universe is concerned, Toydarians are generally resistant to Force mental manipulation, because Watto proved strong willed enough resist Qui-Gonn and proclaimed, “I am Toydarian, mind-tricks don’t work on me, only money.” Like if a guy saw through a scam and said, “I’m an Englishman, confidence tricks don’t work on me!”

        Yep, it’s like if the first human in a movie made by aliens was James Bond. Other writers would decide that humans are a promiscuous species of mostly-hairless bipedal spies with pale skin and a mane of black hair who have affinities for handguns and martinis and speak in one of several British accents.

      • Faza (TCM) says:

        As a counterpoint, I’d propose that whenever you introduce magic into a setting, it’s generally a good idea to set limits as to what it can do – otherwise you’re always running into “why didn’t the magic-wielding protagonist use magic to solve the problem” (and solving all problems with magic is boring).

        Given what we know about the Force (it’s omnipresent, but some beings are more sensitive to it than others) it isn’t too big a stretch to be told that certain species are more resistant to it than others. In fact, the very first time we witness a mind trick (in ANH) we are told by Obi-Wan that it affects the “weak minded” (and one might expect that someone principally used to taking orders – such as a stormtrooper; or Bib Fortuna – would be a prime target). Later, in ROTJ, Jabba explicitly comments on Fortuna’s weak-mindedness and laughs at Luke’s attempts to mind trick him (Jabba being someone who does the telling, rather than being told – which seems to be true of Hutts in general).

        Given what we can glean about Toydarians from our exposure to Watto, it’s certainly plausible that – leaving aside any special Force-related considerations – Toydarians as a race are simply too self-interested, suspicious and cynical to fall for such petty trickery.

        • bullseye says:

          We see some more Toydarians in the Clone Wars, and none of them have Watto’s personality. I think the more recent material (including Clone Wars) is better thought out and doesn’t run into the issue the OP was talking about as often.

          • Faza (TCM) says:

            That’s quite likely. I haven’t really seen that much of the Clone Wars, so I can’t say.

            Still, the idea of an entire alien species being immune to mind tricks is not something I find particularly troubling on a conceptual level. It’s a big galaxy out there, after all.

    • Corey says:

      TVTropes calls this “Planet of Hats” IIRC, it pops up a lot and I agree it’s boring.

  14. By the time I stopped playing WoW, it had become a game where the leveling part was walking you through their not very interesting story, with very little in the way of challenges. You did that in order to get to top level, at which point the game was mostly raids, trying to acquire the better gear that the bosses dropped, with no interesting solo content.

    I mostly enjoyed playing solo. In the classic version, which I am now playing, getting to sixty takes a long time and the game is largely about the fun of doing so. You can do it faster if you have a group that works together, but in my case that means spending some of my time paired with my wife’s character, occasionally joining a random group doing a quest that is almost impossible solo.

    At least on our (RP) server, things are also a lot friendlier than they were in the version I left. Part of that is that, without cross server recruitment of raids, you are likely to see the same people repeatedly, so reputation matters. A lot of people randomly buff others, for instance.

    • Lasagna says:

      I loved WoW when it came out (and Everquest, and LOTRO, and City of Heroes… I tried way too many of these games), but, as with all MMORPGs, it spins off the earth too quickly. It required too much of a time investment to keep pace with everyone else. I ended up quitting all of these without getting far at all.

      And what I’d heard about how WoW has changed over the years confirmed what you’re saying: that the game more or less became a minor inconvenience to reaching the end-game so you could raid. I wouldn’t be interested in that – what I liked was the struggle to advance just a little further, the feeling that the world was huge and there were some seriously dangerous areas out there for me NOT to mess with.

      Obviously that makes me really want to give WoW vanilla a shot, but I know this song. I’ll play way too much for a week, not get enough sleep and zombie my way through work, give up, and regret it.

  15. Randy M says:

    GearRatio reminded me of a question I had after filling out applications recently.
    Employers, possibly only of a certain size, are required to collect demographic information–race, ethnicity, sex, veteran status, and disability are common.
    In each case, there are various options, as well as a “decline to state.”
    As someone unlikely to be eligible for any sort of official or unofficial affirmative action during his working life, what is the optimum selection if the only concern is to get hired?
    I assume saying I am a disabled Samoan veteran will get my application a second look, possibly better chance at interview, during which they would discover I was a liar and throw me out. Also, I’m not terribly fond of being a liar.

    So basically, is there any difference between selecting the majority and true option, or declining to state? I’m not ashamed of any characteristic, but I’m not against playing the game in a not strictly lying way if necessary. (Obviously not the place to discuss the optimum rules for the game policy wise, nor the motives of anyone else in the system)

    • Lambert says:

      I think this is the kind of question that inevitably leads to CW.

    • Aftagley says:

      Your assumption only holds true if you are A: a member of the majority and B:believe that the least beneficial option possible is being majority. If this is the case, then yes: decline is probably treated as defaulting to majority.

      On the other hand, if you’re a minority and believe it’s possible there could be some bias in the system which might result in your racial status causing you to not be considered, then the decline to state option removes that potential hurdle.

      I basically see the “decline to state” option as a steam relief valve: whatever you are and whatever you think the biases are, it allows you to escape them.

      • Randy M says:

        I basically see the “decline to state” option as a steam relief valve: whatever you are and whatever you think the biases are, it allows you to escape them.

        I’m not sure it does. It might get around “no X biases” until you actually get the interview.
        But I think automated screening handles a lot of this first glut (I should note these are on-line applications), and it seems likely to me that they are move demographics needed for whatever quota the EEOC or their own diversity policies want to see higher in the queue.

        I think the reason it is included is to give you, the applicant, some false assurance and way to protest the collection of the data.

        • Aftagley says:

          I think the reason it is included is to give you, the applicant, some false assurance…

          I think we actually agree here.

          When I say it acts as a steam relief, I don’t mean it actually does anything constructive when it comes to combating bias, I just think it lets a concerned applicant feel like they are escaping bias.

      • Z says:

        One time I applied to a tech company that required my demographic information. I declined to state. They then pressed that I state, so I did. Then my application was rejected.

        ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • S_J says:

      When I was younger (and had spent lots of time reading about and watching Star Trek), I would often find the “Racial Identification” list, check “Other”, and write “Human” in the blank line adjacent to that listing.

      I don’t do that as much anymore, but maybe I should begin doing that again.

      Would that be considered lying on an official declaration-of-Race form?

      If so, why?

      • Viliam says:

        If so, why?

        Because the people evaluating the form would decide so, duh.

        (The relation between clever ideas and social reality is usually like this.)

    • Eric Rall says:

      I’ve been involved in the hiring process as an interviewer at a couple different large software companies. The information on those forms never reached me: I got a resume and sometimes feedback from earlier interviewers, but never the EEOC form or information from it.

      I’m pretty sure the form is only used for statistical purposes by the HR department and the federal regulatory agency that mandates the form. The more the attentions of the hiring decision-makers are called to a candidate’s demographics, the more the company is exposed to liability for discrimination claims.

      Of course, by the time you’re actually being interviewed, your race and gender will probably be pretty obvious to the interviewers either way.

      • Well... says:

        I’m pretty sure the form is only used for statistical purposes by the HR department and the federal regulatory agency that mandates the form. The more the attentions of the hiring decision-makers are called to a candidate’s demographics, the more the company is exposed to liability for discrimination claims.

        I am not an HR professional, but my understanding is this is true and accurate. I’m 99.999% sure nobody with decision-making power over whether or not you’re hired ever sees how you answer those questions, or is even allowed to see how you answered them. Even if they somehow saw accidentally, it would be illegal for them to take that information into consideration when making their decision.

        Therefore how you answer those questions is completely irrelevant to your objective of getting hired. To that effect you can answer them however you see fit.

        • cassander says:

          There are certainly exceptions to this rule (government employment is more explicit about points), but but it fits with my experience generally. Now, if I were getting pressured by my boss to hire more women/minorities, the way I would probably go about doing it by being more willing to grant women, but If I were to do that, I’d almost certainly do it based on their names, not the form they fill out.

        • Randy M says:

          Therefore how you answer those questions is completely irrelevant to your objective of getting hired

          I believe that is true, but it isnt’ logically necessary from the premise that the hiring manager doesn’t see it, since it’s possible the right answers get you passed on by the automated screening easier.

    • Aapje says:

      @Randy M

      Note that many people who identify as black (in the West) are actually mixed race, with some being not much darker than slightly tanned white people. For example, this person identifies as black. So you may be able to argue that you are black.

      An even easier option is to call yourself Hispanic, as that is not a racial ethnicity. About half of Hispanics identify as white.

      Of course, in all cases, when pressed, state that you have a white father and you got your names from his side.

      • Randy M says:

        They can always call on the mortal enemy of my people–the sun–to testify against me.

      • JonathanD says:

        Assuming he’s American, it’s likely less that he *identifies* as black than that he *is identified* as black. It’s a society-wide assumption, a legacy of the old one-drop rule. We don’t think about it much, but we still do it. To pick the obvious example, it would have been deeply weird, in an American context, for Barack Obama to call himself white, despite having a white parent and having been raised by a white family. If he’s not from here, feel free to disregard, I don’t know how this stuff works other places.

        Edit: typo

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          To pick the obvious example, it would have been deeply weird, in an American context, for Barack Obama to call himself white, despite having a white parent and having been raised by a white family.

          White and Indonesian, even.

        • Aapje says:

          @JonathanD

          Is that still relevant after Jim Crow laws were abolished? I doubt that anyone will thoroughly investigate the ancestry of a job candidate, to see if there is a drop of black blood, unless the job is President.

      • Law schools are required to ask students, perhaps even applicants, about their race. One of the categories is black, another is mixed race.

        My guess is that most American born blacks are actually of mixed race, given how much lighter most of them are than people from sub-Saharan Africa. But apparently the people who make the relevant rules accept the usual rule that “black” means “enough sub-Saharan African ancestry to be noticeable.” Possibly with an exception for partial Asian or Amerind ancestry.

    • bullseye says:

      I feel like, if they did take your demographic answers into account, if you don’t answer they’d assume you’re not in the group they’re looking for, whatever that group happens to be. If I *have* to hire a specific race, I’m not going to take a chance on someone of unknown race.

  16. GearRatio says:

    I have a big job interview today, something like 147% of my current salary. In the spirit of me not freaking the fuck out for the next six hours until I can drive down there, I would love to hear examples of:

    A. Really bad interview advice you’ve gotten

    B. Really bad interview tactics you’ve been subjected to

    The more disastrous, the better for my sanity!

    • Dogeared says:

      An interviewer once asked me to cluck like a chicken.

      I’m uncertain of the reason, perhaps just to see how I reacted.

      I did a sort of quiet peeeerrrrrrk.

      And I didn’t get the job.

      • GearRatio says:

        Out of curiosity, what position did the interviewer have with the company?

        • Two McMillion says:

          “Result of Experiment: Applicants unable to determine difference between interviewer and random homeless person off the street.”

        • Dogeared says:

          I don’t recall. It was a sales and promotion type job however, so I guess it was a test to gauge outgoing personality and willingness to make a tit of yourself.

          On the plus side I didn’t end up wearing a big rubber chicken outfit in the high street selling KFC or something.

          • GearRatio says:

            I was assuming whatever explanation you gave would still give me room to go “that’s incredibly abusive” but that sort of makes sense, actually.

    • Lasagna says:

      I once got a former colleague an interview at my company for a plum spot. A great job with tons of qualified and eager applicants. She was less qualified, but they made time and space to interview her anyway on my recommendation.

      The job was for a high-level management position in a brand-new part of the company (I’m intentionally keeping this vague) and would involve hiring and managing a new team. When asked if she had any thoughts about how she would approach this team, she said “Yes! Lots of them.” When asked what they were, she refused to say before being offered the job. When they gently told her she wasn’t going to get the job offer without giving them information on how she planned to do the job, she got kind of nasty. Then they had to run out the clock for the remaining 45 minutes of the interview. Don’t do this.

      • Radu Floricica says:

        In her defense, I had a friend with the opposite problem. She kept going to interviews for digital marketing manager positions for companies juust a bit too small to really afford a proper digital marketing manager. Most of the interview was “how do you see the marketing strategy for our company?”. This being said, her approach definitely wasn’t correct. Especially considering she was there on a recommendation.

      • Wency says:

        Ha, I seem to recall Homer Simpson doing this in an old episode.

        Hopefully the recommendation didn’t come back to bite you. I’ve learned (from a few missteps like this) to be VERY careful in giving unqualified recommendations. It doesn’t really help anyone to give them unless you have very high confidence the person will excel (in both the interview and job).

        • Lasagna says:

          You’re not wrong. And it sure didn’t help me. But I did qualify it – “I know her and like her, but can’t speak to her strengths on X, Y and Z” where “X, Y, and Z” basically encompassed the entire job.

          But it was still a learning experience, and I should have known better and attached more caveats (“she’s nuts”). You walk up to a colleague and press a resume into their hands the chances just went up 1000% that that person is going to get an interview. I mean, I knew it wasn’t going to work out. I was just doing a favor for a colleague I hadn’t spoken to in years when I should have done a favor for my current colleague, you know?

    • Jake says:

      We once had a guy in a phone interview who obviously didn’t know the answer to the question we asked, so proceeded to ramble on for the next 20 minutes or so, not letting anyone else on the line get a word in edgewise. This was some grade A corporate lingo BS, to the point that we actually put the line on mute, and called other people into the office to hear what he was saying, and he would just not stop, no matter how many times we politely tried to move the conversation to the next question. Needless to say, he did not get the job.

    • Chalid says:

      I’ve been interviewing a lot lately, and a couple nights ago I had a dream in which I forgot the name of the company I was interviewing with and had to dance around the topic through multiple conversations.

    • rubberduck says:

      Best of luck on the interview!

      Hijacking your thread to ask my own interview/job app question: How bad/good is it to, in the absence of a specific skill, say something along the lines of “I have [close friend/family member/spouse] with X years experience in skill Y and plan to use their advice” (assuming it is true and you really do plan to do that)? Somebody is trying to convince me that this is absolutely a thing you can and should say but my gut says no, because the interviewer wants YOUR skills and anyway you need to sound independent. Thoughts?

      • Aftagley says:

        I probably would just take the hit and admit not having that particular skill, but if you feel like you need to mention it as a strength you could spin it as overall familiarity with the topic. Something like, “while I’ve never personally done X, my [insert person here] has been doing X for Y years and I’ve had the opportunity to learn a great deal about X from them.”

        I would not say you’ll continue to consult with this other person, you’re right. They don’t want someone who feels like they have to call home on every tough decision.

        If these people are your parents, I would only do this if you’re young. No one wants to here anyone over 30 talk about their parents.

        If this person is your friend, I probably wouldn’t mention it.

        If this person is your spouse, you can probably use this as an asset pretty far into your career, but I wouldn’t bring it up more than once over the course of your interview.

      • Plumber says:

        My uncle is a plumber and I grew up listening to him” worked, so sure.

      • jgr314 says:

        Avoid that (based on my experience interviewing candidates and managing many hiring processes).

        An alternative:
        (1) acknowledge that isn’t a skill you have
        (2) talk about related skills
        (3) talk about how you would acquire that skill

        Ideally, you would know before the interview if there is a critical skill required for the job that you don’t have and you’ll be prepared to address it.

        FWIW, it would be rare for me to bring someone in for an interview if I thought they were missing a key skill. It has happened a couple of times when I was asked to join someone else’s hiring process, though. Which reminds me that another bad strategy is arguing that the skill isn’t actually important for the job…

      • Randy M says:

        Seems like you would only get away with this if your [close friend/family member/spouse] was going to be on the job with you.

      • Lasagna says:

        Lots of really good advice here. I do a lot of interviewing, and to back up what others have said:

        1. I’ve never heard anyone say “I’ll rely on a third party you don’t know for X”. I’m not sure I’d respond favorably to that; it’s pretty weak. If you don’t have a particular skill, just acknowledge it. It’s safe to do that for two reasons: (1) if the skill was a dealbreaker and you didn’t have it, you wouldn’t have made it to the interview unless you lied on your resume; and (2) you don’t want the job if you don’t have the skills. But:

        2. If you want to spin your roommate’s/spouse’s/mom’s knowledge as a reason to hire you, you have to do it in a way that indicates you’re aware that it isn’t much. I’d say “my experience with X is pretty limited, though I’ve certainly heard a lot about it from my wife” and let it flow naturally from there (“oh? What does your wife do?”). And so on.

        3. The obvious caveat: All this advice is context dependent. I don’t know what skill it is you’re talking about; maybe advertising your wife’s skills WOULD make a big impression. Can I ask what it is specifically?

        • rubberduck says:

          I’m applying to a customer-facing job at a company making scientific software. My background is in the sciences and I have the lab+soft skills needed but no CompSci experience whatsoever (at least not beyond routine use of scientific software). The job listing mentions some CS skills that would be a big plus but ultimately asks for scientists, not tech folks, so I don’t expect my lack of CS experience to be a serious drawback. I think in this case mentioning my CS-experienced family member would not do me any favors.

          • Lasagna says:

            For what it’s worth, I think your instincts are right. It sounds like you should acknowledge that your strengths lies elsewhere. I’m nervous giving this advice, so maybe wait until someone in software/engineering comments – their thoughts would be worth more.

            But another thing, to take or leave: when an applicant acknowledges (deftly and mildly, just basically being cool about it) that they lack a helpful skill or area of expertise and will need to learn on the job, I like them more. Nobody is ever an exact match. If someone like that shows up, sure, they get the job, but nobody ever has; everyone needs to learn something important AFTER they start working.

            Applicants that fare the best are ones that (1) have enough of the needed skills that we can work with them; (2) seem trustworthy and honest and eager to work; and (3) seem like they’d fit in generally and be liked by their colleagues.

            ALL THREE of these need to be in every person we hire – it’s a very team-oriented place. You can have all the lawyerin’ skills in the world, but if I think you’re going to blame someone else when you make errors and make unreasonable demands on the organization or your colleagues, or if you’re not going to be able to take constructive criticism from others on your team and make people dread working with you, no way are we hiring you.

            Basically what I’m saying is don’t sweat not having everything list in the job description. Nobody does. It’s not up to you to determine what’s vital and what the company can do without. Be both honest AND put your best foot forward.

            Good luck!!!

          • gbdub says:

            Acknowledging that you have a (nonfatal) weakness that you are motivated to improve is good. Giving a plan to do it is even better.

            “CS specifically is an area where I know I don’t have a lot of experience, but I’m really fascinated in the field and interested to learn more. I have several good friends in the industry and they’ve recommended I do XYZ to build a basic fluency, and I plan to follow that advice”

    • SamChevre says:

      Not bad, exactly, but bizarrely memorable: the interviewer for an entry-level professional job whose opening was “I’m [name], and I have no idea why I’m talking to you–they never listen to anything I say.” I got the job, though.

      Not bizarre, just brutal: interviewing for a research assistant position–a full day of interviews. 10 45-minute interviews with PhD-level researchers, back to back, with a half-hour lunch break. And then dinner with the current research assistants. I didn’t get the job, and later heard informally that they weren’t sure I would be comfortable working with the other research assistants, since I had hardly said anything at dinner. (I was exhausted to the point of incoherence–I’m an introvert and the interviews were challenging.)

    • Lord Nelson says:

      My worst interview was with a prestigious engineering school. The interviewer told me a story about how one of his professors jumped off the top of a school building and committed suicide. It came completely out of nowhere and I had no idea how to respond.

    • RDNinja says:

      When I was interviewing for my current job, I mentioned that at my previous internship, one of my tasks was to measure the viscosity of paint. One interviewer asked “Did you used instruments for that?” I was a few hours into the interview process at this point, so I sarcastically replied, “No, I just ran my fingers through it.”

  17. Aftagley says:

    1. Nostalgia – WoW is still kinda popular now, but back in the day it was an actual cultural force. For a bunch of people, wow classic was the first game they ever really, really got into. WoW classic lets these people go home again.

    2. Difficulty that forced interaction – WoW original wasn’t designed to be a game that an individual could succeed at. It forced people to work together which in turn, forced people to interact. This in turn led to pretty close-knit friendships/structures.

    3. It was a much less refined experience – I’d argue that the additions to the base game haven’t made it actively worse, they’ve just sanded off a bunch of the rough edges in a way that people are kind of medium on. Stuff like solo queuing (where if you want to run a dungeon alone you just click a button and the game puts you in a group then warps you to the dungeon) means it’s way easier to run dungeons, but running them is less of an event. I remember back in the day, if you were an alliance and wanted to run Scarlet Monastery it could be an all day event sneaking in and then summoning your allies. Today, you hit a button. Classes used to have far more defined roles and non-combat strengths, whereas today they’ve all blended together.

    This all being said, I think that WoW classic released today with no history behind it would fail. It’s too plodding, occasionally arcane and massively unforgiving.

  18. Two McMillion says:

    With all the discussion of bans going on, I thought I’d share an experience that happened to me some time ago regarding moderation, internet forums, and how it affects the makeup of a forum. A while back I was a member of a certain forum which was devoted to a certain hobby. As these places often do, they had a subforum for off-topic discussions, and, as often happens, politics came up, and discussions got heated. Site administration responded by creating a new subforum and declaring that all culture war topics had to be discussed there. So far, so good.

    The Controversy subforum quickly developed a different flavor than the rest of the site. It was harsher, certainly, but it also produced some excellent discussion of different points. The lows were lower, but in my opinion the highs were higher as well. Over time, though, it felt like we got fewer highs and more lows. Threads becoming flame wars began to happen more and more often; insults became a more common occurrence.

    Over the course of several years, site administration tried several tactics to mitigate this course of events. They tried heavily moderating the forum, and were met with backlash and claims they were being partisan (in both directions). They tried lightly moderating the forum, and it became such a cesspool people were leaving the site. Finally, they declared a reign of terror: Be nice, or else; we’re not going to apologize for our decisions, we’ll try to be fair but if you disagree, you can GTFO.

    The reign of terror was quite successful in cleaning up to forum. Almost overnight it became a much nicer place with much higher quality posts and discussion. It also succeeded in almost completely driving away the right-wing voices in the forum. The moderators began by banning everyone with a reputation for being stupid or mean, which immediately removed almost half the right-wing voices in the forum. There was some mumbling about partisanship, but personally I don’t believe partisanship was an issue. I think they were legitimately and genuinely trying to remove the most toxic voices from discussion. It just so happened that most of those voices were right-wing. I say this as a conservative myself. Banning people who really did need to be banned had the net effect of removing conservatives from discussion.

    Now outnumbered, the conservatives who had not been banned began leaving the forum as well. I think they legitimately tried, but there’s a tremendous psychological effect that comes when you’re in a hostile space and your posts are getting replies from three times as many people who disagree with you. It was no longer fun, and most of the right-wingers left, myself included.

    On a whim, I popped my head in the forum the other day. It’s completely left-wing now. Don’t get me wrong, it’s more or less without the worst kind of trash that it used to have. But it’s no longer a place where engagement occurs between two sides of the spectrum. It’s completely a left-wing echo chamber, and I think they like it that way.

    I don’t know how reasonable it is to draw conclusions based on this one experience, but if it generalizes it might say some depressing things about having good online discussions. First, it’s possible that rules about niceness and civility inherently advance left-leaning voices. Why this might be, I don’t know; I can only assume the reason is cultural. Perhaps the red and blue tribes have different ideas of niceness, and somehow the left-leaning one is more prominent. Second, it might be the case that removing toxic voices on one side can have the effect, not of facilitating discussion, but making the discussion space less fun for the rest of the people on that side.

    I don’t know if this is some sort of general law, or if it was the result of factors unique to that forum. I do know that facilitating good discussion is hard; doing so online, even harder. And I know from experience that even an attempt to even-handedly enforce the rules and impose a norm of kindness can have unexpectedly hostile effects. I’m reminded of Scott’s old post about superweapons, and how even true things said about a group that cast it in a negative light can make the whole group tied together whether they like it or not. I’d hate to think that we’re so divided that we can’t even have an agreed-upon norm about niceness. But who knows?

    One thing I know, though, is that if I ever run a forum, I’m going to enforce a strict “no politics” rule.

    • The Nybbler says:

      Perhaps the red and blue tribes have different ideas of niceness, and somehow the left-leaning one is more prominent.

      Yes, this is bias in the definition of “niceness”. For example: “People in category X should be helped” is considered “nice”, but “people in category X should not be helped” or “…should be punished” is not. This is a very superficial definition of niceness, but it often holds sway. Often enough this is added to more obvious bias about how this only applies for some values of X.

    • DragonMilk says:

      On niceness, we should probably save that for the next hidden thread.

      • Nick says:

        ETA: On second thought, there’s nothing but downsides to pre-registering a contention. Just going to save my thoughts for next hidden thread!

      • Two McMillion says:

        Oh crap I forgot this was a visible thread.

        • Randy M says:

          Unfortunately, when Scott wants to make an announcement about comments, he does it on a visible thread, which is understandable, but discussing them often drifts CW, and visible threads are non-CW.
          It’s a bit of accidental entrapment to watch out for.

          • Plumber says:

            @Randy M,

            The comment you responded to is relatively mild, but yes alot of this thread is now looks pretty “hot button” to me.

            I wish Wednesday’s 136.25 thread was here already, somehow “CW allowed” threads seem less rancorous.

          • Randy M says:

            The comment you responded to is relatively mild, but yes alot of this thread is now looks pretty “hot button” to me.

            Yes, because Scott started it with a discussion of banned posters and links to what they said–and an explicit invitation to whine about it, which implies this is a place to discuss comment policy and whether certain obviously CW statements were over the line.

    • I’m not going to even entertain the idea of a grand sweeping narrative of conservative meanness based on one unverified anecdote. There are dozens of examples of left intolerance.

      • axiomsofdominion says:

        I think it is more likely to be a composition problem and not a ideological problem anyways. One side just happens to have more or less nice people for reasons not related to ideology. That might be brigading from another community or some other cause. Then you ban those people and the balance of the community gets upset and one side leaves.

    • Radu Floricica says:

      Not sure it applies here. We’re deliberately working on higher levels of discussion, with some success – or at least that’s how it felt when I joined the forum. The final goal is specifically to be able to discuss every topic, without turning it CW. (That’s why I’m choosing to respond to this instead of being a good boy and ignoring it until the next thread. Practice makes perfect.)

      Using Haidt’s definitions, which I like: left is all about caring about people, while right is equally balanced between more principles (that express differently in different people, and some expressions don’t really fit in the modern world anymore. Nota bene: not the principle itself. Carl Sagan or Richard Fenyman probably held quite a few things to be sacred, but this doesn’t make the extreme religious right very …. good).

      This means that if you use niceness (aka caring) as a measuring tape and cut away everything that doesn’t fit, the people that don’t get cut are mostly left. The right will occasionally hold its ground on various other moral foundations, and they’re by definition less nice than just being nice.

      Also, I feel I just said the same thing as Nybbler in a lot more words.

      • Dragor says:

        That’s…really bothersome—except actually I have heard a similar angle from left wing friends of mine saying demands for civility discriminate against the disenfranchised who should be able to express their pains in a manner comfortable to them. I think it’s been said elsewhere, but I think this maps to conflict vs mistake theorisms (where would that fit into Haidt’s paradigm? I know I would consider him a mistake theoretical foil to Jordan Peterson’s conflict theorist.)

        • Aapje says:

          @Radu Floricica

          Extreme niceness to one group often results in not being nice to another group, though. ‘Let’s save our women and children from all harm by genociding our outgroup’ is extremely nice and caring for ‘our’ women and children, in a way.

          What is considered nice is not universal, but is subjective.

          @Dragor

          Sure, but then you get the issue that being seen as disenfranchised allows one to burden others, without allowing others to burden you, which can easily be abused. Even if a person is disenfranchised and has a need, that still doesn’t make it just to victimize or very heavily burden a random person.

          For example, I don’t think that poor people should be allowed to just steal stuff, even if they have a (non-emergency) need. They get what the welfare system provides them and are allowed to argue that they need more, but they do have to respect limits that other people set.

          In general, that is what civilization is: the acceptance of limits*. If some people get to ignore the limits, they undermine civilization.

          * Note that this doesn’t mean accepting the status quo, but opposition to the status quo needs to follow the rules on how anyone gets to challenge the status quo.

          With many forms of disenfranchisement being hard to see/prove/etc, these exceptions seem to often be granted by stereotyping and/or to those who act according to a stereotype.

          From an individualist perspective, this is problematic.

          • axiomsofdominion says:

            Difficulty is when the rules themselves are being enforced unfairly. The people gaining from that unfairness are not going to admit it without a struggle for obvious reasons.

            How would this apply to a feudal society? There would basically be no way to fight back without violence. Many people argue the same applies in a modern society.

            Also if you are poor its just much harder to work the system than it is for the rich. Ergo you have to break the rules.

            This is what structural racism or structural classism or other arguments deal with. Whether a particular case is correct or not, the meta-argument is sound and has many proven cases.

          • DinoNerd says:

            Anecdata from English wikipedia – there’s a chronic running battle that amounts to (sub)cultural norms being applied to outsiders. Various words commonly used by working class British are beyond-the-pale offensive to many Americans, and worthy of an instant ban. Some of the language considered only mildly offensive by other Americans are beyond-the-pale offensive to those same British folk. An educated+ Brit expressing contempt or worse can appear to be barely annoyed at all to the kind of American extrovert who works sales. (Even this Canadian tried to say “this hoax needs to be deleted ASAP” and had it misread as “I think there might be something a bit iffy about this article”.) An American that’s mildly annoyed appears to be “yelling” at the Brit. And they all want to ban “bad behaviour”, and warn/discipline/ban offenders, who are often using normal speech and/or joking by their own lights.

            This isn’t the only reason good editors and admins get run off wikipedia, and others become cynics. But it’s worth keeping in mind, because class + nationality may correlate with political instincts (or at least what you see as ‘normal’). And a certain amount of the US CW seems to involve people proudly acting according to their own subcultural norms.

            And the above is almost always portrayed as being about “niceness” – or at least standards of good, friendly etc. behaviour. Even when it’s e.g. actually just about parts of the British Working class using the C word almost as punctuation – and many Americans being shocked and offended.

          • Radu Floricica says:

            @Aapje
            Yeah, but some things are harder to express as nice than others. That’s why I like Haidt, btw, and I don’t really care if he turns out to be 100% correct or 30% correct. For the first time it gives some structure to the they way I think about these things.

            Your example can easily be framed it as taking care of vulnerable people. Arguably that’s even what it’s really about – it takes almost no effort at all to express it like this.

            The right, with their more varied moral foundations / guiding principles / goals, goes into directions where you hold opinions that are Just Not Nice. Like the quote from wikipedia’s Fram you posted recently.

            Or, for a more extreme example, “I know minority X is in jail a lot, but maybe they shouldn’t break the law so much”. That’s a statement that can come from pure respect for authority – it doesn’t need anything else to come out like this (definitely doesn’t need racism, for example). But it looks racist af. You can express this nicely, of course, but you have to work at it. The raw feeling is “they shouldn’t break the law”, and it’s not a nice feeling.

            That was a bit extreme, indeed, but you can think of similar examples for fairness, loyalty, sanctity or liberty. The only one that’s inherently nice is Care. So it makes sense that an environment that selects for niceness above all else will in time favor the left.

          • Aapje says:

            @axiomsofdominion

            Difficulty is when the rules themselves are being enforced unfairly.

            One complication is that “unfair” is not at all objective. Your “unfair” is almost certainly not my “unfair.” In fact, I would argue that people’s definition of fairness tend towards the selfish (directly or indirectly) and people’s definition are thus themselves not fair.

            You also ignore that fairly applied rules can also be considered unfair. A consistently enforced rule that only rich people may vote will disenfranchise the poor, but not because of unfair enforcement.

            Furthermore, privilege is not black/white. Compared to the single most privileged person, we are all treated unfairly. So do we all get to use violence, except that one person?

            Furthermore, there is the huge complication that nature is not fair. People tend to believe that humans need to make up for this to some extent, where that extent is again very subjective (and people typically seem to feel that this should be larger when it benefits themselves). It doesn’t seem obvious to me that if someone feels entitled to more than others are willing to give, they can take that with violence or otherwise break the rules.

            Ultimately, IMO the ugly truth is that most humans are more motivated by selfishness than by altruism. Decent prosperity and human well-being for all requires that we find a balance between letting people indulge in this, so they are motivated to sacrifice in a way that benefits others, while clamping down on excesses and redistributing some of the personal benefits.

            That seems to work a lot better with democracy, than with violence.

            @Radu Floricica

            Your example can easily be framed it as taking care of vulnerable people.

            Very many things can be expressed thusly, but that doesn’t mean that it will be accepted. ‘Jews are in control and oppress and exploit gentiles’ has the same structure as ‘Men are in control and oppress and exploit women,’ but one of these statements is going to be accepted as a legitimate claim by way more people than the other.

            The raw feeling is “they shouldn’t break the law”, and it’s not a nice feeling.

            That’s because you don’t mention the victims in your statement. The meme is “Won’t someone think of the children!” for a reason.

    • RalMirrorAd says:

      Niceness in tone is a lot less subjective than niceness in content.

      A rhetorical techniques like sarcasm can generally be identified as such by any person regardless of their value system.

      But if you judge a statement by how it makes other people feel, regardless of what literary techniques are employed then a you have a very easy to exploit loophole. Supporting or opposing any state of affairs has winners and losers, and can be regarded as just or cruel depending on your value system. It that case it becomes impossible to make an argument because the argument is cruel at it’s core.

      Similarly any statement of fact or causality can come off as a value statement because people place certain positive and negative value on both causes and effects. To say X cause has Y effect will trigger a negative emotional reaction in someone if the value of X and Y aren’t either both good or both bad.

    • Jiro says:

      I think we’re getting the literal opposite here and on TheMotte. The left is ascendant everywhere and doesn’t need to conform to standards of decorum in order to be heard. People from the left end up behaving badly because the left gets away with it everywhere else. If a forum is actually policed for good behavior, you end up banning a lot of leftists.

      • Radu Floricica says:

        We really need the same topic in the next thread as well. I have a perfect reply and probably true, but half of it is actually waging CW instead of just discussing it.

    • Viliam says:

      Perhaps the red and blue tribes have different ideas of niceness, and somehow the left-leaning one is more prominent.

      There are many double standards, when a thing is considered okay when one side does it, but the analogical thing is considered horrible when the other side does it.

      (For example, “discussing benefits of slavery, especially in presence of black people” vs “discussing benefits of socialism, especially in presence of people from former Soviet bloc”; one is horribly insensitive, the other is perfectly innocent. Or criticism of Christianity vs criticism of Islam. Complaining about archetypal behavior of men vs complaining about archetypal behavior of women. Censoring some topics for greater social good vs censoring some other topics for greater social good. Etc.)

      And yes, all these double standards can be defended… in a way that sounds plausible to one side, and unconvincing to the other side. When you set the rules, it is easier for you to collect the points.

      • InvalidUsernameAndPassword says:

        (For example, “discussing benefits of slavery, especially in presence of black people” vs “discussing benefits of socialism, especially in presence of people from former Soviet bloc”

        Bias certainly plays a role, but I think you’re ignoring another major contributor to the disparity, namely that “Real slavery has never been tried” is not a thing (at least AFAIK).

    • CandidoRondon says:

      Was this alternatehistory.com? If not the same exact process occurred there – the admin finally got fed up with dealing with all the controversies and just started getting very strict with interpreting the rules banning most of the right-wing regulars. Where back in say 2008 you had a pretty consistent back and forth between the political sides ten years later the forum is a political monoculture.

  19. Chalid says:

    Near my old workplace is 270 Park Avenue which will soon be the tallest voluntarily demolished building in the world and the third-tallest destroyed building ever (after the World Trade Center of course); here is Wikipedia’s list of tallest demolished buildings.

    Lots of people have listed tallest demolished buildings but there are some other obvious metrics. Any idea what would be the largest demolished buildings by building volume? By floorspace? By volume, I’m thinking perhaps some kind of massive German or Russian factory or shipyard in WWII. By floor space it seems hard to beat the WTC.

    Here are various lists of largest (non-demolished) buildings.

    • jgr314 says:

      One of the largest buildings is this refrigerated warehouse: 2800 Polar Way. I know that area and can’t think of a reason why it would be good logistics to have a huge frozen food warehouse there. The press release says that it is convenient to an existing rail spur, which, sure, but it seems pretty far from both (needing to be frozen) food producing regions and population centers.

      • ksdale says:

        Having lived in Washington most of my life, I agree that it doesn’t seem like most of the food from there would need to be frozen, but there’s a gigantic amount of produce grown in that region and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was livestock within a few hundred miles of there as well.

        I’ve driven past a big Ore-Ida factory in Oregon or Idaho… and though potatoes generally aren’t frozen, I think every Ore-Ida package I’ve ever seen has been in the freezer section, so maybe it’s something like that.

      • Wency says:

        Having worked some in commercial real estate, I can say that siting a large warehouse is not as trivial as it might appear (it’s just a big box, put it anywhere!) Warehousing is a low-price, low-margin business, so all the economic factors need to be considered carefully.

        You often need a very large plot of flat ground that is available for sale, which in hilly or mountainous regions (like much of the northwest) can be surprisingly hard to find. You need good logistical connections. You need a large enough labor force with the right skills (or to not be in so dismal an area that no one will relocate there), willing to work for the right price. In the case of this refrigerated facility, I bet the costs of keeping it cool are substantial, so electricity rates are relevant (probably not a coincidence that WA has some of the lowest rates in the country due to its ample hydro power).

        And like any corporate presence like this, you of course hope to find a local government that wants to attract you there.

        • jgr314 says:

          That’s very interesting. One thing I’d thought would be an issue with that site is that E Washington gets very hot in the summer. West of the mountains is moderate/cool all year, but much harder to find flat space.

    • BBA says:

      Maybe a building associated with the old Denver airport, which closed when the current one opened in 1995. Airports take up huge amounts of land, and the terminals and hangars are very large buildings, yet when you look at a map of Denver today you can barely tell where the old one was. It’s just another neighborhood now.

  20. aristides says:

    SMBC had a similar proposals called Suckbook. Like many SMBC comics it ends with robots enslaving us all, but hopefully your venture goes better.

    • Nancy Lebovitz says:

      Heard somewhere– If only desperation made people more attractive.

      • Doctor Mist says:

        Broadcast News, the Albert Brooks character:

        Wouldn’t this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If “needy” were a turn-on?

  21. bean says:

    Biweekly Naval Gazing Links Post:

    First, I’ve started a new series on Riverine Warfare. The first two parts, covering North America and Africa, are up now.

    Second, I’ve wrapped up my series on the Spanish-American War with a look at the handful of actions after Santiago.

    The US military supports an incredible R&D infrastructure, and some of the facilities are worth a closer look. My favorite is the David Taylor Model Basin, where ship hull forms are tested.

    In the Falklands, the British troops have finally engaged the Argentinians at Goose Green.

    Lastly, I went to the Tinker Airshow back in June and finally got around to posting my photos.

    • EchoChaos says:

      First, I’ve started a new series on Riverine Warfare. The first two parts, covering North America and Africa, are up now.

      Excellent. I’m really looking forward to South America and the War of the Triple Alliance.

    • Tenacious D says:

      The riverine warfare series is interesting so far. Are you planning an entry for every continent?

      Does the David Taylor Model Basin give tours, or did your info mainly come from books?

      • John Schilling says:

        Riverine warfare in Antarctica: coming soon to a blog near you.

      • bean says:

        The riverine warfare series is interesting so far. Are you planning an entry for every continent?

        John beat me to the obvious joke here, and I don’t really have anything for Australia, either. The serious answer is that I am doing my best to take a global view of the subject, sorted by area. I seriously considered several different arrangements, and ultimately settled on geographic. The first three parts each cover a continent because they had about the right amount of material for that. The rest probably won’t. I expect China (the next topic) to run to 3 parts. SEA will probably take two. Not sure beyond that.

      • bean says:

        Oh, right. Forgot part of this. DTMB does give tours, and taking one is very much on my bucket list. But everything in that post came from books or the internet.

  22. Nancy Lebovitz says:

    As I recall, something like that was one of the premises of the Torchship Trilogy.

  23. Aapje says:

    @Zephalinda

    Does it actually drain off hateful energy or does it make people feel entitled to threat others as inferiors?

    Furthermore, if you teach people that they are higher status than they are, and they go into the real world, will they get in trouble for being uppity?

  24. Dan L says:

    IRL any benefits from hating or harming perceived inferiors come at the cost of stress to the other people being hated and harmed. But with so much of everyone’s social lives played out via largely imaginary people-proxies anyway, it could be fairly easy to quietly introduce artificial “chew toy” accounts– accounts ostensibly for mildly-less-successful people, for weird, ugly, or pathetic people, for people just on the annoying edge of a different Overton window than the current CW one– to drain off some of that excess hateful energy and leave the real people with a pleasant sense of being comfortably near the top of a personal pecking order.

    I know this is already in use in some online games – both Fortnite and PUBG (mobile) were known to seed low-level early matches with bots, to the point were it’s not unusual for the humans to have an average K:D ratio of 5 or higher. Of course, this was primarily in service of getting new players hooked with easy wins rather than any utilitarian optimum.

    • It’s done routinely and openly in WoW, and I assume many other games. The NPC’s exist, in part, to make the player feel like an elite, since he can beat them up.

      • moonfirestorm says:

        I think NPC versus PC is a little different: it’s pretty clear to the player that they’re not representing other humans, and often exploiting specific aspects of their behavior is a core game mechanic. The entire concept of the tank in WoW is that NPCs have a fully predictable targeting system, so you can force their attention onto the player most built to survive it.

        Maybe there’s still a power aspect, but I’m not sure you can disentangle that from “winning at games” in general. If we’re tying this back to social standing, I’d expect the NPCs to be more like prey in a hunt than social hierarchy. Especially when many of the NPCs aren’t human or humanoid.

        Interestingly, they’ve introduced some new pseudo-PvP AI in the latest expansion’s Island Expeditions (3v3 resource collecting race, which also has a full PvP mode). The NPCs try to use some of the tactics you see in PvP, with a targeting model more advanced than “who has the most threat”, moving around to avoid attacks, and using much more crowd control. I’m not convinced anyone is being fooled into thinking they’re real players though.

  25. soreff says:

    >until you guys whine at me to reinstate her enough

    I’d like to register a whine.
    I rarely agree with Deiseach,
    but I _always_ want to hear what she has to say.

    • Lurker says:

      me too!
      people like her take me out of my echo chamber and that’s worth a lot to me and I find her style funny, so if she writes something I reflexively disagree with, I’m more likely to seriously think about it because it also makes me laugh (maybe that makes me weird).

      [also, is there a reason why banning/warning someone can’t go by percentage? arbitrary example: if 5% of your comments cross a line, you get a warning, if 10% cross a line you get banned. that way, frequent commenters wouldn’t be at a disadvantage because more comments mean more chances for mistake, and the trolls that show up just to mess with people would still get banned as well.]

      I’ve also noticed interesting comments by Le Maistre Chat and EchoChaos and would be sad to see them go.

      • Doctor Mist says:

        is there a reason why banning/warning someone can’t go by percentage?

        If we had any expectation of due process, this might make sense. But it would require a massive amount of bookkeeping on Scott’s part; if he has a fixed budget of time he spends on SSC, it would reduce his posting considerably, which to my mind is not a good bargain.

        • Lurker says:

          if he has a fixed budget of time he spends on SSC, it would reduce his posting considerably, which to my mind is not a good bargain.

          I completely agree with that!
          I just figured that seeing the number of posts a person made on your blog in a certain time frame would be easy to see and then you just divide the number of posts that bothered you by that.
          But maybe that’s a feature that just sounds interesting to me, but no body else so no one implemented comment count per person.
          If it does exist the additional time you need to make the decicion to ban is maybe a minute or so. If it doesn’t then yes, the amount of time necessary to do this is unreasonable even if it wouldn’t take away from Scott’s blog writing time.

          [assuming something exists because it seems obvious that it should happens to me occationally and then I end up sounding unreasonable to people who know that it doesn’t. sorry.]

          • Doctor Mist says:

            I don’t think we’re in disagreement here, but I’ll just say that “number of posts that bothered you” by itself requires more bookkeeping than I would want to impose. My impression is that Scott is probably just using his native Bayesian processing: any obnoxious post raises his irritation level toward the poster, and at some point the irritation level is high enough for him to say, “All right, that’s it; out of the pool.” The final straw may not be a particularly egregious violation, as I think many people agree about the examples cited in the OP, but it was the final straw.

      • Witness says:

        [also, is there a reason why banning/warning someone can’t go by percentage? arbitrary example: if 5% of your comments cross a line, you get a warning, if 10% cross a line you get banned. that way, frequent commenters wouldn’t be at a disadvantage because more comments mean more chances for mistake, and the trolls that show up just to mess with people would still get banned as well.]

        Banning by percentages certainly seems fair. It’s a matter of fact that the more often one opens one’s mouth, the more chances there are for something to slip out that shouldn’t, and should someone be punished for that?

        My response is, sort of yes. It’s also a matter of fact that those who comment have more influence over the tone of the debate. I think it’s wise to hold them accountable for that.

        I also think that it’s worth a certain amount of charity on the duration of such bans, provided the offender genuinely adds value when they aren’t slipping. If “indefinite == permanent” then I think that’s worth reconsidering, but if indefinite is more “until I reflect upon it and/or hear from other commenters”, then we’re on the right track.

        • Lurker says:

          It’s also a matter of fact that those who comment have more influence over the tone of the debate. I think it’s wise to hold them accountable for that.

          Good point. I agree. One should be held accountable for one’s behaviour.

          (Assumption here for the following: the percentage thing is fast to do and/or easy to automate)
          But wouldn’t setting the percentage points relatively low achieve that?
          Or does an unkind/untruthful/etc comment from someone who generally follows the standards have a disproportionate impact? (if someone who’s never rude suddenly starts yelling at me or someone who’s always been nice to me is suddenly mean, this will have a much bigger impact on me than someone who’s always like that. Do internet comments work similarly?)

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      Example #1 doesn’t seem to me like a rule violation, given the context to which she was responding.

  26. Skeptical Wolf says:

    In a previous open thread, I mentioned that there are some valuable skills for professional software developers that CS programs are frequently bad at teaching (and vice versa for boot camps). Ilate asked me to elaborate, but I took too long to get back to the thread, so I’ll post my answer here.

    Disclaimer: I do not work in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley software development has a different culture and focus than most other software development. Use an extra grain of salt if trying to apply my advice to SV.

    Skills professional software engineers need that fresh CS graduates usually have to be taught:
    Unit Testing Test Driven Development is still not ubiquitous, but unit testing in some form is. Your preferred language probably has a library or utility named ***unit (junit for Java, pyunit for Python, xunit or nunit for C#, etc). You can probably learn to use it fairly easily from youtube tutorials and blog posts (if you try this and have trouble, flag me down in an open thread and I’ll help if one of the other local techies doesn’t get there first). For a second step, look for a mocking library that works with your unit testing framework (mockito for Java, unittest.mock for Python, etc). Being comfortable with those tools will put you several steps ahead of other fresh bachelor’s degree recipients. Also, learning what is hard to test and what is easy to test will help you become a better programmer (hint: good code is easy to test). It is frequently better to show no code samples at all than to show code samples without unit tests.
    Naming things descriptively This is hard even for the most seasoned professionals, but it’s also an absolutely essential skill that is frequently overlooked by CS professors. Clean Code by Robert Martin is a good book to start with for this and a few similar practices (though I tend to disagree with him about exceptions). Alternatively, try revisiting an old project, restructuring the code and renaming things until someone looking at it for the first time can clearly understand you intent with no comments. This is not a purely academic exercise – as a professional software engineer, I feel that I have failed if I have to comment anything beyond a module’s public api.
    Agile practices / team dynamics Even the slowest dinosaurs of the industry are either turning agile or pretending to. Being passingly familiar with some of the basic practices and principles will help you get up to speed on a professional team much faster (and help you get through the interview). If you can get access to a Safari account, Neal Ford’s Agile Engineering Practices videos are a great place to start.
    Splitting things up into small units This is closely related to naming in that it falls under the giant umbrella of “writing readable code”. A lot of new engineers I’ve met (this one applies both to CS programs and bootcamps) have a tendency to write everything in one method/function. In professional practice, there is almost never a reason to do this. Breaking things up into smaller units lets you achieve consistent levels of abstraction and communicate a lot more of your intent with descriptive names. In practice, I generally assume that any method that runs longer than 10 lines needs to be broken up (and being smaller doesn’t make it safe). Neal Ford recommends four lines as the safe size, which isn’t always practical in every language, but communicates the concept very nicely.

    If people are interested in more of this content, I’m happy to answer questions or do a similar post for what bootcamps tend to miss.

    P.S. – Ilate, I also answered a couple of your more specific questions back in OT135.75. Apologies for the delayed response.

    • Enkidum says:

      Thanks for this. I can’t imagine writing all my methods in 10 lines or less, but it’s an interesting thing to aspire to. Unit testing is the next tool I think I need to master.

      To give you an example of where I’m at in programming, I’m quite good at writing code that does things, but I created my first class maybe four years ago, and only now feel somewhat comfortable with the main concepts of OOP. So I’m only thirty years out of date…

    • brad says:

      In general good advice, but some pushback:

      Unit Testing
      I don’t think excessive mocking is valuable. You end up encoding your assumptions in your mocks and then test that your code embodies your assumptions. If you find yourself doing a lot of mocking consider integration/ETE tests instead.

      In terms of testable code being good code, to the extent we are talking about the functional style, I mostly agree. But I find that testable code seems to have less encapsulation (freer access) than otherwise good code would. @VisibleForTesting displeases me.

      Agile practices
      There are some good ideas there. Don’t make like a crossfitter please.

      Small Units / Clean Code
      I seem to recall CC not only recommends four line functions but wants them to each take one argument. No one wants to read three hundred line functions with a dozen string arguments but this is going way overboard in my opinion.

      caveat
      Although I’m not in SV, I do work for a company headquartered there.

      • Enkidum says:

        No one wants to read three hundred line functions with a dozen string arguments

        Oh no I’ve made a horrible mistake… many, many horrible mistakes

        • Skeptical Wolf says:

          Everyone makes those mistakes when they’re starting out. They’re something to learn from, not be ashamed of.

          If you could tell me what language you’re working in, I might be able to recommend a book or two to help you ramp up a bit faster.

          • Enkidum says:

            Matlab for data analysis, C#/Unity for experiment design/control (I’m a psychologist/neuroscientist, doing experiments with quasi-realistic environments/stimuli, hence Unity). Some R/python, currently those are weaker skills, but I recognize that they’re the optimal tools for analysis.

            I recently went through Modeling Software with Finite State Machines — A Practical Approach by Wagner et al, which was incredibly useful for my current task. And it happened to match a bunch of my preconceptions for how software should work, which is always a plus.

          • quanta413 says:

            It’s been a while since I’ve used Matlab, and I am not a software engineer but my recollection is that Matlab encourages horrible habits. I abandoned it for Python after porting one small project over to Python and seeing the difference. I feel it helped me improve my coding habits a lot even though my code is still not at the level I’d want if I was working in a group rather than mostly hacking together one-off scripts and notebooks for data analysis. Never looked back.

            Last time I used Matlab, you couldn’t call anything but the top level function of a .m file from another file which encourages building huge functions that contain as much functionality as possible or using the top level function as a sort of wrapper for functions lower down the file. I didn’t try using Matlab classes though.

            I also found the lack of namespacing very frustrating.

          • Enkidum says:

            Both your recollections are correct. There are a few things that Matlab has going for it:

            – sunk cost, just huge amounts of people are fluent in it and it takes time and energy to retrain them, particularly in some branches of engineering and (for odd historical reasons) experimental psychology, which is where I’m at
            – the GUI. Everyone keeps telling me that in recent years python has made leaps and bounds here, but I find the Matlab gui so much better than anything else I’ve tried for examining data that it’s really hard to switch.
            – the help files and function references. Seriously, they are amazing. Again, this is something that in the past decade or so has hugely improved in lots of other languages as well.
            – dealing with matrices, Matlab is short for Matrix Laboratory, after all. Yes, yes, numpy and so on, but I’ve never found anything as intuitive for manipulating n-D stuff.

            There are a few other positives as well. That being said, it’s ridiculously slow, and as you said it encourages terrible code. I am guilty of this, though I’m improving a lot.

          • roflc0ptic says:

            @Enkidum I kind of want to suggest caution when applying Skeptical Wolf’s words here to your own work – the qualifier “for software developers” is pretty important. There are many contexts in which quickly writing low quality code is the rational strategy.

            Code written by scientists is usually “bad” code – things aren’t named well, they aren’t split up into small units, they aren’t unit tested (or testable). However, these “problems” are only problems in the context of long-lived, often-modified code in a sizeable codebase. It’s not cognitively cheap to write good code, nor is it a cheap skillset to pick up.

            I believe [citations needed] all of the practices Skeptical Wolf is pointing to emerged from people working on teams trying to coordinate with each other on how to modify and re-use code. That’s certainly where their value lies.

            I’m not saying you should avoid learning about software development. It’s pretty great. But with more knowledge comes more ways to accidentally waste time.

          • quanta413 says:

            @Enkidum

            I totally agree on the costs of retraining and a lot of the GUI being nicer. Matplotlib is powerful but also often a pain to deal with compared to Matlab’s plotting interface. I’ve also heard that building standalone apps with Matlab is less painful than breaking out PyQt or some other full blown graphics toolkit. I’ve never had to do either. I really like Jupyter notebooks and widgets which Matlab didn’t have anything like, but I’ve been bitten by breaking updates or weird cross-platform or cross-browser bugs in Jupyter widgets enough times that I don’t recommend it in general.

            The matrix notation in matlab is nicer, but I find it’s a relatively minor issue.

            I actually feel the opposite way about Matlab help and documentation though. When I go off the happy path of Matlab to write some marginally more complicated algorithm that isn’t just matrix manipulation or I need some little used feature, I find the documentation quality drops steeply. I once tried to help my wife debug some code using image processing routines and some of the help pages weren’t even clear on things like “what numeric type does the input matrix need to be and what type will the output be” or “what do these optional arguments do”?

            Although numpy’s docs aren’t as friendly, I find they’re more likely to cover all the details I need. Although a more fair comparison might be scikit-image which IIRC has some of the same issues with not always making it obvious what will happen to the numeric types of matrices going in.

            That being said, it’s ridiculously slow…

            Fortunately, it’s not that slow at matrix multiplication although string processing and other things might be pretty slow (not sure). You probably don’t have to worry about this much unless you are doing a lot of really heavy computational work.

            It’s roughly the same speed as numpy. Give or take a factor of 2 usually. Which is usually within an order of magnitude of typical C code, or for some routines can be as fast as can be since both it and numpy can be configured to call into BLAS/LAPACK routines.

          • Enkidum says:

            In terms of Matlab’s speed, one of the big issues is apparently the way loops are handled. I didn’t fully understand all of this when it was explained to me, and that was a long time ago, but if I remember correctly they’re not using the super-efficient C++ methods for looping. There are (I think) actually good reasons for this, because Matlab loops tend to involve a lot of things (like matrix manipulation/indexing) that don’t necessarily play nicely with the way most software engineers expect loops to work. (I’m way above my pay grade here, so take that with a large grain of salt).

            The speed definitely becomes an issue for me, even with just eye tracking data, which is not particularly massive (say, a few gb per participant-hour) the kinds of analyses I tend to do can take minutes for 50 participants. For most neural data, you’re looking at an order or two of magnitude more, and the analyses often get more complicated. So I should (a) optimize my code better, and (b) start migrating slowly to python and r, really.

            Finally, in terms of whether I should even bother thinking about things like unit testing – actually yeah, I should. Even internal to our lab, there is a significant amount of code sharing and re-use, and debugging other people’s code (and other people debugging mine) is a huge time sink. We need to learn to do it better. Plus I’ve started releasing open source code for the research community to use, and this is something I need to get up to a decent, readable standard. But better practices always take the back seat to getting stuff done quickly, as noted.

          • quanta413 says:

            In case you weren’t already aware, Python loops also have a lot of overhead, and I’m not sure about R but I suspect the same thing. The solution always boils down to calling into a library that loops for you which is what calling basic stuff like * or functions on matrices does.

            It’s not a big problem to loop as long as the amount of work inside the loop is much higher than the overhead. I’ve used Python’s profiler to decent effect a couple times when needed.

            If you really have just a few tiny operations inside a loop and can’t deal with the overhead, you’re basically stuck with dropping down to a lower-level language like C or C++ or a much less popular language like Julia (or Haskell or Common Lisp). I’ve played with Julia a bit, and it’s pretty easy to write code for and you can make small loops in it that are performant because it compiles stuff fairly efficiently (LLVM is the same backend a lot of C++ code is compiled on), but it’s relatively new and has a different set of issues.

            Finally, in terms of whether I should even bother thinking about things like unit testing – actually yeah, I should. Even internal to our lab, there is a significant amount of code sharing and re-use, and debugging other people’s code (and other people debugging mine) is a huge time sink. We need to learn to do it better. Plus I’ve started releasing open source code for the research community to use, and this is something I need to get up to a decent, readable standard. But better practices always take the back seat to getting stuff done quickly, as noted.

            I 100% support this. Even working alone, I found building some tests useful. Did I obtain 100% coverage? Not even close, but something is better than nothing. Similarly, even if I’m only running a script once to munge some data, I prefer a format like an SQL database where I can easily embed constraints that prevent the data from being the wrong type or violating some bounds to munging data from one spreadsheet into another spreadsheet and having to hand write all the error-checking functions.

            If there’s already code re-use going on between people in your lab, hopefully other people are interested in writing tests too! There was some reuse going on of my code in my lab, but I was the only one writing helper files or little pseudo-libraries and it’s harder to motivate yourself then.

            One thing I found tough about writing tests for scientific code was that it was much harder to write an oracle that could confirm a function I wrote was correctly implemented than any example I’d find on the web. I ended up instead using two somewhat more complicated approaches.

            1. Very amateur fuzzing where I’d generate random inputs (in a hopefully not too stupid manner) and then check that after feeding them into my functions that the outputs didn’t violate constraints that ought to have remained true or approximately true. Like conserved quantities should be conserved (to within floating point error) after time evolving them, or the first moment and second moment of a distribution would be some function of its parameters.

            2. Checking reduced cases. If I know solutions for special cases by hand or certain special cases have relatively easy algorithms to write, I can check my code doesn’t fail fail for these cases. Usually this is still combined with (1.)

            I later learned there’s a Python library called Hypothesis that helps with fuzzing, but I haven’t used it yet.

          • Skeptical Wolf says:

            roflc0ptic is right to urge caution when applying my advice outside of software engineering. These techniques come from a body of practice that has heavily optimized for developing and maintaining large (by the standards you’re used to) applications in teams over a long period of time. They are tools very well suited to that job. Outside of that niche, they offer trade-offs that may or may not be valuable to you.

            One of the useful metrics for figuring out how to optimally spend your effort here is this: if you could double the time you spent writing the code in order to halve the number of mistakes you make (and thus the time/cost of debugging), does that sound like a good deal?

            When you’re first starting out, you’ll face an initial learning curve of a few months where things are just slower (as with adopting any new paradigm). After that, you’ll break through to a point where that’s about the result you can expect (100% increase in development time, 50% reduction in bugs). After that, if you keep practicing, you’ll slowly improve to the point where you’re getting something more like 50% increased development time with a 90% reduction in bugs. Getting to this point will take at least 2 years, though.

            In terms of books, I can’t recommend anything for Matlab or R, but the general Object Oriented list will help a lot with C# and won’t hurt with Python (though their applicability may be limited, depending on what type of Python you’re writing).

            The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master is the most succinct book I know that tries to explain the differences in thought between competent non-specialists and top-tier professionals. It’s a little old, but still relevant and an interesting look into how a group of people tends to think.

            Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code Writing about how to turn bad code into good code is what put Martin Fowler on the industry’s radar. The second edition was recently released and is much more approachable than the first.

            Clean Code Already mentioned above but it’s worth mentioning again. This book is the reason Robert Martin is commonly known as “Uncle Bob” in software circles. Somewhat Java-focused, but almost all Java techniques and concerns translate directly to C#.

          • Enkidum says:

            Thanks to all for the useful discussion and suggestions! At the very least I will read some of the suggested books, and see where they take me.

            I never expected that my research career would be 7/10s software engineering, but here I am. There’s little that pleases me at work these days as much as well-written, efficient, and clean code, so I might as well keep pushing myself in that direction.

          • A1987dM says:

            @roflc0ptic:

            However, these “problems” are only problems in the context of long-lived, often-modified code in a sizeable codebase.

            Sure, but for smaller values of “long”, “often” and “sizeable” than you seem to be implying. Sometimes I edit my own code which I haven’t seen for a couple of months and I have to spend more time figuring out how to change something without breaking other stuff than I would have spent making the original code more editable in the first place, even in ~ 1 kloc projects.

            But yeah, if you’re writing code you’re pretty sure no-one will use again including yourself writing “write-only code” can be a net saving of time.

          • roflc0ptic says:

            @A1987dM

            The problem with most discussions about software development methodology is that they’re heuristic driven, and basically everybody gets to be right. I spent a lot of words to say that there’s some point on an imaginary Effort vs Reward Over Time curve where trying to write good software is net benefit; before that it’s net loss. Skeptical Wolf does a better job elucidating the tradeoffs I was pointing at.

            Based off of more information – namely that Enkidum wants to release OSS, I think learning about testing is a fabulous idea. Trying to get an org of scientists to Write Good Code sounds Sisyphean, but perhaps there’s value in the attempt. I’m happily agnostic about that. Pretty curious to hear how Enkidum’s journey goes, and hope they share more about it.

      • Skeptical Wolf says:

        Unit Testing
        If you end up encoding assumptions about your unit under test into the mocks, that’s definitely a problem. However, if you’re using some form of dependency injection (which is pretty ubiquitous now, fortunately), then I find mocking to be an excellent way to isolate what you’re testing. Integration testing is also valuable, and e2e tests are sometimes the least-bad option, but I still find a great deal of value in testing units individually. Perhaps I should have mentioned SOLID principles (including IoC/DI) in the initial post, but that’s much more relevant specifically to the Java/C# world and there are a lot of JS and other jobs out there as well.

        Regarding the functional paradigm, I’m a big fan of writing in the paradigm of your language. Good code being testable also applies at least to OO as well, and I’d be inclined to look for it in any enterprise toolset.

        Agile Practices
        Could you elaborate on what “making like a crossfitter” means? I’m not familiar with that reference in this context.

        Small Units
        I agree that four lines with a single argument is going overboard in practice. The most aggressive team quality standard I ever worked with was 20 lines and 2 arguments. 30 and 3 is more common (and I believe the most common defaults in static analysis tools). 10 is my rule of thumb, but even that has to be broken sometimes. Four lines and one argument makes an interesting academic challenge for a small project, though.

        • brad says:

          What I meant is that there’s no need to enthusiastically embrace the cultish trappings. The key idea is short development cycles that deliver concrete incremental improvements to end users.

          • johan_larson says:

            As far as I can tell, when a company goes “agile”, the practices they actually adopt are daily “stand-up” progress meetings, and grouping work in two-week “sprint” intervals. Nothing else changes. What they don’t adopt is the adaptability and flexibility that agile is all about, so they end up doing a weird sort of cargo-culting.

          • Skeptical Wolf says:

            This varies quite a lot from company to company. The difference between one that actually adopts agile practices vs one that just throws the latest buzzwords around is how they deal with change. There’s a huge difference between structuring your teams so that they can and will respond quickly to changing requirements vs trying to prevent requirements from changing (just doing it on a shorter cycle).

            The shorter cycles have value in their own right (even mini-waterfall is a better development process than full waterfall) and are an essential part of the reactive process.

            Brad’s point about avoiding cultishness is well-taken. Agile is a good philosophy and an encapsulation of a lot of learning in the field, but anything can have its value drained by reducing it to “bow before the sacred buzzwords”. I don’t think agile practices are unusually prone to this, but they’re certainly not immune to it either.

            In general, though, a new developer can get a leg up in an interview by showing that I won’t have to explain that a stand-up is not a status meeting or why we estimate in points rather than hours.

          • Robin says:

            @johan_larson: I’m wondering whether you are aware of the cargo cult agile buzzword, or have you just invented it independently?

          • johan_larson says:

            @Robin, I think I came up with that on my own.

        • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

          I don’t think it makes sense to give language-agnostic standards about number of arguments and lines (except to the extent that the size of a typical screen is a relevant unit). The ideal values depend on things like the extent to which the language encourages OOP (for number of arguments) and simply how verbose it is (for number of lines).

      • Nick says:

        I seem to recall CC not only recommends four line functions but wants them to each take one argument. No one wants to read three hundred line functions with a dozen string arguments but this is going way overboard in my opinion.

        Yeah, came here to say this. Having to bounce around a hundred different functions to understand what’s going on can be just as confusing as reading a single function, especially when the code is linear anyway. I’ve seen this described as “risotto code.”

      • JPNunez says:

        I’ve come around against short functions. You end up with a ton of cascading functions that each do a small part of the logic. I am pro long functions of logic with functions abstracting the I/O, calls to other services, etc, but trying to keep the flow in one place.

    • liate says:

      Thanks for the effortpost!

      I have had classes try to teach all of these except Agile stuff, but not very effectively. The unit testing that’s been in any of my classes hasn’t included much writing of our own unit tests, and was more used as a system for grading coding projects than anything else. There is a Software Engineering course that I haven’t taken yet which is supposed to teach all of these things, but who knows how well that works.

      (nitpick: my username is “liate”, not “Ilate”; swap the I and the l and preferrably leave it all lowercase. (It’s based on a calculus mnemonic, but is also in this xkcd.))

      Edit to add: Also, thanks for the book recommendations!

      • Skeptical Wolf says:

        Sorry for getting the name wrong, I could distinguish the bolded letters and guessed wrong. Thanks for the link to the nice XKCD, though.

    • mfm32 says:

      How much of the utility of these practices, particularly the granularity of splitting things up, is driven by the fact that lots of professional software development is (in my non-professional experience) glue / interface code vs. actual “value-add” code (in a Lean sense)?

      I’m sure I am not as good at modularity as I should be, but I struggle to see the utility of breaking up most functions into 10-line units. Of course there are many functions that naturally are that small, but for others, I see a way to do it but question when I would ever call the “child” function in another context.

      • Skeptical Wolf says:

        This has very little to do with the divide between framework/logic code. It has a lot more to do with the fact that very little professional software engineering is greenfield development and almost none of it is done solo.

        You code needs to not just do what it’s supposed to, it needs to also be easy for someone who isn’t familiar with it to understand, debug, modify, and expand. And remember, after a few months on other projects, you won’t be familiar with that particular piece of code anymore either.

        10 lines isn’t an absolute rule so much as my rule of thumb. A more advanced way to think of it is that each method should do only one thing, that what it does should be obvious from its name, and that how it does it should be obvious from its body. If your method is too big to understand easily, find a piece of logic you can pull out into another (well-named) method.

      • Enkidum says:

        +1 to Skeptical Wolf’s response.

        I write thousands of lines of code as part of my day job. A lot of this is collaborative, and the advantages of short, simple methods for collaborative projects should be obvious.

    • Robin says:

      “Clean Code” is a great book. I also loved “Working effectively with legacy code”, especially for some specific insights:
      * “Legacy code” is defined as “code which is not unit-tested”. Really great when you think about it… If there are no unit tests, you don’t dare change anything, out of fear to break some corner case you don’t understand. Unit tests relieve you of this fear.
      * Mocking is the only thing I’m missing in that book, but you can fit it in yourself, with the idea of “seams”… Seams are a point in the code where you can snip snip snip out a part and put it in your little petri dish for unit testing, separate from the rest. This is why you do dependency injection, for example. It makes you think a little differently of how to organize your code.

      About the number of lines and arguments per function… I always wanted to — but so far never got around to — do some “object calisthenics”. Programming a little project with some really REALLY strict rules. Of course this is nothing for real life, but the exercise (so they say) is very instructive.

      • Garrett says:

        Do you have any suggestions for dependency injection support for high-performance/kernel code? It’s one area where I’ve worked where the mechanisms required to support doing so add overhead which people don’t want because of the performance impact.

        • Robin says:

          Is your kernel code in C or C++? I have used some lightweight mocking framework, e.g. hippomocks, for replacing function calls by a mock. It does some nasty things to the function tables under the hood, but “just works”.

      • Viliam says:

        Programming a little project with some really REALLY strict rules.

        Once I found a section in Eclipse settings that allows you to display warnings for various things. So I was like “yeah, let’s turn everything on and see what happens!” Suddenly the project was full of warnings.

        Some of those warnings didn’t make much sense. Like, some settings were mutually contradictory (e.g. “always use ‘this.’ for members” vs “never use ‘this.’ for members”, if I remember correctly). Each of them could make some sense separately (“always make using members explicit” vs “never shadow variables”), and I couldn’t choose, so I turned these off. But I decided to apply the “Chesterton fence” approach, and only turn off a setting if I feel I understand fully why someone could want to have it this way, and I happen to disagree with that decision.

        I learned a few interesting things that day. It is especially interesting when you are shown an example of something exotic in your own code.

    • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

      And learn basic git if you don’t know it already.

    • DinoNerd says:

      Interesting. I’ve still never been forced to do “agile”, so I can’t speak to its benefits – but daily meetings don’t attract me, particularly start-of-day meetings. Agile seems to me to be a mix of common sense, magic pixie dust, and an attempt to make extroverts like engineering better, at the cost of making introverts like it less.

      Maybe it works, in a medium sized team that’s actually working on a common project – but that’s rarely what I’m really doing. The team’s either 1-3 people, and agile is just silly overhead – or it’s 60+, with overlapping sub-teams, most of whom are involved in multiple projects at once – meetings are going to be beyond unwieldy. And I’m working on 2-6 of these things at the same time, counting ongoing bug fixing activities.

      In my recent positions we aren’t going to be regularly revising our interfaces based on feedback etc. And there’s no manageable sized set of people with whom I share responsibility for releasing some single ‘thing’. There aren’t developers, QA engineers, human interface designers, and managers all trying to work together to make some feature or release happen – or at least, not at the scale where anyone can remember all their names, let alone manage a participatory meeting with all of them present.

      • Aapje says:

        I think that, if done properly, the daily meeting is quite introvert-friendly, since it is supposed to be very quick and well structured, as everyone is supposed to answer these questions:
        1. What did you do yesterday?
        2. What will you do today?
        3. Are there any impediments in your way?

        Aside from developers, testers and someone responsible for keeping the meeting on track (who can be a developer as well), a product owner should be present. This person is responsible for making clear demands of the developers. To do so, this person often speaks with many stakeholders and condenses their diverse demands and needs into actual tasks with enough detail for the team to be able to perform them.

        You are correct that these methodologies are not designed for developers that work on many projects or alone/in very small teams. Scrum used to advise a team size of 5-9 and now advises 3-9.

        Agile seems […] an attempt to make extroverts like engineering better

        No, I think that it attempts to force people out of problematic behavior. For example, it forces introverts to give frequent updates and discuss problems they have. It bans people-oriented extroverts from approaching developers directly and getting high priority for their tasks by exploiting social conventions/pleasing behavior. It encourages process improvements, rather than people sticking with what they are used to, by having regular retrospectives. It demands quick feedback loops to reduce the cost of communication errors. Etc, etc.

        • DinoNerd says:

          Hmm. Just for giggles/cycnicism, I’m going to answer those, for yesterday, which was on the bad side of normal:

          1. What did you do yesterday?

          2 hours of one-to-many meeting attendance. 2+ hours fighting with an undocumented process I was using to do a routine task [that should have taken 15 minutes] because of bugs in the normal one. 1 hour being distracted by an overly chatty colleague in our 12 person (if full) workspace; he also lacks an indoor voice. At least 1 hour on email, some of it low priority. At least half an hour dealing with two managers giving me mutually contradictory orders about the same task, and one of them chatting me up in slow mo by IM. Half an hour hiding in a conference room trying to get rid of the headache. Maybe as much as an hour on my actual top priority task, which is probably insoluble in the projected time frame.

          2. What will you do today?

          Hopefully meet with the relevant tech lead about the top priority problem. Dig through too much email. Fend off managers looking for daily status; it would help if the IM user actually understood the problem. Make sure I’m not blocking anyone else, who has a task that isn’t an emergency-visible-to-management yet but will have one eventually if they aren’t unblocked. Look at incoming bug reports, prioritize them, and then get a manager to do the actual assignment to release targets for me (company culture blocks non-managers from doing this at this stage of the release). If there’s any time left over, actually work on the top priority problem.

          3. Are there any impediments in your way?

          The open office effect costs me up to 50% of my productivity. (I measured when they moved me in.) This includes Mr. Chatty.

          I don’t have the right background knowledge to understand the symptoms seen in the top priority task in detail, and there doesn’t seem to be any documentation other than the source code, much of which is only accessible to me via a painful to use online interface. (No, I can’t just “git clone” things too far outside my organizational location.)

          Additional bugs in the routine task made my best debugging machine semi-unusable for some hours, so I was using the backup laptop. My fault for not postponing it, I suppose, but there’s always some mini-crisis, and it was overdue.

          • Faza (TCM) says:

            one of them chatting me up in slow mo by IM

            That one’s always fun, isn’t it?

            A colleague of mine, though otherwise an all around fine chap and competent professional, has an absolutely exasperating style of IM that goes something like this:

            “Hi.”

            (pause)

            “I have an issue/question…”

            (long pause)

            [Details of issue hopefully follow here. On bad days they are prefaced by further niceties and pauses. Invariably, the entire thing could be put in a one-liner.]

            His way of communicating is a running joke in the company. We have pointed the problem out to him, but I don’t think it has stuck. It’s just the way he is.

          • Nick says:

            There ought to be terms for this, like Ask vs. Guess culture. Rush vs. Dawdle culture, maybe.

          • Mark V Anderson says:

            Interesting the discussion on IMers who won’t get to the point. I have a constant issue with this with foreigners. I am sure I seem rude to many of these folks. But many seem to feel obligated to make three or four introductory comments before getting to the point. It is common to start all Skypes with “Hi.” I don’t know if this is how it is everywhere, but at least in my company that is the culture. I do that. But then after Hi I see “how are you doing?” “I hope you are doing good,” and maybe some more. And there is often a minute between these comments. I want to yell at them to “just ask the question, man!” But as I said, I am probably considered rude for asking my question right after “Hi.”

            I am in US, in case it wasn’t clear

          • Aapje says:

            @DinoNerd

            Have you considered wearing headphones, to block out the sound of Mr Chatty et al?

            Anyway, your challenges do suggest that Agile may help (with the caveat that it would require a reorganization). For example, you wouldn’t have to deal with managers giving contradictory orders, as that would be the job of the product owner to sort out. Similarly, prioritizing bugs would be her responsibility as well.

            In a retrospective or daily stand up, you could make it clear to the product owner how much time the routine task unnecessarily takes and suggest that a developer is given time to fix that task. You can also address interpersonal impediments during the retrospective, like Mr. Chatty’s chattiness or the slow IM style of someone you have to deal with.

            Addressing your lack of background knowledge for your top priority task in the daily stand up might prompt another developer to offer to help or the product owner to find someone from elsewhere in the company to help you.

            Note that when I read your comment, I see a rather typical problem where priorities are set partially by you as a programmer and partially by no one (or Moloch), with the result that you waste a lot of time and do a lot of tasks that I doubt your superiors actually want you to do. A key aspect of Agile is to make a single person responsible, to reduce such waste.

  27. John Schilling says:

    This was a major subplot in Karl Gallagher’s Torchship Trilogy, which got some discussion here when it was fresh. It worked fairly well, until suddenly it didn’t and a bunch of people who had long thought they were comfortably above average, well, OK, not too unbearably below average, suddenly learned they were at the very bottom of their society’s real-person status ladder and that they’d been essentially pranked for years by the elites.

    So, do consider the failure modes, and how this will look to the targets of your altruism if they figure it out. And don’t get cocky about your ability to run elaborate internet hoaxes on a grand scale without getting caught and called out.

  28. Well... says:

    [Epistemic status: 100% certain.]

    A person riding a recumbent bike is recumbing. He is in a state of recumbance. He recumbs because it is recumbent upon him to practice recumbance.

    • thasvaddef says:

      If he falls off, did he get his recumbuppance?

    • Well... says:

      We’ve established that one recumbs while riding a recumbent bike — so what does it mean to cumb? Or to practice cumbence? What does a cumbent bike look like?

      Is someone is already on a recumbent bike, is it an incumbent recumbent? Conversely, if a person has never ridden a cumbent bike but is trying it for the first time, then is he a newcumber?

      If we signal to him to start riding, can we call that cueing the cumber — cucumber for short?

      • Paul Brinkley says:

        If we signal to him to start riding, can we call that cueing the cumber — cucumber for short?

        You’re trying too hard. Nothing about that was cumbulent.

        (…If he has to fix a flat on it, does he have to use a cumberjack?)

  29. Christophe Biocca says:

    How we survived 5 years in the most dangerous market in the world, by a friend who ran a cryptocurrency market-making and arbitrage company until recently.

    Primarily interesting as a case study in using the ideas in Taleb’s writings (“The Black Swan” and others) in practice.

    • Aqua says:

      Thanks for the link, don’t have time to dig deep at the moment, but adding to my reading list

      What happened recently that changed things?

      • Christophe Biocca says:

        What happened recently that changed things?

        Nothing terrible, just the decision that the good-but-not-exceptional returns (there’s a lot more competition nowadays and so less profit margin, but the risks remain as high as ever) weren’t worth the high stress from running the business. He decided to fold the operation, return the funds to investors, open source the code and see if there’s a market in consulting for those bigger players that are now the space. Or something along those lines.

  30. Mark Atwood says:

    Does Conrad has a social media presence or a reddit presence?

    He very quickly had been admitted to the set of commentators that I specifically searched for and read before working thru the rest of the unreads. (The other ones being Deiseach, John Schilling, David Friedman, and Freddie deBoer.) The comments by those 5 in union have been invariably usually more valuable than all the other comments. Combined. Including my own.

  31. Nearly Takuan says:

    Greene writes:

    If the inhabitants of an ancestor simulation learn that they inhabit a simulation, and this has a significant effect on the course of human history, then the value of the simulation for answering counterfactual social-scientific questions is destroyed.

    This to me feels like a pretty big leap, more so than many parts of the paper he seems to admit are speculative. I can see how the sim we live in might lose its value to the basement reality if we discover we live in a simulation, but if it’s possible to nest simulations then we’re far more likely to be in a nested simulation than an unnested one, right? And if that’s so, then our direct simulators, who have also determined that they live in a simulation, must be interested in studying a civilization that is aware it’s in a simulation, since that would actually parallel their society more closely.

    Additionally, the whole point of the probes is that they’d only work if it turned out that we live in a kind of crappy low-resolution simulation where we can observe arbitrarily tiny stuff like bosons and quantum entanglement but, oops, somebody forgot to #DEFINE __cosmic_radiation_9c__, or else wow, isn’t it weird how we can make our computers simulate any detail or collection of details about reality, except that if we try to simulate everything at once the program just crashes for no reason. If we find that we’re able to detect our own simulated-ness by such rudimentary methods, doesn’t that imply that the simulators have thought ahead and imposed good bounds on the program to keep us from getting terminated? Or at least detected when we got close to this point, paused the simulation, and applied a hotfix before things got worse?

    • Nancy Lebovitz says:

      “If the inhabitants of an ancestor simulation learn that they inhabit a simulation, and this has a significant effect on the course of human history, then the value of the simulation for answering counterfactual social-scientific questions is destroyed.”

      That’s reasonable, but if it’s more of a “start it and see what happens” sim, then the inhabitants discovering it’s a sim would be fascinating. What will they do next?

  32. hls2003 says:

    Has anyone ever heard of a group or state employing the following PR strategy? I would call it something like “false flag annoyance.” Assume that you’ve got a conflict with two sides; India vs. Pakistan, or Russia vs. Georgia, or China vs. the Uighurs, or something like that.

    Step 1: Retain online ad developers with very limited scruples (or hackers if you’ve got access to them);
    Step 2: Develop a campaign based on spam and pop-up ads which ask for support for the other side, in a way that looks a lot like either a scam or a virus. E.g. you visit a mobile site, and a flashing pop-up disables your phone saying “Support the Kashmiri freedom fighters in their war against India! Click Here to give!!!” Or an email arrives with a suspicious-looking link purporting to be from a Kashmiri citizen who needs your bank account number to unfreeze some funds for the revolution, they’ll give you a cut.
    Step 3: Everyone associates your enemy with annoyance and spam; they become a punchline, at best, like Nigerian royalty.

    I can’t think of any such campaigns I have heard about, but I don’t follow online stuff that closely. Does this sound like something bad actors have tried, or might try?

    • BBA says:

      Back in the Usenet days it was called a “joe job.”

    • Nearly Takuan says:

      When Russian agents spread propaganda for the 2016 US elections,

      The Mueller report lists IRA-created groups on Facebook including “purported conservative groups” (e.g. ‘Tea Party News’), “purported Black social justice groups” (e.g. ‘Blacktivist’) “LGBTQ groups” (‘LGBT United’), and “religious groups” (‘United Muslims of America’).

      So, yes. At least one group supporting the Trump campaign masqueraded under a false flag, in this case pretending to be maximally annoying caricatures of “social justice warriors” and/or some other outgroup that certain people already hated or feared.

      • hls2003 says:

        That’s kind of like it, although at first blush that looks like third-party imitation of caricatures of both sides. And specifically I was looking not just at the false flag part, but the focus on intentionally looking like spam. I assume these guys were trying to look like legit annoying outgroup members.

  33. Donald Hobson says:

    I am a student In Cambridge UK. I have a room in a shared hostel you could use, so long as not too many people turn up, and I might be able to book a college room. Any time from the 3rd to the 6th of October would be ok. Let me know if your interested. I’m looking for an idea of numbers and date/ times that people would prefer.

    • mingyuan says:

      Hey Donald, someone actually stepped up to organize the meetup, so no need to do the logistics, but thanks for volunteering and I hope you can make it to the Cambridge meetup!

  34. Dragor says:

    Hey, so I gave a decent attempt at trying to find the NYC meetup on lesswrong, but I failed. Any tips?

  35. aashiq says:

    Similar to @GreatColdDistance, I’m in favor of the ban. Wouldn’t normally comment, but I am attempting to remedy some selection bias in who chooses to comment, since those against the ban will experience asymmetric outrage.

    The most relevant article for my reasoning is this one from Scott. Niceness is critical for creating a community that can productively disagree, and snark is more evil than any political ideology for this end. In the linked comments, the commenters have chosen to use rather inflammatory rhetoric where a kinder phrasing could have conveyed the same information. Rather than making it about red tribe vs blue tribe, this is really about mistake tribe vs conflict tribe. In my opinion, the main reason that this comment section is so pleasant to read is that conflict tribe is somewhat suppressed. People talk about choosing one of kind, necessary, true, but in my view it would be fine to hold the forum to a higher standard of 3/3 if that’s what Scott desires.

    One data point that I would love to see is: what is the probability that a conversation “devolves” given that a certain person comments. Devolves could mean that more ad hominem is posted, more culture war is waged, or that many short replies lacking original analysis get posted in response. If you consider online discourse as a dynamic system, there is a powerful attractor of ad hominem / Godwin’s law, and certain people push the conversation towards it and are drawn to it. If you identify 15 threads that have “devolved” and commenter X started every single one, that is a powerful argument for banning commenter X, even if their comments don’t have anything you can pinpoint that’s wrong about them. From what I’ve seen, the linked commenters tend to comment in rapidly devolving threads, even though they often share valuable insight in the process. In my view, this is simply the price of civility.

    • Viliam says:

      Unfortunately, rules can be gamed. If the rule is “ban people whose presence correlates highly with threads becoming horrible”, all you need to get someone banned is to make any thread they participated in become horrible, by different people in different threads. If Y1 and Y2 want to get X banned, for each thread X participates in, they flip a coin, one of them joins and makes it bad, the other one abstains. Now the badness ratio is 100% for X, and 50% for both Y1 and Y2.

      This doesn’t have to be coordinated as an explicit conspiracy against specific X. All that is necessary is for Y’s to come from a culture that has a rule that any [type of comment X is likely to make] must be met with an attack, but if it already was addressed adequately, it is not necessary to join the fight. Thus, instead of flipping the coin, the reaction will be decided by who visits the website first after X has posted their comment.

      In some sense, yes, following this rule would result in a nice debate, by having all X’s removed.

      (Now less meta: I see the current bans as neither necessary nor harmful. It would work either way. So it is nice to have one person in change who can make the judgment, as opposed to e.g. having a vote with opinions split 50:50, and endless debate about what is right to do.)

      • aashiq says:

        These are really good points, and I admit that my last paragraph suggests a criterion that is prone to really pernicious false positives if the commenter has an underrepresented ideology. It’s plausible that (for example) the only vocal Trump supporter could experience exactly the conditions you describe in the second paragraph.

        I guess it really is crucial to identify a tendency for misbehavior in excess of how others react. Also, if you have an ideology that is common on this site, you probably have plenty of people to help you defend your ideas. If you have a more rare ideology, you will be attacked from all sides, making you more likely to slip up, even if you would be well-behaved on a forum where everyone is like you.

        I totally agree with your last point. Really glad that we have one person in charge rather than being bogged down in endless debate. This blog is engaged in a survival of the fittest competition with others, and if some other blog leader does a better job of moderating people might eventually move.

        Do you know of any online communities that are more democratic or at least rule-based, without discussion devolving frequently? I’ve found some communities that are like this when they are homogeneous, but things deteriorate if they find popularity.

      • beleester says:

        That only works if X either (1) exclusively starts the kind of threads that can be expected to become horrible, or (2) always responds with equal vitriol when attacked, even when the topic is something non-controversial. If X is generally fairly chill and has evidence of being non-horrible in other threads, then he won’t be 100% bad and the Y’s will look like they’re trying to stir up shit in other threads.

        I think the reverse norm is far more gameable – if you don’t punish people for creating predictably horrible threads, then you incentivize X to make inflammatory posts and then act surprised when other people get upset. We want people to think carefully before stepping into a conversational minefield.

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      Those banned are people whose comments tend to have an edge; personally I like this, but Scott obviously doesn’t.

      I do feel it is harsh to leave the bar open late, then ban those found speaking loudly upon shutting it.

  36. Le Maistre Chat says:

    Most Hollywood directors make films. Who are the exceptions?
    Spike Lee joints.
    M. Night Shamalyan tweests.

  37. JonathanD says:

    With the caveat that of course this is your blog and your rules, as with several other people, I would like to object to the bans. It’s typically your policy to warn someone, then ban them, unless they’re being particularly obnoxious, which doesn’t seem like it was the case here.

    I’d like to specifically request a commutation of sentence for dick. I grant that he gets worked up, but he’s a lefty, and not that long ago, you announced that lefty commenters would be held to a lower standard, due to their relative dearth. To follow up that announcement with a warning-less indefinite ban seems very unfair.

    As dick was one of the few house lefties who regularly rouses himself when the local commentariat starts going on about how bad we are (eg divorced ponies in cartoons), I feel his contributions were particularly valuable and will be particularly missed.

    • GreatColdDistance says:

      I’d like to specifically request a commutation of sentence for dick. I grant that he gets worked up, but he’s a lefty, and not that long ago, you announced that lefty commenters would be held to a lower standard, due to their relative dearth. To follow up that announcement with a warning-less indefinite ban seems very unfair.

      As dick was one of the few house lefties who regularly rouses himself when the local commentariat starts going on about how bad we are (eg divorced ponies in cartoons), I feel his contributions were particularly valuable and will be particularly missed.

      I would second this

    • Scott Alexander says:

      Dick’s ban takes the looser standards for lefties into account. I can think of at least three lefties who would have been banned already if not for those standards.

    • Skeptical Wolf says:

      Most bans on SSC have come and gone without me noticing much. Dick is an exception. I understand and respect the urge to combat negativity directed towards one’s in-group (or even a group one simply feels some degree of empathy for). But the thing that makes SSC my favorite place on the internet for discussions like this is that here (not universally, but more than anywhere else) people tend to take the high road. Rather than countering stereotypes with worse stereotypes, we try to address both the problematic behavior and the assumptions that underlie it. Dick never seemed to get that memo; all I ever saw from them was sarcastic, uncharitable repetition of the same tired cliches I see in plenty of other places.

      Perhaps I missed their best comments, or am letting negativity bias drive the worst examples to prominence in my memory. If this is the case, I’d love to see some links or quotes to their comments that added to a conversation. But in the meantime, thank you Scott for not letting your desire to tack left override the thing that makes this community unique and wonderful.

    • beleester says:

      I don’t object to the bans either, but I do notice I haven’t seen Scott use the bright red warning text in a while, and I wonder if earlier warnings could have headed this off at the pass.

      • Doctor Mist says:

        If someone were interested in doing the data mining, I think it might be very interesting to see what fraction of warned people are subsequently banned. If the fraction is large, it would indicate that warnings aren’t really worth the trouble, especially since the practice of warnings seems likely to incentivize brinkmanship — be as obnoxious as you like, as long as it hasn’t yet triggered an explicit warning.

    • Dan L says:

      To follow up that announcement with a warning-less indefinite ban seems very unfair.

      I think I’m mostly in favor of these bans, but the specific fact that the indefinite bans went to regulars* with no priors (or even warnings) while both recipients of temp bans have previously earned lengthy time-outs feels like a failure of modship. Good moderation is both time-consuming and emotionally exhausting and I empathize with Scott’s desire to have a life outside of the SSC comments section, but enforcement is the primary feedback commentators get as to what is and is not acceptable.

      * I’m strongly against regulars getting preferential treatment in general, but I do think summary bans should be reserved for new, obviously incompatible posters.

      • quanta413 says:

        I know the original saying is tongue in cheek, but you can also use sudden strong enforcement “pour encourager les autres”.

        Used sparingly, it doesn’t affect many directly, but it can be a strong deterrent. I think those banned were being fairly egregious violators on a somewhat consistent basis.

        • Dan L says:

          Deterrence is an attractive strategy in that it promises Authority that it can force-multiply its efforts without having to deal with more individual cases. I’m skeptical that it works out in practice. (I have a pithy one-liner about how you can learn this by surveying decades of criminal justice data, or talking to one mediocre dog trainer.)

          It strikes me that it’s particularly unsuited to use on the internet, where for the users alternatives are a click away and for the admins you can’t actually get rid of people for good. It’s a case of removal rather than rehabilitation, and a game of trivial inconveniences. #JusticeForSidles

          • quanta413 says:

            I agree it doesn’t work with dogs (although that’s partly because dogs are kind of dumb).

            But I think an internet forum is the most favorable situation for this strategy to work. Unlike real life, rehabilitation is a totally unnecessary luxury, and no one is hurt badly by even the harshest punishment (permaban). And the cost of consistent enforcement in a large comments section (which may the be ideal strategy if you don’t count costs to the owner) is very high in time and sanity.

            On the other hand, if you’re still trying to grow a comments section it’s probably the worst idea.

            It’s true you can’t get rid of a determined troll for good, since there are too many ways to make new accounts and hide your identity but there is no strategy that accomplishes getting rid of those.

            I’d probably roll with year long bans as a first warning in the deterrence strategy rather than permabans although I’d expect the effect to be much the same, but Scott’s blog Scott’s rules.

      • eigenmoon says:

        This. I think that permanent ban without warning for (even multiple instances of) drive-by dissing the outgroup is too harsh. The problem is, once the punishments reach the maximum, there’s this effect:

        Chen turns to his friend Wu Guang and asks “What’s the penalty for being late?”

        “Death,” says Wu.

        “And what’s the penalty for rebellion?”

        “Death,” says Wu.

        “Well then…” says Chen Sheng.

        • Doctor Mist says:

          Yeah, but there’s no way for somebody to actually topple Scott. Plus, Scott isn’t actually imposing death.

          Also, “If I’m late, I might as well rebel” isn’t a very good parallel to “If I’m rude, I might as well be really rude”, if only because being late might well be out of your control, but being rude surely is not.

  38. Nick says:

    How small a world is it?

    I remember remarking to a friend in my sophomore year of college that I’m surprised I’d never met any classmates into an old MMO I used to play. I figured there had to be someone in, for instance, my CS major who played. He did an estimate based on how many sophomores there were in my major, the likelihood they’d join that major, and how many active players there were back when I played. He concluded it was very unlikely.

    Later that year I learned one of my classmates, Nick, was a big fan of it. What’s more, we had a mutual friend.

    I’m reminded of this because despite the Internet having a billion or so people, I still run into folks I know in other places. Deiseach, soon may she return, commented on a bunch of other blogs I visited. albatross11 downthread mentions Making Light, a blog several SSC commenters used to frequent. And I’ve got more wild coincidences like the above. So how small a world is it? Do you folks have other small (or not so small) world stories like that?

    • Plumber says:

      @Nick,
      The world is small indeed, as I’ve mentioned before I have:

      “…1) Met William Shatner (“Captain Kirk”/”T. J. Hooker”/Master Thespian extraordinaire!

      2) Met Patrick Troughton “Doctor Who”

      3) In ’83 I met both Dana Meese and her father Edwin Meese (who was President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General), so one degree of separation between me and the then current President of the U.S.A.

      4) Met Barry Goldwater (’64 Presidential candidate)

      5) Met then Speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown

      6) Met and have worked with dozens of other people who met Kamala Harris (besides Willie Brown) and I replaced plumbing fixtures in her old private bathroom) – one degree of separation.

      7) Have worked for seven years with a guy who was personally thanked by the man who is now Governor of California (one degrees of separation).

      8) Met lots of other local and State politicians and a couple of the Police Chiefs of San Francisco

      9) Met Science Fiction/Fantasy author Fritz Leiber

      10) Met Science Fiction/Fantasy author Michael Moorcock

      11) Met Science Fiction/Fantasy author Larry Niven

      12) An ex-girlfriend of mine has met Archbishops, et cetera who met the Pope (two degrees of separation)

      13) Was friends with Green Day’s original drummer (and my name was Tweeted by their current drummer this year)

      14) Knew a guy a who knew a guy who met Joseph Stalin (two degrees of separation)

      15) Knew a guy who knew a guy who met Leon Trotsky (two degrees of separation).

      16) At least three old friends became published authors…”

      • bullseye says:

        A few months ago I got a letter from the Democratic party asking for money, with Obama’s name signed. I joked to my neighbor that Obama had sent me a letter, and he didn’t realize I was joking, because his mother used to write letters to Obama and he’d respond.

        Also my neighbor is a plumber.

    • SnapDragon says:

      At a local SSC meetup of about 20 people, I met the wife of a prominent community member. It turns out that she and I both raided in an endgame guild as an Alliance Resto Druid on the same small WoW server back in the classic days. (There are fewer than 10 people in the world that match this description.)

      Now, of course, the Garden of Forking Paths needs to be kept in mind. Clearly I didn’t go looking to meet people with this exact set of matching criteria in mind, a priori. And meeting a fellow WoW raider at a rationalist meetup is fairly likely. However, once we started talking about WoW, this was exactly the relevant set of features I would be interested in. I think that even with a proper rationalist skepticism of coincidences, this was still among the most unlikely things that has happened in my life.

    • J Mann says:

      Running into the same commenters doesn’t seem as surprising. If you have the same interests and both enjoy commenting on blogs, it seems likely you’d both show up at LessWrong, ThingofThings, etc.

      If you ran into Deiseach at AllRecipies or in a StackExchange discussion of carburetor repair, that would be a little more surprising, but we’re clearly all internet connected folks with some free time, so even then, not fantastically surprising.

      • Randy M says:

        I think the surprise comes from the assumption that people who enjoy commenting is a much larger category than it is.

        That is, given that internet access is pretty widespread, my naive assumption based largely on projection is that a sizable majority are leaving comments. What’s the point of reading something if you don’t talk about it? So it’s kind of surprising to see familiar names show up in other places, especially unrelated, unlinked like mtgsalvation (hi sniffoy!) or twenty-sided tales or Quora (where you can follow David Friedman).

        But I suspect that much of the public is passive consumers of internet, using it for videos or information without bothering to read the comment sections, let alone fill them. I also suspect this will change as people get more used to getting interaction on-line.

        • J Mann says:

          Not directly relevant, but I didn’t realize mtgsalvation was a thing, so I ran it through Rot13 and got more confused. 🙂

        • Chevalier Mal Fet says:

          But I don’t comment here OR at Twenty Sided! D:

          I’ve run into some old Advance Wars Bunker people here. I like it because it reminds me they’re alive (I hope jaime’s still alive, he hasn’t commented in years…).

          And I’ve run into some SSC people at Realms Beyond.

    • Kuiperdolin says:

      I bumped into the same Chinese woman (an actual Chinese citizen, not a N-generation immigrant) at a summer internship in France and a few years later, at a University in the USA. We did not have the same major and it was the only class either of us took outside of our major.

    • James says:

      On seeing commenters elsewhere: I used to see names I recognised from here over at Language Log.

      I think I recognised the name of one of our Eastern European commenters, a programmer, over at Hacker News (but that’s not so shocking—pretty much the same demographic as here).

      Øyvind Thorsby, a webcomic artist, showed up here a while ago. He and I both used to be on a webcomic forum with only a few dozen regulars.

    • Doctor Mist says:

      The world is huge; it’s just folded over lots of times.

    • One of the people who came to one of our south bay meetups turned out to be the sister of a renaissance dance person in the SCA my daughter knew of, probably had met. The sister lives in Canada.

      Many years ago, when Betty and I were living in New Orleans, we went to a public lecture on something. One of the women in the audience asked a question that was both a good question and wittily put, so we kidnapped her back home to socialize. Sometime after midnight, as best I recall, she discovered whose son I was and I discovered that she was the daughter of Warren Nutter, the first person to get a PhD with my father on his committee and a fairly well known economist, pretty much the only person to get a reasonably accurate picture of the Soviet economy by not believing the official statistics and using proxies instead.

      She later met the men she ended up married to in our encampment at Pennsic—she was with us, he was visiting.

    • The Nybbler says:

      The world is large but alike people cluster. When I worked at Google, not only were there several people I knew from the computer lab at college (a large state school, so not SO unlikely), but at least one person I knew in elementary school. At my current (smaller) company there’s someone who went to my kinda small high school in a different area (though not at the same time).

      And I have a weird connection to Moldbug.

      • axiomsofdominion says:

        Google was always interesting to me. I know/knew like 10 people from different parts of my life who worked there and I was always curious if they knew each other.

    • BBA says:

      One, ah, quirky commenter we had here a while back reminded me a lot of a similarly quirky commenter on a mainstream Dem blog I read from several years ago. She denied a connection, but I’m pretty sure it was her. She ended up getting banned from both blogs, unsurprisingly.

      Less surprisingly, I’m sure many people here used to read the same webcomics I did when I was into webcomics, and are involved with lots of other nerdstuff I do (e.g. MIT Mystery Hunt) but that’s more “big world” type stuff.

      In real life, my family was on a cruise ship a few months ago and an acquaintance of my late grandfather’s was also on board, which my mother only found out about when she met his wife at one of the shipboard events.

    • Dan L says:

      I recognize a bunch of commenters here that I’ve interacted with on a few sites that are at least two steps removed, but I use a screen-name on most of those as opposed to an initial and I’m not in a hurry to merge online identities. I’ll occasionally slip in an oblique reference to that fact in my replies as a hat tip to the intended audience.

    • Jaskologist says:

      August Jassid, Henry C. Chang, are you lurking out there somewhere?

      Or anybody who remembers those pseudonyms?

    • tossrock says:

      Years ago, I had a friend and coworker who I knew had gone to Notre Dame. Separately, I had a friend in a totally disjoint friend group who also went to Notre Dame. Over time, the friend groups got integrated, and at one point while the three of us were talking, I brought up their shared alma mater as a conversation topic. It turned out that not only had they been in the same dorm, but they had had the same room – just separated in time.

      Another one – my sister was working at a small, < 20 person startup in the Bay Area, and struck up a friendship with the CTO. They bonded over their lapsed Catholicism, and my sister stated that hers was the greater lapse, because her father had attended a junior seminary (and then not taken holy orders, obviously). The CTO said aha, but no! My father too attended a junior seminary! But, wait, no – surely not? But of course, yes, in fact – they had both attended the same junior seminary (in Illinois, no less), and were even in the same class, and remembered each other. They'd gone their separate ways decades ago, and then here were their children, running into each other completely unbeknownst – and getting to know each other well enough to realize the connection.

      And then there was documented time I ran into a guy who made a WC3 map that I’d gotten into the credits for on HN, and he was able to verify by checking the old code on his github.

      One of my favorite things about this phenomenon is that it’s well predicted by the graph properties of the human social network but still feels magical when it happens.

    • viVI_IViv says:

      I’m reminded of this because despite the Internet having a billion or so people, I still run into folks I know in other places. Deiseach, soon may she return, commented on a bunch of other blogs I visited. albatross11 downthread mentions Making Light, a blog several SSC commenters used to frequent. And I’ve got more wild coincidences like the above. So how small a world is it? Do you folks have other small (or not so small) world stories like that?

      I’ve lost count of how many different forums and comment sections I’ve seen gwern commenting on. But this is hardly surprising: if there are like 4 or 5 degrees of separation between two random people on the planet, then it’s not unlikely that people with similar interests who like commenting on the internet all cluster together.

    • Plumber says:

      In terms of noticing folks posting to these comments and to another site, I noticed one guy posting here and at a Dungeons & Dragons Forum (same user name and interests)

      • Lasagna says:

        Ah, D&D. I’ve been wanting to get a campaign going since I decamped for the suburbs a few years ago. I just can’t find enough people with both the interest and the time. It’s a shame; I think I have some good campaign ideas running through my head.

        What forums do you like? At the very least I wouldn’t mind yacking about it.

    • Paul Brinkley says:

      I remember attending a pianowarming party being thrown by a friend of mine from community theater. I knocked on the front door and was greeted by another friend of mine, from ultimate frisbee. “Duude! What are you doing here??” “I live here!” Turns out the former friend had moved in with the latter without my knowing, and without either of them knowing that the other knew me. …Once I’d surveyed the crowd there, I noticed more ultimate frisbee friends than community theater friends.

      On a rationalist note, I walked into a DC meetup only to be greeted by… another friend via community theater. She had met the host via some random mixer.

      Years ago, my startup got an application from someone who listed Eric Raymond as a character reference. Turns out they both lived near each other in Pennsylvania. I later found out this guy’s sister was a fellow CS major of mine in Texas – a double connection.

      Decades ago, I used to hang out on a Usenet group for Tom Clancy fans, and found out one of them was organizing a party in honor of her piano teacher, who had taught me when I was growing up in rural Texas.

  39. broblawsky says:

    For anyone who’s interested in the commercial implications of tax policy, I give you the answer as to why White Claw Spiked Seltzer is a big deal now.

    I’m interested in any other substitution products for other markets, whose niches were created by vice taxes. Can anyone think of anything else?

    • Aftagley says:

      This article over simplifies the argument. Yes, brewed beverages are taxes less than distilled beverages and that conceivably explains why company’s would like to make and sell this product, but it doesn’t explain why consumers want to buy it. As the article points out, plenty of other beverages have gone down this same road before (natty lite, mikes hard, smirnoff ice) with limited success, and the “use sugar if you don’t want a malt taste” trick has been around for years.

      Why did this particular product succeed when most of the (similarly incentivized) products didn’t?

      • broblawsky says:

        I think the author argues that White Claw was able to make something that tastes better than normal hard seltzers without having to add sugar after brewing; hence White Claw’s success.

    • oracel says:

      The reverse happened in Japan, where beer taxes made canned distilled ‘chu-hi’ drinks (like Suntory’s Strong Zero, which imo is far superior to White Claw) the go-to cheap alcohol.

    • zoozoc says:

      Can’t this rise in hard-seltzer simply be explained by the rising popularity of normal seltzers? At least from my perspective, non-alcoholic seltzers seem to be much more popular the last few years than they were previously.

    • J Mann says:

      There’s Cincinnati product, “Bubbles,” which is made with fermented fruit juice, plus some unfermented juices for flavor. However, for reasons that escape me, adding juice to a cider would make it subject to tax as a wine, so instead the brewery has somehow made it an ale.

    • BBA says:

      I touched on this last thread with my post about the “wine products” only found in New York State. That’s exploiting non-tax regulations but it’s clearly a related phenomenon. Alcohol laws are weird, dood.

      Notably, most “alcopop” type products have different formulations outside the US. Mike’s Hard Lemonade was originally a mixture of vodka and lemon soda in Canada, but became a lemon-flavored malt beverage for the US market because there’s such a discrepancy in tax rates between beer and spirits here.

      For a non-booze example: gambling is illegal in Japan, but pachinko parlors can give “prize tokens” to winners that can then be sold back for money at an “unaffiliated” shop next door.

      Example of such a scheme thwarted: every cigarette sold in the US in the last 20 years has been “class A.” The larger “class B” cigarettes, if any were to be produced again, would be taxed at a higher rate, because the tax rate is based on the number of cigarettes rather than total weight of tobacco. Without the different rates, it’d be easy to sell packs of 10 double-sized cigarettes to be broken in half, thereby halving the taxes from the standard pack of 20.

      • DarkTigger says:

        Notably, most “alcopop” type products have different formulations outside the US. Mike’s Hard Lemonade was originally a mixture of vodka and lemon soda in Canada, but became a lemon-flavored malt beverage for the US market because there’s such a discrepancy in tax rates between beer and spirits here.

        It went a similar way in Germany.
        They had a little more alcohol content then beer (5-6%) and a lot less then wines. They were heavily marketed to “young adults”, and although they contained liqour they were often sold to minors. (It is legal to sell wine and beer to persons over sixteen here, so sales assistants could claim ignorance to the difference).
        After a lot of alarmist media coverage about binge drinking teens, the goverment tightend the youth protection laws concering alcohol, and raised an extra penalty tax for alcopops. They became replaced by beer based mix-drinks very fast.
        Some of which have half the alcohol content of normal beer (aroud 2.5%) and some have the same alcohol content (4.9%).

  40. fr8train_ssc says:

    Hey Scott. I’m the one currently organizing a meetup in Pittsburgh with our google group, but we’re still waiting for responses on optimal time and date for the next month. Once a consensus is reached I’ll send you that information.

  41. GearRatio says:

    On effective resistance to the new bans for a particular kind of objector:

    If you, like me, are conditioned to believe that most internet-comment bans are specifically directed at right-leaning views and those with right-leaning viewpoints for whatever reason, then you want to object to these bans. If they are unfair then there are two obvious reasons why this might be, which require (at minimum) one specific action per.

    1. Scott is more hostile to conservative views/conservatives or is more afraid of the left’s retaliation than he is of being unfair.

    If this is true, you need to document people on the leftish side behaving badly so you have ammo next time a mostly rightish ban list pops up. Being able to say “hey, you just ignore bad behavior on the left” is vital to exert pressure here.

    2. Leftish people report things more than rightish people

    If this is the case, this isn’t going to balance out unless you report all the bad leftish behavior you see. This is less useful than 1. for me, because “shut the other guy up equally” seems evil to me, especially since I’m aiming for “everyone can talk”, the effective opposite.

    The solution for 1. is necessary for both causes, regardless – start keeping a spreadsheet or something, folks.

    Quick edit: I’m not sure if I made this clear, but I want to be open that I’m not sure if I think conservatives get more of this here because that’s what’s happening, or because I find that to be generally true of the internet and it makes me think that’s what’s happening – thus the “document things” direction of my advice.

    • Le Maistre Chat says:

      1. Scott is more hostile to conservative views/conservatives or is more afraid of the left’s retaliation than he is of being unfair.

      If this is true, you need to document people on the leftish side behaving badly so you have ammo next time a mostly rightish ban list pops up. Being able to say “hey, you just ignore bad behavior on the left” is vital to exert pressure here.

      If this is true, I don’t know how to help fix it. As an Aspie, I find Scott hard to read. He aspires to be fully rational, but he’s very emotional about belonging to the Bay Area. I can see how this leads to other cognitive biases, but I fear the consequences of stating my thoughts, since it seems to be 3+ times harder for me to write without causing offense than if I was neurotypical with the same verbal IQ.

      • GearRatio says:

        I’m not so much saying “let’s fix Scott” or even “Scott needs fixing” as I am “If you think Scott is broken, your first step is to document that he’s treating one side worse than another”. Scott might be fine and I might just be easily spooked, I honestly dunno. But if I want to say he’s being unfair, the first response I’ll get it “nuh uh, he treats everyone equally per-capita” and it’s my responsibility to have data if I don’t want my complaint to wither on the vine.

        • PedroS says:

          There ate so few vocal leftists here that you will find it harder (even if the offense rate is the same) to find ban-worthy leftist comments tnah right-leaning ones. dick is vocally left and he was banned for his unproductive utterances. I don’t think, thrrefore, that you should bascribe bad motives or bias to Scott

    • Aftagley says:

      Didn’t Scott at one point explicitly say he’s going to give more leeway to leftists than rightists as a way of balancing out what he perceives as the rightward tilt this place has?

      I think I remember that being a part of the Reign of Terror, but I don’t remember if it was ever rescinded.

      • Lasagna says:

        I remember that too. I thought it made sense. Any bookie will tell you you’ve got to adjust the odds if you want to increase the action.

        But I’m not sure this place leans as far right* as a lot of the comments here suggest. Didn’t the results of the last SSC survey show that we lean mostly left? Or maybe it’s just that the people who choose to comment tend to be right-ish, while the people who read the blog do not?

        *Christ, I cannot tell you how happy I will be when we’ve finally all acknowledged that this left/right divide doesn’t describe anything useful anymore.

        • Jiro says:

          It seems like a bad idea for some of the same reasons as actual affirmative action. If women disproportionately are not interested in X, you should expect there to be few women doing X, and that isn’t something to be corrected, or at best, something to be corrected by trying to get the women more interested. If they refuse, then so be it.

          If leftists are disproportionately uninterested in rational discussion, you should expect to see fewer leftists on a blog dedicated to that. At best, you can try to get leftists interested in that, but if they’re not, they’re not.

          • albatross11 says:

            I don’t think leftists or SJWs are uninterested in rational discussion, and I think assuming that is mindkilling yourself. As best I can tell, SJWs in particular have a very different (and maybe narrower) Overton window than most SSCers, and so don’t feel like there’s any rational discussion to be had with a human b-odiversity type or an alt-riter or a neore-ctionary or even a bog standard Trump supporter. But that’s different from not being interested in rational discussion within their window.

          • Enkidum says:

            @albatross11 – thank you, sincerely, for your continual efforts to actually engage in steel manning/charity. It’s something which is particularly difficult for me and you provide a good example of how to do it.

          • GearRatio says:

            @albatross11

            Something I’m trying to work out how to say:

            Isn’t there a point at which refusal to talk to anyone who disagrees with you substantially precludes having rational discussion? Is a flat-earther who not only refuses to listen to evidence but also refuses to talk to anyone who isn’t a flat-earther having “rational discussion within their window”?

            I’m not saying this isn’t a thing at all (like, I wouldn’t want to spend a ton of time talking to rapists about how rape is great) but if we agree that both those bookends are valid for “can’t have a rational discussion within my window” and “can have a rational discussion within my window” there has to be a switch-over point somewhere where you are now refusing to listen to enough dissenting views that what you are doing isn’t rational anymore.

            Note: I’m NOT making an argument that where SJW, ect are on either side of the line. I’m just saying that I want to know where that line is.

          • Enkidum says:

            Orwell has an article (from the late 30’s, if I remember correctly) where he says something like “you can imagine a reasonable argument being made by a Catholic, a fascist, a communist, or a socialist, but you could not imagine a reasonable argument being made by a member of the Ku Klux Klan” (at least, not about the domains to which their group membership is relevant). I’m not sure where the line is, I spent quite some time a couple weeks back arguing that Alex Jones supporters are outside it, but everyone is going to draw it somewhere different.

            But you’re asking the opposite, I suppose. And I think you also have a point. Given that the average person listens to close to no dissenting views charitably, I think we can say that there isn’t a lot of rationality going around.

          • albatross11 says:

            GearRatio:

            That’s a good question. I guess my point is that there’s a difference between “My Overton window doesn’t contain your position–I don’t think it’s something about which reasonable people can disagree” and “I don’t value rational discussion.” Everyone has such a window.

            I do think there’s a failure mode of human minds where we rule more and more possible ideas out of bounds pre-emptively and so end up blinding ourselves. In the extreme case, you get people who get totally captured by some conspiracy theory, to the point that all evidence against the theory turns out to just be more subtle evidence for the theory. (And I suspect that there are mainstream political views that aren’t so distant from that.).

            It’s important to try not to let your window narrow to the point that you are closing out reality because it’s inconvenient to your existing beliefs.

          • Hoopdawg says:

            If leftists are disproportionately uninterested in rational discussion

            This suggestion is, frankly, quite offensive.

            But this allows me to raise, without escalating the conflict (oh, don’t try to tell me yours was just a hypothetical), the possibility that it’s the rightists who are uninterested in rational discussion (only, being a vast majority here, they have the means to simply flood out the opposition, while perpetuating the aura of rationalism in discussions about less politically charged topics). At least that’s my impression after numerous attempts to present any anti-capitalist point whatsoever and mostly receiving stock dismissive responses from within a limited set of [Stalin, Kim, Venezuela].

            I would guess, to repurpose other poster’s words, people here “have a different Overton window, and so don’t feel like there’s any rational discussion to be had with” anti-capitalists. I should note that, contrary to some of the voices here, I don’t consider this phrasing a steelman, but rather a description of a mindset that is closed to discussion and anti-rational. I expect rational people to be able to present and examine their positions down to the bare axioms and assumptions about the world.

            And I genuinely understand the urge not to do this. The world is messy and complicated and when it comes to explaining one’s reasoning, people with simple, far-reaching, hard-to-falsify assumptions have a large advantage. It’s extremely tempting to decide that someone’s reasoning has crossed some metaphorical event horizon and became impenetrable by facts and reality, then just dismiss them. It’s also extremely easy to do, because all it takes for mutual incomprehensibility is an unspotted rejection of one of your own basic assumptions.

            But then you’re just leaving people with simple, far-reaching, hard-to-falsify assumptions unchecked while they proselytize. And, due to the aforementioned advantages, they’re good at it. Reality invariably impedes them, but on many occasions not before they brought some horrible disaster upon everyone. Refusing to engage them is not just irrational, it’s irresponsible.

          • jermo sapiens says:

            At least that’s my impression after numerous attempts to present any anti-capitalist point whatsoever and mostly receiving stock dismissive responses from within a limited set of [Stalin, Kim, Venezuela].

            Hi Hoopdawg,

            What is your dividing line between capitalism and not-capitalism? Is it the extent of the social safety net, or is it having industry in private hands vs government?

            Isn’t reasonable to consider that the current wealth of the USA is due in large part to capitalism, and isn’t reasonable to compare non-capitalist societies to the USA? What nation should we look to as an example of a successful non-capitalist nation, if not the USSR, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, China (pre-capitalist reforms), Cambodia? Why should we overlook the millions of dead and the shocking human misery these regimes created?

            I’m not trying to be dismissive of your ideas, and I understand that capitalism is far from perfect, but so far its track record seems far better than anything else.

          • EchoChaos says:

            @jermo sapiens

            Very CW. Please reroute it to the next CW enabled thread on Wednesday.

          • jermo sapiens says:

            @EchoChaos

            Apologies, you are correct.

          • Hoopdawg says:

            I will likewise refrain from responding. At least on object-level issues.

            But I really cannot refrain from noting how I was just hit with all the stock thought-terminating cliches in response to a complaint about the very same thought-terminating cliches.

          • You were hit with the question of why certain arguments should be classified as thought-terminating cliches rather than as reasonable arguments. If you want to be taken seriously, you should answer that question (in the next CW permitted open thread), not dismiss it.

          • sentientbeings says:

            Hoopdawg said:

            …the possibility that it’s the rightists who are uninterested in rational discussion (only, being a vast majority here…

            Am I the only one thoroughly confused by this assertion (that rightists are the vast majority here)? I’ve seen something akin to it a few times in relation to the recent ban discussion. Hasn’t that been thoroughly documented not to be the case in the successive annual surveys? Did I miss a recent demographic shift?

            Hoopdawg, have you seen the prior annual surveys? What numbers do you have to support “vast majority?” Do you count libertarians as rightists? Do you think there could be a definitional mismatch between your categories and others’ here? Do you doubt the survey results?

            I would doubt your claim even if I judged it on my personal observation reading this blog for years, but the actual attempts at quantification have been fairly consistent, to my recollection.

          • Jiro says:

            But this allows me to raise, without escalating the conflict (oh, don’t try to tell me yours was just a hypothetical), the possibility that it’s the rightists who are uninterested in rational discussion

            My proposal explains away a phenomenon. Your supposedly similar proposal does not, unless you claim there are few right-wingers here.

          • Paul Brinkley says:

            I guess my point is that there’s a difference between “My Overton window doesn’t contain your position–I don’t think it’s something about which reasonable people can disagree” and “I don’t value rational discussion.” Everyone has such a window.

            If everyone has such a window, doesn’t it follow that everyone pretty much values rational discussion, where rational is defined as being within their window? (I’m not counting people who genuinely just post snark or jokes with others to have a good time.)

            There are apparently Klansmen who have built up a worldview coherent enough to discuss on online forums. Same for pedophiles. So, contra Orwell, I can very much imagine a reasonable argument from a KKK member, even though I’d have to entertain some starting premises I would care not to.

            The only people who I truly can’t see having reasonable arguments are loners who only log on to forums to rant, or who keep to themselves about their nefarities (serial killers, Ed Gaim, etc.). But even the Unabomber had thoughts he deemed worth writing down.

            Compared with these, anti-capitalists are extremely reasonable.

            [T]his allows me to raise […] the possibility that it’s the rightists who are uninterested in rational discussion […]. At least that’s my impression after numerous attempts to present any anti-capitalist point whatsoever and mostly receiving stock dismissive responses from within a limited set of [Stalin, Kim, Venezuela].

            This is probably an artifact of having a critical mass of commenters here for whom the question of “capitalism: pro or con?” is settled. Anyone not settled on it is going to look like a fish out of water if they post something. One, the pro-caps probably assume the newcomer is being unreasonable on purpose. Two, the newcomer might assume the same of the other commenters, and the newcomer is about to share the evidence that will finally set them on the correct path.

            To put it another way, there’s no commonly recognized way to approach a group of seasoned experts and ask them to question any of their basic premises as an expert with different perspective, and also have the call for discussion sound friendly or academic. …Or there is, but it requires dispensing with brevity. But if that’s your aim, this forum is the place for it…

        • Trofim_Lysenko says:

          If I remember correctly: Comments lean right, with the most frequent commenters leaning further right. Readership skews slightly left. Higher libertarian-ish propensities in both readership and commentariat than the general population.

          And yes, my understanding is that Scott explicitly intends to hold right-leaning posters to a higher standard in terms of “niceness”/rhetoric, specifically in order to attempt to close the gap between readership and commentariat, and to encourage more left-leaning readers to comment more regularly.

          • Plumber says:

            @Trofim_Lysenko,
            That’s plausible (and I’d assume my a bit more Left than Right leanings are how I’ve escaped a ban), but our host has banned a fair number of Leftists lately, a further Leftist comes readily to mind, his comments didn’t seem high quality to me, but he did lend ideological ‘diversity’ if that’s the goal.

            And on that note, among frequent commenters I’d say there’s a few Warren/Sanders Democrats, a few Trump Republicans, and a lot of Ron Paul Republicans, among the less commenting readership (judging by the survey) Warren/Sanders Democrats are probably a plurality, but not a majority, but if commenters matched the general U.S.A. population there’d be some more Warren/Sanders Democrats, even more Trump Republicans, a lot more Biden Democrats, and all would be out numbered by people who didn’t follow politics, so maybe more cooking, movies, sports, and television posts – which looks like the general trend of the last few visible Open Threads (except this one) anyway.

          • Chevalier Mal Fet says:

            I’d assume my a bit more Left than Right leanings are how I’ve escaped a ban

            I’ve literally never read a Plumber comment that failed to give me some measure of joy. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you interact with anyone in any but the most polite and good-cheered manner imaginable, so I can’t imagine you being anywhere near the ban list at all.

            I think your voice is one of the most valuable on this forum. This is coming from probably one of the most right-wing lurkers here.

          • Plumber says:

            @Chevalier Mal Fet ,

            Oh wow, thanks for some very kind words!

            I have posted my share of cranky/ranty posts (and I credit @DavidFriedman for pointing out that I should re-consider some statements I’ve made).

            On some stuff I’m probably to the ‘Left’ of most Americans, on some other stuff I hear some of parts of the ‘Rights” wishlist and think “Is that all you want?”, “I wouldn’t even bother to bargain hard before I compromsed over and gave them that!”

        • People will always complain about “far right dominance” until the left completely controls the conversation. It’s meaningless.

          • Enkidum says:

            Not when there is empirical data to support it.

          • There’s no evidence of far right dominance. The most frequent commenters are more to the right than the typical browser. But that’s not going to stop people complaining about the “far right”.

          • Enkidum says:

            OK, “right dominance” then, where “far” is in the eye of the beholder?

          • DinoNerd says:

            IMO, people will tend to complain that people in their outgroup are dominant.

          • Jack says:

            No no, not far right dominance. Far right dominance. What you need is empirical support for the italics.

          • JulieK says:

            This is the sort of sweeping statement that we should try to avoid.

          • OK, “right dominance” then, where “far” is in the eye of the beholder?

            You’re conflating “dominance” with being the majority, obviously not the same thing. If a leftist wants to comment here, they are free to do so. There are no real world repercussions if they say the “wrong” thing. The only keeping them from commenting is themselves. I’ve never been given an answer about why I should care that this place leans right. If you don’t care that the universities are dominated by leftists, then there is no principled reason to care about a small website comment section.

          • Enkidum says:

            You’re conflating “dominance” with being the majority, obviously not the same thing.

            That’s a fair point. I’d say that there tends to be a bleed-through of having a majority to having dominant-ish tendencies, both in general and specifically in discussions here. But it’s far from complete, and obviously left-wing people get plenty of points in.

        • Hoopdawg says:

          It’s more that the left/right divide describes several widely differing things at once.

          Sometimes, it’s liberal vs. conservative, in which case this place leans left, but neither strongly nor decisively.
          Sometimes, it’s Blue vs. Red, in which case this place is, obviously, Grey.
          But often, it means socialism vs. capitalism, and here, this place is pretty much evenly divided between “privatize everything” market fundamentalist libertarians and radical centrist neoliberals, making the usual scope of discussions further right than at any venue currently in the mainstream.

          • Plumber says:

            Hoopdawg says:
            September 10, 2019 at 1:33 am

            “…here, this place is pretty much evenly divided between “privatize everything” market fundamentalist libertarians and radical centrist neoliberals, making the usual scope of discussions further right than at any venue currently in the mainstream”

            Quoting this now to remind myself to ask for some working definitions in the next “hidden” fractional Open Thread that doesn’t have the “…please try to avoid hot-button political and social topics…” request.

          • fr8train_ssc says:

            But often, it means socialism vs. capitalism, and here, this place is pretty much evenly divided between “privatize everything” market fundamentalist libertarians and radical centrist neoliberals, making the usual scope of discussions further right than at any venue currently in the mainstream.

            Also quoting this to remind myself for the culture war thread. Like @Plumber, I have a hypothesis that depending on whether you use the definition “People who believe workers should own the means of production/wealth generation” vs “People who agree with >80% of Marxism-Leninism(-Maoism)” you will get different membership numbers.

          • Plumber says:

            “…Quoting this now to remind myself to ask for some working definitions in the next “hidden” fractional Open Thread that doesn’t have the “…please try to avoid hot-button political and social topics…” request.”

            Now asked in the 136.25 “Hidden” Open thread

        • Garrett says:

          IDK – whatever happened to our Marxist participants? A number of them came across as acerbic to me, but I was hoping that at some point I’d get a “feel” for their type of analysis. I’ve been hoping to see more of them around.

          • Aapje says:

            I remember one getting banned for being a full-on Stalinist.

          • EchoChaos says:

            @Aapje

            I am pretty sure he was banned more for being a one-note ass than being a Stalinist per se.

          • baconbits9 says:

            They showed up to a forum with higher than average economic literacy, and with a few posters who could quote Marx back to them (people who had read and understood Marx’s arguments, not those who were quoting incorrect versions of the labor theory of value). They showed up naked to a knife fight and their entire strategy was to claim that they had a gun in their pocket. It was an untenable position.

          • Nick says:

            Worth noting that same username was banned numerous times on the subreddit under obvious pseudonyms (note the last header in the table of contents). Honestly, I found it a wonder they weren’t banned here just on name recognition; I wouldn’t have blamed Scott for it.

          • Plumber says:

            @Aapje says: “I remember one getting banned for being a full-on Stalinist”

            There was another Stalinist who’s posted in the last year (something like “citizen Cockaigne or Cockayne”) who didn’t get banned, he just tapered off his posting.

          • Randy M says:

            Speaking of bans, this remark always cracks me up:

            – Scott Alexander for one week (10/7 – 10/14) for reasons

          • Nick says:

            @Randy M
            My favorite is blacktrance’s.

          • Hoopdawg says:

            They showed up to a forum with higher than average economic literacy

            This statement, the entire post really, is extremely symptomatic of the local standard of discourse, and I hope everyone can figure out what the problem is.

            and with a few posters who could quote Marx back to them

            I recall you in particular quoting Marx (found it – https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/26/book-review-twelve-rules-for-life/#comment-613782) and, to refrain from using stronger language, it was not particularly impressing.

          • baconbits9 says:

            I recall you in particular quoting Marx (found it – https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/26/book-review-twelve-rules-for-life/#comment-613782) and, to refrain from using stronger language, it was not particularly impressing.

            I like how you made snide and inaccurate remarks and remember that as a victory for yourself. You specifically made one claim that could be tested against Marx’s writings and were shown to be wrong where you said

            I especially love the part where Marx’s restating of a bourgeois strawman of communism is taken as his actual position.

            I quoted the broader passage surrounding that claim which demonstrated that it was not a straw man, and quoted the surrounding passages for every quote I had to allow anyone reading to evaluate for themselves your claim that I was taking them out of context.

            So I note that in two instances now regarding Marx you have dropped in with insulting comments with zero actual content, and wonder why anyone would give two figs about you being impressed or not by my knowledge of Marx.

          • Jack says:

            @baconbits9 Regardless of your disagreement with Hoopster about your presentation of some Marx quotations, the apparent fact that Hoopster (and, it seems, benwave back in that other thread) were unconvinced by your use of Marx is evidence against your initial claim, something like that the Marxists left when embarrassed by their own ignorance.

          • Hoopdawg says:

            @baconbits:
            After I pointed out your Marx quotes are taken out of context, the discussion in question immediately ended with benwave (an impartial participant claiming to neither be a Marxist nor having read Marx previously) stating he’s “largely unconvinced they say what you propose they say”. In light of this, it’s extremely weird for you to claim I was “shown to be wrong”.

          • baconbits9 says:

            @baconbits9 Regardless of your disagreement with Hoopster about your presentation of some Marx quotations, the apparent fact that Hoopster (and, it seems, benwave back in that other thread) were unconvinced by your use of Marx is evidence against your initial claim, something like that the Marxists left when embarrassed by their own ignorance.

            The discussion was mostly with poster benwave who specifically said he needed to read more Marx, and also said he wasn’t there to defend the Communist Manifesto. Hoopdawg specifically accused me of taking Marx out of context, refused to provide the context himself, and added nothing to to the discussion.

            I had a perfectly reasonable discussion with someone who disagreed with my interpretation of Marx but who was not themselves defending Marx. The people who were defending Marx in that thread dropped out as soon as quotes from Marx were presented.

          • baconbits9 says:

            After I pointed out your Marx quotes are taken out of context, the discussion in question immediately ended with benwave (an impartial participant claiming to neither be a Marxist nor having read Marx previously) stating he’s “largely unconvinced they say what you propose they say”. In light of this, it’s extremely weird for you to claim I was “shown to be wrong”.

            You made a direct statement that was testable by the text

            I especially love the part where Marx’s restating of a bourgeois strawman of communism is taken as his actual position.

            I quoted the broader text showing that Mrx did not think it was a straw man and heartily endorsed the idea. Since your post added no other substance there was nothing to directly refute, my discussion with benwave was separate and he neither mentioned your post nor defended your accusation.

          • Aftagley says:

            The discussion was mostly with poster benwave who specifically said he needed to read more Marx, and also said he wasn’t there to defend the Communist Manifesto.

            Ok, let’s go through this. Here is Benwave’s post you’re referencing:

            @baconbits I have a lot to learn about late-career Marx, it would seem. But I’m not here to defend the communist manifesto.

            Following that, you were accused of selectively quoting by HoopDawg. You posted more context and, low and behold (according to Benwave, emphasis mine)

            I still probably have to go through and read the whole thing (sigh) but with the context around them, I am largely unconvinced they say what you propose they say.… (he then presents a nuanced argument from the text against your claims.)

            So, yes, while he technically did say the things you are claiming he did, you are ignoring the final entry in the discussion which largely did not end in your favor. On a meta level, it’s also kind of funny that in an argument about whether or not you engage in posting selective quotations, you’re defending yourself by selectively quoting someone.

          • baconbits9 says:

            So, yes, while he technically did say the things you are claiming he did, you are ignoring the final entry in the discussion which largely did not end in your favor.

            I never claimed that the discussion with benwave ended in my favor, my first post was a comment about the average economic literacy and knowledge of Marx being stronger here*, and a discussion between two non Marxists would highlight, rather than contradict, that point. My later statements were directed at a specific poster who had made a verifiable claim- that I had misread a strawman argument for Marx’s position as his position, as well as his otherwise insulting and content free comments.

            Poster Jack then said

            Regardless of your disagreement with Hoopster about your presentation of some Marx quotations, the apparent fact that Hoopster (and, it seems, benwave back in that other thread) were unconvinced by your use of Marx is evidence against your initial claim, something like that the Marxists left when embarrassed by their own ignorance.

            To which I responded that benwave does not appear to be a Marxist or even a Marxist sympathizer, so the claim seems to be that since HoopDawg has attempted to insult me twice without providing any content that Marxists aren’t leaving this place due to higher rates of knowledge.

            *PS more or less I was recalling some of David Friedman’s responses to Marxists when I wrote that, not mine, but that is just a side note.

          • Jack says:

            @baconbits9 I mean I assumed in the other thread Hoopsie didn’t respond to your last comment (“dropped out” as you put it) because the additional quotations you provided supported Hoops’ view. User benwave was not as specific as Hoop-dawg about what was wrong with your use of the quotations, but seemed to more or less agree with H. And just to add, because I’m not sure anyone has spelled this out, “Marx thinks there should be no individuality” is the strawperson while “Marx thinks there should be no ‘individuality’ where ‘individual’ means ‘no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property'” is what Marx said in the fuller quotation.

            That said, this is all you defending yourself against Hoopser’s criticism of your own quoting of Marx. If you want to evidence your original claim, it would likely be more productive to find a situation of a non-Marxist out-Marxing a Marxist, as it seems you recall Friedman has done.

        • aristides says:

          The readers leans left and the frequent commenters lean right. My hypothesis is that This in one of the few places on the internet that intelligent right wingers can have a calm discussion without fear of being banned or downvoted solely based on their view points, so we flock here and comment more. I read a lot of reddit, but I never comment politics, because I worry about being downvoted, or even receive ad hominem attacks based on my post history.

          • +1

            No idea why people on the left are so obsessed with this place.

          • Plumber says:

            @Wrong Species says: "+1

            No idea why people on the left are so obsessed with this place"

            I’ll bet with great confidence that the overwhelming vast majority of “Leftists” (as well as Rightists, Centrists, Upists, Downists, Allaroundists, Hokeypokeyist…) are completely unaware that this blog exists let alone are “obsessed” with it (Sorry Scott).

            I expect the word “Some” was missing, but with big enough categories of peoole in a big world “some” is true too often to mean much.

          • Enkidum says:

            No idea why people on the left are so obsessed with this place.

            It’s a blog for intelligent discussion of many things, including politics, written by a reasonably standard example of a left-wing thinker. Why wouldn’t left-wingers come here?

            EDIT: “standard” yes yes Scott is very clever and special (not meant sarcastically), but many/most of his articulated political positions are bog-standard left wing.

          • jermo sapiens says:

            No idea why people on the left are so obsessed with this place.

            Obviously, Plumber is correct, but I see your point that the existence of SSC bothers alot of the leftists who know about it more than what you might expect. I think it has alot to do with the level of intellectualism and the ideological distribution of the commenters, as well as the posts tagged “things I will regret writing” (always the best ones).

          • Aftagley says:

            Do you have any evidence of these claims? I’m a leftist, read leftist stuff and enjoy this place (although I wouldn’t call myself obsessed).

            I think Scott’s anti-SJW stance might have been enough to poison some of that crowd against him, and I could see someone who only had that exposure having a negative impression of this space, but nothing I’ve seen implies that lefties overall have dislike SSC.

          • Randy M says:

            “Scott’s critics are leftists” and “Leftists are Scott’s critics” are two very different generalizations. The first is definitely more true than the second; Scott has been opposed from the left for such posts as Untitled and for allowing banned discourse, but many prominent leftists also link to and discuss Scott’s work, in Vox, the Atlantic, and so on.

            Even then, to be fair, some of Scott’s critics do attack him from the right, if you check back in on old posts that show some hate mail. I wouldn’t venture a prediction on relative quantities with high confidence.

          • Plumber says:

            @Randy M,

            FWLIW, the first time I came across SSC was from a link in a Ross Douthat column in The New York Times, I read some but didn’t get to the comments section, the second time was a few years later from a link in The Atlantic Monthly (unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the author), I regard Ross as a token Rightist in a center-left-ish newspaper, and The Atlantic as a bit closer to center, both aren’t The National Review Right, or The Nation Left, I’d call those publications “collegiate class mainstream” which these days is usually thought of as more left than right.

            Personally how left or right I lean depends on how much alcohol or caffeine is in my blood at the moment.

          • quanta413 says:

            It’s a blog for intelligent discussion of many things, including politics, written by a reasonably standard example of a left-wing thinker. Why wouldn’t left-wingers come here?

            I feel Scott is a left-wing thinker by the standards of the last 5-10 years only by a very loose definition. He’s more like a bleeding heart libertarian except not on the Social Justice bandwagon. I’m not saying that prescriptively, this is not an ideal outcome. Steven Pinker would’ve been obviously important left-wing thinker until fairly recently, and now I don’t see many counting him as such.

            Scott’s got some anti-SJ stances to the right of my own. And I’m not a bleeding heart.

      • GearRatio says:

        @Aftagley:

        I’m not sure that matters to me much – somebody going “this one group gets preferential treatment because they don’t put in as much effort” doesn’t really appeal to me in the first place, and complaining about that starts with the same steps or else “Well, it’s a moot point anyway, considering….” arguments defeat the complaint.

        • Aftagley says:

          I guess, but when that someone is the person who sets and enforces the rules for the community, I feel like you’re setting yourself up to run into a brick wall.

          • GearRatio says:

            Depends on what your win conditions are. I think mine are:

            1. Make sure I’m right.

            2. =if(1.=true, “Show that I’m right”, 3.)

            3. State I’m wrong and back off.

            My principle here is that if someone is wrong, showing they are wrong is worthwhile even if you aren’t going to change them, so other people have the option of making an informed decision about how seriously to take them. Certainly “ignore the whole thing” has the lowest chances of my preferred 1. – 2. outcome or any change happening, so I’d be less likely to do that.

          • Aftagley says:

            I mean, feel free to keep any spreadsheet you want my friend I’m just skeptical that it will result in any useful, much less actionable data.

    • GreatColdDistance says:

      I don’t agree with your position (to me the most prolific commenters here tent to be right wing, so any crackdown is going to disproportionately hit them), but I do strongly endorse your methods as being the best way to deal with the situation.

      • GearRatio says:

        Yeah, they are sort of exactly designed to be the lawful good response to your position. If you go “This is a pretend problem based on population”, I sort of have to show Scott ignoring “reality has a well-known liberal bias” type statement.

    • souleater says:

      I’m a conservative-libertarian, but I don’t think there is is any justification is accusing Scott of being bias or unfairness. This post seems to be neither kind, necessary OR true.
      edit: GearRatio didn’t accuse him of anything, and I regret my poor manners.

      SSC commenters are overwhelmingly right leaning (although interestingly enough, also very blue tribe). So it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the ban list was also overwhelmingly right leaning. however, out of the 8 people named, only 5 could be described as being on “the right”

      It seems to me that if anything, the comments section will be more right wing going forward. If you want more voices in this community, we should be advocating the the right be held to a higher standard than the half-dozen left leaning commenters we have here.

      edit: The above isn’t intended as a personal attack on you, and it may be a little harsher than necessary. but I see a number of people implying conservatives are receiving unfair treatment, and this is just the post I happened to reply to. rereading your post, I wonder if I mistook a challenge for data as a call to arms.

      • GearRatio says:

        Reread the post and note that I specifically didn’t accuse him of anything, and made a point not to do so.

        • souleater says:

          I actually just did reread your post and I see I besmirched your character unfairly. I apologize, and take full responsibility for the error.

      • EchoChaos says:

        Note that the conservatives banned are notably Red Tribe in a very Blue/Grey place, which may be one of the reasons.

        The other very prolific Red Triber is me. Plumber is Red Tribe adjacent and he and I get each other a lot despite disagreeing fundamentally on a lot of political issues.

        It would not surprise me if dick was also liberal Red Triber based on his style, which makes me wonder if it’s a tribal style thing on reflection.

        • Plumber says:

          @EchoChaos says:

          “…Plumber is Red Tribe adjacent…”

          As a rough guess I’d say at least 60% of the guys I’ve ever known are “Red-Tribe”, and for the majority of “Blue-Tribe” guys that I’ve known well I knew them decades ago, or they are the husbands of my wife’s friends and I just don’t encounter them that often.

          Women that I’ve known though have been at least 90% Blue Tribe, my initial though on reading our host’s list of “tribal features” was: “Isn’t this just some differences between most men and most women? “, but I guess there’s more to it than that.

          “…he and I get each other a lot despite disagreeing fundamentally on a lot of political issues…”

          Likewise, and tbf given our differences in age and neIghborhoods I think it would be weird otherwise, without getting into “hot button” specifics, the U.S.A. is a big place and policy wise I don’t think “one size” fits all on many things, even San Diego and San Francisco, as well as Salt Lake City and San Antonio.

      • Dan L says:

        SSC commenters are overwhelmingly right leaning

        I think I probably spend more time staring at those numbers than anyone, and I wouldn’t say that – I wouldn’t be fully comfortable advancing any particular overall orientation as dominant. But it’s definitely true that there are right-aligned positions that are overwhelmingly represented on SSC, and that could have a similar effect if they’re what conversation tends to focus on.

    • Nearly Takuan says:

      I support the idea of a score-keeping spreadsheet because, I hope, any lefty ideas that survive the process will be more likely to receive attention, or at least sympathy, from non-lefty types. I am a little apprehensive, because there’s lately been a weird culture war over at StackExchange (and especially Meta) where the pendulum seems to swing wildly between “increase engagement and community outreach, even if that means allowing low-effort posts to pollute the space indefinitely” and “remove any contributions perceived by frequent users to be low-quality, even if that means disproportionately driving away anyone who doesn’t speak a specific vernacular.” But I’m hoping this community can do it better. I’d be tempted to think it couldn’t be worse, but the first internet forum I ever commented on was GameFAQs….

    • ECD says:

      This sounds an awful lot like you’re recreating opposition research for this forum. I will also say, as a lefty who is relatively uncomfortable commenting here, the proposal to have (righties, presumably?) make a spreadsheet of all the stupid/evil/cruel things lefties say, is not something that makes me more comfortable commenting here, nor I think is it likely to engender the sort of community it appears Scott wants.

      Honestly, I think it almost directly parallels some of the worse (though not worst) excesses of social media more generally, which this forum has generally and repeatedly condemned.

      • as a lefty who is relatively uncomfortable commenting here

        Could you explain why?

        Part of my general curiosity about why so many people read but don’t comment.

        • Dan L says:

          It should be noted that commenting in general is rare among the readership, but there are very strong biases in who doesn’t make that jump. Speculating why from my own experiences would immediately go CW or ECD can summarize it pretty well, I guess.

          I’d be strongly in favor of questions being added to the 2020 survey to this effect, both specifically asking as to participation in the (hidden) open threads, and why not as applicable.

        • ECD says:

          A combination of things.

          1) A general lack of knowledge and an unwillingness to do the research necessary to have an independent position on the topics most of interest to this forum.

          2) General support for the topics which are quasi-taboo here (SJW related).

          3) A recognition that this place skews hyper-literate and extremely good at argument, which combined with (1) and (2) makes any engagement difficult and potentially counter-productive in searching for truths of interest to me. Especially as, on the few areas I do know something about, law, bureaucracy, federal government service, law school, universities, ‘blue-tribe’ politics, the picture presented is so completely alien to my experience that despite good argumentation, I cannot take it at face value.

          In the main, I find the SSC commentariat useful whenever I start getting into my own bubble and want to see how other, smart, people think and what they think about. They make an excellent mirror to society, even if it’s a funhouse one. But I don’t feel comfortable engaging here, because I have little interest in seeing myself so distorted.

          If any of that makes any sense at all.

          Oh, and one more, even though it’s extremely unfair:

          (4) A tendency for a LOT of extraordinary claims to go entirely without challenge, even as some extremely minor claims get challenged five rows deep with thirty paragraphs. Silence isn’t agreement, but it’s very striking to see (examples are not quotes):

          “Slavery would have died on its own”->Silence, not “Even granting your premise, which I don’t necessarily, how many people would have suffered slavery, which is to say, rape, torture, theft and murder, until then?”

          “A college student said something stupid/signed a petition/tweeted something”->Fifty paragraphs of discussion about SJW’s and how college is pointless and we really just need coding schools.

          • eigenmoon says:

            3) I would absolutely love to meet hyper-literate and extremely good at argument people with completely alien views to my own, assuming that they are willing to talk to me long enough. This would be potentially very productive in searching for truths. I’m a libertarian and I’ve had a good talk with conservatives on this forum, and I’ve learned something new about their perspective even though I still disagree with it. I have never met a leftist in my life who would be both capable to defend leftist views at least to the standard of this forum and willing to stay long enough to actually do it.

            4) how many people would have suffered slavery, which is to say, rape, torture, theft and murder
            I assume that the amount of murders would be less than that of the Civil War, which is why I would not challenge the “slavery would have died on its own” claim.

          • AlesZiegler says:

            For what it´s worth, I also find it implausible that slavery would have died on its own in CSA without Civil War, I just didn´t want to get into extended argument with those guys in last thread.

          • Aapje says:

            @ECD

            “Slavery would have died on its own”->Silence

            Your recollection is false.

            That you seem to have merely remembered the comment you found offensive, but forgotten the push back, suggests that your perception may be skewed.

            , not “Even granting your premise, which I don’t necessarily, how many people would have suffered slavery, which is to say, rape, torture, theft and murder, until then?”

            The Civil War also involved rape, torture, theft and murder. However, looking back at the thread, no one seemed to be directly arguing that it would have been better if the Civil War hadn’t happened, but rather, Matt M and EchoChaos seemed to merely argue that the Civil War was not necessary to end slavery.

            Perhaps you were interested in a different discussion than they, but I don’t see how they are obligated to anticipate that in advance. It’s up to you or other commenters to raise issues they want to address. If you/they don’t, then you are stuck with what those who do comment want to talk about.

          • EchoChaos says:

            Backing up Aapje, lots of people debate all sorts of things here, so if you want something specific debated, feel free. We bust out sources and everything!

            Although this particular topic is best left for a partial number thread because it unfortunately still gets pretty heated.

          • Corey says:

            +1, I’m in the same situation. I’m a few PhD’s short of being able to meaningfully contribute, and lefty enough that anything I do have to contribute will be suspect.

            The form of right dominance this comment section has is via group consensus. Every group either comes to consensus on issues that people disagree on, or has endless flamewars / latent flamewars about them (for a trivial example, aquarium fora have to come to consensus about whether to mention plecostomus catfish as “pleco” or “pl*co” thanks to a Usenet-era superstition).

            In SSC comment sections (especially open threads, though topic threads have this to a lesser extent), the group consensus is on the right-wing side of every issue where you could meaningfully assign left/right to the positions.

            To come back to the topic, this manifests as: stereotypes of liberals are Obviously Correct no matter how unflattering, stereotypes of conservatives that could conceivably be interpreted as negative are terrible slurs that must be rebutted.

            I think naive counting of number of comments (as Scott tends to do) misses this dynamic.

          • ECD says:

            @Aapje

            That wasn’t actually the thread I was referring to. That wasn’t the first time this has come up. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to do a search of the hidden threads (which is probably why they are ‘hidden’) so I’m having some difficulty finding examples. If you like, I’m happy to go back through the open threads for some examples.

            However, that thread is representative of another related topic that is a different reason I comment infrequently, though it’s somewhat difficult to go into specifics on the non-CW thread, but generally boils down to a certainty that the commenters input is valuable. These are two economics papers, but unless I’m misreading the thread, none of the local folks who know about economics are actually involved.

            But succumbing to the same tendency myself, I will point out two things about that thread, it started with links to two articles. The first goes into great length about the deadweight loss, which he defines as “the loss in utility of forcing slaves to provide more labor than they otherwise would” and the tax (in the form of slave patrol). This is a good argument (as far as a non-economist can tell) that the slave-owning society would have been better off if they’d been a free society (at least a free society with approximately the same population where everyone worked). But it doesn’t prove what everyone seems to be assuming it says, namely that slavery made them poorer. But for slavery, the slave-owning society in question has approximately half the population it had in reality. The effects of that on the economy are not even considered in this counterfactual (nor does, I followed an economically sub-optimal path to my present, comfortable life==college education/buying coffee/whatever stupid/uneconomic shit I do which is part of me, made me poorer. No the package made me middle-class and the uneconomic shit was part of the package, even though not wholly responsible).

            The second I can only access the abstract, but it states: “The data shows that slave use is negatively correlated with subsequent economic development. However, there is no evidence that this relationship is driven by large scale plantation slavery, or that the relationship works through slavery’s effect on economic inequality.” which is not actually relevant to the question of current value of slavery to slave-owning societies.

            And, since I’m listing reasons I comment infrequently, I’d say the endless, wearying cynicism on any political/academic/’elite’ topic in the comments section at least, wears on my soul.

            @eigenmoon
            RE, (3)
            Sure, and in areas where I know things, I’m happy to have a debate. But for things where I don’t, getting into a debate with a hyper-literate, excellent arguer is as much a waste of time as trying to learn martial arts by trying to fight a guy with a gun unarmed. In any number of these discussions, I am definitely the unarmed man in Churchill’s (or Twain’s, a cursory internet search gives me differing results) quotation.

            RE: (4) We’re drifting real hard into CW territory here. But I’ll leave it at two points, my point with the example was two-fold, first there’s, in my view, though I have provided no evidence for it, only my impression, a difference in how things are responded to (which isn’t any individual’s responsibility, but does help shape an atmosphere I’m generally uncomfortable with). The second point is that, the specific claim I raised as an example here was indeed addressed. However, the problem is not that it was addressed, but that it ignores the underlying moral question at issue, which is, at least in part the cost of not acting.

            Assume they are correct and slavery would have ended on its own. Brazil is the usual example given, so lets assume the same timetable, even though I think that overly optimistic. Slavery ended in Brazil in 1888. The civil war had approximately 1.4 million dead and wounded (which included quite a few slaves). There were approximately 4 million slaves in the US in 1860. I honestly have no idea how to weigh the torture, rape, murder and enslavement of 4 million people for 28 years against the death of 1 million and the injuring of 400,000 and neither do you, but the conversation there dodged the entire issue. Given that this is the non-CW thread and I’m not a mind reader, I won’t speculate as to why, but it’s one reason I don’t comment here often and it’s part of what I was getting at with that unfortunately chosen example.

            People are allowed to be interested in what they’re interested in, but it does shape the atmosphere of this place into one where I don’t comment very often.

            ETA: typo correction wearing->wearying. Oh, and all numbers are being pulled from Wikipedia (please note, they count captured very strangely, so the 1.4 is my attempt at extracting a casualty figure from their numbers, it could be as high as 1.6)

          • Garrett says:

            Especially as, on the few areas I do know something about, law, bureaucracy, federal government service, law school, universities, ‘blue-tribe’ politics, the picture presented is so completely alien to my experience that despite good argumentation, I cannot take it at face value.

            Then please, please contribute to the conversation. Perspectives not exposed cannot be considered. Providing your experience can help shape the scope of discussion.

          • albatross11 says:

            ECD:

            I think it’s useful to separate out the moral question from the factual question. If the CSA had successfully seceded (the Union said “don’t let the door hit you on the way out”), would they have ended slavery a couple decades later on their own? That’s a *factual* question that’s kind-of interesting to consider, though I’m not so confident in anyone’s ability to answer it with a lot of certainty.

            But that’s separate from the *moral* question of whether that would have been a good trade. Slavery is a moral atrocity, but war is also pretty horrible. That’s a worthwhile discussion, but it’s a *different* discussion. (I’m not sure how you’d balance the suffering of war and the suffering of slavery–probably try to do some kind of utilitarian calculation.)

            For that matter, I’m pretty sure that a grand compromise that preserved the Union, avoided the civil war, and ensured that slavery would end everywhere in the US as of, say, 1880, would have been seen by most abolitionists and the great majority of Northerners as a great victory. That doesn’t mean it was the best moral outcome, obviously, but it does suggest that people on the ground at the time would probably have found it acceptable.

            It’s notable that we absolutely do allow horrible things to happen in the world when it’s too expensive to do something about it–go ask the Uighurs and Rohinga if you don’t believe me. It’s not obvious to me what the moral calculus there should be–invading Myanamar to force them to stop ethnically cleansing Rohinga would have extremely high cost.

          • Aapje says:

            @Corey

            If everyone would only comment if their claims are backed by supposed consensus, there would be no real debates, but just an echo chamber, with people making claims and others agreeing or making minor nitpicks.

            Every group either comes to consensus on issues that people disagree on, or has endless flamewars / latent flamewars about them

            If the only options/behaviors that you see are consensus or flamewar, then your view/perception is very different from mine.

            stereotypes of liberals are Obviously Correct no matter how unflattering, stereotypes of conservatives that could conceivably be interpreted as negative are terrible slurs that must be rebutted.

            I see a lot of push back against stereotypes of liberals.

            The main complaints about them seem to be more that they shouldn’t be made in the first place, not that they aren’t rebutted.

          • EchoChaos says:

            @albatross11

            I would love to have this discussion on Wednesday in the next fractional thread.

          • eigenmoon says:

            the conversation there dodged the entire issue. Given that this is the non-CW thread and I’m not a mind reader, I won’t speculate as to why, but it’s one reason I don’t comment here often

            I still got no idea what the entire issue is. Let’s wait for the CW thread.

          • Corey says:

            @Aapje you make a good point, not every issue is divisive enough that it fractures groups. “issues that people disagree on” did too much work and excluded the middle. I’d say “the sort of issue that fractures groups” but that’s circular. Probably a good example of not being good enough at argument.

            As for stereotypes, obviously any examples would be too CW, and then gather defenses on the grounds they’re Obviously Correct 🙂

          • Aapje says:

            @ECD

            Searching for old SSC comments is hard. I usually use Google, but quite often don’t find what I’m looking for (like U2).

            When searching for the comment I presented to you, I also found a months old thread where the same claim was made and where it also was rebutted. So even if you are correct that there was another thread where the claim was not rebutted, such claims still seem to be often rebutted. So I think that this disproves your claim that “a LOT of extraordinary claims to go entirely without challenge.”

            The rest of your comment abandons the meta-level debate in favor of arguing the issue itself, which I see as going off-topic and which IMO also violates the no-culture war rule for this Open Thread.

            I stand by my earlier claim that the burden is on people who want to discuss an aspect of a multi-faceted issue, to bring up that aspect.

            However, I also think that it is perfectly reasonable to want to focus on one specific question. Note that this is how (good) science often works as well, by limiting itself to one aspect of an issue and examining that very thoroughly, rather than examining many aspects more casually. Such an approach doesn’t mean that one considers those other aspects irrelevant.

          • Randy M says:

            the group consensus is on the right-wing side of every issue where you could meaningfully assign left/right to the positions.

            I don’t believe this is true. But maybe cultural issues from a few years ago have now conquered the right to the extent that they don’t count anymore.

          • Erusian says:

            Hey ECD. You’re sort of getting dogpiled, so I’d just like to say (insofar as I, a random stranger, get to ask you for favors) I’d really like to see more people like you post. Kind, thoughtful social justice types who are willing to engage in good faith. I really enjoy talking with (eg) LadyJane and I wish there were more people like her hanging around.

          • Enkidum says:

            Seconding Eurasian. There’s a lot of left-wingers lurking, and I think that this can be a more pleasant home if we’re careful about the meta-debate. I’d like to see you and others post, and would do what I can to make it comfortable, at any rate.

          • jermo sapiens says:

            In SSC comment sections (especially open threads, though topic threads have this to a lesser extent), the group consensus is on the right-wing side of every issue where you could meaningfully assign left/right to the positions.

            For what it’s worth, I have the complete opposite impression, with the exception of SJW-identity politics type issues, but even then it’s pretty close.

          • the group consensus is on the right-wing side of every issue where you could meaningfully assign left/right to the positions.

            Part of the problem with deciding if this is true is how you classify libertarians. If you include them on the right, there are very few positions to which you can meaningfully assign left/right.

            The most obvious example is probably immigration. In current U.S. politics, opposition to immigration is right wing. But practically the only people willing to support the opposite position, free immigration, are libertarians.

          • PedroS says:

            contra Corey, above, I do not think that in SSC the default consensus in CW matters is overwhelmingly the “right-wing-coded one”: the comentariat is generally pro-LGBT rights (Conrad Honcho’s decision to make his home free of Glee and other pro-LGBT fare was widely reviled here and as far as I am aware no one agreed with him), pro-free trade, anti-Trump wall, anti-SJW and probably anti-interventionist (regarding US use of force in international affairs). In abortion matters, I sense a general ” pro-choice is the obvious stance” vibe in spite of a strong Catholic contingent who defends the pro-life side of the issue.

          • Randy M says:

            the comentariat is generally pro-LGBT rights (Conrad Honcho’s decision to make his home free of Glee and other pro-LGBT fare was widely reviled here and as far as I am aware no one agreed with him)

            This is true and something I had in mind when objecting to the “universally conservative” (paraphrase) character of SSC commentariat; as to the example in parenthesis, though, I tried to out flank him on it; but it’s not a view I want to argue about vociferously here. (Linked thread also demonstrates how perennially SSC’s favorite topic–our relative faction strengths–reoccurs.

          • Nick says:

            Social conservatives are a prolific but definite minority on SSC. I can’t explain why it is we stay when other minority opinions, like our communists, get exhausted and leave.

          • ECD says:

            Okay, well, that will teach me to go to work instead of staying home and responding to forum messages. The above is sarcasm.

            @ various folks who said nice things about me: Thank you, that’s nice. The above is not sarcasm.

            @eigenmoon “the entire issue” there was that whether or not slavery would have died out on its own doesn’t answer on its own the question that people seem to be pulling from it, namely whether the civil war was justified, or the related question of what the impacts of slavery on the US have been.

            @albatross11: Yes. There can be value in splitting debates into different points. I was not asked, what would be best for this area, or what would produce the most truth, or what would allow the cleanest debate of abstract points of history. I was asked, why are you uncomfortable. One part of the answer is that this is a place that often, though not always likes to focus on an abstract, or meta-level debate without getting into the morality, or the effects on individuals. For a less CW example (which is mostly on me), one of my few other comments was on the thread about the horrors of dealing with the bureaucracy around human experimentation, pointing to the study wherein a psychologist chose to attempt (and succeed) in inducing stuttering in a bunch of orphans, via belittling their speech abilities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Study#Criticism).

            Also, oh boy is there a difference between things my country does and things my country doesn’t prevent.

            @Aapje: The above response to albatross is partly a response to you. I collapsed a few things into that point. However, my broader response is that one reason I am uncomfortable commenting here (though not necessarily advocating for changes to this forum) is this exact conversation. Let me walk through it from my perspective.

            1) Someone advocates keeping a list of alleged misbehavior of leftists (and only leftists, which keeps getting glossed over somehow, this is not advocacy for a neutral list of misbehavior to compare rates of banning).

            2) I respond, that that seems like a bad idea and is part of the reason I feel uncomfortable commenting here. To the extent I recommend any changes to this place, it would be this, don’t make a change to add a bad-leftists spreadsheet.

            3) DavidFriedman asks why i am uncomfortable.

            4) I give a list of reasons one of which is “A tendency for a LOT of extraordinary claims to go entirely without challenge, even as some extremely minor claims get challenged five rows deep with thirty paragraphs.” I give two examples, one of which was clearly a bad idea (my fault) because it was CW and because it was similar to a topic which had been on a recent open thread (and I had seen that thread). I do however make it clear I’m not quoting and I thought I made it clear that these were not intended to be evidence, but explanation of the phenomena in question.

            5) You say one of my examples is false, linking to the CW thread in question and say:

            Perhaps you were interested in a different discussion than they, but I don’t see how they are obligated to anticipate that in advance. It’s up to you or other commenters to raise issues they want to address. If you/they don’t, then you are stuck with what those who do comment want to talk about.

            6. At this point I’m moderately pissed. I was asked why I feel uncomfortable. I explain what helps create an atmosphere that causes me to feel uncomfortable (I even label the thing in question “extremely unfair”) and you respond by telling me that I’m trying to obligate other people to respond in ways I want, or discuss things I want. And so, I respond, explaining my position and stating:

            People are allowed to be interested in what they’re interested in, but it does shape the atmosphere of this place into one where I don’t comment very often.

            7) You respond by saying that, since you’ve rebutted my randomly (badly) chosen example

            I think that this disproves your claim that “a LOT of extraordinary claims to go entirely without challenge.”

            Except, no you haven’t. Because that’s not actually how things work. Rebutting an example, does not disprove the underlying argument and you know that. You haven’t disproven anything. Again, you don’t have to, but this is pretty irritating, especially since I offered to find other examples and you decided instead to double down on the one I admit was bad. Then you go on to say:

            The rest of your comment abandons the meta-level debate in favor of arguing the issue itself, which I see as going off-topic and which IMO also violates the no-culture war rule for this Open Thread.

            I stand by my earlier claim that the burden is on people who want to discuss an aspect of a multi-faceted issue, to bring up that aspect.

            However, I also think that it is perfectly reasonable to want to focus on one specific question. Note that this is how (good) science often works as well, by limiting itself to one aspect of an issue and examining that very thoroughly, rather than examining many aspects more casually. Such an approach doesn’t mean that one considers those other aspects irrelevant.

            8) At this point, I am honestly pretty furious, because, putting aside how condescending this comes across as, I had literally said “People are allowed to be interested in what they’re interested in, but it does shape the atmosphere of this place into one where I don’t comment very often.” in the comment you’re responding to. I was not asked “How should we change SSC’s comment section?” I was asked “Could you explain why [you’re uncomfortable commenting here]?” And that’s the question I answered.

            So, in the interest of answering the question I was asked, and doing “good science” please understand that this thread is a good example of why I don’t feel comfortable commenting here often.

            Have a nice day.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @Nick: Well in my case, I heard of Less Wrong through Mr. Chat, decided that Eliezer was very wrong (“Raising the Sanity Waterline” made me quantify him as “Richard Dawkins and a Singularity believer had a baby”), but this one guy Yvain seemed pretty smart in a non-arrogant way. That is, Yvain/Scott was like the only prominent person there who could lure social conservatives.

          • Paul Brinkley says:

            [F]or things where I don’t [know things], getting into a debate with a hyper-literate, excellent arguer is as much a waste of time as trying to learn martial arts by trying to fight a guy with a gun unarmed.

            I think one fallacy here is assuming you’re fighting a gunman who wants to kill you. I don’t think you are. The gunman here doesn’t want to kill you; he just wants to prosper, and that might include using his gun to help you blow a hole in a nearby wall to a room with enough money for both of you.

            Or to keep it real: someone with better arguments and debate practice than you may still want to be right, even if that means changing his mind. You’re smart enough to point him at evidence, or in a direction to seek evidence. You might even say you’re not sure, but something about his evidence doesn’t quite add up, and as long as you can draw a tighter circle around what’s bothering you, he can check it, state it another way, etc. Now, if you lack the time or energy to do even that much, then yeah, that would be on you; at some point you have to come partway. But in the meantime, no one should be here to just score points. We’re here to convince, or to understand.

            And to echo others here: if you’re worried about your ability to make quality comments, don’t. You just did.

          • Nick says:

            @Le Maistre Chat
            I started reading Scott’s blog back in the Livejournal days because Leah Libresco at Unequally Yoked would link to it once in a while. That was high school; I’ve graduated twice since then….

            ETA: @Paul Brinkley
            Well said, and +1!

          • eigenmoon says:

            @ECD
            Sorry for what you’re going through here. But I’m still confused! Please don’t be furious at me.

            You say that the entire issue is that people tend to assume that A implies B but actually it doesn’t. OK. Above you’ve shown a calculation demonstrating that A does not obviously imply B but ended it with “… but the conversation there dodged the entire issue”. That’s what confuses me. Hasn’t your calculation nailed the entire issue?

            Let me ask more directly: suppose that to “Slavery would have died on its own” somebody replied “Be that as it may, please note that it doesn’t necessarily imply that the Civil War was unjustified because [your calculation]”. Would that be the kind of comment that would make the athmosphere more comfortable for you? If not, could you write such a comment?

          • Aapje says:

            @ECD

            One part of the answer is that this is a place that often, though not always likes to focus on an abstract, or meta-level debate without getting into the morality, or the effects on individuals.

            Yes, but that is a nerd trait, not a right-wing trait. In plenty of left- and right-wing spaces, attempts at meta-level debate will usually quickly result in responses based on morality. There are also left- and right-wing dominated spaces where meta-level debate will frequently ignore morality.

            You seem to express a discomfort with nerd behavior in general, rather than making a claim that the commenters have a strong bias to invoke morality for some topics, but not for others. I think that the latter complaint/perception would be a fair reason for a leftist to feel unwelcome, but that the former is not. So I’m wondering to what extent this specific discomfort truly derives from your leftism.

            Someone advocates keeping a list of alleged misbehavior of leftists […] I respond, that that […] is part of the reason I feel uncomfortable commenting here.

            I don’t understand why you bring this up in a response to me, when I have never implicitly or explicitly addressed it. You gave a bunch of reasons why you feel uncomfortable here. I only responded to one of these and never said that you specifically or leftists in general are wrong to feel uncomfortable commenting here.

            You haven’t disproven anything.

            You gave an example that in your eyes, demonstrated that “a LOT of extraordinary claims to go entirely without challenge.” I found that your example of a supposedly entirely unchallenged claim, was challenged very recently. You are correct that this doesn’t disprove your claim per se, however, your anecdotal evidence also wouldn’t be sufficient to prove your claim, if it were true.

            If anything, I think that the inaccuracy of your example, provides a bit of evidence in favor of the possibility that your perception is due to bias on your part, because you presumably tried to give a strong example.

            and you respond by telling me that I’m trying to obligate other people to respond in ways I want, or discuss things I want.

            I said neither of those things. My point was that this seems like something that is to a large extent under your control.

            Imagine a bar in 1930’s Germany that doesn’t serve Jews. If Baruch then goes to that bar with his gentile friends and feels uncomfortable because he is the only one without a drink, then it is fair to say that this discomfort is caused by the environment.

            Now imagine Baruch going with gentile friends to a bar in 2019 Germany, where his friends get a drink, but where Baruch is too anxious to get a drink. Now, I would attribute feelings of discomfort and the lack of a drink in Baruch’s hands to something that only he can truly solve. If there was a claim that 2019 Germany is hostile to Jews, I would not consider Baruch’s situation to be evidence for that.

            I think that this distinction matters a lot, in light of the repeated discussions that people have been having about the supposed hostility to leftists of this forum.

            I was not asked “How should we change SSC’s comment section?” I was asked “Could you explain why [you’re uncomfortable commenting here]?”

            Yes, but the context of this question was why leftists tend to be uncomfortable here and I was trying to figure out to which extent your discomfort is actually due to your leftism.

          • ECD says:

            @eigenmoon

            To be clear, I’m not furious with you.

            You say that the entire issue is that people tend to assume that A implies B but actually it doesn’t. OK. Above you’ve shown a calculation demonstrating that A does not obviously imply B but ended it with “… but the conversation there dodged the entire issue”. That’s what confuses me. Hasn’t your calculation nailed the entire issue?

            Let me ask more directly: suppose that to “Slavery would have died on its own” somebody replied “Be that as it may, please note that it doesn’t necessarily imply that the Civil War was unjustified because [your calculation]”. Would that be the kind of comment that would make the athmosphere more comfortable for you? If not, could you write such a comment?

            Yeah, a lot of the discussion about (4) is confused by a combination of my collapsing a couple of related issues and a bad choice of example (as well as other people’s issues). To be clear, none of the below discussion is intended to obligate anyone to do anything, it’s merely an attempt to explain. I’m sure anyone here can come up with explanations about why each of these points doesn’t mean anything and shouldn’t have any effect on me.

            So I wouldn’t say the entire issue is that A implies B, but rather a combination of a couple of points which build an atmosphere:
            1) What topics end up being raised.
            2) What topics end up being discussed instead of left at a no response depth (and this one especially is open to interpretation, does no responses mean “obviously true,” “boringly false,” “you commented at the wrong time”?).
            3) How those conversations tend to go. Note the discussion above about single topic conversations and their value. Note the immediate “derailing” of this thread, which made a specific suggestion (keep a list of bad things leftists do on this forum) into a question of SSC demographics, bias against ‘red tribers’ and a number of other points that this forum likes to discuss endlessly without much of anyone pointing out both how valueless a list which addressed only leftist bad behavior would be, or what effect it would have on the selection of people so monitored.
            4) And then there are the tone issues which pissed me off so much yesterday.

            On the question of, would the proposed comment make me more comfortable? Probably? It would depend what the responses were (please note, not what any individual response was).

            Honestly, this is part of the reason I am so irritated with Aapje. Their comment that

            I stand by my earlier claim that the burden is on people who want to discuss an aspect of a multi-faceted issue, to bring up that aspect.

            has a lot of truth in it. It’s certainly the responsibility of people (like me) who’d like this forum to change to make an effort to cause/support that change (at least, as we prioritize this preference amongst our other priorities). But again, I was not actually proposing any action for that, trying to play by the rules and address the issue raised.

            As for what action would work, I think the bans/suspensions are a step in the right direction. Otherwise, despite my comment below, I’ll try to comment somewhat more frequently myself. For actions other people could take…

            Most of it is basic etiquette stuff, which this place is mostly good on. Then there’s just the ‘right but what would that mean on the ground?’ question and the ‘well, if this seems so stupid no one could possibly do it, why was it done?’ which gets asked about cultural practices supported by this forum’s zeitgeist (with liberal references to chesterton’s fence and the recent post on culture as science), but somehow doesn’t get asked about the cultural practices it doesn’t and never gets asked about governmental practices.

            Other than that, this place does a lot of calling out of “virtue signalling” but, oh boy does it love its’ “cynicism signalling,” “cool guy signalling” and “intellect signalling” (terms made up, I believe, by me). A one-line response saying ‘ha-ha you really believe reporters/big business/governments are neutral?’ (not a quote) does not, in my view, do much that’s helpful.

            A final thing would be to try to bring some good news to a thread, as similar to most places, the high profile stuff tends to be ‘something is wrong’ not ‘something went right’. In that interest, a weird one that sticks in my mind:

            I made it to 30 without ever learning to drive, mostly by living walking distance to work/school while in small towns, or using public transit in the one big city I lived. My then-new boss insisted I learn to drive, in case he needed to send me out into the field (the emergency that needs a real estate/cultural resources lawyer, but no one else is a bit tricky to imagine, but some creativity will get you there). So I took some driver’s ed training (at 30, which was actually surprisingly pleasant, though I did arrange individualized teaching, rather than being part of a class of 16 year olds), then gave my local DMV a call, because they let you schedule appointments (I believe, it’s been a couple of years). Their office was clean, they were pleasant, there were no/minimal lines and I was able to take and pass (if barely, oh boy am I a bad driver) both tests in less than an hour. It took longer for me to walk too and from the DMV than to deal with them.

            This is not an interesting story, but I offer it as a positive experience with local government.

          • ECD says:

            @Aapje

            Me:

            you respond by telling me that I’m trying to obligate other people to respond in ways I want, or discuss things I want.

            You now:

            I said neither of those things. My point was that this seems like something that is to a large extent under your control.

            You earlier:

            I don’t see how they are obligated to anticipate that in advance. It’s up to you or other commenters to raise issues they want to address.

            I stand by my earlier claim that the burden is on people who want to discuss an aspect of a multi-faceted issue, to bring up that aspect.

            However, I also think that it is perfectly reasonable to want to focus on one specific question. Note that this is how (good) science often works as well, by limiting itself to one aspect of an issue and examining that very thoroughly, rather than examining many aspects more casually. Such an approach doesn’t mean that one considers those other aspects irrelevant.

            I’m sorry, but if you are unwilling to see how claiming it’s perfectly reasonable to do something which I have literally said is something you’re allowed to do (“People are allowed to be interested in what they’re interested in, but it does shape the atmosphere of this place into one where I don’t comment very often.”) and it’s on me not you to change the place is suggesting that I’m trying to change the place and put the burden of that on other people, then I don’t know what to tell you. It may not have been your intent, but it was (and is) very much how I read this interaction.

            Also, oh boy do I not appreciate the mind reading about how uncomfortable I am with nerd culture, as you choose to define it.

            Also, all of this is a really good example of reason (3) I’m uncomfortable commenting here. See :

            You gave an example that in your eyes, demonstrated that “a LOT of extraordinary claims to go entirely without challenge.” I found that your example of a supposedly entirely unchallenged claim, was challenged very recently. You are correct that this doesn’t disprove your claim per se, however, your anecdotal evidence also wouldn’t be sufficient to prove your claim, if it were true.

            Except, wait, in the comment I responded to I said

            I give two examples, one of which was clearly a bad idea (my fault) because it was CW and because it was similar to a topic which had been on a recent open thread (and I had seen that thread). I do however make it clear I’m not quoting and I thought I made it clear that these were not intended to be evidence, but explanation of the phenomena in question.

            I literally said, in the comment you’re responding to that the examples weren’t intended to be evidence. I was not attempting to prove a claim. If I’d meant to do that, I would have provided links, citations and argument, as I did in arguing (probably improperly on this page) over the civil war/slavery issue.

            Honestly, this is starting to feel like we’re playing by the rules of formal debate and you’re trying to score points and that’s really not something that’s interesting to me.

            ETA: typo correction and completing a thought (finishing the final sentence)

          • Faza (TCM) says:

            ECD,
            At the risk of being unkind, what is it that you would like?

            What I’m getting from this – and please correct me if I’m wrong – is that you don’t like the way the SSC commentariat discusses things and this is why you usually choose not to comment.

            That’s fair enough.

            However, there does seem to be an underlying theme in your posts along the lines of “the reason you don’t like the way the SSC commentariat discusses things is because we’re doing it wrong”.

            I’m sorry, but the problem with your slavery/Civil War example isn’t that it’s CW, but rather that you are introducing morality (specifically, the moral value of war/inaction) into the discussion in a way that very much implies (a subset of) the SSC commentariat is immoral for not sharing your intuitions on the subject.

            Generally, you will get pushback for calling people immoral. What we’ve seen in this thread so far is as kind a reaction to that as you’re likely to get anywhere. Aapje, for example, brings up evidence against your specific accusation (“Slavery would have died on its own”->Silence). If you don’t want to provide evidence for your assertion, the polite thing to do is withdraw it. Otherwise, you may find yourself in a spiral of “they think I don’t like them, so they don’t like me”.

            My overall impression of the SSC comments section – especially the open threads – is that you can expect to get challenged on anything here. That’s what, to my mind, makes this place so valuable.

            If you aren’t comfortable with being challenged on certain issues, it’s probably best to avoid them.

            If you find that something challenge-worthy isn’t being challenged, be the one to challenge. This place is at its best with diverse voices, which is why the bans are causing such a stir.

            ETA:
            Regarding “pushback for being called immoral” bit – since you mentioned no names, but wrote of the comments section in general, it’s probably worth pointing out that a lot of commenters may have felt implicated by association, even if you weren’t thinking of them specifically at the time.

          • ECD says:

            @Faza

            I don’t particularly want anything, indeed the one recommendation I started with was not changing something. When expressly asked for recommendations for how to change this place to, I think, improve it, I gave some in my response to eignemoon above.

            I’ll also point out I have repeatedly said that the example I gave was not intended as evidence and was badly chosen, yet we continue to discuss it. I’m not sure how much more withdrawing you think I can do of that example.

            But, to be clear, I do think this forum chooses the places to discuss morality with a certain focus, which I do not share. See, how downright puritan it can be on the subject of divorce vs human experimentation, for example.

            ETA: I have repeatedly said people can focus on what they want, but that does shape the atmosphere here. If you can understand how general comments about the atmosphere here might offend people, can you see how repeatedly suggesting I’m doing something I have expressly disavowed might be offensive to me?

          • Faza (TCM) says:

            ECD,
            Right, got it, thanks.

            Sorry if you felt offended. It wasn’t my intention, I was trying to understand your position better.

          • quanta413 says:

            See, how downright puritan it can be on the subject of divorce vs human experimentation, for example.

            This may sound weird or sarcastic, but I’m completely serious.

            Can you please link me to a time we discussed human experimentation around here? It sounds very interesting. Although it occurs to me now you may mean something like Scott’s post about IRB’s which I found only mildly interesting and kind of humorous, whereas I’m thinking more like… a serious discussion of the ethical justification of unwillingly modifying someone to have a chainsaw arm to fight zombies in a hypothetical zombie apocalypse.

            SSC really seems like a place that would have long discussions of the ethical justifications for making human cyborgs. Or Bruce Campbell.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            SSC really seems like a place that would have long discussions of the ethical justifications for making human cyborgs. Or Bruce Campbell.

            I take the position that you don’t need any ethical justifications for making Bruce Campbell if you’re Mr. and Mrs. Campbell.

          • Lasagna says:

            quanta413 said:

            I’m thinking more like… a serious discussion of the ethical justification of unwillingly modifying someone to have a chainsaw arm to fight zombies in a hypothetical zombie apocalypse.

            Come on, man. You’re bringing up an impossible hypothetical. Who would be unwilling to undergo surgery to implant a chainsaw arm to fight zombies? That would be fantastic. I think a better topic would be “let’s talk about how awesome chainsaw arms are at fighting zombies”.

          • Witness says:

            @ECD Thank you for putting so much effort into your responses here. I’ve gotten a fair amount out of reading this and I don’t think I’m the only one.

          • ECD says:

            @quanta413

            Yeah, it was mostly the IRB threads, which aren’t too bad, though I don’t think they really address what I’m trying to get at. I think it’s come up at least once since then. There was a thread in an open thread a while back in which Deisach brought up a case in Ireland, which I can’t find for the life of me (though a news article on the story is here: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/without-consent-five-women-who-had-gynaecological-work-to-be-contacted-1.3936362). Honestly, that thread, as I recall it, wasn’t bad at all. There may also have been a recent thread about the work done in China a while back, along with more general griping about holding back the glorious transhumanist future which awaits us all (that last part is mostly a joke, here).

            @Faza

            You haven’t offended me. But I will ask. If I was going to attempt to answer the question asked, ‘why do you feel uncomfortable commenting here?’ was there a way to do it (besides simply saying it’s my issue) which wouldn’t, at least potentially be offensive to the people for whom this is a good environment?

            Take the example issue. I shouldn’t have given any, and let my explanation stand on its own. But, do you really think if we go through the last 135*3 fractional threads I can’t find an example of what I’m talking about? And if I do, the response won’t be, ‘that’s a single incident, what’s needed is a broader review’ which no one has time to do? The whole exchange on that is a really good example, in my view, of reason (3) which I don’t comment here often and of which I am not innocent myself. I encouraged the drift into CW territory, which Aapje rightly declined to continue and continued to fight, even though the example did not matter to my broader point. I would amend it slightly to add to hyper-literate and good at arguing “and enjoys arguing, at least from my perspective, for the sake of arguing, or argument itself,” but again, that sounds to my ear, pretty mean/offensive, which is part of what I’m trying, and failing, to avoid.

            ETA: typo correction “me”->”my”

          • eigenmoon says:

            @ECD

            I’ll also tell you a story. One theater troupe went on a tour through Russia. They gave a play in a remote town when the electricity turned off. The actors initially thought that it’s the end of the show. But it was a common occurrence in that town, so everyone in the audience brought a flashlight. The play continued. Soon the actors realized that the attention of the audience is very much not where it’s supposed to be. The flashlights were shining not just on the action, but on attractive actors. Well, that’s the end. I guess the message is that other people’s attention is weird and sometimes uncomfortable. I think this is roughly what you mean.

            Your plan to comment more is solid. Go ahead!

            Note the discussion above about single topic conversations and their value. Note the immediate “derailing” of this thread,
            Yes, this is a big problem. This blog is unique in that Scott conducts experiments with new formats such as Adversarial Collaborations, where two people from opposite tribes lock themselves together and don’t fight. I think this is a great thing and I’d love to see more of that, not necessarily as heavy-effort as ACs, maybe just interviews. But to illustrate the communication problems, here’s an AC proposal from a leftist:

            Hi, I want a partner for a collaboration on whether or not to call American migrant detention centers concentration camps (I think yes). I write things online mostly anonymously and I am therefore in no place to put conditions on who you are; besides, I have contempt for you just because of your position, but I believe your idiocy is so farcically self evident that I can work with you to put your racist “still calling wolf” ass on display. I will work hard at making sure you get a platform provided I’m on that platform too: I will be serious about producing a decent essay. All you gotta do is not be a coward in the face of my actually held beliefs about your character, authoritarian temperament, and so on (if a racist is racist I want to believe the racist is racist, but I can work with racists.)

            Then there’s just the ‘right but what would that mean on the ground?’ question
            Often leftists speak in very abstract terms, so I’m afraid this is a necessary question. An example from Jack on this page:

            ECD in this thread was I think describing something similar: a discussion of slavery with the perspective of slaves being missed.

            What could that mean? My perspective on slavery is that it sucks. Slaves’ perspective is… slavery really, really sucks? Even now that (I think) I know what you mean I still have no idea what Jack means.

            This effect is much, much worse with SJWs. Wouldn’t you want to ask about meaning on the ground when you hear something like this: “disempowering the oppression of structural equality enables unbiased solidarity of intersectional voices”?

            but somehow doesn’t get asked about the cultural practices it doesn’t
            Like what? Maybe you could make an interesting post out of this.

            and never gets asked about governmental practices.
            That is because unlike the free market and cultural evolution, which are both superintelligent processes, governments are pretty stupid. The Left seems to believe that there is something superinteligent about governments as well, but they’ve never explained to me what it is. This is one of the biggest problem I have communicating with the Left: they seem to have two separate languages to talk about government – one positive, another negative – but I don’t see the difference. So when I’m told “the corrupt powers-that-be gave away lots of money to the rich, so we should tax the rich to get this money publicly accountable”, what I hear is this: “the corrupt bureaucracy gave away lots of money, so we need to return this money under the supervision of the same corrupt bureaucracy”.

            Other than that, this place does a lot of calling out of “virtue signalling” but, oh boy does it love its’ “cynicism signalling,” “cool guy signalling” and “intellect signalling” (terms made up, I believe, by me).
            Sure (except I don’t know how to signal cynicism). There’s the book “The Elephant in the Brain” by Robin Hanson which says that pretty much everyone signals something pretty much all the time.
            See also the conversation between Hanson and Tyler Cowen. Usually people here (and at LW) love Hanson in general and this theory in particular.

            The problem with virtue signaling is not that it’s signaling, but that it’s very counterproductive if you want to search for truth or the optimal course of action. Intellect signaling, on the other hand, might even help. Cool guy signaling may or may not help, and I’m not sure what cynicism signaling is.

            A one-line response saying ‘ha-ha you really believe reporters/big business/governments are neutral?’ (not a quote) does not, in my view, do much that’s helpful.
            Agreed. Scott might ban for such a response.

          • ECD says:

            @eigenmoon

            The problem with virtue signaling is not that it’s signaling, but that it’s very counterproductive if you want to search for truth or the optimal course of action. Intellect signaling, on the other hand, might even help. Cool guy signaling may or may not help, and I’m not sure what cynicism signaling is.

            In response to the comments of this thread, I’d actually challenge this. If you want to search for truth, at least the kind of truth of interest to me, what other people consider virtuous, or their society wants them to consider virtuous seems extremely relevant.

            Additionally, just as virtue signalling can silence, or derail, so too can intellect signalling. More than once in my life I have accidentally shut people down, hard by engaging in moderately accidental intellect signalling. I’ve caused real problems for people I was trying to help by not realizing I need to code-switch and stop using the scrabble words and just be clear.

            On cool guy signalling, I very much doubt I need to tell anyone here how it can effect people.

            On cynicism signalling…I’m honestly not sure I can explain what I mean, but there’s two quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold which I try to remind myself of whenever I start drifting towards ‘the world has always been shit and it will always be shit.’

            “Now there’s this about cynicism, Sergeant. It’s the universe’s most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you’re not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.”

            “Cynicism did not seem nearly so impressively daring to her now as it had when she was twenty.”

            That is because unlike the free market and cultural evolution, which are both superintelligent processes, governments are pretty stupid. The Left seems to believe that there is something superinteligent about governments as well, but they’ve never explained to me what it is. This is one of the biggest problem I have communicating with the Left: they seem to have two separate languages to talk about government – one positive, another negative – but I don’t see the difference. So when I’m told “the corrupt powers-that-be gave away lots of money to the rich, so we should tax the rich to get this money publicly accountable”, what I hear is this: “the corrupt bureaucracy gave away lots of money, so we need to return this money under the supervision of the same corrupt bureaucracy”.

            This is another place I’d push back. The government isn’t some thing somehow separate from culture or markets, it’s part of them.

            On your referenced positions of the left, it’s hard to answer at an abstract level, but all the conversations I’ve seen have an intermediate step you seem to be skipping, that is, stop ‘corrupt’ gifts to people. I don’t want to shove us back to the object level, but I guess I don’t see that as notably distinct from, ‘the government need a big military to protect us from X,’ ‘I need my guns to protect me from the government.’ To the extent there’s a contradiction, it may be because someone assumes an unstated step is obvious.

            I mean, one of the stereotypes of the left is that we’re regulation crazy. That isn’t limited to outside the government. One of the more irritating aspects of my job is doing legal reviews of conference requests (that is, requests by a federal employee, who has already received travel approval) to go to a conference. Limiting what the government can do with money goes a long way towards bridging this gap and most people assume that the folks on their side will not be actively corrupt, at least.

            On the conferences thing, just because it irritates me often, this isn’t crazy, it’s a reaction to the GSA conference scandal, but it’s one of those things where the cure might be worse than the disease. Is it worth spending a big pile of money to prevent the misuse of some, maybe smaller pile of money? Maybe, maybe not. What about the loss of public confidence if you waste a smaller pile of money? What about the man who spent time in jail for that? Would it have been avoided with clearer rules and processes? Or would he just have violated those as well as the law? I honestly don’t know, even as I spend a moderate amount of time cursing the existence of these rules and the requirement that a lawyer sign off on the requests.

            Anyway, I don’t really have a great conclusion to this conversation. As I hope I make clear, there’s always issues with derailing conversations, but likewise issues with having conversations which are too narrow. I don’t think there’s some perfect balance. Every place is going to be uncomfortable for some people, if only the terminally shy. That’s not necessarily bad. It can be, but doesn’t have to be (examples removed to avoid argument).

            With much less irritation than before, have a nice day, folks.

          • eigenmoon says:

            @ECD
            We had a nice conversation. I’ve answered to the points that you explicitly labeled as “challenge” and “push back” here and here.

          • ECD says:

            @eigenmoon

            I meant to say and didn’t, this is a great story and very helpful!

            I’ll also tell you a story. One theater troupe went on a tour through Russia. They gave a play in a remote town when the electricity turned off. The actors initially thought that it’s the end of the show. But it was a common occurrence in that town, so everyone in the audience brought a flashlight. The play continued. Soon the actors realized that the attention of the audience is very much not where it’s supposed to be. The flashlights were shining not just on the action, but on attractive actors. Well, that’s the end. I guess the message is that other people’s attention is weird and sometimes uncomfortable. I think this is roughly what you mean.

          • LeSigh says:

            All of this. And also casual misogyny.

        • Jack says:

          I’m going to pretend this question was asked generally to people fitting the category. Here is my attempt to explain one reason I am relatively uncomfortable commenting here. There is a phenomenon where taking a certain stance about a person or group of people in a certain way gets described as “denying their existence”. By this is meant denying some basic aspect of their identity. It’s a kind of social death, a kind of skepticism of the perspective of another that fails to respect its validity, and dealing with it (as a person whose perspective is being dismissed) can range from exhausting to deeply depressing. There’s not much point discussing kinds of knowledge that have emerged through lived experience and consciousness raising with people who simply reject these forms of knowledge. It can simply be a waste of time as well as disheartening. Experiences I have personally had on this forum include: sure you say you can be happy in polyamorous relationships, but probably you’re wrong or disturbed. And, sure you say you don’t like homophobia but maybe it’s not so bad. Are the gays really sure they weren’t better off in the closet? ECD in this thread was I think describing something similar: a discussion of slavery with the perspective of slaves being missed. (ECD knows better, but I read their repeatedly bringing up the violence against slaves as predominantly a demand for recognition of their equal moral importance.) None of this is surprising to me, given the sexual and racial demographics of this forum.

          • Is your complaint that at least one person on the forum “denies your existence” or that everyone does? If the former, then what you want is an echo chamber (on that particular issue), a place where everyone agrees with you or keeps silent. This forum is very poorly suited to someone who wants that, for practically any issue.

            If your complaint is that everyone here denies your existence, then polyamory is a poorly chosen example, given that Scott is openly polyamorous.

          • @Jack

            That sense of social death you are describing is a minuscule fraction of what conservatives experience on campuses and cities every day. Every single day.

          • Plumber says:

            Wrong Species says: “@Jack
            That sense of social death you are describing is a minuscule fraction of what conservatives experience on campuses and cities every day. Every single day”

            Around Berkeley in the 1980’s sure, but at most every jobsite in and near San Jose the decade I worked there the loudest and most abrasive guys were by far usually Republicans, and often that guy would be the foreman or his buddy who carpooled with him (usually from Stockton), and the only time I saw much push back was in 2004 when the occupation of Iraq was going badly, even now (though not to the same extent) that’s still the case with my working in San Francisco (even though it’s possibly the most “Blue-Tribe”-ish of cities), but among my wife’s friends the opposite is true and Democrats dominate.

            I suspect that you spend much of your time around white collar people and/or women, get a job working construction, or with cops to experience a different “bubble” if that’s your goal.

          • Corey says:

            @Wrong Species: interestingly, my experience here is what led me to appreciate that perspective – it’s tough when intellectual spaces that are not explicitly partisan are hostile to your ideology.

          • mitv150 says:

            @plumber
            Isn’t it reasonably the case (as a generalization) that cops and construction workers are not the typical inhabitants of the “campuses and cities” to which wrong species is referring?

          • @Plumber

            The funny thing is that I don’t live in a particularly liberal area and the people in my social groups are not raging SJW’s but it still is something I have to censor myself on. For example, I’m ok with gay marriage but I don’t like the whole “being forced to bake them a cake” issue. If I ever said that out loud, I would probably be accused of being a homophobe. Why risk it?

            @Corey

            I appreciate the sentiment, but people on the left have no idea how easy it is to be a leftist. The schools reaffirm your views. The major news organizations(with one glaring exception) reaffirm your views. All the movies, tv shows, and music you consume reaffirms your views. You now get corporate sponsorships. If you say something too leftist, you might be admonished slightly, not turned in to a pariah. You might even be called “brave”. You don’t receive an overwhelming barrage of vilification. You have to go out of your way to experience something that challenges your views, like here. But it’s like a nice little camping retreat. When you’re done browsing, you go back to the comfort of the real world.

          • Corey says:

            @Wrong Species: The glaring exception is the highest-rated news network by far. And Republicans control multiple veto points in the Federal government and at least one in most States, probably permanently. And essentially all the money in the world is on that side. (I know there are differences between “right”, “Republican” and “conservative”)

            That’s why both sides feel persecuted (h/t Yglesias): right is dominant in policy and cares about culture, left is dominant in culture and cares about policy.

          • Randy M says:

            That’s why both sides feel persecuted (h/t Yglesias): right is dominant in policy and cares about culture, left is dominant in culture and cares about policy.

            That’s well put. I’m not sure if there’s anything to it beyond “everyone wants what they don’t have.”

          • Fox news is the highest rated cable news because it’s the only conservative one. If you add all the others together, they outnumber Fox. It would be like me saying that Protestants are the most prominent Christians in the United States and you arguing against that by pointing out Catholics have the largest denomination. Yes, but they make up 20% of Christians.

            I don’t want another tedious debate about who’s winning. I’m just saying that for a liberal, it’s trivial to block out conservative views while with the reverse, it’s nearly impossible.

          • eigenmoon says:

            @Corey, Wrong Species
            Imagine being a libertarian. You’re surrounded by statists. Your tribe controls nothing. You just want to get out of here but there’s nowhere to run.

          • And essentially all the money in the world is on that side.

            I don’t think so. My not very expert impression is that a lot of rich people are left of center.

            That sense of social death you are describing is a minuscule fraction of what conservatives experience on campuses and cities every day.

            “every day” and “minuscule fraction” would be considerable exaggerations of my own, possibly sheltered, experience.

            But I am reminded of a conversation I had in 1964 and have probably discussed before. It was with a friendly stranger who wanted to know how I could possibly support Goldwater. We went through a bunch of issues, on each of which it was clear he had never heard the argument I was offering and had no immediate rebuttal.

            At the end, he asked me, in a “don’t want to offend” tone, if I was taking all of these positions as a joke. The political equivalent of “what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

            The pretty clear implication was that, in his world view, there were no intelligent and articulate people who supported Goldwater. I did not exist.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            @eigenmoon
            And yet my impression is that libertarians very rarely experience the feeling described by Jack and Wrong Species.

          • quanta413 says:

            And yet my impression is that libertarians very rarely experience the feeling described by Jack and Wrong Species.

            When I was very young, people I spent all my time around were to my right in many ways and I was careful about expressing many of my beliefs. And since my early or mid-20s most people have been to my left and I’ve become careful about expressing a different set of my beliefs. I hid different things each time, but it pretty much felt the same either way.

            It’s awkward and a bit tiring.

            But you’re right that I don’t feel like it’s “social death” like Jack or Wrong Species. I have other complaints in my mind that feel more significant to me than that. And not because anything bad has happened to me. Just that other ordinary things that almost everyone deals with have bothered me more. Although I probably deal with those things more poorly than the ordinary person because I’m kind of odd.

          • Wency says:

            I’m not sure if there’s anything to it beyond “everyone wants what they don’t have.”

            There are similarities, but the core asymmetry is an impending sense of doom widespread on the right. Between unfavorable demographics and the remarkable pace of leftist cultural victories, the right feels cornered.

            The left also sometimes feels threatened and in retreat in response to right-wing victories, such as state-level victories on abortion. I call this the “Kerensky impulse”, after Kerensky’s paranoia of a right-wing counterrevolution even as he was on the verge of being overthrown by forces to his left.

            But while there are pessimists on the left, the left also has a triumphalist current, a sense that ultimate victory is inevitable, that setbacks are temporary, that no compromise is needed as their enemies will eventually crumble. Very few people on the right have this feeling about their own side. If they are opposed to compromise, it’s because they feel it’s impossible.

          • Plumber says:

            @mitv150 says: “…Isn’t it reasonably the case (as a generalization) that cops and construction workers are not the typical inhabitants of the “campuses and cities” to which wrong species is referring?

            Oh sure, but except for maybe big name universities I’m doubtful that the “typical” folks @Wrong Species is referring to are all that typical, I’m pretty confident that in most “blue” as well as most “red” areas the majority aren’t anti-conservative or anti-liberal as they are anti-political and would rather talk family, movies, sports, the weather, et cetera.

            @Wrong Species says: “The funny thing is that I don’t live in a particularly liberal area and the people in my social groups are not raging SJW’s but it still is something I have to censor myself on. For example, I’m ok with gay marriage but I don’t like the whole “being forced to bake them a cake” issue. If I ever said that out loud, I would probably be accused of being a homophobe. Why risk it?

            Censoring yourself is normal, though usually I can guess someone’s leanings (most folks are apolitical, bosses usually lean Republican, younger women usually lean Democrat, et cetera), and I can usually think of something to say that they’ll likely agree with spurring them to talk more (or they’re doing the same trick and humouring me), though increasingly I’m out of my depth with youngsters as I don’t know the movies, music, and now video games they do, but there’s always traffic and weather. 

            “…people on the left have no idea how easy it is to be a leftist…”

            Probably not, but I suspect that your vastly overestimating how much Leftists agree even with each other, the term “circular firing squad’ was coined for a reason.

            “…I’m just saying that for a liberal, it’s trivial to block out conservative views while with the reverse, it’s nearly impossible…”

            I don’t doubt you about “the reverse” being “nearly impossible”, but as to it being “trivial to block out conservative views” I suppose my Dad worked that trick by living in a public housing project in Oakland and rarely going outside – I think that’s called being unemployed and a hermit, in my experience if you’re a man working around men you’re going to hear conservative views and if you pursue women for romantic partners in California you’re going to hear liberal views unless you’re really limiting who you have social interactions with somehow, which just seems like way too much work for not much reward.

            @Corey and @Randy M

            +1, I have no doubt you’re correct

            @eigenmoon, @DavidFriedman, and @thisheavenlyconjugation

            I strongly suspect you’re correct

          • @Wency

            Leftists failure to see this asymmetry is just bizarre. Trump winning doesn’t look like the beginning of some conservative “counter-revolution”. It looks like the last gasps of resistance. What’s bewildering is that leftists say this all the time and yet they also simultaneously act like he is an existential threat.

            The idea that conservatives “control” the government is obviously absurd. The abortion example is telling. Progressives have won about 95% of the issue and yet the fact that a few states have put up some restrictions is equated to conservative “dominance”. It’s patently ridiculous, and yet its too late to dislodge the narrative.

          • Plumber says:

            @Wrong Species says: “…failure to see this asymmetry is just bizarre…”

            It depends on which individual issues are most important to you, I’m pro-union, the legality of the issue you cite is far from the top of my priorities, and in my 51 years I count more economic/political losses than wins, as to the social changes in my lifetime that’s way too hot button for this thread.

            I think I’ve posted my views before at length in previous months but please remind me of this topic with Open Thread #136.25

          • eigenmoon says:

            @thisheavenlyconjugation

            Imagine that somebody you know is a libertarian experiencing the feeling described by Jack and Wrong Species. What would be your estimation of the probability that you know he’s a libertarian?

          • Wency says:

            @Wrong Species

            Leftists failure to see this asymmetry is just bizarre.

            I use the Kerensky example to point out it’s not unique to our culture. I’d posit that it’s not so different from our instinctual resistance to the idea that the “snake is more afraid of you than you are of it”.

            I hate snakes, and I’ve killed more than one with a shovel in my day. And while I’m aware intellectually that the snake is little threat to me as I’m in the process of bashing it to death, emotionally I imagine it might have some hidden reserve of strength and be just about to lunge at me right up until the moment that I can see its guts or sever its head. I suspect this is an ancient primate impulse.

            And so it is with politics.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            @eigenmoon
            Pretty high, certainly higher than if we were talking about a conservative.

            I’m not intending to disparage your lived experience if you are a libertarian who feels that way. But in my experience that is unusual. I think it’s an outgroup/fargroup thing; I believe the same is true for n r x types and commies.

          • eigenmoon says:

            @thisheavenlyconjugation
            I’m not really feeling this way, no. I guess the Left and the Right feel “The collective doesn’t accept me. This is a tragedy!” but I’m processing it like “The collective doesn’t accept me. Well, screw the collective then!”. Maybe this is common for libertarians.

            But that doesn’t mean libertarianis are a happy bunch. Here’s something written in 1970:

            One who is half-free and half-serf dwells in a psychological no-man’s land. He knows too much and thinks too independently to play servile status games with conviction and success, yet remains too immersed in, and influenced by, that culture to achieve success/satisfaction on his own terms.

            The libertarian who wrote this went to live in earth-houses he dug in some forest in either California or Oregon for the pleasure of never having a contact with a government agent. Nobody knows what happened to him since he broke all contact.

          • Jack says:

            @DavidFriedman There’s a difference between agreeing with someone (and thus qualifying for echo chamber membership with them) and taking their view seriously. Good judgement and good conversation require taking others’ views seriously. What does “taking seriously” mean? It’s complicated.

            The phenomenon I’m describing is, I think, that sometimes enough people here don’t seem to take me or people like me seriously that I have a bad time (unproductive and/or it hurts) and then other times when I think about reading the comments or replying I say to myself, “but remember last time… never mind”.

            I have queer friends and we talk about queer stuff and disagree. For instance I recently read, and then discussed with a number of friends, an article arguing that the proliferation of PrEP was allowing gay men to talk to and care for each other less as there is less of a sense of collective responsibility for decreasing HIV transmission. So maybe PrEP is a mixed blessing. This is kinda similar to the recent homophobia-vs-STIs “conversations” being hosted here. Yet we were quite able to discuss it without too many echoes, but also without people feeling unheard or like they were wasting their time.

            A related distinction is between lived experience and other forms of knowledge. The two examples I gave in my above comment were not examples of people failing to echo my view, they were examples of people baselessly questioning a matter of fact where lived experience was very likely to be the best available evidence. In this forum this can look like selective demands for rigour, related to a phenomenon EDC described of an apparent pattern in what goes unmentioned and what incites a twenty post thread. The comments on the polyamory article were a memorable example, where many people came away with the sense that (what one user called) “arbitrary scepticism” was at play. People can be pretty good at applying rhetorical methods associated with rationalism yet still do so inconsistently.

            @Wrong_Species I thought this might come up. I find it odd that you think you can make a comparison between the experiences of different people in this way. I have no idea which is a minuscule fraction of the other. That said, I grant that it can be a similar situation and I think when anyone is suffering, that matters. I’m not sure it is the same, for two reasons. In RL, I’m not sure that failing to consider a perspective seriously because of its content is the same as failing to consider a perspective seriously because of who it comes from. More relevant in this interwebs forum (where you can’t see my MAGA hat), is that failing to take a person’s claim about their own experience seriously is different from failing to take a person’s claim about the rest of the world or some policy implication seriously. Being consistently disagreed with can suck, but it goes beyond sucking and into being dehumanizing when the kind of disagreement is, “I do not trust you even when it comes to your lived experience”.

            That said these are definitely some slippery distinctions.

      • GearRatio says:

        Let’s imagine for a moment that the worst-case scenario (for the right-ish) is true and Scott mostly bans conservatives, is more likely to ban those with conservative viewpoints (as far as has been represented in the thread goes, this seems to be his stated policy) and lowers the bar so it’s harder to get banned if you have a more left viewpoint.

        If that’s the case, your appeal looks something like “Well, couldn’t you guys just shut up while you get banned? It makes me uncomfortable when you point out the double standard”.

        Now let’s look at the best (for the leftish) case scenario: Banning happened because people are dicks, conservatives are more likely to be dicks, and there’s more conservatives and there’s no other way this could go, statistically. For the conservative who doesn’t believe the worst case, how could he know it’s untrue without data?

        I think either scenario could be true, but understand if the first one is true it’s true either because:

        1. Scott is letting a bias seep through and doesn’t know.

        2. Scott is letting a bias seep through and knows, but wants to be perceived as even-handed to a certain extent.

        In both those cases, the only counter is data; in the first case for convincing him he’s doing wrong and in the second case for shaming him by revealing the truth.

        In the case of the conservative who doesn’t believe it’s his own fault when it is, he either:

        1. Really doesn’t believe this or

        2. Knows that the bannings are the conservative’s own fault and fair but won’t believe it

        In both cases, the only counter is data, first to show him the truth and second to show others he’s being dishonest.

        It’s certainly possible that the cure is worse than the disease here and the data shouldn’t be gathered, but I’m not sure the banned members would agree. To the extent that anything should be done, I do believe that this is the course of action that would be productive.

        For context, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to being uncomfortable posting places; when I was younger and (much) dumber I used to participate in a curated discussion series on The Atlantic back when they still allowed discussion; this resulted in people implying they’d go after my job, although this never seemed to happen. More recently someone made a weak but real attempt on my life due to (very likely) my internet commentary. I’m not saying “your discomfort is nothing”, I’m just saying to the people who are getting banned, it’s a choice between you feeling uncomfortable and them being banned. I’m not sure yours outweighs theirs.

        • Enkidum says:

          You can look at the people who were banned, and see it’s pretty close to evenly split between right and left, and the frequent commenters here skew right. Thus this whole thread is proposing solutions in the absence of a problem.

        • ECD says:

          Except, you aren’t proposing to gather “data” that would be a spreadsheet of all bad behavior. You’re proposing to do opposition research, that is, bad behavior of your (presumably) opponents.

          If you want to maintain a spreadsheet of all bad behavior, I’ll still think that’s silly, and moderately creepy, but it’s a different thing than a spreadsheet of explicitly leftist bad behavior.

          • The problem is that “bad behavior” is in part a subjective category and one affected by the biases of the person doing the rating.

          • ECD says:

            @DavidFriedman
            That is one reason I would find a list of all bad behavior silly and moderately creepy. It’s not my objection to a list of specifically leftist bad behavior.

      • jgr314 says:

        @ECD: do you now feel more inclined to comment in the future, the same, or less?

        • ECD says:

          See above for my lengthy response, but about the same. This went approximately how I expected, down to the usual digressions into endless discussion of ‘percentage of readers’ vs. ‘percentage of commenters’ vs. ‘percentage of comments’ which never gets resolved, despite being debated every time this comes up.

          • axiomsofdominion says:

            Personally I think it would be interesting to have a leftists only open thread as well as the standard thread at the same time. But, despite the libertarian leanings of many here I am not sure that would ever happen.

          • Corey says:

            I wonder if it will be the next topic Scott has to ban 🙂

          • Paul Zrimsek says:

            I wonder if it will be the next topic Scott has to ban

            I say the sooner, the better.

          • quanta413 says:

            I agree it should be banned. “How right/left/libertarian is SSC?” leads to the most long and boring discussions here.

          • EchoChaos says:

            Thirded.

          • Jaskologist says:

            Allow it, but only if you also include statistics to back up your point.

          • The Nybbler says:

            I believe there was a leftists-only open thread (on the honor system), but I can’t find it because the likely keywords are too common.

          • jgr314 says:

            This isn’t all-encompassing, but it looks like a decent chunk of the response (and, personally, what I find problematic in the comments generally) is commenters arguing with someone rather than trying to convince them.

          • Enkidum says:

            I would like to apologize to everyone concerned for any of my attempts here or in previous threads to discuss the proportion of right vs left wing people on SSC. I don’t even care that much, as I came to realize reading this thread.

          • Plumber says:

            @ECD says: “…the usual digressions into endless discussion of ‘percentage of readers’ vs. ‘percentage of commenters’ vs. ‘percentage of comments’ which never gets resolved, despite being debated every time this comes up”

            @quanta413 says: “…“How right/left/libertarian is SSC?” leads to the most long and boring discussions here”

            @Jaskologist says:“Allow it, but only if you also include statistics to back up your point”

            As far as I’m concerned the results of the 2019 survey and the charts that @Dan L kindly provided based on those results satisfy as an answer, the total readership leans slightly Left (about 63%), once a week or more commenters lean slightly Right (about 58%), and Libertarians are the biggest contingent of the Right.

            I’ll point out (again) what seems obvious: on individual issues sometimes someone who chooses “Social Democrat” among the options in the survey may argue what is now usually the position of the “Right” against someone who identifies as a “Libertarian” who is arguing a position that is now regarded as on the “Left” (I’m too lazy to look up the specific thread right now, but keyword “Utah” if you must) ’cause many aren’t all-in on every little thing on our “sides”, and on that note: “Leftists” and “Right-wingers” aren’t monoliths on their opinions anyway.

            Also @ECD, I really hope to see more of your posts.

          • Jaskologist says:

            @Plumber

            Yes, I agree that those are the current best statistics we currently have. But imagine how different the complaints would look if they had to reference the statistics.

            “This comments section is 58% right-wing (counting the libertarians). That’s so slanted!”

    • anonymousskimmer says:

      I looked at a couple of the ban-worthy comments and I think Scott is overly focused on sarcastic political generalizations.

      Personally I would only ban for generalizations (or specific comments) targeted at particular other commenters. I have made such specific comments here and have never received even a warning (I recall being particularly harsh toward vVvVv, or whatever that name was, when annoyed by a comment, and recall bandwagoning another commenter over something else).

      • acymetric says:

        Worth pointing out that those were samples of recent posts that fit a pattern, not exhaustive lists of all bad posting on the part of those banned. Some of the people (on the banned/warned list) had been making top level posts matching the examples provided in basically every OT for seemingly months (some of which ended up deleted, although I’m not sure if that was self-retraction or Scott removing the posts himself). I would suggest that top-level posts making sarcastic political generalizations (which wouldn’t be targeted at a specific poster) are just as bad (maybe worse) than making a sarcastic generalization in response to a comment from another poster.

        I am in the (apparently minority camp) that feels @Deiseach should serve her full term. I’ll be glad to have her back once it is over as I do enjoy some of her posts, but she’s either got to dial it back from 11 a little bit or stop making so many multi-paragraph top level rant posts that basically distill to “outgroup is dumb, how can they be so dumb, and they’re probably evil too”. That isn’t really the kind of thing we want posted here prolifically even if the snark is amusing. It isn’t just that the discussion in those specific comment threads turns nasty immediately, it bleeds over into other threads/conversations.

        I wish @dick’s punishment were commuted to 3 months as well (maybe with a short leash upon his return), I viewed his offending posts as somewhat similar to @Matt_M’s (who I will also be glad to have back as probably the conservative leaning poster I was most likely to find myself in agreement with on a wide range of issues).

        If it were me, I would make the 3 month bans one month, and the indefinite bans 3 months and call it a day, but I’m glad something was done to nip this in the bud, I was really not enjoying the tone of the OTs the last few weeks.

  42. Paul Brinkley says:

    Those of you who enjoy Metroidvania games like Hollow Knight should give Supraland a try. The author (seriously, one guy – he took the Unreal 4 engine and put a full game on top, did the music, everything) touts it as pulling from Metroidvania, Portal, and Zelda.

    I managed to beat it without hints – there’s enough hinting in-game to figure everything out. (There was one mechanic that I could have used a bit more reinforcing, though.) It’s especially gratifying to me that features interact to the extent that I can try something that seems new (the coloring machine is especially grand for this), and it just works.

    Supraland 2 is in the works, and my only regret is that I missed the Kickstarter funding window. Woulda loved being a beta tester.

    • Aftagley says:

      I saw screenshots and read reviews of it. Despite the absolutely glowing coverage, I bounced hard off of it purely as a result of aesthetics and didn’t end up getting it. Is the gameplay good enough to where I should still check it out, despite being massively put off by it’s visual design?

      • Paul Brinkley says:

        I don’t know your personal sweet spots in gaming, but I found the gameplay good enough that, like the reviewer on Rock Paper Shotgun, I found myself thinking about the game puzzles even while not playing the game.

        As you’ve probably read, the combat isn’t great; it’s a momentary distraction, not very hard, and not slowing you down too much either. As a result, getting gun and sword powerups are only exciting because you figured out how to reach another chest, not because you can finally defeat that boss you couldn’t beat otherwise. But for me, that was okay; the fun was virtually all in exploring and solving puzzles.

    • Dogeared says:

      Crazy looking stuff! I’ll check it out some more. I’m looking forward to Dying Light 2, I’ve spent more hours than I care to mention playing Dying Light, which is just so well designed that one can play it repeatedly and form different experiences as you might from a game of chess.

  43. Randy M says:

    CS Lewis made the following poetic argument for the divine: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

    Unfortunately for the persuasive power of the statement, I think there’s another explanation that may be more probable.

    If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, it may be that evolution discovered that continual striving the best way keep me alert and stockpile resources while seeking ever more mating opportunities, and thus to transmit my genes, and therefore satisfaction of desires was always only an illusory promise.

    • jermo sapiens says:

      Religiosity seems to be clearly correlated with fertility: here, and here.

      It doesnt mean Lewis was wrong, whatever evolution produces is still the work of the God for those who believe in God.

      • Randy M says:

        My thinking was more about the nature and purpose of desire than the compatibility of evolution and divine creation.
        It’s not logically necessary for a desire to have fulfillment if unfulfilled desires are even more motivating.

    • andhishorse says:

      There isn’t even a need to invoke evolution, only imperfection. Consider the logic of:

      “If I find in my house a phone which no charger in my neighborhood can charge, the most probable explanation is that it was made for another world.”

      First, there is the observation that nothing can satisfy the desire; my version makes it explicit that “nothing” actually means “nothing in the limited set of things to which I have access and have tried”, but Lewis, barring some great and comprehensive cross-cultural survey of which I am unaware, has the same limitation, only it is unstated.

      Second, there is the assumption that the desire is functioning correctly; that there is not a deficit, either unique to the object or common to the object’s design[^1], which simply renders it incapable of satisfaction. This is clearer in the case of a phone, because a phone is something which we generally understand can be broken; desires, too, can be broken or ill-designed, but this is less intuitive.

      [1]: Design here meaning pattern or generalized structure, in a way that does not imply a designer, but only a statistical commonality which can be used to cluster entities into a class.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        [1]: Design here meaning pattern or generalized structure, in a way that does not imply a designer, but only a statistical commonality which can be used to cluster entities into a class.

        Whoa, hold on there. “only a statistical commonality which can be used” seems to be doing unjustified heavy lifting there. Without a concept of forms, how do you know which entities in the material world to cluster? What is the statistical commonality that justifies clustering some of the entities into a set? A steel machete is a knife, a machete’s shape made out of other matter with good cutting properties is still a knife, any steel blade marketed as a knife is also a knife[1]… if you walk past a local hick and see that he’s whittled a very sharp stick <12 inches long, is that a knife?

        [1]This is the point where Crocodile Dundee asserts his subjective judgment as reality-defining.

      • FLWAB says:

        I have to object a bit. Lewis spent much of his life trying to satify the desire and found nothing (this still fits in your metaphor of the neighborhood not having a charger for his phone) but he also searched and found no evidence that anyone who ever felt the desire had found satisfaction for it. I can’t find the exact passage at the moment, but I remember in some of his writing about Joy he said that he found lots of peopel who either spent their whole lives searching for satisfaction (running from one thing to the next, traveling from place to place and relationship to relationship searching for the real thing) or turning to cynicism about the desire and concluding that there is no satisfaction (like an old man who says “Yes, young people do feel that way some times. I did myself until I grew out of it and stopped dreaming of castles in the air!”). Which means you metaphor would be more accurate if Lewis not only could find no charger for his phone in the neighborhood, but no record of anyone having found a charger, despite finding records that many people, perhaps most, have had the same type of phone as him. It is not unreasonable to conclude then, as he did, that the charger must exist (because the phone exists, and needs a charger, and nobody manufactures a phone that needs charging without also designing a charger) but that for some reason it exists somewhere where nobody can get to: out of our world, if you will.

        As you said, a phone is not a perfect analogy. And of course it is possible that some people have found the fulfillment of Lewis’s “Joy” and he just never met them or heard about them. But it doesn’t seem to me that the world if full of fulfilled peopled, but instead the opposite. So it seems more likely to me that either Lewis was right and the fulfillment exists somewhere outside our world, or Randy’s idea is right and there is no fulfillment at all and it is a trick: the phone is a marketing promotion and the charger never existed.

        • Joseph Greenwood says:

          Seconding this. I think the underlying thought experiment is reasonable, in the sense that there’s no logical necessity that a need can be answered, and (per the parent comment) there are plausible reasons that an unsatisfiable need could exist. However,

          First, there is the observation that nothing can satisfy the desire; my version makes it explicit that “nothing” actually means “nothing in the limited set of things to which I have access and have tried”, but Lewis, barring some great and comprehensive cross-cultural survey of which I am unaware, has the same limitation, only it is unstated.

          This seems to me like an isolated demand for rigor. It is true that inductive reasoning not only lacks a definitive proof, but can (in some cases) be mistaken. On the other hand, some ability and willingness to generalize from what is observed to other ‘similar’ cases is critical, not only to the scientific method, but to function in the world at all.

    • FLWAB says:

      As you noted it is a poetic argument, not a logically compelling one. By compelling I mean the literal sense of the word: the argument does not compel the reader to accept a position. There are alternative explanations that could be brought forth. Similarly the moral argument, for instance, is not logically compelling, but seems highly effective.

      I also think it depends on the sort of person you are. Lewis called his pangs of divine desire “Joy” and I often wonder if they are universal pangs or particular to certain people. I know I feel them. I understood exactly what he meant when he described them. The longing that is better than all the satisfactions I have ever known: the sadness that is better than happiness. It hits you suddenly and unexpectedly: you can’t seek it out or capture it, but must let it land on you gently in its own time. It is a hurt better than comfort, a ray of sun breaking through dark clouds that never part. I felt it a week ago when I was hiking and took a turn and suddenly the entire valley opened up before me, full of the bright colors of autumn. And I looked at it and I longed. I couldn’t say what for: the valley was so beautiful that it hurt to look at it, because it reminded me of something I have never seen, and of a place I had never been to.

      So when Lewis writes about Joy, I feel it too. Maybe it is just a twist of mental wiring, preserved by natural selection. If so, how terribly sad. It would be better that the desire point to something somewhere, even if I never find it, then that it points to nothing at all. But given the two options, the only reaction you can have to Joy is either belief (and the hunt for the divine that must follow) or cynicism (the rose is only a common weed, and my mind is only a box of useful cogs assembled by a blind and idiot watchmaker).

      • Randy M says:

        Lewis called his pangs of divine desire “Joy” and I often wonder if they are universal pangs or particular to certain people. I know I feel them. I understood exactly what he meant when he described them.

        Yeah, I get you; this is what I try to describe with words like “wistful” and “melancholy”, except with more positive, hopeful tint.

        But given the two options, the only reaction you can have to Joy is either belief (and the hunt for the divine that must follow) or cynicism (the rose is only a common weed, and my mind is only a box of useful cogs assembled by a blind and idiot watchmaker).

        I’m not sure. Maybe I just don’t feel as strongly generally, but my reaction is more of a “It would be nice… so I will believe it. I hope it is so.”

        And I looked at it and I longed. I couldn’t say what for: the valley was so beautiful that it hurt to look at it, because it reminded me of something I have never seen, and of a place I had never been to.

        The other day, I mentioned here the Tule Elk preserve as a place that lived up to the hype (it was recommended to me here after asking about San Fran vacation sites). Recollecting on it, I view my few hours there with my daughters as one of the best days of my life for bringing this sort of feeling.

        • FLWAB says:

          Maybe I just don’t feel as strongly generally, but my reaction is more of a “It would be nice… so I will believe it. I hope it is so.”

          Though Lewis’s argument does not compel us to believe, it is still has it’s uses. It is a recognition of a fact about reality that has to be taken into account: these desires seem to exist, and there seems to be no fulfilling them. What do we do with this fact? On its own it is not enough to convince anyone of the existence of the supernatural, but taken with other facts that point in the same direction it can add weight to a conclusion. As I believe Chesterton once said (paraphrasing, I couldn’t find the quote) “A man is less convinced of something by five arguments than he is by one argument, one sunset, one book, one letter from a friend, and one song.” If you think the evidence is strongly against the existence of the supernatural, and God in particular, than Lewis’s Joy is just an odd phenomenon that is likely to have a mundane explanation. But if you are like Lewis was, and find oneself more and more convinced that God does exist, then this is one more fact in favor of the conclusion. So it’s more than “It would be nice, so I will believe it” but rather “And here’s another thing! It fits exactly what I would expect to find if God is real.”

          And now that I’ve had time to think about it, I think the evolutionary explanation is very weak. It’s simply another evolutionary “just-so” story: something that could be true, but could just as easily be made up ad-hoc. Yes it is possible that unfulfillable longing has a reproductive benefit, but do we have reason to think so? It’s a bit like saying “God did it.” Well sure, God could have done something, but do we have reason to think He did? An evolutionary explanation seems likely only if we already have reason to think a supernatural explanation is impossible (or unlikely). So again, it is not a compelling argument but I would say that Lewis has the stronger side of the argument compared to an evolutionary explanation. Either way it depends on your priors: if God does not exist than it must be evolution, regardless of how ad-hoc an explanation that is.

          • g says:

            The evolutionary explanation is weak only in the same sense as Lewis’s is. I think you agree, but just to be explicit: If lots of people have an apparently unfulfillable sense of longing, “it could be because actually it will be fulfilled, for a perhaps tiny fraction of them, in some other state of existence after their bodily death” is no less ad hoc than “it could be because a state of longing encourages them to do things that make them more successful reproductively”. In fact, the version of Lewis’s explanation I just gave is no explanation at all (on the face of it the fact that something may be fulfilled later can’t be a cause for its existence now); it needs to be something more like “it could be because a super-powerful being has made it so in order to encourage those people to look beyond the affairs of this universe”, which is even more ad hoc (and also open to the objection that if a super-powerful being wanted to do that then surely there would be more effective ways).

            The main asymmetry here is that Lewis is actually trying to use it as an argument: lots of people have this feeling, therefore there must in fact be some sort of future state or something in which it will be fulfilled for at least some of them. Whereas literally no one is saying “lots of people have this feeling, therefore evolution is real”.

            To invalidate Lewis’s argument, another ad hoc explanation suffices perfectly well.

            In fact I think Lewis’s argument is invalid even without a specific alternative explanation in hand. Longing in general is frequently fulfillable, so nothing very special is needed to explain our ability to feel it; and then all it takes to generate unfulfillable longing is for the wires to get crossed a little. Similarly, it’s not so unusual for people to have sexual desires that can never truly be fulfilled, or the urge to eat things that aren’t (and couldn’t be) nutritious. That doesn’t mean that there’s a future realm in which every fetish or pica will be gloriously realised, it just means that sometimes the wires get crossed a little.

            (Pedantic note: “future” isn’t quite the right word; in much Christian thought that glorious postmortem state is more extratemporal than future. This doesn’t change anything I’ve said above; I’m just acknowledging it to forestall possible nitpicks.)

          • FLWAB says:

            It is important to recognize Lewis’s argument for what it is, and what it is not. It is not a logical proof. It is, however, weak evidence for the supernatural and stronger evidence for Christianity in particular, provided that you are willing to accept the existence of the supernatural. It “fits” what we would expect the world to look like if Christianity is true. Christianity makes many claims and among them is the idea that this world is not our home. It was once perfect, but has become corrupted (the Fall). Man once walked with God, but now is separated from Him by sin. Jesus came to found a kingdom not of this world. Someday this world will be consumed by divine fire (metaphorically, or possibly literally) and will be replaced with a New Earth and a New Jerusalem (again, literally or metaphorically). All this and more points to an idea of separation between man and the divine when the natural state of man should be to be in union with the divine. These doctrines were not invented as a response to the sense of longing Lewis and others have felt (at least not explicitly) but they provide an answer to why those longings exist and why they seem to have no satisfaction in this world. As such they match what the Christian “model” would predict.

            And of course this was very personal for Lewis. He grew up feeling a longing that seemed more intense and important than any other feeling he had ever felt. When he tried to find the satisfaction of that longing he found that everywhere it landed was a dead end or a red herring. As an atheist didn’t know what to do but to set it aside and try to ignore that feeling for years. When he became a theist it began to look as if his longings did have a meaning and a purpose, and when he became a Christian outright they obviously did. Now he could place those desires: he had a framework that could understand them satisfactorily. But it wasn’t his longings that brought him to Christianity; they just confirmed his destination once he was there.

            Whereas literally no one is saying “lots of people have this feeling, therefore evolution is real”.

            True: but it does argue weakly against evolution (or more specifically materialism), insofar as one might reasonably ask “Why would evolution produce in man a longing that cannot be satisfied?” Of course you can provide answers to that question that are not incomprehensible or inconsistent but it does raise the question. It does not look like the sort of thing we would predict that evolution would do if we did not know that the phenomenon already existed.

          • g says:

            One might, indeed, reasonably ask “why would evolution produce an unsatisfiable sense of longing?”. And one might reasonably answer as Randy M does, that it seems plausible that such a sense of longing might provoke behaviours that on balance increase reproductive fitness; or as I do, that it’s obvious enough why evolution would produce a capacity for longing, and that it seems plausible that once you’ve got that various miswirings or misfirings might trigger that sense of longing even in the absence of any way of fulfilling it.

            To whatever extent those answers are as plausible as the answers to “why would God implant in us an unsatisfiable sense of longing?”, there isn’t evidence for theism or against evolution here. I think they are in fact about as plausible, and accordingly I don’t think the existence of unsatisfiable longings is much evidence either way.

            And I think we would, or at least should, have predicted that this sort of thing would happen. For the miswiring-or-misfiring reasons I describe, we should expect unsatisfiable longings, and appetites for things that don’t nourish, and pains that don’t result from any fixable damage to the body, and curiosity about questions we have no way of finding the answers to. And, on the flip side, feelings of satisfaction that don’t arise from the meeting of any actual need, and deliciousness of things that don’t nourish, and pleasures that don’t result from the achievement of anything useful, and feelings of enlightenment not accompanied by any actual increase in ability to navigate the world successfully. Happiness and sadness that come out of nowhere and don’t result from things going well or ill for us. Itches that aren’t the result of insects we could get rid of by scratching. Pick any sort of emotion or feeling, and there should be cases where it arises in the absence of the things it’s usually “for”. And, lo, so far as I can see this does in fact turn out to be true.

  44. crh says:

    I’ve previously been refraining from enforcing the comment policies too hard on people who otherwise produce good content.

    Without expressing an opinion on any of the particular bans that resulted, I’d like to applaud this change in policy. I think it’s very bad for a community when the regulars know they can get away with conduct that would get a newbie banned.

    • quanta413 says:

      I’d like to signal boost this comment. My belief is that even if some valuable commentary was lost, that this will encourage enough of an increase in civility going forward to be worth it.

    • LeSigh says:

      Agreed. Though I do prefer the public warnings to jumping straight to bans. It’s reassuring to see toxicity countered in the same moment that I read it, and I think it can serve as a reminder to all of us that we can do better.

  45. gettin_schwifty says:

    Recently I’ve started working on my abs. I’ve had a low-level disgust with myself for not being able to do a sit-up. I can do many ab exercises without a problem, but the sit-up has always been out of reach. I blame it on gym teachers for letting me BS the exercise by throwing my body up with my back, never engaging my core, but that’s beside the point.

    Would anyone like to share a similar example? I’m talking about specific things being hard to do despite being good at the general thing. For me, it’s being generally fit but not being able to do a sit-up, for you it may be something like good math understanding but being baffled by matrices or something. If your response is “if you can’t do a sit-up then you’re not really in shape,” I would say “fair point.”

    For what it’s worth, the fix seems to be to start in the sat-up position and slowly lean back, repeat over time until you can lay down smoothly. My body starts shaking pretty badly pretty quickly, so it seems I have a long way to go.

    • Aftagley says:

      Sit-up advice: Find something that you can use to brace your feet under (or have someone hold them down). Yes, it’s not as great as doing them normally but it decreases the difficulty just enough to where it feels possible whilst you’re starting out.

    • DragonMilk says:

      Try planks. I have a very bony tailbone and certain surfaces feel like I’m scraping skin off. It’s also much harder to mess up a plank.

      Another thing I do – the pants heuristic. I am determined never to buy new pants and have a pair of what I’ll call “measuring” pants. If they get tight, I know I need to decrease my caloric intake and possibly even exercise. Otherwise, I keep gorging.

      • Randy M says:

        certain surfaces feel like I’m scraping skin off

        Yup, rug burns are the reason laziness doesn’t get to be alone in preventing me from doing sit ups more often.

    • hls2003 says:

      It’s cardio for me. A bunch of body weight exercises that I like to do are limited more by getting winded than by the muscles involved, which has persisted despite trying to do more cardio work. Thus far the advice I’ve gotten is simply to do more of the full-body work and less isolation.

      • FLWAB says:

        I have had a similar problem, and a few years ago I realized I probably have undiagnosed exercise induced asthma. Do you quickly get out of breath when doing cardio? Does the inside of your mouth start to taste a little like blood? Do your lungs burn long before your muscles do? All that happens to me, and as a result I mostly just avoid cardio. But it might be worth seeing a doctor, because if you do have exercise induced asthma they could probably hook you up with medication for that.

        • hls2003 says:

          I don’t think so, but it’s worth a look. I’ll check out the symptoms and see if I have enough to talk to my doctor.

      • Dogeared says:

        Agree with this – forget work outs and repetitions, best thing you can do is go for long walks and then jogs

      • GearRatio says:

        I have this problem. I get gassed afterwards, not during, though. It’s like I do whatever, and then later on my muscles put in the order for the replenishment and I’m suddenly completely winded a minute or so after the exercise itself.

        One of my friends is a competitive bodybuilder, and his recommendation for this is “more weight, less reps”. If you are super winded in a way that keeps you from doing 50 squats, add weight until you are only going to be able to do 5; it doesn’t matter if you get winded if it’s not an endurance thing to begin with.

        My actual lived experience with this is that if you do it every day, it eventually gets better; you get better at the exercise so it gets “cheaper” to do it even if you aren’t stronger overall yet.

        • Jon S says:

          Not relevant for 1 minute after exercise, but for later: your body is able to recover better from endurance exercise if you immediately start to refuel your body after the workout (depending on factors, usually a combination of carbs and protein). I think the same is true for body building with different specifics. Likewise for adequate sleep, etc.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        I’ve come to believe that a lot of my problems with exertion are from being so tense that I never get a deep breath.

        I’ve cleaned my breathing pattern up to some extent, but my habit was to tighten my abdomen when I inhale so that the only thing which could expand was my chest.

        • Paul Brinkley says:

          I’ve come to believe that a lot of my problems with exertion are from being so tense that I never get a deep breath.

          You’re probably not alone. I took a class in ringen (medieval German grappling) a couple years ago, and the first thing my wrestling partner said to me was, “breathe”, and I noticed I was in fact holding my breath while I strained against him. Then I noticed I did it a lot during other exercises, especially jogging. I tuned out the music and just listened to myself breathe, and tripled my jogging distance before feeling winded.

          So for everyone feeling out of breath, do yourself a favor and at least make sure you’re not simply tensing up. It could save you an embarrassing amount of money in doctor visits and meds.

    • sfoil says:

      This is just my personal/anecdotal experience, but I would avoid situps. I suspect that they cause lower back injuries, or at least make minor injuries much worse. I’ve switched to doing various exercises while hanging from a pull-up bar, of which the easiest is probably to touch your knees to your elbows.

      For someone who can’t do a single sit up though, if you’re obese then change your diet to lose weight. Others have had success with using an “ab wheel” and I think planks are an effective exercise, although I don’t really prefer them.

      • Enkidum says:

        I have heard from people I trust that situps should be avoided for exactly the reason that they can injure you. Then again these people were not kineistheologists or physiotherapists. So… looks like this comment wasn’t much use.

      • gettin_schwifty says:

        I don’t think I’ll make sit-ups a regular exercise, but I want be able to knock out a few if I feel like it. I have also heard of the health hazards, I guess it’s more of a pride thing than any particular muscle or aesthetic reason. It would make sense if I were obese, but I’m 6 foot 170 pounds, so (I tell myself) there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to do them.

      • Well... says:

        I heard the solution is to do crunches instead of sit-ups. Crunches are like sit-ups’ more ergonomic sibling. Instead of lifting your whole back off the floor, curl upward from the shoulders, compressing your ab muscles. At full flexion, your shoulder blades should be about 4″ off the floor. Hold that position for a second, then go back down and unflex, retaining control over the motion.

    • FLWAB says:

      I have always had trouble with push ups. I’m not exactly a strong guy, but I can do a lot of exercises with at least minimum competence: chin ups, bench presses, etc. But push ups are my bane. I think the most push ups I’ve ever done in a row is 5, and that’s not for lack of trying. My arms just give out. I’ve never understood it.

      Also this isn’t the case anymore but for the longest time I couldn’t understand why printing more money caused inflation. That is to say, I understood the theory and the principle, but I just couldn’t get over the idea of “Whose actually counting the money? How the heck does a grocer in Alaska know that a mint in Pennsylvania rolled out an extra $1,000,000 dollars?” It took a very long time to realize that nobody needs to count because when salaries go up people buy more stuff, when more stuff gets bought sellers raise prices to meet demand, and viola you have inflation. That bugged me for a long time.

      Also quantum physics. Just the whole idea of a particle being in two different places until observed. I’ve read explainers about how this was discovered, with the double slit experiments and such, but I still don’t get it. Why do we believe this is true? It seems ridiculous on its face but it must have something going for it because all the people smarter than me believe in it.

      • bullseye says:

        Going off completely on a tangent, there’s this one issue in physics that just seems so dumb I can’t believe that physicists actually believe it; the people explaining it to me must be getting something wrong.

        So there’s an experiment where they make two particles. One particle has one property and the other has the opposite property, but they don’t know which is which until they measure one of them. Then they measure the other and of course it has the other property, and this is interpreted to mean that the first particle, upon being measured, communicated its property to other.

        • hls2003 says:

          Not a physicist, and I lack the math to explain it precisely, but what you’re describing as the “of course” answer (i.e. there’s a red marble and a blue marble in the bag, I find the red marble, “of course” I instantly know that the remaining unseen marble is blue) is known as the “hidden variables” explanation, and it appears to be precluded* by experimentally confirmed violations of Bell’s inequality.

          Also, I don’t know if “communicated” its property to the other is quite the right term either – information cannot be transmitted faster than light in this scenario, so if “communication” implies information, that is not the case, as I understand it.

          *Edited to add: Precluded, or extremely constrained as to what the nature of such variables could be.

          • Viliam says:

            You are right. It’s not that “the particles already have the properties, but the physicists don’t know until they measure them”. It’s that before the measurement, the property itself… somehow… wasn’t determined.

            The only thing that was determined was that the two particles will have the opposite property, but which one has which property, that was not.

            As an analogy, we can imagine two enchanted coins. Each one of them is a fair coin; before you flip it, there is no way to tell whether it ends up heads or tails. But the enchantment makes them both provide the opposite values (once; then the enchantment wears off). So you could leave one coin at Earth, take the other one to Mars, agree to flip both of them at the same time… and then by looking at your coin you would also know the result on the other one — instantaneously — faster than the information from the other coin could arrive to you.

            Is this a “faster-than-light communication”? In some sense it is; I know the value of the other coin before the signal from it could have reached me (assuming the other person actually flipped it at the predetermined time). On the other hand, I cannot use this mechanism to actually transmit information; for example, I couldn’t use it to find out what the weather is like on the other planet. All I get is a random number… that is the opposite of the number on the other planet. It would be more proper to say that the information was instantaneously generated at both places, but it wasn’t instantaneously communicated. All we got is “faster-than-light generation of related random numbers”. I suppose it could be useful for cryptography, but you can’t build a phone or a teleport on top of it.

            Now another question is how does the reality itself “communicate the outcome of one coin to the other”. How does reality itself know, when the Earth coin is being flipped, that the Mars coin already landed some way a fraction of second ago (not enough time for the light to get here from Mars), so that the Earth coin must land the opposite way? This is a different question, but the laws of physics we know so far suggest that the speed of light is a limit for reality itself, so it is relevant.

            I have no idea what could be an answer in Copenhagen interpretation. But in many-worlds interpretation, I guess it’s something like this… when you flip the coin on Mars, you create two realities “Mars: head” and “Mars: tails”. If at the same moment you flip the coin on Earth, you also create two realities “Earth: head” and “Earth: tails”. Now what reality has to do is to connect these realities together properly; instead of making all four combinations, to only connect “Mars: head” to “Earth: tails”, and “Mars: tails” to “Earth: head”. This connecting could actually happen at a later moment, when the signals from these two places reach each other. So the reality not only has multiple branches, but those branches are local patches that expand at the speed of light and somehow merge properly with other patches. (As opposed to the idea that many worlds split instantaneously in Newtonian absolute time.) As far as I know, this is not a part of the standard many-worlds interpretation, but could be understood as an extension of it.

          • bullseye says:

            Thank you for your replies. I’m going to go look up Bell’s inequality now.

      • Viliam says:

        I started exercising a lot a few years ago. It is fun seeing how various parts of my body get stronger, and how I can do things I could never do before. It’s like being in Matrix.

        …except for the push-ups. Zero progress there.

        Just the whole idea of a particle being in two different places until observed.

        If you want to get less confused about this, I would suggest to stop using the word “observed”. It sounds like a human eye is somehow the magical component (and then all kind of mumbo jumbo follows), but the actual meaning of this word when used by quantum physicists is something like “having interacted with many other particles”.

        A particle has a distribution of where it is and where it goes. Actually, it is a bit more complicated than this, and complex numbers are involved. When two particles interact, their individual distributions create a join distribution. When zillion particles interact… it’s the same story, but because of the law of large numbers, some patterns are statistically extremely likely to happen. These patterns are known as the classical physics, and because we and everything we interact with is made of zillions of particles, we have the intuition that classical physics is how things should be. But actually, they are not.

        It’s like always rolling zillion dice and observing that their sum follows the bell curve… and concluding that the same must be true for each individual die.

        The particles were never in a fixed place; it’s just difficult to notice because most of their distribution usually is in a very small interval (the size of an atom), and you are too big to notice those rare situations when the particle unexpectedly appears at an unexpected place. But even before quantum physics we already knew there was the thing called radioactive decay, where a particle in an atom nucleus just randomly decides to go away. Also, that electrons in an atom are not literally rotating around the nucleus (because they would gradually lose energy and fall into the nucleus), they just somehow exist an area around it.

        Quantum physics explains these: The electrons cannot fall into the nucleus, because they are not at one place, and when their distribution gets as close to the nucleus as possible… well, that’s what the orbitals are. (Plus some more rules, such as there can be only two electrons in the same place.) The particles disappear from a radioactive nucleus because a part of their distribution goes far outside the nucleus; actually this is true for all atoms, it’s just that for some of them that part of distribution is much larger than for others (i.e. all atoms are “radioactive”, only some of them so slowly that the chain reaction in real life never happens).

        • FLWAB says:

          It just seems so bizarre to me. I guess what I really don’t understand is how people came to such a seemingly ridiculous idea that particles don’t exist in any particular location but rather in probability fields. I’ve read up on the double slit experiment several times and I still don’t get how their results demonstrate the conclusion.

          • Corey says:

            My understanding is that it’s indeed ridiculous, but less so than other known explanations that fit the data.

          • smocc says:

            Here’s my simplest explanation:

            First suppose that the state of an electron is fully described by a probability distribution in position and velocity space. This is the classical physics assumption — we assume that the electron does have a well-defined position, and the distribution represents our uncertainty about its position. The probability distribution you end up when you shoot an electron through one slit is a peak in front of the slit. Call this probability distribution P1(x), where x covers all the different possible places on the screen the electron can hit.

            When you add a second slit classical probability theory suggests that the new probability distribution should be some combination of P1(x) and P1(x-a), the same distribution shifted over a little to account for the second slit. If the electron were equally likely we’d guess that the new distribtuon should be (P1(x)+P1(x-a))/2. The key thing is that the two probability distributions we combine are both positive or zero for every x and when we add them together we get a new distribution that is also positive or zero everywhere.

            But in reality when we add the second slit the resulting distribution of electrons has zeros (dark spots) where neither individual distribution was zero before! Somehow we’ve combined two positive numbers and gotten zero.

            This is the evidence that fully describing the state of the electron requires more information than just probability distributions in position space (including perfect knowledge of the electron position / momentum, which is just a special case of probability distribution). The only solutions that anyone knows to this problem require postulating the existence of a “wavefunction” that, unlike a probabilty distribution, can take on positive and negative (and complex) values. The state of the electron is fully described by the wavefunction, not by the resulting probability distribution.

          • jermo sapiens says:

            The double slit experiment can be performed with a single photon being fired at a time, and you still get an interference pattern. So the only explanation is that photons are interfering with themselves as they (the wave) pass through the two slits. You get similar results with electrons or things that are more commonly thought of as particles.

          • The Nybbler says:

            If this isn’t bizarre enough for you, look up the “delayed choice quantum eraser”.

          • FLWAB says:

            Here’s my simplest explanation:

            First suppose that the state of an electron is fully described by a probability distribution in position and velocity space.

            That genuinely made me snort with laughter. It was just such a whiplash from “simplest” to “probability distribution in position and velocity space.”

            I think I understand what you’re getting at. At least, I understand it a little better. It still doesn’t make sense to me…shouldn’t there be multiple possible explanations as to why two slits results in particles in unexpected patterns? I can only assume that all the other possible explanations have been refuted if the one we ended up with was “the particle doesn’t actually exist in any particular place until it bounces off something.”

          • smocc says:

            shouldn’t there be multiple possible explanations as to why two slits results in particles in unexpected patterns?

            Maybe? One one level, it’s always a question whether there’s some other completely different model that explains all the same stuff as the “right” model. On another level, the actual pattern that you get on the screen really, really, really looks like there’s a wave somewhere. That just leaves the question of what the wave is.

            … “the particle doesn’t actually exist in any particular place until it bounces off something.”

            Let me suggest an alternative phrasing. I like “there are more states for electrons on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Or, less poetically, an electron is always in a state that doesn’t have perfectly defined position in the same way that you can never point to the exact location of an ocean wave. But when you put an electron near an electron-position-detector it forces the electron into a state that has a much better defined position (determined by the resolution of the detection device).

            That doesn’t explain all the weirdness of quantum mechanics, but it might help as a start.

          • FLWAB says:

            Or, less poetically, an electron is always in a state that doesn’t have perfectly defined position in the same way that you can never point to the exact location of an ocean wave.

            Maybe we’re getting a little closer to my crucial point of misunderstanding, because that doesn’t make sense at all to me. Of course I can point to the exact location of an ocean wave. Like literally: I can stand on the shore and say “Look, I’m pointing at the exact location of that ocean wave.” That seems trivially easy.

          • Enkidum says:

            Warning: this is me sounding vastly more confident about what I’m saying than I have any right to. I haven’t taken a physics course since high school.

            Like literally: I can stand on the shore and say “Look, I’m pointing at the exact location of that ocean wave.” That seems trivially easy.

            No. You can point at a general location. But what is the exact location of the wave? Like, down to nanometers? It’s a meaningless question.

            More to the point, what might be an more appropriate example is to think of something like a wave on a guitar string. When I pluck it, where is the wave? The answer is, everywhere along the string, though its magnitude is less as you get further away from the point of plucking.

            Think of the string as all of space, and the electron as a wave that propagates through that space. This is a highly inappropriate analogy for all sorts of reasons that are well above my pay grade (I am not even remotely an expert on this stuff), but it gets to the point at hand: asking “where is the electron” is kind of a bad question.

            Except when it isn’t, which is when you have particle-like behaviour. No one said quantum mechanics was easy.

          • FLWAB says:

            When I pluck it, where is the wave? The answer is, everywhere along the string, though its magnitude is less as you get further away from the point of plucking.

            Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. When I said I could point to the exact location of an ocean wave I was using (and thinking) the world wave in the way most people use it: the peak of amplification at a particular moment in time. As in, here comes one ocean wave. Here comes another one. Oh, that was a big wave! You know, taking each individual peak as one particular wave.

            But (if I’m following) you and smocc are using “wave” to mean the entire pattern of shifting peaks and valleys at the same time, irrespective of the physical medium that wave moves through. I guess it would be impossible to point to a specific place such a wave is.

            On further reflection, I think my biggest problem is that when I think of particles, I think of very small things. Like an atom, but smaller and weirder. But I think quantum mechanics is saying that particles are not discrete things at all. Which I could accept, except apparently they become things after interacting with something an arbitrary amount? I’m confused again.

          • Viliam says:

            But I think quantum mechanics is saying that particles are not discrete things at all. Which I could accept, except apparently they become things after interacting with something an arbitrary amount? I’m confused again.

            Particles are discrete in their number. You can have an electron, you can have two electrons, but you can’t have 1.5 electrons.

            Actually, this is where the word “quantum” comes from. If I remember correctly, someone observed radiation of a perfectly black body with high temperature, and their explanation of the results was something like “energy cannot be divided infinitely; it comes in little packages called photons, and you either get the entire photon, or nothing, but you cannot get half of a photon”. (I am not an expert here.)

            What isn’t discrete is the position and the momentum of the particle. Like, you have one electron, and it’s “mostly here, but also a little bit over there”.

            Okay, what it means for an electron to “be somewhere”? It kinda means that it has a chance to interact with some other thing that is also there. So, the electron that is “mostly here, but also a little bit over there” has a high chance to interact with another thing that is “here”, and a small but nonzero chance to interact with another thing that is “over there”. But not with both of them at the same time! So the electron is not actually stretched between those positions; it rather is “most likely here, and somewhat likely over there”, but talking about probabilities is also not exactly correct, because it becomes weird when we try to add them. Turns out, you need to do the “probability” math using complex numbers to get it right…

            Well, I wanted to address the “discrete” part. The particle itself is discrete (i.e. indivisible), but its position and momentum are not, and even its interactions with other particles happen with certain probability-but-as-a-complex-number.

            So what prevents this all from becoming an utter uncertainty, where anything could be anywhere? That part is called entanglement, and it means… well, let me give you a toy example. Let’s have two particles, called A and B. Each of them can be in the position X or Y. And maybe they interacted with each other, or maybe they didn’t.

            If you do a Cartesian product, you would get 8 combinations: 2 (particle A at X or Y) × 2 (particle B at X or Y) × 2 (interacted, or not interacted). But because interaction happens only when the particles are at the same place, only 4 of these 8 combinations are actually possible: [A at X, B at X, interacted], [A at X, B at Y, didn’t interact], [A at Y, B at X, didn’t interact], [A at Y, B at Y, interacted]. So, as the uncertainty expands the space of possible combinations, entanglement again reduces it somewhat. And each of these 4 combinations has its probability-but-as-a-complex-number. (Okay, I will stop here.)

          • Mark V Anderson says:

            @Viliam

            What isn’t discrete is the position and the momentum of the particle. Like, you have one electron, and it’s “mostly here, but also a little bit over there”.

            That’s a real interesting idea. I’ve never heard quantum physics explained that way before. But it does sound kind of what Enkidum was saying too, that an electron is a wave that is spread out. I’ve always thought of quantum physics as kind of fishy, like when they say that a particle doesn’t really exist in a certain place until it is measured. This concept sounds more coherent to me, that quantum particles really do cause effects over some larger areas of space than they are normally thought of as particles. I am thinking the main difficulty here is how quantum particles are normally modeled as like tiny balls. Maybe a better representation is kind of a force that affects a certain area, and not really like a particle at all, except in that you can count how many of them there are.

          • Enkidum says:

            But (if I’m following) you and smocc are using “wave” to mean the entire pattern of shifting peaks and valleys at the same time, irrespective of the physical medium that wave moves through.

            That’s definitely true for me at least, with the fun complication that “particles” don’t need a physical medium to move through – they are perfectly wavy in vacuums. (You may have read of this being one of the biggest controversies in physics about 1900ish, I believe.) Or, I dunno, maybe in some sense space-time is the medium? I defer to someone who knows what they’re talking about.

            As someone else put it in this thread, you’re probably going to have to relax your definition of what a “thing” is. What Austin called “medium-sized dry goods” are what we’ve based almost all our folk ontologies on, but why should we assume that our parochial experience of such clearly definable, locatable, and discrete objects is something that generalizes to all scales?

            What things like the double-slit experiment clearly show is that these experiences do not generalize. There is no way you can tell a story in which electrons are little billiard balls that makes sense of the results. Whatever the fundamental constituents of reality are made of, it’s not “things”, at least not in the sense that we’re used to “things”. But you get enough of them together, and squint a little, and the collection starts acting fairly thing-like.

        • smocc says:

          Oh, that is a key issue! Here, I made some pictures of different possible wave shapes. Can you tell me the exact position of the wave in each case? Waves

          Hopefully this helps clarify that “exact position of a wave” isn’t a concept that makes sense or is useful. That then extends to the state of an electron.

        • smocc says:

          There’s two ways to proceed:
          1. Decide that you are being two limited with your definition of “thing.” Accept that just because you can’t fully describe it just by giving its position and speed (as you would a tiny ball) it can still be a real thing. Sometimes it is a thing that has a pretty well-defined position, sometimes it is not. That’s okay, “things” are under no obligation to behave the way we expect them to.

          2. Get into the Bohmian interpretation. Bohm’s interpretation says that electrons really are tiny balls that always have exact position, and there is also a thing called the wavefunction. The wavefunction ripples like a wave and “pushes” electrons around like little balls floating on the ocean. The “spread out” behavior of electrons is due to tiny uncertainties in their initial position magnified by interaction with the wavefunction. Additionally, the wavefunction always knows exactly where every electron is at all times and responds to their motion instantaneously.

          I have tried to make 1 sound appealing, but you have noticed something I have been eliding: electrons are not exactly like ocean waves. When you shoot an electron-wave at a particle detector it tends to suddenly contract to a different wave shape localized at only one spot on the detector. Ocean waves don’t do that.

          Quantum is weird, there’s no way around it. But the first step involves adding more things to what you count as “real thing.” Either accept the wave-like nature of electrons being their true nature, or accept the existence of the Bohmian Wavefunction. Or invent a way to explain the interference pattern in the double slit experiment and why electrons don’t collapse into the nucleus and why atomic spectra are discrete while only imagining point-like electrons.

          • littskad says:

            It’s very confusing that there were three prominent physicists who made important early contributions to quantum mechanics named Born, Bohr, and Bohm. Is it possible that they were just different states of the same person?

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        Very tentative, but could there be something wrong with your hand position and/or how you apply force?

        • FLWAB says:

          Oh probably, but beats me how to do it right. 4 years of high school gym teachers never seemed to have a problem with my form, just my lack of success. And it seemed like my peers had no trouble. Then again, one of the failure modes I am prone to is assuming that there is some secret knowledge I am missing whenever I run into an obstacle. So I guess I’ve taught myself to be suspicious of the idea that I’m just missing information, since that’s what I tend to assume anyway and I have usually been wrong.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        Here’s one that’s sort of in the category and rather crazy-making: The fourth exercise in The Five Tibetans. (4:07)

        I have trouble getting much height, and it doesn’t feel good. My theory was that my arms are short compared to my torso and my shoulders are tight… but I did one good one and I have no idea how.

      • Gerry Quinn says:

        Look up the two slit experiment (e.g. Wikipedia article on ‘double slit experiment). It shows how the interference patterns we expect of waves are found to apply also to the things that seem like pretty pure particles, and goes on to explain the implications of that – which are that individual particles seem to be able to ‘sample’ multiple independent paths through an apparatus.

        • FLWAB says:

          Yeah, no, I’ve read up on the two slit experiment. I just don’t “get” why the conclusions follow logically from the experimental results.

          My mental process is roughly like this when reading about the experiment:

          Wiki: So they shot particles through a slit and measured where they ended up.

          Me: Got it.

          Wiki: And then they added another slit and expected the pattern to be basically the same but double.

          Me: I’m following you.

          Wiki: But it wasn’t: the particles were not ending up in places where they used to end up with just one slit.

          Me: That does seem surprising.

          Wiki: Which means that particles don’t actually exist in any particular location but rather in a field of potential possible location, and these possibilities collapse into a reality only at the point in which the particle interacts with the sensor.

          Me: You’ve lost me.

          Wiki: Well you see, the results only make sense if the particle was interfering with itself.

          Me: Ok.

          Wiki: So the particle must exist nowhere in particular but instead in a field of potential locations until the waveform is collapsed.

          Me: But how can it interfere with itself when it doesn’t exist?

          Wiki: It does exist, just not in any particular location.

          Me: Everything I know exists exists in a particular location. That’s kind of how I know it exists: if it isn’t anywhere, then it doesn’t exist.

          Wiki: No, you see, it does exist, just as a probability field.

          Me: I don’t follow.

          Repeat ad infinitum.

          • I think the problem is that your (and my) intuition about what things are like is based on large objects moving slowly. It turns out that large objects moving slowly are a special case, and the rules that apply to them do not apply more generally. Objects do not, in the general case, have a precise position. It’s just that the imprecision for large objects, such as grains of sand, is too small to notice.

            Do you find relativity as puzzling as QMech? For the obvious example, consider the addition of velocities. If you are on a train moving at 40 mph and walk forward at 4 mph, your velocity relative to the ground is 44 mph–that seems obvious and necessary. But if you are on a spaceship moving at .75c and you run forwards at .5c (admittedly difficult), your speed relative to the outside world is not 1.25c. Velocities don’t add.

          • Viliam says:

            Objects do not, in the general case, have a precise position. It’s just that the imprecision for large objects, such as grains of sand, is too small to notice.

            Specifically, the imprecision is usually about the size of an atom. Which is not a coincidence, but rather the size of atoms happened as a result of this imprecision — that is what prevents the particles in the atom from getting even closer to each other.

          • FLWAB says:

            Do you find relativity as puzzling as QMech?

            As a matter of fact, I used to. Relativity was as equally baffling to me as quantum mechanics. The theory seemed ridiculous on its face, but it must be true since everyone smarter than me agrees with it. Plus GPS works. And no matter what I read on the subject it still didn’t make sense. The thing that finally gave me an “Aha!” moment was this post on the subject. It finally made me realize that if we accept that nothing can go faster than light, and motion is always measured relative to another point over time, then the only way your speed could stay constant regardless of the observers relative position was if the time value of the equation was different depending on the observer. That made me pretty happy when it finally clicked together.

            I think some things are just extremely difficult to understand if you can’t do the math. Relativity only made sense because that guy was able to dumb it down enough to be close to algebra.

            I do appreciate all the comments by the way. I still don’t get it, but I appreciate the effort. And by “get it” I mean “understand internally without having to really completely and totally on taking it on authority.”

    • Well... says:

      Every exercise I do at the gym, I’ve gotten stronger at and been able to gradually increase the resistance.

      Except bench press. No matter how regularly I do it, the amount of weight I can bench press — both my 1RM and my regular amount to do a full set — goes down and down almost every time I try. It leaves me angry and depressed.

      And I do mean the bench press in particular, done with the barbell and plate weights on either end. My dumbbell press is fine, and I can press heavier dumbbells now, in the same motion, than I ever could before.

      • Nornagest says:

        Odd. I have trouble building up my OHP, but bench press has never been an issue for me.

        How often do you bench, and what other exercises do you do targeting the same muscles? I’ve been doing 5/3/1 and hitting bench on OHP days for 5×10 @ about 55%, which seems adequate.

        • mitv150 says:

          I believe this is not uncommon. In my mind, strict press (e.g., overhead press), is the most difficult of the major lifts.

          I suspect that the reason for this is that there is less “slack” in your strength for this lift. By this I mean two things: 1) failing a strict press is not traumatic and it is therefore easier to work closer to our strength limit; 2) strict press doesn’t feel heavy until you are pretty close to your working limit.

          When we begin a lifting cycle, a portion of our weight increases are due to true strength increases and a portion are due to simply taking up the “slack” as we get closer to our current working limit. Because of the two items above, any strength cycle for strict press starts closer to our working limit and thus we reach failure earlier and feel as if its harder to make progress.

          That’s just my theory.

        • Well... says:

          I’m near the end of having taken a month off, but I was doing a split routine, with one day devoted entirely to the chest group. I was doing dumbbell presses flat, inclined, and declined, and then also dumbbell flyes — usually with a slight incline, though I’d switch up the exact angle from week to week. As I said, I was able to increase the weight of those dumbbells fairly steadily.

          I didn’t do barbell bench presses all that often — maybe once every month or two. And each time I did them, even though I was in the midst of increasing my resistance for dumbbell press — my barbell bench press kept having to get lighter and lighter for me to complete even one rep. It usually ended with my angrily shaking my head and cursing under by breath as I reracked the plates.

      • Cliff says:

        That sounds basically impossible as you present it. Dumbbell press is confounding because there are so many little muscles involved in balancing. Do you ever do cable flys? Like bench press they primarily work the pectorals (although bench press also works triceps- flys shoulders/biceps)

      • gbdub says:

        Is it really that surprising that you are not improving at an exercise you only do once a month? Swap out dumbbell press for bench for a couple months and see if the issue goes away.

        When you bench press to failure, which muscles give out? Which ones are most exhausted the day after? What about on dumbbell presses?

        Theory: your all dumbbell routine is not effectively training the muscles that are actually limiting your bench. I would guess that your dumbbell workout is doing a good job of activating and training the smaller muscles in your arms that are critical for balancing and stabilizing a dumbbell one handed. It also, of course, doesn’t allow one weaker arm to cheat. If these muscles are your limiter for the dumbbell press, you could be strengthening them without doing much for your actual chest. But barbell bench press isolates your pectorals more, and if that’s your failure point…. short version you may have strong arms but a relatively weak chest.

    • quanta413 says:

      If your response is “if you can’t do a sit-up then you’re not really in shape,” I would say “fair point.”

      Holy cow! you’re psychic.

      More seriously you sound like you’ve got the right mindset. There’s no point in worrying about anything other than improving from wherever you are now. Comparing yourself to others is a mug’s game. I’m still trying to get used to running about as fast as would be needed to pass the state fitness standards set when I was in high school.

      I’d second the recommendations above about having someone hold your feet. I also like your lean back idea. You can combine the two by using one of those sit up benches or something to imitate it. Then you won’t need a friend to hold your feet and the leaning back can be a bit harder depending on the angle.

  46. GreatColdDistance says:

    There’s a common failure mode where people who feel the need to complain will speak out, but those who are happy with things will stay silent as “I agree with the consensus” is a boring thing to say.

    So I feel the need to register that I agree with the bans above. The lengths of ban feel excessive, but that’s a side effect of Scott not having much time to police the comments I suspect. It’s difficult, because each banned user has brought meaningfully good, enlightening content that has opened my mind of some significant issues, but they also consistently seem to violate the comment policy on a fairly regular basis. Also, before complaining about bans, please actually read the comment policy.

    Unfortunately, hostile snark begets hostile snark, and if you cut certain users slack because they contribute to the overall conversation their tone will set the norm for others who come to this blog to comment. The conversation drifts towards the lowest common denominator.

    It really sucks because users like Desi have a unique style that adds a lot to the comments, and that style involves a certain amount of abrasion. I almost think that such users would be better off starting their own blogs where they can run (relatively) wild with their own style, because while a little bit of snark can make comments much more interesting, Scott has the right to run his comment section according to the comment policy posted.

    It is also important to note that bans aren’t necessarily a moral judgement. A comment can be perfectly fair and valid, and the commenter a good person, but simply be not the kind of thing that is appropriate under the rules of a given space.

    • souleater says:

      I see where you’re coming from with the bans being justified, But considering that “True” and “Necessary” are to a certain extent in the eye of the beholder, A perma-ban seems to me to be a permanent solution to what could have been a temporary problem.

      • GreatColdDistance says:

        Very true! This is a really tough problem. All I can say is that at least for CH, I noted them making statements which violated comment policy far more often than has been cited here.

        • “True” has an important ambiguity–does it mean true in reality or true in the belief of the poster? One of the linked examples for one of the bans was a statement which I am pretty sure was false, but suspect the poster believed true. Does that justify it?

          • EchoChaos says:

            Does that justify it?

            I strongly think it does. Otherwise we get all wound up in comparing the quality of sources and fighting there.

            But this is Scott’s sandbox, so his rule on that is more important than my thoughts.

          • liate says:

            Well, according to the fifth paragraph of the comments policy page, true seems to mean more-or-less “uncontroversially true”:

            Recognizing that nobody can be totally sure what is or isn’t true, if you want to say something that might not be true – anything controversial, speculative, or highly opinionated – then you had better make sure it is both kind and necessary.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            It means true in reality; “don’t lie” is not a very high bar. Getting “wound up in comparing the quality of sources” is exactly what people should be doing. The policy is supposed to be stringent: if you make an unkind or unnecessary comment that is also untrue that violates it, even you believe it’s true and even if that’s not an unreasonable thing to do.

          • Bamboozle says:

            I don’t think it does. Isn’t rational discussion largely about comparing sources for things? If not then making sure it’s kind or necessary first seems like the other option

          • DinoNerd says:

            I think there’s a kind of “reasonable person” test implicit here.

            Crackpots shouldn’t get credit for “true” when posting beliefs that are ridiculous to most, no matter how sincerely they believe them.

            People who aren’t specialists should get credit for “true” if they repeat something that’s in fact over simplified or out of date – at least until someone with specialized knowledge informs them.

            But I’m not sure where the boundaries should be. I suspect it will always be a judgment call.

          • Garrett says:

            Crackpots shouldn’t get credit for “true” when posting beliefs that are ridiculous to most, no matter how sincerely they believe them.

            A general way to turn something from contentious to “true” is to speak from an individualized perspective. It’s the difference between “blue is the best color” and “I think blue is the best color”. At that point either the claim is true or the poster is intentionally lying because there is nobody else who is able to speak to their own internal state.
            It also has the benefit of increasing civility. The first is generalizing and normative. The second is usually not.

          • Randy M says:

            A general way to turn something from contentious to “true” is to speak from an individualized perspective. It’s the difference between “blue is the best color” and “I think blue is the best color”.

            That’s a little weaselly though.
            “I think ideology X is corrosive to public decency and should be opposed in every instance.”
            “Dude, where’s your evidence for that?”
            “Evidence that I was thinking it?”

        • GreatColdDistance says:

          Reading the policy, I would interpret the requirement of truth to mean that either it has to be uncontroversially true, or you have to back yourself up with solid evidence. If you want to say something that isn’t kind or isn’t necessary, it should either be undeniably true or you should show your work on how you got there.

          I may believe any number of things, but if they aren’t common beliefs and I can’t prove them, they don’t meet the test. Note that it is still possible to post things which fail this “Truth” requirement, as long as they are kind and necessary. This seems reasonable to me.

          • albatross11 says:

            I think this standard for truth is so high nobody can meet it. How about plausible speculation based on currently available data? If someone tells me there’s no God, do I get to demand that they shut up about it until they can *prove* God’s nonexistence?

          • Nick says:

            Plausible speculation based on currently available data or writing on the assumption that God does or doesn’t exist are perfectly fine. It’s when you do so while at the same time chucking out “kind” or “necessary” that you have a problem.

          • Randy M says:

            Good point. True should be a strict standard, because other wise it frees people to be unkind or derail threads. (When starting a top level post in the open thread, I think you are granted latitude with necessary for free, too).

          • jgr314 says:

            @albatross11
            If I were allowed to negotiate for the non-theist side, I’d say, “sure.” My guess is that no one on the other side will be convinced by an argument of the form “Because God, therefore..” or “Because no God, therefore.”

            In contrast, I think it should be allowed for someone to explain their own conclusions in a related form: “Because I believe/don’t X, therefore I take action/believe ….”

      • baconbits9 says:

        The problem isn’t necessarily ‘poster x is posting badly’, it is ‘there is always some number of posters posting badly’. The problem is broad behavior that grows out of individuals behavior.

    • scherzando says:

      For similar reasons, I’ll note that I agree this set of bans is basically reasonable. (I’m glad that Deiseach’s is only temporary, though, and hope she’ll return to commenting eventually.)

      I am admittedly a) a liberal, and b) mostly a lurker and a very infrequent commenter, though, so take with whatever grains of salt you wish.

    • Nancy Lebovitz says:

      A blog for people who were banned from ssc might be entertaining.

      In order to not incentivize people to write ban-worthy posts here, I suggest that a consensus among the original members would be enough to allow people in who weren’t banned.

      • Randy M says:

        I don’t think that ever turns out well.
        The Motte sub-reddit is already a thread for people who want to break certain rules (against excessive CW topics).
        There was once a conservative blog called little green footballs that switched to a liberal blog around the time of the Obama admin. Basically it was run by a moderate who was supportive of the war on terror who got a bit more liberal and was opposed to all the other conservative positions being discussed in his comments. In the course of a year or so there were dozens or hundred of bannings (some of which clearly intentionally provoked). Two off-shoot forums resulted. I don’t know how long they lasted, but that’s not a very good way to select members, even if a there were some very good commenters in that pool of banned folks, for all the reasons Scott has described in that post about witches and free speech and what not.

      • Paul Brinkley says:

        A blog for people who were banned from ssc might be entertaining.

        For comparison, I’ll note that there’s a subreddit for people who were kicked off /r/TheMotte. I checked it out a few times, and found it very unserious. The name of that offshoot alone encourages unseriousness. An abattoir of ranting.

        I won’t say you can never have an intelligent forum formed as a counterpoint to another, but I will say that the very method of formation would appear to make it very unlikely.

        • The Nybbler says:

          There’s actually two such subreddits, CultureWarRoundup and the other one. Neither is restricted to those kicked off the Motte, however, and the other one is pretty explicit about being not serious. The main problem with CWR is that most of those there basically agree on culture war matters (which isn’t conducive to discussion), and those that don’t are mostly just there to stir shit up (which also isn’t conducive to good discussion). That may improve as moderation at the Motte gets worse.

  47. mingyuan says:

    Someone under the name Sortition posted a link on the last Classified Thread (back in April) to a book of humanist poetry they wrote. I read it and really liked it, and I’m considering using it in a secular solstice event I’m running this year. If Sortition or anyone who knows them is reading this, I’d love to get in contact!

  48. Randy M says:

    I want to make a partial (let’s say, oh, 30%) retraction to an overly long argument I had in the comments of a post two and a half years ago.

    I was given the book “Not your parents’ offering plate” to read as a part of our church stewardship committee (don’t all fall over yourselves from shock at my immense gravitas. You too could go places with a tolerable appreciation of spreadsheets and a free night once a month!). It’s by a former pastor turned consultant for fund raising primarily for churches, and in the beginning he talks about successful fund raising campaigns by non-profits, such as a new building at a college or a hospital seeking funding and how they contrast with typical requests for funds from churches–at least struggling ones–which, perhaps ironically, tend to be the drier approach of giving numbers and asking for help in a straightforward way. For churches this probably stems more from a desire to be honest and transparent than to promote rational discourse, but mostly it’s probably naivete.

    What the author argues, pretty convincingly given what we know about human nature, is that those kinds of appeals don’t work compared with anecdotes–preferably with photogenic moppets–demonstrating success in the mission of the organization.
    But this is not as manipulative as I was framing the Refugee Assistance Project’s pitch (providing they are true anecdotes, of course). People–normal people, anyway, EA types may be excepted here, maybe not–want to know what you want to accomplish and whether or not you can. They do not care about your budget numbers, how efficient you are, what your logistics look like.

    Now, I still think this approach is a-rational in as much as it is promoting a mode of knowledge that doesn’t give as accurate an impression of the world as, say, a carefully constructed chart. But it’s irrational not to use it, at least in large part, if it is successful, and it could be done in an honest way.

    • quanta413 says:

      I think this depends on a means/end distinction. On the one hand, it’s bad to exploit emotions in order to extract money from people. On the other hand, almost no one really acts like a utilitarian, so almost the only way to fund any good but charitable cause is going to involve “anecdotes-preferably with photogenic moppets” as you put it. The other strategy is hooking a very rich donor, but very rich donors appear to largely choose their projects based upon what’s already popular anyways. It’s like you’re selling people the ability to feel good about themselves in order to actually do some good. Which isn’t wrong as long as you’re not lying. They want you to do some good with their money; you go do good. Everything in the world operates on some level of trust and ignorance anyways, so that hardly makes fundraising unique.

      It reminds me of a post by Greg Cochran reviewing the book “The Germ of Laziness” about the eradication of hookworm in the U.S. Although rather than photogenic moppets, they apparently carried around some dead roundworms in a bottle which they called hookworms so that people would be more impressed by the eradication of hookworm in their town.

  49. sarth says:

    I’m absolutely baffled by the first two bans. Didn’t want to put in the time to micro assess the rest.

    What is going on? What is wrong with those comments? I genuinely can’t see it and it makes me wonder if there’s some gaping hole in my ability to assess communication accurately, or if Scott is just kinda being a scaredy-cat.

    • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

      Look at the first two linked comments by the first two people. In terms of technicalities, neither is kind or necessary. In terms of the actual reasoning, both fail to be these quite gratuitously: both are provocative snark without any substantive content.

      • axiomsofdominion says:

        Pretty much what I was going to say. Dick particularly was clearly not intended to add anything of substance to the conversation but was just being nasty/snarky to the participants.

    • RalMirrorAd says:

      Looking at the first Ban: Yes, more often than not there were reasoned arguments in the writing but it had to be saturated with sarcasm and the kind of tone that usually encourages poor quality responses.

      There are plenty of people historically who don’t want to hear factual statements irrespective of how politely the writer tries to put things, (I won’t give examples because this is the visible open thread) but I don’t believe SA is one of them.

      The second one it’s also a case of lots of uncessary sarcasm [and less argument]

  50. Nancy Lebovitz says:

    I’ve been having less fun at ssc, and I’m not sure what the problem is– it isn’t so much a matter of difficult posters, though the comments tend to be more rightwing than I like, it’s a loss of bounce and sparkle. The big problem isn’t too much bad, it’s insufficient good.

    Perhaps the problem is just people running out of new ideas. Perhaps the lightning comes down in a place but it doesn’t stay there.

    Perhaps it’s realizing that becoming more rational doesn’t do as much good as one might have hoped– once you’re fairly rational, the improvements come from more conscientiousness and more knowledge.

    • Lambert says:

      Reversion to the mean+Sturgeon’s law means that nothing isn’t crap for a long time/

    • albatross11 says:

      I also think the general nature of public discussions has gotten worse over the last few years. The rhetoric is hyped up to 11, Orange Man Bad is in the white house, and a bunch of hungry ambitious companies have figured out that they can monetize outrage. That’s probably bleeding over into SSC, as I think it also bled over into the Making Light comment threads over time.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        albatross11, I don’t think those specific problems have hit ssc especially hard, but it’s possible people who don’t want to get caught up in the emotional maelstrom are tired and depressed.

        Making Light seems to have settled down into a reasonably good moderate traffic place.

      • Nornagest says:

        Making Light got intolerably political for me as early as, like, 2009? Whenever RaceFail happened, anyway. I gave up on it about the time I discovered Less Wrong.

      • Mark Atwood says:

        Since when was Making Light ever good?

        It arguably is the exact precise pinpoint epicenter of how and when and where Everything Went Wrong. It was the spark of the match that became Racefail. It was the first reenforced rebout of online SJ. Making Light was created because someone with some small amount of community cred (they had less than they thought, and also thought they deserved more than they had) thought “its really fun to have a forum where geeky people chat with each other, but only if those Bad People who have Bad Thoughts that make The People That I Like have the Feel Bads are excluded by mockery”.

        • Nancy Lebovitz says:

          Making Light is a matter of taste– so is here, and I’m generally not going to post links from one at the other.

          However, I’ll put up with a fair amount (possibly too much) if people are interesting.

    • baconbits9 says:

      Perhaps the problem is just people running out of new ideas. Perhaps the lightning comes down in a place but it doesn’t stay there.

      Or perhaps you have been here long enough that there are no ‘old ideas’ left that are new to you, plus you know some posters well enough that you can see where they are going sooner and so the post itself sounds less new.

    • axiomsofdominion says:

      I have had the feeling that Scott is making fewer interesting, to me, posts, but it is also possible I caught up on the backlog. I only check here once or twice a week now and even then I’m usually not met with new interesting content. The culture war to me hasn’t really gotten much worse, so I concur with Nancy that it is less about being put off and more about being not sucked in.

      I’ve also become more and more certain of my belief in the essential statistical nature of the world. That to me explains most of why rationality isn’t as valuable as it should be, or rather its very useful on the societal level to have more and more rational members but the individual benefit of becoming more rational is largely subject to extreme diminishing returns. Random factors are simply too significant.

      For instance I was given a reference to get me an interview at Google, and this was primarily based on luck in connecting with someone from an unrelated activity I was engaged in. I declined because I know myself well enough to know I would not succeed at Google but it certainly greatly expanded my feeling of the lack of structure in human affairs. Nearly anyone here could have engaged successfully in the actions I engaged in to impress the person who gave me the reference if they had the opportunity.

      • Majuscule says:

        Funny, I’ve been rather enjoying the posts lately. I think this might be because there have been several about history, which is my thing. I know a lot of other folks might favor the posts about AI and futurism, which I still find interesting but less so. One of my favorite parts of this blog is the analysis of methodologies behind scientific studies, something I always wonder about but am not quantitatively equipped to do myself. History doesn’t lend itself to that too well, so maybe you’re missing some of the great back-and-forth from the many science-minded readers who comment on those posts? I do wonder if the kind of bold and eloquent social analysis that put this blog on the map simply doesn’t bear repeating when you get it so right the first time. I also wonder if blazing new trails in that area might feel a bit fraught given the exhausting-sounding scrutiny Scott apparently received last year. In any case, I’m hoping this place can last and that we can keep it the rare corner of the internet with enough “ambient civility” to examine genuinely fraught scientific and social questions.

        • axiomsofdominion says:

          I love history but the specific analysis both by book authors and by Scott recently do nothing for me. The theories involved to me are both unprovable and uninteresting.

    • Freddie deBoer says:

      I’m afraid this is a common dynamic/arc to internet communities.

    • Viliam says:

      I think that a political debate becomes boring after some time when you realize that no one is actually updating on any information.

      Initially, you have some hopes that perhaps there is some important X that you are missing that could change your view, or perhaps the other side didn’t hear Y sufficiently well explained and you are going to do the job. What actually happens is that the other side gives you the same old unconvincing arguments, and remains unimpressed by your arguments. After enough time has passed, you realize it is very unlikely that an exception from this should happen right now. Both listening and explaining feel futile. Some people react by becoming aggressive, other people just give up.

      (No specific examples because this is a CW-free thread.)

      • Plumber says:

        @Viliam

        “…No specific examples because this is a CW-free thread…”

        On specific policies have my opinions changed much from discussions with folks from “the other side’?

        I really don’t know, I suspect my mind ‘ret-cons’ many opinions so I think I always had them, and I know I’ve been registered to different political parties than I am now in the past so I must’ve had different political opinions than I do now, but I have few memories, and fewer strong memories of them.

        What the more in-deph discussions at SSC have given me is a better sense of the common humanity I share with my ‘opponents’, they have different ideas and priorities, but not entirely different ways of thinking, and getting a sense of the different priorities makes me optimistic that there’s room for compromises that me and some commenters that support the other Party would both prefer to the status quo (if we were both legislators that is!), ‘course that’s not all commenters on ‘their’ or ‘my’ side, but I’ll take what excusrs for optimism I can find.

        • Enkidum says:

          What the more in-deph discussions at SSC have given me is a better sense of the common humanity I share with my ‘opponents’, they have different ideas and priorities, but not entirely different ways of thinking

          +1

        • Randy M says:

          I’ve definitely changed my mind, but not necessarily enough to switch positions. But on a number of issues I’ve gone from firm supporter to realizing I don’t really know much and there’s theories either way, so shrug.

      • ana53294 says:

        I think that a political debate becomes boring after some time when you realize that no one is actually updating on any information.

        My parents had quite a few disagreements on politics. My mom used to say some things, which my father rejected outright. Years later, I frequently hear him saying the things my mother used to say, and he thinks they are his idea.

        I have changed my opinion on issues. But never as a result of one conversation; it’s more like, once I see really good arguments on the other side, a seed of doubt is planted; I then investigate. And usually it takes me years to change on topics I consider important for my self-identification. Topics I don’t care about, I change faster.

        If you track posters over the years, won’t you see changes? Won’t some of them now say completely different things to what they used to say years ago?

        • Mark V Anderson says:

          I have changed my opinion on issues. But never as a result of one conversation; it’s more like, once I see really good arguments on the other side, a seed of doubt is planted; I then investigate. And usually it takes me years to change on topics I consider important for my self-identification. Topics I don’t care about, I change faster.

          Yes yes. This is how I think a rational person decides things. If it’s something important that one has thought about before, how could one conversation change one’s mind?

          I very rarely see new ideas I hadn’t seen before. But every once in a while I come across something where I think “I never thought of it that way before.” (By the way, several times this has been on SSC). But even then I never change my mind immediately, at least not a dramatic change. It’s like a Schelling Fence as applied to my own mind. I had the previous opinion in the first place for a reason — it takes some effort and thought to overcome the previous belief.

    • ilikekittycat says:

      Perhaps it’s realizing that becoming more rational doesn’t do as much good as one might have hoped– once you’re fairly rational, the improvements come from more conscientiousness and more knowledge.

      At least ten or twelve times I have seen a tribal argument spiral out of control on an open thread here, and people (different people every time, too) come to the conclusion “well maybe we shouldn’t start the first post in an argument with rhetoric like “the [position]/all [position]-ists are doing or saying X with a broad brush because it leads to this bitter tribal feuding.” Every time there is broad consensus the diagnosis is correct, and many times there are even slightly better solutions or innovations on the matter, should everyone adopt them. And literally every single time no behavior changes in the next open thread.

      Some plurality of the rationalist commentariat you describe here reminds me of nothing quite so much as last supper syndrome in the very obese, where every single day they intellectually recognize how necessary a diet is, decide they deserve a little treat because they’re starting for real for real on Monday, and then spend every single non-Monday day of their life thereafter binging in preparation for Monday, when they’re gonna give it up – constant insight, constant reflection, zero application

  51. Majuscule says:

    It looks like most of these bans involve tone more than content, which personally I favor. I’ve openly mused about how my ideal blog would reserve the right to police the hell out of people’s tone. I’ve gotten into several arguments over the years about the potential detriment of snark and other instances of lashing out that seem minor taken individually, but which inevitably drag down the level of discussion, usually without propelling it anywhere useful. It certainly feels good and can be entertaining, but I’ve defended the idea that it is a hazard. I applaud the commenters cited who have responded for seeming genuinely concerned and open to constructive criticism.

    Speaking of, does anyone know what happened to the comments section on Marginal Revolution? I checked back recently after not looking for a few years, and for the few posts I looked at it seemed like 90% of the comments were just undiluted content-free snark. I recall it wasn’t always like that, and I’m not sure how Tyler Cowen runs his moderation policy, but it felt like a cautionary tale.

    • albatross11 says:

      Marginal Revolution’s comment threads have been mostly taken over by obsessive crazies and trolls–it used to be possible to have interesting discussions there, but now having a serious discussion there is like having a serious discussion in a back alley while a couple crazy homeless guys scream back at the little voices.

      • baconbits9 says:

        I have found MR’s moderation to be the most bizarre on the internet. At first it appears as if there is no moderation outside of spam deleting, but then you hear about people getting posts deleted, and also see Cowen replying sometimes so he is reading some number of them. It seems as if this is an intentionally curated comment section making it all the more bizarre.

        • albatross11 says:

          I’ve had inoffensive posts deleted on Marginal Revolution in threads where one of the local obsessive crazies had posted a bunch of profane rants under the names of other posters. As best I can tell, this must have been some kind of malfunction, because any moderation at all would have deleted those.

          It’s a pity, because MR comment threads used to be pretty good, and now they’re a complete sewer.

    • Urstoff says:

      Tyler doesn’t have a moderation policy as far as I can tell. MR comments are the poster child for the bad driving out the god.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        the poster child for the bad driving out the god.

        This has got to be a heresy, most likely a Zoroastrian one.

      • Andaro says:

        He did delete my comment when I pointed out his hypocrisy in defending “free speech” while demanding porn be banned by law. In fairness, I should also add I honestly evaluated the value of his work, and Ross Douthat’s work, as being less valuable than porn. Which is simply true from my perspective. That comment was gone in no time flat.

    • Lasagna says:

      I came to Tyler’s blog late, so I never experienced the comment section as any different than it is now – depressing, hateful, boring. You know, the internet. Keep SSC vibrant!! This is it, people. The only place left that still exemplifies the web we were promised.

      I miss The Dish.

  52. DragonMilk says:

    Anyone know of an easy way to search if the plot of a story already exists?

    I think my capricious “original” ideas are probably unwittingly derivative, and my current one goes as follows:

    Single guy with normal desk job at insurance company has lucid dreams that always end when he goes to sleep in the dream, and vice versa. Turns out it’s always the same dream and it continues where it leaves off (different time/place), and along the way he realizes his real life friends are in-dream enemies, his parents are in-dream kids, boss in-dream servants, etc.

    Slowly discovers the counterparts are having dreams from their POVs and would revolve around the dreaming is affecting his “real”-world relationships and eventually starts questioning if the dreams are real or everything is but a dream…

    • souleater says:

      If I were you I would go to literature.stackexchange.com and put in a question about story identification as if your plot were a real story you were trying to identify. You should get all sorts of responses for similar stories.

      I’m not sure that that is entirely ethical, and that’s definitely not the intended purpose of the site, but I bet you would get a useful answer.

      • b_jonas says:

        Sorry, but no. We specifically disallow open-ended speculative id questions, we allow only ones desribing a single story you’ve read. You can ask that sort of thing in the chatrooms associated with the site though.

        • souleater says:

          Yup, I realize open-ended speculative id questions are disallowed. I’m saying that if DragonMilk wanted to he/she could frame it as a specific story, to skirt that restriction.

          I read a book in the early 2010s about [SLIGHTLY VAGUE DESCRIPTION] This book was around the length of a novel or novella, written in english, and I think it takes place in the US, but could be a different western nation. the setting was very modern, so it was definitely written within the last 20 years or so.

          To the extent its unethical, its the low level unethical that people constantly engage in, probably happens all the time on that site, and nobody gets hurt. I’ll leave it to DragonMilks discretion if that’s something they feel comfortable with doing.

    • Snickering Citadel says:

      Maybe TVtropes can help? Here is a page about somewhat similar ideas:https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SchrodingersButterfly

    • Randy M says:

      Anyone know of an easy way to search if the plot of a story already exists?

      The easy way I know is to simply assume it does. Especially if you expand the scope to one-off twilight zone or black mirror style television series or collections of sci-fi short stories or magazines.

      Fortunately from a writers point of view, it doesn’t matter. The execution will make the difference, and the details are bound to differ from what’s been done before enough to prove compelling if well done.

      FWIW (not that much) I don’t know of anything that closely matches that description.

    • SnapDragon says:

      Most likely anything’s been done, but it might not have been done well. So don’t (unreasonably) despair. 🙂 Your plot reminds me a little of the short-lived TV series Awake, featuring somebody living two closely-related lives that alternate any time he goes to sleep. There are differences in the details, of course.

    • Well... says:

      Echoing SnapDragon, I would say the awake/dreaming divide has been well explored in fiction, and so probably someone somewhere has done something like this — but I don’t think it should stop you from pursuing the story idea if you think you can write it well.

      Personally, I think the “what if our waking life is actually a dream and our dreams are actually reality” trope is boring because in my experience dreams are not just like another life you go to while you’re sleeping, but rather they are fundamentally different kinds of experiences from waking reality. Dreams are so disjointed and strange yet powerful and vivid that, to me anyway, they are interesting enough on their own without having to play around with their ontological status. BUT, like I said, if you can do something interesting and of quality with this trope, I’d still probably find it enjoyable to read. I liked the movie “Inception”, not because I thought the premise was particularly profound or original but because the movie was compelling and well-made. (Though it isn’t one I’d rush out and buy on DVD so I could watch it over and over again.)

      • Randy M says:

        Man, though, I had a weird experience last weekend where I woke up crying from a dream. And, like I said up thread, I’m not the most emotional person, but it was so vivid and depressing I was crying for five minutes after (which sounds like not much, but you know how quickly dreams fade). Even now describing it makes me shudder.

        • Well... says:

          Yes, I’ve had a rare few dreams that were both vivid and “realist” (for lack of a better term). I’ve also had some that were extremely emotionally powerful, to where I could easily still feel it after I woke up and recall the feeling days or years later, as you did. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a dream that’s all three though.

    • aristides says:

      The TV show Awake had a similar premise, but it was cancelled after one season, so there is still plenty to explore. I say write it, everything is a little derivative

  53. Nabil ad Dajjal says:

    Free Deiseach and Conrad Honcho! Deiseach has a really interesting perspective and while she’s definitely crotchety that’s a lot better than being smarmy like many non-banned posters. Conrad is also a good poster and he increases my productivity at work by posting responses that I would have otherwise made, thus saving me the effort of writing in culture war threads and letting me focus on vapid media criticism.

    On a completely unrelated topic, I finally saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood this weekend. I suspect that this movie was a lot more enjoyable for Quentin Tarantino to make than it was for me to watch. It’s not bad, it’s just incredibly indulgent. The film would probably have benefited from being an hour and a half shorter.

    Anyway, the most interesting thing for me was how much the film relies on the audience walking into the theater with a detailed knowledge of the Manson Family and their crimes. I watched it with my ABC girlfriend, and while I could more-or-less follow the plot she was completely lost because she had no idea who any of these hippies were or what they were doing. Given that it’s been sixty years since Sharon Tate was murdered, that’s a hell of a gamble that the moviegoing audience would know or care enough to build tension towards the climax.

    • albatross11 says:

      ABC?

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        If I recall aright from his past references to her, “American-Born Chinese.”

      • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

        As LMC said it’s a shorthand for Chinese-American, typically second-generation.

        I brought it up in this case because my boomer parents referenced Charles Manson a lot so it was part of the cultural milieu I was exposed to. Her parents were still in China at the time and she didn’t really get that much exposure to that stuff growing up (she had never even heard the song Helter Skelter, much less knowing about the related murders).

        • Nick says:

          Are you going to do a “you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000” and introduce her to some of the milieu now? Kyle Smith said in his review that this is the only film about the events, but you could show her more of the music or something.

          Then again, killers are really depressing compared to the Diet Coke and Mentos thing. 🙁

          • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

            I sort of did, although more of a summary than a super-detailed play-by-play.

            One nice thing about our relationship is that even within Americana we’ve managed to have very little overlap in what we’ve seen before. I got to show her Star Wars for the first time, and she showed me the Godfather for the first time.

            Plus obviously she’s more plugged into Chinese culture than I am, while I’ve been actively trying to dig into my German cultural heritage. So I get to see Red Cliff and she gets to see Goodbye Lenin.

          • Randy M says:

            @Nabil ad Dajjal

            Plus obviously she’s more plugged into Chinese culture than I am, while I’ve been actively trying to dig into my German cultural heritage.

            Do you find any culture clashes between western and Chinese outlooks, or is the Chinese part too distant due to the American birth?
            My story features a European biologist who marries a Chinese scholar (… in Space!), but I’m not expert on the latter so it’s of some particular curiosity to me.

          • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

            Eh I mean somewhat?

            She’s fairly Americanized, hard to avoid when you grow up here your whole life, plus I’ve dated mainland Chinese girls before so it’s not like I’m totally unfamiliar with the culture.

            The real thing that throws us off is manners. In China there’s no such thing as saying Gesundheit when someone sneezes. Western table manners and even the place settings / utensils can be intimidating, especially at the high end with e.g. different glasses for red and white wine or figuring out which spoon is the soup spoon. At the same time, outside of eating Chinese culture is way more formal or overtly status-focused than American culture e.g. the expectation that I would call her parents Mr and Mrs LastName. Also my more Midwestern politeness (IRL I’m much more courteous) bumps up against Chinese bluntness, standard guess vs ask culture confusion.

            The biggest cultural argument we had was about changing her maiden name when we get married. It’s just not a thing that’s really done in Chinese culture and comes off as insulting to the in-laws, whereas here obviously it’s still customary even if it’s more controversial. Ultimately the question of whose tradition we would follow was moot because changing her name would be bad for her academic career.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            The biggest cultural argument we had was about changing her maiden names in marriage. It’s just not a thing that’s really done in Chinese culture and comes off as insulting, whereas here obviously it’s still customary even if it’s more controversial.

            Chinese culture is still patriarchal under the Communist Dynasty, right (in that Industrial Era way where everyone works for wages, women aren’t homemakers)? Interesting how an old custom of a much more feminist culture can still come off as an insult.

          • Randy M says:

            At the same time, outside of eating Chinese culture is way more formal or overtly status-focused than American culture e.g. the expectation that I would call her parents Mr and Mrs LastName. Also my more Midwestern politeness (IRL I’m much more courteous) bumps up against Chinese bluntness, standard guess vs ask culture confusion.

            This is useful actually. Conveying a focus on manners yet blunt speech is a bit alien. Western manners are more hedging, using euphemisms and prizing feelings over status, I think.

    • Aftagley says:

      I watched it with my ABC girlfriend, and while I could more-or-less follow the plot she was completely lost because she had no idea who any of these hippies were or what they were doing.

      I don’t know what an ABC GF is, but this scenario applied strongly to me. I don’t know/care about Manson, Tate or her husband. Before this I could honestly say that I’d loved ever movie made by Tarantino, but this flick just seemed like a succession of random events without any overarching narrative structure. I don’t know if prior knowledge of the Manson Family would have helped.

      • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

        I think that it would have helped, but only somewhat.

        In real life, the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate and the other people at the house in a deliberately over-the-top way, including writing on the walls with blood (Tex’s line “make it look witchy”). And at the time of the murders, both of the movie’s protagonists are placed in positions where they shouldn’t be able to notice the murders much less prevent them from happening. So for the last thirty minutes or so of the movie you’re supposed to be waiting for the murders to happen right up until the climax.

        The problem is that the hour or so of Manson build-up is spread out over two and a half hours of meandering exploration of the 1950s-1960’s Hollywood film and television scene. So even if you’re pretty clued in and actually anticipating what’s going to happen it’s easy to forget or lose interest in it.

    • FrankistGeorgist says:

      I do think it squandered my goodwill by being so long. I also hate westerns, so even spending time in that world (and to what end?) annoyed me. I knew some of the Manson-Tate story, but it was decidedly not fresh in my mind when I saw the film.

      I sort of get it as something in the vein of Inglorious Basterds, a cinema fairy tale where fantasy, history, and film meld and become myth, but all I could think at the end was “so?”. Indulgent indeed.

      There’s nothing in the movie’s play space more interesting than the Manson family actually living on an old movie set – that’s peak California Orphism gone rotten in the most delicious way. Fictionalizing it only detracts.

      I will also give it points for depicting male friendship/platonic love in a way I find really lacking in the modern world. Sadly I didn’t care for either character involved.

    • hls2003 says:

      I think Conrad is one of the only folks – or at least prolific commenters – who will full-throatedly defend Trumpism in this space. There are other political conservatives, cultural conservatives, and religious conservatives (and lots of libertarians), but few if any other unabashed pro-Trumpers. That perspective is one I would miss very much, and which I think is a legitimate loss in this comments section specifically because it’s so rare here but common in 40+% of the country. There isn’t a progressive bubble in the comments by any means, but there seems a very hard-shelled and nigh impenetrable anti-Trump bubble. It was useful to see that interrogated by Conrad Honcho.

      • EchoChaos says:

        This is a good point. Rare viewpoints articulated well are incredibly valuable.

        I will have to step up my defense of Trumpism.

        • Aftagley says:

          I was about to say. I don’t think you or Matt M are 100% on team Trump, but you are both definitely on the train. I think there’s an anon# floating around that also reliably pipes up in Trump’s defense.

      • Plumber says:

        @hls2003 says:

        “I think Conrad is one of the only folks – or at least prolific commenters – who will full-throatedly defend Trumpism in this space…”

        Agreed, IRL I encounter “I’m against abortion” and “I hate paying taxes” Republicans, but vocally full Trump agenda supporters are rare (such are bubbles) so some insight to thst point of view was informative.

      • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

        Perhaps Trumpism is rare here in comparison to people on the right-libertarian to libertarian-libertarian spectrum. But it’s definitely not rare in comparison to say full-throated HR-C support, which I have seen literally never.

        • axiomsofdominion says:

          I can defend Warren but not HRC. I could only defend HRC in the context of Trump, I can’t make her stand on her own. HRC support has virtually no crossover with the grey tribe demographics of this site.

        • JonathanD says:

          I mean, I liked her, I voted for her in the primary and the general, and genuinely think she would have been a good president. But her career is over. She’s yesterday’s news. How often has she been discussed at all since the Nov 2016, other than to bag on her for losing?

          Of course, I rarely comment, so even if she has come up I might not have said anything.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            Fair enough, consider my views about the number of HRC-primary-voting commenters updated. But as you say, you are not a particularly prolific commenter.

          • Aftagley says:

            For whatever it’s worth, add me to the list. I thought she was perfectly fine. Not the best candidate ever to run, but she would have done a decent job.

            I think if, minus 2016, she was running now she’d easily out compete all but one or two candidates in the primary on pure qualifications/competence.

            Edit: it wasn’t clear from my writing, but above I’m referring to the 2020 primary. I think HRC was the best 2016 candidate by a mile.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            I was intending to point at people who would’ve e.g. enthusiastically voted for her in the primary rather than people who would’ve voted for as a generic Democrat (or generic not-Trump) in the general; I’m sure there are several of the latter around.

          • Aftagley says:

            Well, I did vote for her enthusiastically in the 2016 primary. Just, like JonathanD said, it’s hard to be excited about someone whose career is over.

          • cassander says:

            >I mean, I liked her, I voted for her in the primary and the general, and genuinely think she would have been a good president.

            Why? I mean this question sincerely. I can understand preferring her to Trump, but actually liking her? She was been prominent national positions for over 2 decades, what has she actually accomplished besides self promotion? She made an absolute mess of the one thing she was put in charge of as first lady, did nothing of substance as a senator, lost a primary election to barack Obama, destroyed Libya for no purpose as Secretary of State, and than lost an election to the least popular presidential candidate in history. She has consistently demonstrated poor managerial ability, and descriptions of the mismanagement of her campaign are strikingly similar to those of her mismanagement of healthcare. Now, all of those descriptions were written after the fact, so perhaps they can’t be trusted, but I fail to see what anyone could like about someone who has so consistently been so unimpressive.

          • axiomsofdominion says:

            I mean if you took out 2016 of course she’d out compete most people. She’d be in exactly the same situation as she was in 2016. Using her behind the scenes power to keep most people out of the race.

          • JonathanD says:

            @cassander,

            Look, a big reason I don’t post a lot is time, and spending 20 min defending Hillary Clinton’s career just doesn’t seem like an interesting use of 20 min. Briefly, her career looks different when you more or less agree with her. For one example, losing the healthcare fight in the early 90s was rough, with ugly generational consequences, but I don’t hold being on the right side, thinking big, and losing, against her in the way you seem to think I should.

            I could go fisking through your list of her faults and find similar answers to your other points, but you wouldn’t find them convincing and I’ve only got 40 min of lunch left.

            Broadly, Hillary’s brand was an experienced, knowledgeable bureaucrat who would keep incrementally moving the country along in the direction I want it to go. I want strong social safety nets, family leave, national daycare, better healthcare (cheaper, easy, truly universal), better infrastructure, mostly free trade, strong environmental regulations, a good enough military but for God’s sake let’s cut it, and so on. And I want it carefully. I don’t want to blow everything up and start over, I want to tune things, see the results, and tune again.

            I’m sure you won’t agree with the characterization, but that was HRC to me, and I really, really wish she had won. I think if she’d managed to eek out the first term people would have liked her, and she’d have gotten the second in a walk.

          • jgr314 says:

            @JonathanD
            To give you a little emotional return on the time you invested, thanks for even those comments. It helped me understand an actively pro-HRC perspective and was pleasant to read.

          • cassander says:

            @JonathanD

            For one example, losing the healthcare fight in the early 90s was rough, with ugly generational consequences, but I don’t hold being on the right side, thinking big, and losing, against her in the way you seem to think I should.

            Have you read any histories of that fight? She didn’t lose because she thought big. She lost because she had no idea what she was doing, didn’t know how to run her staff, and alienated so many people that ought to have been her allies that it almost seems deliberate. If you truly think that losing that fight had awful, generational consequences, then why on earth would you want to give power someone with a demonstrated record of failure? You’ll note that I’ve said nothing about the advisability of the policies she was pursuing, my critique is solely confined to the inept way that she went about pursuing them. I find it quite telling that her husband, who actually has a record as an effective politician, never put her in charge of anything again.

            I understand that, as generic democrat, she is preferable very preferable to trump, or any republican. That’s a given, and I tend to feel the same way about generic republican. But I separate that preference from my evaluation of the individual candidate. I wanted a republican to win in 2008, but that didn’t make me think more highly of John McCain’s presidential timber. I didn’t think that McCain was going to rack of a lot of wins for team red, but at least he wasn’t going to be trying to push the needle in the other direction.

            And for what it’s worth, military spending fell 15% between 2011 and 2016. Those are actual cuts in the budget from year to year, not the reductions against the baseline that pass as “cuts” in most budgetary debates. For god sake let’s cut it is not really a sensible attitude towards the part of the budget that, by far, gets the most scrutiny.

        • albatross11 says:

          I think Trump’s image and style (and probably substance, but I don’t really know that) is largely anti-intellectal. (Note: that doesn’t mean non-intelligent.). That is, Trump is willing to say something like “these experts/elites don’t know what they’re talking about and we should do something different and commonsense that I can see.” (Except that he’ll usually tweet it in some way that causes two or three angry media firestorms over Orange Man Bad that swamp any discussion of the actual policy he’s changing.)

          I think most of us on SSC tend to be intellectuals and like at least some kinds of expert. I mean, I think a lot of elites/experts are overpromoted and/or self-dealing, but I still tend to value scholarship and research and knowledge and such, whereas I think Trump appeals to a very long line of anti-intellectualism in American politics. (Often, IMO, anti-intellectualism is driven by intellectuals/elites being massively out of touch and pushing really bad policies.).

          Now, sometimes, the anti-intellectualism is really about a different set of elites with different intellectual commitments, expressed in a good-ole-boy accent for public support (Clinton and Bush, Jr). Sometimes, it’s a whole different intellectual framework invading/challenging the dominant one. (Reagan/Thatcher, perhaps Trump but I don’t think so).

          Elites in finance, politics, government, and academia utterly screwed the pooch w.r.t. the Iraq War and the 2008 meltdown, and largely saw to it that their friends were sheltered from any consequences for their failures. They’ve overseen and sometimes shoved through social and economic changes that have hurt a lot of people. They’ve gotten us into a bunch of wars that are really hard to justify in terms of American interests or well-being. This really undermined confidence in those elites. Obama came to power with a mandate to overrule the elites, but that’s not remotely his style–he’s an intellectual by nature himself.

          And so, here’s Trump. His inclination is the slag on intellectuals and scientists and subject-matter experts, and we’re mostly a community of intellectuals and scientists and subject-matter experts. His whole lifetime suggests that he massively values image over substance, and that he doesn’t care very much about understanding things or getting the facts straight. This is almost tailor-made to repel most SSC types, including those on the right.

          • S_J says:

            Elites in finance, politics, government, and academia utterly screwed the pooch …, and largely saw to it that their friends were sheltered from any consequences for their failures… Obama came to power with a mandate to overrule the elites, but that’s not remotely his style–he’s an intellectual by nature himself.

            And so, here’s Trump. His inclination is the slag on intellectuals and scientists and subject-matter experts, and we’re mostly a community of intellectuals and scientists and subject-matter experts. His whole lifetime suggests that he massively values image over substance, and that he doesn’t care very much about understanding things or getting the facts straight. This is almost tailor-made to repel most SSC types, including those on the right.

            In hopes of signal-boosting an idea linked to this statement:

            Obama and Trump have more similarities in their electoral success than is commonly admitted.

            Both Obama and Trump appeal to populists within their party; both depend heavily on a core of people who like their style of speech; both generate tremendous (and unthinking) revulsion among their core political enemies.

            Both rely heavily on image, and were willing to do so whether or not there was any substance to the image.

            This is not to detract from the differences between Trump and Obama: one of them has the grace and tact of a huckster at a carnival…the other has a college-professor’s ability to make anything sound profound.

            The success of both is a sign of the weakness of the cultural elites.

          • axiomsofdominion says:

            As a leftist my view is that Obama was so popular for 2 reasons. One, the whole Bush war drama and two, here was a man the elites could support and pat themselves on the back for even though on the substance he and Clinton and Edwards were basically identical. The media boost that this produced gave him his stratospheric boost, beating McCain by 10 million votes. The establishment adored Obama to the shock of no one he was therefore super popular. Elite propaganda is stupendously powerful in politics.

          • cassander says:

            @axiomsofdominion says:

            As a leftist my view is that Obama was so popular for 2 reasons. One, the whole Bush war drama and two, here was a man the elites could support and pat themselves on the back for even though on the substance he and Clinton and Edwards were basically identical.

            Not just elites. In his own words, Obama had a gift for “Serv[ing] as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” Go back to 2008 and look at opinion columns endorsing him. Most of them hit the same note, a vast swathe of opinions, but everyone essentially arguing “Trust me, deep down he’s one of us.”

            Of course, once he’s president and had to actually make decisions and do things, he could no longer be all things to all people, and the gloss began to wear off almost immediately.

          • A Definite Beta Guy says:

            Elites in finance, politics, government, and academia utterly screwed the pooch w.r.t. the Iraq War and the 2008 meltdown, and largely saw to it that their friends were sheltered from any consequences for their failures.

            What “elites”? George W Bush was remembered as “Is Our Children Learning” and “Bush Lied, People Died.” The popular conception was that Bush was corrupt, incompetent rube that took pleasure in being an idiot, and that was the country was so bad. That leaving aside the people who believed (and still believe) that Bush essentially lied us into Iraq, and the non-trivial fraction of Americans that still think Bush knew about 9/11.

            Obama wasn’t anti-elite. He was the epitome of the elite. He was supposed to be the West Wing made flesh. He was supposed to be racial and intellectual vindication after the long Bush years, when the US become Gilelad and was run by Halliburton. That’s why he was so insanely popular. The only Presidents even remotely comparable that early on were JFK and Eisenhower, and Eisenhower freakin’ beat the Nazis.

        • John Schilling says:

          There is such a thing as a “full-throated HRC supporter”? OK, I kid, a little, but I think her political persona wasn’t the sort to generate fervent and unconditional support. She was the skilled and competent politician people trusted to win elections and implement the DNC platform in a way that e.g. Bernie wouldn’t, and she was certainly the lesser evil in any election involving Trump. But she had obvious shortfalls in likeability and arrogance, and she didn’t have a personal brand or ideology distinct from the Democratic party in general.

          Except, of course, for “first woman president ever!”, which yeah, definitely a real and sometimes mind-killingly real thing in the world at large. But in the tiny subset of the world that is going to chose to post regularly on SSC, I’d expect about zero or one “full-throated HRC supporter” in about the same way I’d expect either zero or one hardcore Trumpist.

          Pragmatic, qualified HRC supporters who voted for her in the 2016 primary and general election and would tell you so when it was relevant but not shout it from the rooftops at every opportunity, we’ve got plenty of those. As JD notes, she hasn’t been relevant and you haven’t heard from them in almost three years.

          • BBA says:

            Hillary stans are out there – to me the central example is a suburban mom who uses phrases like “wine o’clock” – but I can’t imagine many of them have interest in places like this. Whenever I express a dissenting opinion in their presence, they dismiss me as a Russian bot.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @BBA: Ah, people not smart enough to have learned the difference between Arctic Russians and Antarctic penguins.

      • Eigengrau says:

        I think perhaps it is just nigh-impossible to be an unabashed pro-Trumper without violating the true/kind/necessary rules.

        Maybe I don’t live in the same anti-Trump bubble as the rest of you, but I do not find that viewpoint rare, nor particularly valuable. I come here for the high sanity waterline. Consistency check: do you yearn for the perspective of Young Earth Creationists? They also comprise ~40% of the United States. Do you feel like you need to step up your defense of Young Earth Creationism on SSC due to lack of representation?

        • EchoChaos says:

          Smart, engaged and intellectual YECs are really useful to engage with.

          My father is a Young Earth Creationist (I am not) and he has multiple advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. He is one of the smartest people I have ever engaged with, and I work in a very advanced field.

          • axiomsofdominion says:

            But is his YEC useful or is it orthogonal? I could easily imagine a brilliant YEC but I would be far less interested in engaging them on that topic than on the kinds of topics I would engage any brilliant person on.

          • EchoChaos says:

            @axiomsofdominion

            I am not sure I understand the question. He is a professional pastor and theologian, so it is definitely useful to him in a career sense, and he genuinely believes it.

          • Corey says:

            I found the effect of YEC varies by field.

            I work in an ordinary programming job (not any kind of religious organization) and some of my immediate coworkers are YEC. This doesn’t cause problems with work stuff because everything’s modern – nobody argues that C++ virtual destructors were invented before the Fall of Man but not useful until afterwards. They’re perfectly capable programmers.

            But discussing anything pre-written-history is right out. So is biology. Health stuff (e.g. should you eat artificial sweeteners) is biology-adjacent enough to sometimes be problematic. Astrophysics is problematic, etc. It leaves us without much to talk about outside of work but I’m OK with that.

          • Randy M says:

            It leaves us without much to talk about outside of work but I’m OK with that.

            You must be quite envious of other people who spend their time bonding over astrophysics and prehistory.
            😉

          • EchoChaos says:

            Added to clarify,

            My father’s Ph.D. is in a hard science where the age of the earth is directly applicable (hydrology). He became a pastor later in life.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          I feel no intellectual duty to step up my defense of that demographic in their absence, but if we did have to do the talk.origins mental dance, I think it would be more useful than getting to mindlessly accept evo-by-natural-selection.

        • Lasagna says:

          I think it would be valuable for you (and me) to hear the perspective of Young Earth Creationists, yes.

          My grandfather was the wisest, most intellectually curious man I’ve ever known. Immigrated from Sicily at 8, served in the infantry in WW2 then college on the GI Bill for engineering. He and I spent years translating Dante’s Inferno because he loved it, and he felt that he could bring something interesting to the process. And kind – everyone loved my grandfather, and he was fun to (and worth) listening to. Smart, smart as could be.

          He also believed firmly in transubstantiation. You could be a jerk and make fun of him if you like, I guess, but since you didn’t know him – or, I suspect, know many of the 40% of the population who are Young Earth Creationists – it might be beneficial for you to speak with them before writing them off as not having anything useful to add to SSC conversations.

          • EchoChaos says:

            +1

          • albatross11 says:

            Transubstantiation isn’t (and can’t be) contradicted by observable facts. Young-Earth creationism contradicts observable facts all over the place. Some kind of subtle version of creationism where God occasionally runs a divine eugenics program to get things to come out the way He wants probably won’t ever contradict observable facts, but anything close to literal truth of Genesis can’t be made to fit with known facts short of our world being a divine practical joke designed to fool us. (Basically the Good Omens solution.)

            When we’re talking about questions about observable reality, actual observable reality trumps even the most elegant and intelligent argument.

            Any number of smart people can come up with interesting and clever arguments for things that are observably false. I think it’s worth listening to them on factual questions only to the extent that they might shine some light on something new, not when they’re just very dedicated to some factually incorrect view.

          • axiomsofdominion says:

            All of their value is separate from YEC or TS, though. And it has virtually no impact on daily life.

            It is very common for people separate ideas indoctrinated into their minds before they were cognitively mature from any other aspect of their life.

            People who believe these obviously ridiculous things, like believers in astrology or Hellenistic paganism are valuable for their views on many things. They are not valuable for their perspective on the things they believe that are obviously ridiculous.

        • RalMirrorAd says:

          I rate the “importance” of an ideaspace by the practical and contemporary relevance it has, and that usually has to do with what’s being put into law. For instance, flat-earthism seems to have had something of a revival in recent years. Despite this i don’t see much value in arguing for or against the shape of the earth, until these ideas credibly threaten to negatively affect, say, aerospace engineers, or space exploration, I just don’t see the value of it.

          In contrast, you have a trade-war so-called between the US and China, you also have very fierce battles between factions in the government and factions outside of the government both trying to prevent/facilitate the flow of foreign citizens into the united states for temporary or permanent settlement.

          The closest thing to practical import creatonism has is the battle of what gets taught in schools.

          ____________

        • J Mann says:

          I would be interested in hearing from a thoughtful YEC proponent, particularly if we were discussing YEC theories. (It would be more interesting than just hearing someone else agree with me).

          If we’re going to discuss Trump, it’s nice to have a steelman to keep me honest.

        • Radu Floricica says:

          Ask the same question in a CW thread and I’ll answer.
          Much agree that it’s a rare viewpoint. And rare viewpoints are precious – I asked here and was answered about reasons for brexit, and it changed my pov about it.

        • albatross11 says:

          Eigengrau:

          Trump’s rhetorical style is unkind, but I don’t know that it’s notably worse than, say, Al Franken’s. The policy issues he champions (to the extent he champions issues) are pretty bog-standard ones we should be able to discuss in the context of normal politics.

        • Eigengrau says:

          I should clarify. Do you yearn for the perspective of YEC on the subject of the age of the earth?. I should think not, particularly if they are derailing otherwise productive conversations about e.g. biology.

          Maybe it would be better if we banned individuals from discussing particular subjects in which they’ve displayed a lack of reasonableness, but that could be too onerous to moderate.

          I found CH’s posts to be much less reasonable and less kind than the typical SSC user, regardless of political orientation. Heck, I probably even created this account just to argue with him. I will not miss his perspectives. There are many other places on the internet I can go to hear pro-Trump arguments.

          • Corey says:

            Derailment is an important factor, and makes YEC a good example of when it’s appropriate to ban posters for content.

            This depends on your forum of course, but if you want to have productive discussions about biology, endless “what use is half an eye?” is just going to suck time and energy and drive people away. It basically becomes a form of trolling (even if the proponents sincerely believe it and aren’t trying to troll).

            It’s not for nothing that the central example (including in Scott’s post on the subject) of unproductive low-level argument is “Checkmate atheists”.

            Yes you create a bubble (of “evolutionists” in this case) but that can be worth the sacrifice in order to not have the same pointless arguments over and over.

        • I think perhaps it is just nigh-impossible to be an unabashed pro-Trumper without violating the true/kind/necessary rules.

          Someone earlier quoted Scott to the effect that the “true” part meant true beyond any reasonable dispute. By that standard, it is pretty nearly impossible to be an unabashed supporter of any presidential candidate, president, or high profile member of Congress, without violating that part, since all such people take positions most of which can reasonably be disagreed with. That assumes that “unabashed supporter” means someone who supports the politician’s positions in his comments, not just someone commenting who tells us that he is an unabashed supporter of the candidate.

          But I don’t see why one could not be an unabashed pro-Trumper (or pro-Sanders or even AOC for that matter) while being both kind and only saying things that were necessary. And things that were true, such as “Trump didn’t say X, he said Y,” but were not supporting the actual positions.

          • aristides says:

            I was going to comment something similar to the this, so I’ll add that I know we severalTrump supporters that supported him in the primary that would never comment something that wasn’t necessary and kind. The main difference isn’t they support trumps policies but not his persona. They considered Trump the best republican because they considered him the only candidate that would even trying to build the wall.

        • The Nybbler says:

          This, IMO, is the exact sort of sneering dismissal that lowers the quality of discussion, both by doing so itself and by provoking responses in kind.

        • Garrett says:

          do you yearn for the perspective of Young Earth Creationists

          Maybe? What I’ve found is that far too often the positions which are mocked and/or ignored are weak-man or straw-man versions of actual positions which might have better argumentation behind them. This is closely related to nut-picking where the positions presented on TV/radio/Facebook are those held by the least-informed supporters. Given the level of derision around young-earth creationism, I would at least be interested in an intellectually-robust argument in its favor.

          • I agree.

            My example would be the global warming controversy, but an explanation would probably carry us into CW territory.

          • EchoChaos says:

            Put a pin in it. I’ll try to get a summary version from my father to put into the next thread. Again, I’m not a YEC, but I know some very smart ones.

          • FLWAB says:

            I really didn’t want to get into this but…

            I have been (still am?) a YEC, and I got pretty deep into the arguments on an intellectual level. A few years ago I came to the conclusion that while I hadn’t stopped believing in YEC, advocating for it was making me look like a nut. It was not helpful, in other words. Plus I found some arguments that, while they didn’t convince me that YEC was wrong, increased my doubts. So now I don’t talk about it. If next open thread people do want to talk about it I can throw in my two cents.

          • Corey says:

            There’s an entire intellectual edifice, look up “baramin” for example (the study of how the limited number of species on the Ark grew into the number of species observed today).

            But I think, to people who think an ideology is obviously ridiculous, then the arguments will look like strawmen even if they’re not. Take the idea that the “firmament” mentioned in Genesis was a sea covering the sky, which blocked out cosmic rays, allowing the long lifespans mentioned in the Bible. Is this “mainstream”? Widely believed? A caricature? We have no way of knowing (you can’t know what’s mainstream in an outgroup).

            You can ask outgroup members, but they may not be representative. And looking around the Internet, it’s easy to nutpick without realizing you’re doing so (it’s a big world, and for any possible position you can find a bunch of adherents).

      • Jack says:

        40%+ of those who voted or get polled voted for Trump or say they like him. The banned commenter you name perhaps has this in common with those people (I do not have a considered view on their politics because I don’t follow all these threads and remember people’s names). That doesn’t mean that Honcho represents the perspective of “Trumpists”. I imagine supporters of Trump have many different perspectives, and the kind of hyper-rationalized Trumpism you get in certain internet spaces is probably not common. The conservative-populist perspectives I sometimes read here feel more like an evolved response to analytical challenges to conservative politics, rather than the conservative politics itself or any of its underlying material or affective bases.

      • I don’t think you can say that 40+% of the country are “unabashed pro-Trumpers.” They just think he’s less crazy than the other side:

        https://www.kqed.org/futureofyou/440851/can-you-really-know-that-a-3-year-old-is-transgender

        It’s hard to think of anyone who was supportive of Trump at the begging of his campaign who is still a believer in the n-dimensional chess theory today. Almost all of them have either condemned him outright or maintain he’s simply better than the alternative. I will probably end up voting for him, but it won’t be with a drop of enthusiasm.

    • Incurian says:

      I liked the movie a lot, but I was somewhat familiar with the Manson stuff and I grew up in the area.

    • James says:

      Moderate Once Upon a Time spoilers.

      I saw it last week. I didn’t know anything about the Tate murders (though I did know who Charles Manson is, obviously, and a little about the Manson Family). I didn’t realise the creepy hippie community was the Manson Family until the credits rolled—I took them as being a fictional creepy hippie community, vaguely referencing the Manson Family, but also in a more general way emblematic of the Heavy Shit that was in the air at the time. (Actually, I sorta preferred it that way, tbh.) I had also been rigorously avoiding spoilers—defined in the broad sense of ‘any information about the film whatsoever’—before seeing it, as is my wont with films I already know I intend to see. (I recommend this very strongly, by the way.) So I also hadn’t heard that any of that stuff would feature.

      I found it possible to enjoy the film without all that context. I definitely felt a strong sense of dread in the few scenes leading up to the climax, so I don’t think you needed the background to get that, and I enjoyed the meandering plot in the meantime. (I’m usually bored by meandering plots, so it’s hard to say why this is. Maybe Tarantino really does just write them that much better?) It did have the effect of making me think ‘Roman Polanski, huh? That’s an… interesting choice of cameo nextdoor neighbour’.

      Maybe I’m just more up for a pointless-seeming ramble than your gf (and the other commenters above)? (At least in Tarantino’s hands—I was deeply frustrated with the Coen Brother’s pointless-seeming ramble through golden age Hollywood, Hail Caesar.)

      And the jailbait hippie chick was great.

      • mendax says:

        I had also been rigorously avoiding spoilers—defined in the broad sense of ‘any information about the film whatsoever’—before seeing it, as is my wont with films I already know I intend to see. (I recommend this very strongly, by the way.)

        I share this policy, but our course might not be supported by evidence. (Warning, article contains spoilers for The Usual Suspects and some others.)

        I’ll agree with the others: the film was long and meandering. I enjoyed it, but it likely would have been better with some big cuts. Enjoyment of westerns and general knowledge of the murders, I suspect, would enhance one’s experience.

      • Nabil ad Dajjal says:

        I’m usually bored by meandering plots, so it’s hard to say why this is. Maybe Tarantino really does just write them that much better?

        I mean that’s undoubtedly true. Every time we saw a clip of some fictional show or movie I actually wanted to see the “full version” which is legitimately hard to pull off. It’s a testament to his skill that the fictional and real elements blended so seamlessly, that you could imagine that there actually was a show called Bounty Law that ran for five seasons in the 1950’s.

        And the jailbait hippie chick was great.

        Hard disagree.

        For one, she was responsible for about half of the gratuitous foot shots in the movie. I had to look at her grimy toes for entirely longer than necessary, and nobody is hot enough to offset that.

        For another, I get that Griff is supposed to basically be a cowboy character in real life with his code of honor or whatever but it still broke my suspension of disbelief that he didn’t fuck her. I’m sorry but it’s the summer of love in LA, he’s living alone with his dog in a trailer, and she even lied that she was 18 the first time he asked. It’s just such a “oh come on” moment, like we can watch a girl get barbequed with a flamethrower but a late teen can’t give a guy road head.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          For one, she was responsible for about half of the gratuitous foot shots in the movie. I had to look at her grimy toes for entirely longer than necessary, and nobody is hot enough to offset that.

          Thanks for confirming that Quentin Tarantino directed the new Quentin Tarantino movie.

        • axiomsofdominion says:

          Tarantino purposefully amped up foot shots and the actress, who was 24 amusingly, was partially picked because of her beat up feet from dance, and he wrote entire fresh scenes just for her and he didn’t cut any of her stuff even as he cut other characters’ scenes.

          Dude is such a creep honestly, but then again, compared to Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, I guess he isn’t that bad.

        • James says:

          For one, she was responsible for about half of the gratuitous foot shots in the movie. I had to look at her grimy toes for entirely longer than necessary, and nobody is hot enough to offset that.

          Didn’t bother me, but I’m untroubled by gratuitous foot shots. Here I think we arrive deep into de gustibus non est disputandum if we weren’t already.

          For another, I get that Griff is supposed to basically be a cowboy character in real life with his code of honor or whatever but it still broke my suspension of disbelief that he didn’t fuck her. I’m sorry but it’s the summer of love in LA, he’s living alone with his dog in a trailer, and she even lied that she was 18 the first time he asked. It’s just such a “oh come on” moment, like we can watch a girl get barbequed with a flamethrower but a late teen can’t give a guy road head.

          Didn’t strike me that way when I was watching it, but sure, I guess. Though I don’t see the version of the movie where they do screw playing well in 2019 or, really, any year but the summer of love.

          Anyway, I just meant her youthful, uncynical, girlish enthusiasm. I thought the actress pulled it off nicely.

          Thanks for confirming that Quentin Tarantino directed the new Quentin Tarantino movie.

          It really is ridiculous. As if the guy didn’t have enough calling cards already.

          Have you guys seen the clips where some cute french journalist is interviewing him and says ‘I wanted to get you a present, but I didn’t know what to get you, so you can have these’, and puts her feet in his lap for the whole interview? I think she has him give her a foot massage. Totally wanton, but I have to admire her brazenness.

    • AlesZiegler says:

      I disagree! I looked up the Manson family story only after watching it, and I felt it was a great movie regardless of my lack of historical knowledge, although admittedly in a “not sure whether it would hold up on second view” sort of way.

    • broblawsky says:

      I liked it, but seeing it on a relaxed Sunday morning via a cheap matinee probably made me give it a lot of leeway. If I’d paid $15+ to see it, I might have expected more movie for my money.

    • suitengu says:

      Banning Deiseach doesn’t make too much sense. Isn’t she basically our court jester?

      I’m joking. Mostly. Please don’t ban me. -______-

  54. Majuscule says:

    I came across this while Googling for god knows what a few weeks ago and thought this crowd might have greater-than-average appreciation for exquisitely crafted math puzzles. So here is a “Towers of Hanoi” puzzle rendered in solid silver, made for the private yacht of a Gilded Age industrialist. Blog post is from a few years ago, but does a tiny silver bear in a jaunty sailor suit ever go out of style?

    http://aestheticusrex.blogspot.com/2011/10/silver-dreamer-at-sothebys.html?m=1

  55. baconbits9 says:

    Since this is turning into the discussion of bans thread: I would like to register my appreciation for Scott’s moderation, this place has avoided all of the worst aspects of internet comment sections for years now, despite significant presence and regular linking from larger publications that funnel new visitors. So thanks Scott, my individual assessment of which bans are deserved/un-deserved is generally meaningless compared to the overall end result here. Good job, and keep it up.

    • Two McMillion says:

      Agreed.

    • DragonMilk says:

      Were those banned already warned before? If so, fine. If not, even correct decisions can be heavy-handed if they seem to come out of nowhere/represent a substantial change in implied enforcement of rules.

      • baconbits9 says:

        Scott’s goal/desire is to foster a high quality discussion, and that is really only going to happen at volume if we can behave, more or less, like adults in our discussions. Going with strict(er) rules with pre ban warnings pushes/allows worse behavior and puts more of the onus on moderation and not on self moderation.

      • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

        Agreed. The permabans of people who hadn’t been warned previously were definitely too harsh in my opinion.

    • DeWitt says:

      Thirded.

  56. JPNunez says:

    welp, will consider myself warned

  57. jermo sapiens says:

    I would like to register my dismay at the mildness of the comments that got people banned indefinitely. I understand that this is Scott’s garden, and he may run it as he sees fit, but it’s still shocking. I also understand that Scott is under immense pressure to comply with blue/grey tribe hygiene such that any hint of red-tribe allegiance is to be quashed mercilessly, but it is Scott’s longstanding resistance against that pressure that made this blog worth reading, for me at least.

    From my point of view, it seems that red-tribe comments which are written with a bit of flair/sarcasm/humor are deemed to be over the line, which would be very unfortunate, as it would leave us with asymmetric weapons in one of the last places on the web where discussion between the tribes occur. I hope Im wrong.

    • Garrett says:

      To provide a countering opinion, I will note that I was surprised that comments of such tenor were made, despite agreeing with a substantial number of them. My surprise wasn’t based on the content itself – I don’t believe that this is a content-based purge. Instead, these come across to me as tone-based. That is, of the “kind, necessary, true” they came across as unkind. Even fully accepting that they are true, it’s very, very difficult to illustrate that a particular comment is “necessary” and thus fulfilling at least 2/3 of the required attributes.

      • jermo sapiens says:

        They do come across as tone-based. And I understand the need to police the tone of a comment section which allows discussion on controversial topics. But the distinction between having a tone and writing with flair can be blurry at times, and I respectfully submit that some level of fun should be allowed in the comments.

        As for a “necessary” internet comment, I’m afraid there is no such thing.

        This is from a comment that got Conrad Honcho banned:

        Do they not understand we are currently governed by Literally Hitler 2.0, who is going to holocaust all non-whites any day now? Shouldn’t the left be desperately trying to keep these poor migrants out before Trump murders them all?

        I agree with it 100% and I cannot, for the life of me, understand why this point isnt hammered home constantly by Trump supporters, or even people who just oppose open borders. AOC calls ICE detention centers “concentration camps”, and highlighting the absurdity of that claim colorfully is now a bannable offense here. We are all a little poorer for it. Should CH had said:

        The hypothesis that Donald Trump is literally Hitler has been falsified by recent data showing an increase in illegal immigration.

        maybe he wouldnt be banned but at the cost of being boring and therefore ignored.

        • Urstoff says:

          I believe it’s Scott’s hope that productive conversation can come out of being “boring” instead of ramping up the tribal snark in order to get someone to reply to you. Twitter provides plenty of opportunities to be snarky and then get yelled at if that’s what you so desire.

          • jermo sapiens says:

            It’s a fine line. We should all be respectful and never insulting towards others. But, in my view, little jabs that are not in bad taste and that are made when the context allows it add to the discussion rather than take away from it. Some points are better made through humor.

          • Randy M says:

            @jermo
            That’s not unreasonable on the face of it, but keep in mind it’s a text only discussion that strips out all the non-verbal cues and that posters include people from other cultures and non-native speakers–not to mention the charged topics, so ‘little jabs’ are unlikely to be perceived as such.

            It’s not the kind of thing I want quick moderation for, but it’s the kind of thing I try to avoid for those reasons.

          • jermo sapiens says:

            it’s a text only discussion that strips out all the non-verbal cues and that posters include people from other cultures and non-native speakers–not to mention the charged topics, so ‘little jabs’ are unlikely to be perceived as such.

            That’s a very good point.

          • albatross11 says:

            I’ve mostly abandoned sarcasm in any kind of serious online discussion after seeing a pretty convincing argument against using it by (I think) Paul Crowley. It’s too easy to be slippery in what you’re actually arguing for, it’s too easy for people not to quite understand what you’re saying or arguing for/against, sometimes people totally miss the sarcasm because your point-of-view is too foreign. More fundamentally, making a serious point with sarcasm is like making it with overly-clever word games–it increases the cognitive complexity of someone trying to understand what I’m saying. I’d rather my readers spend their brainpower on understanding my point and maybe critiquing my argument, rather than trying to figure out what I’m really trying to say.

          • Randy M says:

            @albatross11
            Thanks for corroborating my instincts with an example from your own experience.
            (Sweet Blessed Bayes, Scott, can I get a medal for avoiding meta-humor here? )

        • Gurkenglas says:

          I didn’t get that joke. Whoever uses rogues’ cant runs the risk of being judged a rogue. We must forbid rogues’ cant, tolerate rogues or suffer asymmetry.

        • ADifferentAnonymous says:

          Personally I find that kind of sarcasm pretty boring and the underlying argument pretty interesting.

        • Nick says:

          As for a “necessary” internet comment, I’m afraid there is no such thing.

          Please stop this. Scott lays out exactly what he means by necessary in the comments page:

          Necessary in that it’s on topic, and not only contributes something to the discussion but contributes more to the discussion than it’s likely to take away through starting a fight.

          And in the case of a post where kindness is the one discarded:

          And it had better be necessary, in that you are quashing a false opinion which is doing real damage and which is so persistent that you don’t think any more measured refutation would be effective.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            The problem, as ever, is that those standards are way stricter than the ones that are actually used. People make comments that fail to meet those standards almost constantly; in fact I think you’d struggle to find a comment that can be classed as unkind but still true and necessary.

        • J Mann says:

          I’m strongly in favor of commuting Conrad and Dick’s bans to three months or less, but I disagree with your point.

          Vigorous brio and style can be delightful, and I enjoy poison pen movie and theater reviews (and Kevin Williamson in politics) at least as much as the next guy, but I think it’s disruptive here. It’s a short trip from delightful elbow jabs to full-on name calling, and as much as I’ll miss the jabs, I think this space is better off without them.

          (Or possibly exempting solely Deiseach, but I can see how that is a hard line to hold).

        • Eigengrau says:

          The comment was not just inflammatory in tone but also in my opinion a fairly obvious strawman. Here is the same argument with the snark removed:

          1) Critics of Trump’s immigration policies are largely of the opinion that Trump will most likely slaughter all illegal immigrants, because they think he is a genocidal maniac on the level of Hitler and has the intent and means to carry out his own mass killings in short order.

          2) Clearly, whatever conditions migrants face in their own countries are not as bad as genocide, so they should not enter the US.

          3) Therefore, if Trump critics were honest and consistent in their professed empathy for migrants, they would try to stop any migrants from entering the US such that the scale of the impending genocide is diminished.

          The main problem is that hardly anyone believes the first point. Most would say that the conditions in the detention centers are cruel and unnecessary, but not as frightening as starvation and murder in the migrants’ violence and poverty-stricken places of origin.

          I contend that if Trump actually began operating death camps somehow (note: death camps are not the same as concentration camps), his critics would in fact discourage migrants from entering America. Also there would probably be civil war.

          It’s the same flavour argument as “if you don’t like it, leave” — a curt dismissal of those who are trying to follow a better maxim: “if you don’t like it, change it”.

    • EchoChaos says:

      My guess is that it seems that Scott wants snark tuned down, especially snark that hit the outgroup even if objectively true, but ESPECIALLY uncharitable takes on the outgroup.

      I understand this, even if I rather find snark enjoyable (even when directed at me, I had several good discussions with dick).

    • Randy M says:

      would leave us with asymmetric weapons in one of the last places on the web where discussion between the tribes occur.

      I found your problem.

      • jermo sapiens says:

        Yes, sorry. I garbled Scott’s analogy. But I believe Scott’s point was that in discussions, the side with the truth has an automatic advantage, which is a good thing. I meant to say that regardless of truth, is one side is allowed to engage in more snark than another, they have an unfair advantage.

        • Randy M says:

          I mean, I won’t lie, there are sides, even if shifting per issue, and they we do try to score points. But this isn’t the dynamic Scott wants to encourage, rather people who have biases but want to come to the truth together in mutually respectful ways that include puns that make smart people laugh don’t portray each other as the enemy.

        • Aapje says:

          @jermo sapiens

          Snark doesn’t get closer to the truth, but closer to group conformity.

    • jgr314 says:

      I don’t have an opinion about the actual bans, but I agree with the overall observation in 3. I was on the cusp of abandoning SSC entirely. I will stick around for a while longer to see how things go.

      And yes, I know that the comments on SSC are better than 90% or more of the internet.

    • souleater says:

      I’ve previously been refraining from enforcing the comment policies too hard on people who otherwise produce good content.

      Some of the people banned were producing 50-100 comments a week. Banning a prolific commenter over 3-5 violations seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I love this blog, and so maybe I shouldn’t be too critical of the moderation policy, but I would prefer to see indefinite bans be reserved for those who consistently don’t add anything to a conversation. As opposed to those who sometimes get too snarky.

    • Lasagna says:

      Seconded. I was surprised at these bans.

      Deiseach in particular. Between the rarity of her perspective online and her interesting and provocative writing style, she should be given a bit more leeway (my opinion, obviously). The same holds true to a lesser extent for the others.

      This is just constructive criticism, Scott. You’ve built the best community that exists on the internet. That’s not hyperbole, so you obviously know what you’re doing. But I DO think that most of the listed offenders are pretty solidly on the “colorful” rather than “obnoxious” side of the line.

    • DeWitt says:

      There’d be more bans of prolific left-wing people acting the asshat’s part if there were more people here doing so. There aren’t, so they(we, I guess) aren’t getting banned. The base-rate fallacy mentioned downthread is correct, in that Scott doesn’t have the means to ban people that aren’t there any more than he has the means to ban ghosts.

      • jermo sapiens says:

        That might be the case, and I cant say that I conducted a full audit of SSC comments to see whether blue/grey tribe snark is more tolerated than red tribe snark. However, I can say that from now on I will be more on the lookout for blue/grey tribe snark when reading the comments.

        • axiomsofdominion says:

          There have been numerous discussions about the lack of prolific truly left wing commentators. And of the ones that have existed in the past, several were banned at least temporarily and would likely be banned now by the same standard as the recent bans. The ratio of grey and red is perhaps pretty even but blue, or even say green for true lefties rather than HRC supporters, are incredibly uncommon.

    • Faza (TCM) says:

      I would like to register my dismay at the mildness of the comments that got people banned indefinitely.

      I’ll second that. The examples provided look pretty weaksauce to me, though I’ll admit I don’t have much of an ear for these things.

      It seems to me that most of these were lapses in “kindness”, with “truth” and “necessity” up for debate – but that’s pretty much the default on the internet. They (mostly) don’t seem like flaming for the sake of flaming, but usually contain at least a kernal of an interesting object-level proposition.

      For example, I found dick’s observation that his five-year-old daughter would have fit right in here because of her capability to reach logical conclusions from what she has been told (circumstances notwithstanding) a bit amusing and quite accurate. It can be seen as both a reminder to not overdo it with the rules-lawyering and – more importantly – not to assume too much shared context (such as: “when I say ‘don’t do x’ I obviously don’t actually mean ‘don’t do y’ even though y is strictly speaking a subset of x, because not doing y would be silly, innit?”)

      Not sure why that particular comment was considered an example ban-worthiness. The others linked are also kinda… meh. Deserving of a Talking-To-In-Red-Lettered-Moderator-Voice, perhaps. I had noticed dick had been a bit deterministic in the past couple of OTs, but a permaban?

      I could make a similar case for the rest but I enjoy (and agree with) their comments a lot more often than dick’s, and I don’t want to sound partial.

  58. Kuiperdolin says:

    Thought experiment : it’s now scientifically proven that some people are genuinely able to predict the future better than luck (and beyond just what observation/logic gives you). Scientists still argue on the how, but rigourous studies have proven that a few people can instinctly and blindly predict the result of a random event with say 95% accuracy, and the scientific consensus is that such “prophets”, while rare, exist. Even the most skeptic of skeptics admit it, and the news is widely published and publicized.

    However, there is no easy way to certify one of those, because there are only maybe a hundred of them on earth, so even a test that gives 1% false positives will net you almost exclusively non-prophets, plus the field naturally attracts all sorts of charlatans and scammers. So it takes a long, costly trial with lots of clever tests to make sure you are the real deal. A handful go through that process and start consulting with big firms for salaries roughly equals to top CEOs’. But most don’t bother. They may not even know they have the gift.

    In this situation, and all else being equal, do the number of fake fortune-tellers increase or decrease? I can see it going both ways :
    * they now have a legit cover story, even Dawkins admit prophets are a thing.
    * but at the same time they now have the legit thing to compete against.

    So which effect wins? I’m really unsure what I myself think.

    • Enkidum says:

      Just to spoil the fun… this:

      a few people can instinctly and blindly predict the result of a random event with say 95% accuracy

      Is not consistent with this:

      So it takes a long, costly trial with lots of clever tests to make sure you are the real deal.

      Someone with a decent understanding of experimental psychology, statistics, and magic (not real magic, but stage magic, to weed out deliberate frauds) could design a cheap test very easily. Hell, I know very little about magic, but I’ve got the first two, and I’m pretty sure I could do it.

      To answer your question, though, I think the numbers of charlatans stay about the same, with a slight tendency to increase. People have never been all that interested in letting reality impede on their fantasies.

      • Tatterdemalion says:

        The trick here will be cut-down.

        There are seven billion people in the world. Putting seven billion people through a really rigorous test would be incredibly expensive. but putting seven billion people through a “predict the outcome of these 20 coin flips while I watch” test, then putting the one in 776 who got 17 or more right through a “predict the outcome of these 100 coin flips under moderately rigorous scrutiny” test and rejecting anyone who doesn’t get at least 80 will weed you down to the point where you have no-one except for true prophets and skillfull scam artists, and there will be few enough left at that point to test them as rigorously as you like.

        • Nick says:

          Yeah, it seems to me this is the sort of test a government could administer to schoolchildren. And every government in the world would have reason to do it and do it right.

          • baconbits9 says:

            That depends on the frequency (also governments don’t have good incentives), if there are 100 prophets in the world at any one time then a country needs ~ 70 million people to expect to have 1 prophet in its population at any time. If you are testing every 5 year old in a country with 5 million people with a life expectancy of 80 then you have a pretty tiny chance of finding a prophet each year.

            Further than that a large chunk of the population will simply test their kids at home ahead of time, so unless you are looking to institute travel bans for every family with a child between 1 and 5 who hasn’t been tested many of those who find prophets will be moving to avoid detection.

          • albatross11 says:

            Find the first prophet, then have him predict when/where the next prophets will be born.

        • baconbits9 says:

          but putting seven billion people through a “predict the outcome of these 20 coin flips while I watch” test,

          So in other words an impossible to administer test?

          • SnapDragon says:

            In Larry Niven’s Ringworld (minor spoilers), this test was secretly administered via Birthright Lottery. One of the characters was the result of six generations of winning a lottery that allows a couple to have extra children. And in-universe, she really did have observably improbably good luck.

          • chrisminor0008 says:

            Was it their luck that allowed them to win the birthright lottery? If so that’s wonderfully recursive.

          • John Schilling says:

            Not only that, but the birthright lottery was secretly established as a very long-term eugenics program to breed exceptionally lucky humans. For a dubious definition of “lucky”.

          • Nancy Lebovitz says:

            It’s been a while since I’ve read Ringworld, but I think Niven made it ambiguous about whether Teela Brown’s luck was a real force or just a bunch of unlikely coincidences.

          • Protagoras says:

            My recollection is that Niven eventually went with the notion that Teela’s luck mostly wasn’t really hers; a lot of lucky people would benefit from her being on the Ringworld expedition, and most of what appeared to be luck was their luck. Which went away when she had accomplished what was needed from her.

          • Aftagley says:

            It’s been a while since I’ve read Ringworld, but I think Niven made it ambiguous about whether Teela Brown’s luck was a real force or just a bunch of unlikely coincidences.

            If I’m remembering the book correctly, much of the first half of the novel is spent trying to figure out if it’s luck vs. coincidence, but by the end pretty much everyone realizes that there’s some underlying force.

            Wikipedia claims (although I can’t see the original source) that Niven even complained about the character, feeling like the need for everything to work out for her severely limited his authorial options.

        • Enkidum says:

          You would only give the test to those who explicitly claim to be fortunetellers. If it’s really as clear-cut a case of precognition as described (95% accuracy), it would be easy to do, and would take maybe an hour, with time included for coffee and bathroom breaks.

          Hell, if someone could predict the outcome of a coin I flip 19 out of 20 times, I would be pretty strongly inclined to revise my beliefs about the existence of precognition. That takes maybe a minute and thirty seconds. Double or triple that for good measure, and do it in several different domains.

          If you want to administer this to everyone in the world, yes, this would be expensive. But why bother, unless you’re Professor X and want to create your team of supermen?

          • baconbits9 says:

            What actually happens in the scenario is something like

            1. Precogs get paid millions to 10s of millions a year
            2. It takes only a few mins to a few hours of guessing coinflips to maybe become a multi millionaire.
            3. Every scumbag/down on his luck/overly optimistic person shows up for the test, some of whom multiple times with as many different identities at as many different testing centers as they can.
            4. The people administering the tests have to be competent and scrupulous so as not to give in to bribes or to be fooled by some oversight.
            5. The competition between companies or countries will mean testing earlier and earlier for precogs with gains going to those who actually find them which means set ups for false positives will be selected for against false negatives.

          • Phigment says:

            6. Some bright person hires a precog to find other precogs.

            Since you don’t actually have to administer any tests, this is surprisingly affordable, and allows you to screen people who wouldn’t come in for testing anyhow.

            7. Hire some of these newly found precogs to find other precogs. Bootstrap into total precognitive dominance.

            8. Since now the main evidence for being a precog is the agreement of other precogs, corrupt the whole edifice into an elitist signalling system where “precogs” are the elites and firmly control entry into the elite class and a life of wealth and power on the basis of opaque and unreplicatable traits.

            9. Make sure to personally get in on the ground floor, because that sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

          • baconbits9 says:

            6. Some bright person hires a precog to find other precogs.

            If we are assuming that being able to predict 50/50 coin flips that are about to happen right in front of you means you can predict 1/700 million shots that could happen at any time and any place on the planet. Its a big jump from ‘some people can tell the future about some things’ to ‘some people can answer any question about the future’.

    • albatross11 says:

      I propose that we find these people by offering millions of ordinary Americans all-expense-paid vacations to Vegas with a few hundred dollars each specifically allocated to playing roulette.

    • Lambert says:

      Is this a metaphor for Warren Buffet, or something?

      Also, this is pretty much what the Scientific Method was built to do.
      7 sigmas should be more than enough to weed out any randomness.

      • Kuiperdolin says:

        “Is this a metaphor for Warren Buffet, or something? ”

        Feel free to take it as such (death of the author) but I don’t know anything about Warren Buffet, beyond him being some rich guy.

    • noyann says:

      do the number of fake fortune-tellers increase or decrease?

      Because “there are only maybe a hundred of them on earth,” there will be no effectual competition with the real thing, but a grain of “this exists” will make the false prophets number explode. For a while, then market saturation and reality checks will decrease them again.

    • Aftagley says:

      Thought experiment : it’s now scientifically proven that some people are genuinely able to predict the future better than luck (and beyond just what observation/logic gives you). Scientists still argue on the how, but rigourous studies have proven that a few people can instinctly and blindly predict the result of a random event with say 95% accuracy, and the scientific consensus is that such “prophets”, while rare, exist. Even the most skeptic of skeptics admit it, and the news is widely published and publicized.

      Care to link any of these sources/evidence of said scientific consensus?

  59. N Zohar says:

    For anyone who’s been reading and leaving comments on my writing, thank you! There is a new short story up, sort of a fun riff on the simulation hypothesis.

  60. Murphy says:

    Chiming in to whine on Deiseach’s behalf… those don’t actually seem so bad. A bit sarky and bitter but not OTT.

  61. ask says:

    I made an account just to comment on the reign of terror.
    One thing I have noticed in the comment section is that comments need not meet 2 of 3 conditions, but 2 of 4, where the fourth is “directed at Scott”. I suspect Scott wants to be more lenient with comments that criticise him or his posts, but I think that these comments still degrade conversation quality and often get lots of replies, and if Scott could stomach it I’d like to see less of them.

  62. rho says:

    Belated update to the library of rho

    I’m uploading 3 major works of Von Neumann, his “First Draft Report on the EDVAC” described by Alan Turing as “the definitive source for understanding the nature and design of a general-purpose digital computer.”

    Also included is Von Neumann’s and Oskar Morganstern’s “Theory of Games,” as well as a shorter piece, Von Neumann’s “Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata”

    • b_jonas says:

      Thank you for Neumann’s Automata article. It has historical relevance, even if no practical relevance anymore, and your version is better than the one we had “https://archive.org/download/theoryofselfrepr00vonn_0/theoryofselfrepr00vonn_0.pdf” . If you happen to have a copy of Böhm, C.: “On a family of Turing machines and the related programming language”, ICC Bull. 3, (July 1964), 187-194, we’d be grateful if you could share.

      • rho says:

        Sorry! I don’t seem to have it. But if I ever get back into hunting down rare manuscripts i’ll give that one a go. Not that i’ve added anything particularly rare to this github so far <___<.

        I'm thinking maybe some early quantum mechanics documents or some recreational mathematics next

  63. Rebecca Friedman says:

    Help request: does anyone know a good, reliable computer repair shop or person in the South Bay?

    Background: I have a rather large, formerly high-end (about 4 years old) gaming PC laptop that is having various problems, but last time I took it to a (well-reviewed!) shop, they spent two weeks breaking it worse, so I’m… currently a little jumpy about just trying places. Anyone have any recommendations for someplace, or someone, really trustworthy?

    • Incurian says:

      If you were to shout “Does anyone know how to fix a computer? It’s for a girl,” at the next less wrong meetup, your problem would become preventing a stampede.

      That being said, what’s wrong with your computer?

      • Error says:

        The problem with that is distinguishing the people who know what they’re doing from the people who only think they do.

        You could maybe filter for the necessary skills by people who actually work in ops (*not* dev). But really, learning to self-repair is the best repair.

        (I’m not in the bay area so have no shop recommendations)

        • Rebecca Friedman says:

          I tried that! I fixed the major problem (computer won’t charge) and caused a minor one (ATM only one of my USB slots is working). Unfortunately, my diagnosis efforts are completely failing to work out what is causing the current problem; I could replace the wifi card, and that would help, but it still throws up errors when I use a USB-connecting wifi device, so it seems unlikely that replacing the wifi card will solve all the problems. (Already tried reinstalling drivers, no dice.) So I defaulted to “OK, I actually need an expert for this one.”

          But thank you for the recommendation! My ultimate goal is to be able to do everything myself, this problem is just significantly above my current skill level.

          • Error says:

            Well, props for aiming in the right place then. 🙂 Wish I could help. I used to work in PC repair, but I’m not sure I want to try to troubleshoot weird hardware issues remotely.

            One simple-ish diagnostic aid is to get a live CD or USB image (Knoppix used to be the best, not sure if it still is), boot off it, and see if the problem still manifests. The idea being to determine whether the issue is something to do with the installed OS/drivers (in which case it will go away when they’re not in use) or something physically wrong with the part (in which case it will still be there).

          • Rebecca Friedman says:

            Actually, that’s really helpful. I don’t know how to do it, but it sounds like something I can google how to do, and it would (should, hopefully) solve one of my big diagnostic puzzles. Thank you very much!

      • Rebecca Friedman says:

        To be fair, I’ve never been to a Less Wrong meetup, but if our SSC meetups are representative you may be exaggerating slightly. A quarter of our attendees are girls!

        That said – mostly explained below, but: Several minor things that are the result of my trying to fix it myself, most of which I can live with (out of the original generous five USB slots, currently only one works; that’s probably the worst, but I can just trade things out; etc.) and one major wifi error. Every so often (usually minutes to days, occasionally lately it’s been seconds) the wifi declares that the network it’s connected to has no connection. If refreshed (ie tap the button again), it stops seeing all possible connections other than the one it’s connected to, which remains “no internet” even if everyone else is connecting via the same wifi network just fine. Resetting the wifi card (ie bring up Device Manager, turn off and then on again) fixes it, so presumably replacing the wifi card would work, clearly that’s what’s causing the problem…

        … except that running wifi through an attached USB device doesn’t fix it; I get a less bad (you only have to reset wifi, not the wifi card, and it doesn’t fight you so hard; also, it’s slower about disconnecting, there’s sometimes a very slow phase before the no connection phase) version of the same problem. However, plug a USB connection in (say, a phone tether) and all problems appear to disappear completely (I haven’t tried ethernet yet; I probably should, but the house isn’t very well set up for it, and I actually do need wifi functional). At which point I gave up on diagnosis and decided I needed to ask an expert. Obviously I’d be happy to hear if you have suggestions for anything else I (low-skill, beginner!) could/should try, either for diagnosis or repair. I’m just guessing it’s out of my class.

  64. rubberduck says:

    What are your guys’ favorite and least favorite map projections?

    I’ll start. (Disclaimer: I am not a cartographer nor mathematician and deciding mostly based on aesthetics.)

    Favorite: Winkel-Tripel. Nice compromise on shape and size distortion, if I had to hang a map of the world on my wall it would be this projection.

    Also, honorable mention to the Hammer Retroazimuthal for shear weirdness.

    Least favorite: Gall-Peters. If you MUST go with an equal-area projection, why this one? Africa stretched out vertically while Greenland is stretched out horizontally! Nobody wins with this projection. Horrible. There are uglier/worse projections out there but this one is unexpectedly popular.

    • Lillian says:

      As is often the case, there is a relevant xkcd. In my case my favourite is the Robinson projection which is just obviously the best looking one of the lot. Like when i picture a globe flattened unto a map, it’s Robinson that i’m expecting, it just looks right. Winkel-Tripel by comparison looks slightly off, the pinched tops might cause less distortion but it’s just weird. And yes i do in fact wear comfortable running shoes everywhere, like coffee, and enjoy the Beatles.

      The worst looking one, obviously Gall-Peters. Seriously, is the anyone who likes that thing?

      • James says:

        One of the small number of actually funny XKCDs. It’s hard to put my finger on what’s so good about it, though.

      • Secretly French says:

        I like it. I like it for being equal-area without being a stupid lozenge shape. I think the lozenge undermines the point of equal-area, psychologically. I don’t care about shape distortion because unlike you americans, I don’t live in a country with perfectly straight 2000 mile long roads.

        • eyeballfrog says:

          But why is equal-area desirable to begin with?

          • EchoChaos says:

            It’s nice to be able to visually compare how big something is when looking at a map.

            There are lots of people who don’t realize how big Africa really is, to use the most common example.

          • Secretly French says:

            Equal area is desirable because what’s the point of a map? You may as well just be looking at a list of places, unless the spatial relationship between them is relevant. If you are trying to pretend that you don’t think it’s outrageous that a generation of plebs grew up thinking Greenland was as big as Africa, well I don’t believe you.

          • bean says:

            Equal area is desirable because what’s the point of a map? You may as well just be looking at a list of places, unless the spatial relationship between them is relevant.

            But why does that mean equal-area is the right answer? Yes, the areas are correct, but why is area inherently more important than shape, which is preserved pretty well by a lot of projections, but horribly by Gall-Peters. If I was teaching geography, I’d probably talk about projections early on, but the main map would be something like Robinson or Winkel Triple.

            If you are trying to pretend that you don’t think it’s outrageous that a generation of plebs grew up thinking Greenland was as big as Africa, well I don’t believe you.

            If I was going through my list of outrages at geography education, that wouldn’t make the top 20.

        • bean says:

          Gall-Peters is merely one of a large number of similar projections, several of which (Hobo-Dyer, for instance) don’t distort the area near the equator nearly as much. This is perhaps the most annoying thing about Peters and his campaign. His map isn’t unique by any means, and even if you insist on square world maps (which I think is bad practice) there are better options.

          • EchoChaos says:

            @Secretly French

            Is this a joke I am missing or are you culture-warring intentionally in the no-CW thread?

          • Aftagley says:

            If I remember my cartographic kerfuffles, when Gall-Peters’ map was roundly ignored by the geographic community, the GPer’s claimed it was only because of antipathy towards non-whites.

            I also can’t tell if Secretly French is referencing that debacle, or claiming it as being true. Principle of charity dictates that I proceed as if it’s the former.

          • bean says:

            I have absolutely no problem with it being 45° whatsoever, since then vertical stretching and horizontal stretching are balanced.

            1. What does “balanced” even mean in this context? Selection of a parallel for this is going to be primarily aesthetic, and while there are lots of good-looking equal-area cylindrical projections, Gall-Peters isn’t among them.
            2. There’s a lot more territory near the equator than near the poles.

            but if you hate Gall-Peters, I am forced to infer that you’re just a white supremacist, I’m sorry.

            Hate is somewhat strong to describe my feelings towards that projection, but I do strongly dislike it. Not out of any feelings of white supremacy or whatever Peters and his followers ascribe to their opponents. I’m very much in favor of clever maps as tools for challenging geographic thought. One of my favorites, which isn’t currently on my wall but has been in the past, is “The US as seen from Canada”. It’s upside-down.

            The problem is that Peters has picked an ugly projection, and then followed it up with a bunch of unjust and idiotic attacks upon the cartographic community. I’m no more in favor of Mercator as a decorative/teaching map than anyone else with the slightest acquaintance with cartography. It’s idiotic publishers who keep the thing alive. Nor is his projection particularly special. It’s a case of a well-known class, and the technical claims made about it are either false or shared by other members of that class.

          • Secretly French says:

            @bean

            Selection of a parallel for this is going to be primarily aesthetic

            Is that a fact is it now, o pontificater? I choose 45° because then half the area of the resulting map is stretched vertically, and half is stretched horizontally. This is the sense in which I use the word “balanced”, and it isn’t primarily aesthetic, it’s based on my intuition about how to present distortion in a plain fashion, so it can be understood consciously, and not bypassed unconsciously. It’s the same line of reasoning which gives me to reject perfidious lozenge maps.

            @Aftagley

            You are very charitable and you are right, but I am also angling a little bit to be banned, in solidarity with Deiseach.

          • bean says:

            Is that a fact is it now, o pontificater? I choose 45° because then half the area of the resulting map is stretched vertically, and half is stretched horizontally.

            For someone who is so strongly in favor of equal-area maps, you’re not considering how such maps work. 45 degrees may be halfway between the equator and the poles along a given meridian, but that doesn’t mean half of the Earth’s surface is above that line. In fact, I think the map projection you should be advocating is the Behrmann, which is 30 degrees instead of 45. You’re welcome.

            This is the sense in which I use the word “balanced”, and it isn’t primarily aesthetic, it’s based on my intuition about how to present distortion in a plain fashion, so it can be understood consciously, and not bypassed unconsciously.

            There are lots of ways to present distortion. One is to declare one map the “true and best”. Another is to make sure that we use a variety of projections based on what we’re trying to do. Seriously, if I was to become a geography teacher, cartography would be close to the top of my lesson plan.

            It’s the same line of reasoning which gives me to reject perfidious lozenge maps.

            Care to remind me what perfidity I’m committing by favoring those?

            Edited to remove something that was probably uncharitable.

          • Lambert says:

            You can hate equal area maps without being a white supremacist.

            I, for an example, am an Inuit, Saami and Emperor Penguin supremacist.
            /s

      • Anthony says:

        Because of relevant xkcd, I am now a big fan of the Peirce Quincuncial projection.

        I think the administration of the Galapagos should use it for their world maps, with the centers at 0, 90 E/W and 180 longitudes.

      • In an interesting coincidence, that comic was published in 2011. At the time, I was living in graduate student housing, and the community center there had (has?) a prominently displayed Gall-Peters map complete with sidebar explaining how it was the only true anti-colonialist map projection.

        My opinions on politically correct cartography are best left to a non-integral OT…

    • Lambert says:

      Azimuthals and retroazimuthals are popular amongst Muslims, so they know which direction Mecca is in.
      Might get one centred on my house.

      The Euler Spiral projection nice because you can make it arbitarily conformal and equal-area.

      Obligatory XKCD

    • Peter says:

      Possibly controversial opinion: I like a good old-fashioned plate carrée. Only slightly less than 2000 years old, originally just the obvious way to do things, but I think in these days of fiddly “compromise” projections like Robinson and Winkel-Tripel, it’s a marvelously non-fiddly compromise projection.

      A while back, prompted initially by the relevant xkcd, I read Rhumb Lines and Map Wars by Mark Monmonier. It’s a good read, especially on the Peters phenomenon.

      Anyway, Monmonier does not like the plate carrée at all and expresses his annoyance at it cropping up again in various places. I don’t know how widespread this opinion in.

      My inner conspiracy nut says the ugliness of Gall-Peters is actually a feature, considered the right way. Consider: a lot of the time we don’t look at a whole world map, but at a map of some selected country or continent or whatever. Generally[1] this is done in a projection optimised for the thing you’re looking at. So we’re pretty familiar with low-distortion shapes of things – but we see them at various scales, so we’re less familiar with sizes. So a projection that preserves shape well but distorts size (e.g. Mercator) will look more familiar than one that distorts shape but preserves size (e.g. Gall-Peters). So when someone says “you’ve been seeing things all wrong, this is what things are really like” and shows a Gall-Peters, it, err, makes quite a statement.

      (All that said, there was a time I was wondering about the north of Canada and Greenland, saying “the Mercator makes them look mega-pointy, let’s see what they look like on a globe”. It turns out, a lot pointier than I was expecting. It’s not just Gall-Peters here – a lot of our favourite compromise projections squish down the tops there too. So maybe my familiarity theory isn’t the whole story)

      Honourable mention: Mollwiede for equal area.

      [1] A while back there were cases of British weather maps in an orthographic projection – basically, looking at a globe from far away, with the equator viewed side-on to be a flat line. This squashed down Scotland but left England relatively undistorted…

    • johan_larson says:

      I don’t have a strong preference among Robinson, Eckert IV and Winkel-Tripel. I agree Gall-Peters is ugly. The equatorial areas look squashed from the sides, and the polar regions look squashed from the top.

    • eremetic says:

      Favorite: the Mercator. Maps are for navigation, and the Mercator is a navigator’s map.

      Least favorite: Nobody likes Gall-Peters. My theory is that Peters chose an ugly projection intentionally to increase the signaling factor of choosing the “unbiased” morally superior map.

      • johan_larson says:

        Or maybe equal-area projection and rectangular shape just don’t mix.

        • Lambert says:

          Probably.
          On a rectangular map, you have to make the 89th Parallels as long as the Equator, even though the latter is almost 60 times longer.
          To preserve area, you have to heavily stretch the equator and/or squash the poles vertically.

          Non-rectangular maps let you shrink the poles in the horizontal axis.

        • eremetic says:

          This is clearly true – no “or” about it.

    • Machine Interface says:

      Favorite: Dymaxion. Very little distorsion, less culturally biased, adaptable for many different purposes.

      Least favorite, I don’t know. Most projections look goofy in some way.

    • EchoChaos says:

      Maps! My absolute favorite topic. My walls are decorated with antique maps and I can usually detect the age of a map to within a decade based on geography.

      The Winkel-Tripel is lovely, but I actually don’t have any. Mercator is the one that dominates my walls because it was most common in the mid-century. I do have a couple of Toblers and really want a Goode homolosine.

      I hadn’t seen the Hammer Retroazimuthal and now I’m tempted to get one as well.

      I have tons of globes, which is what I always bring down to instruct my kids, and they’re my only “modern and normal” maps. All the rest are either old or weird stuff like the Atlas of True Names.

      Being against Gall-Peters is right and just.

      • Enkidum says:

        My walls are decorated with antique maps and I can usually detect the age of a map to within a decade based on geography.

        One of my most successful renovation jobs involved buying a few old atlases and wallpapering my bathroom with them, then varnishing the whole thing. Looked cool as hell.

        • EchoChaos says:

          Brilliant! BRB, pitching to my wife for future use.

        • Lambert says:

          I’m entirely unsurprised that the SSC commentariat is full of people who put antique maps on their walls.

          Which reminds me, I’ve got a Patrick Moore lunar map poster that probably came with the Radio Times or Sky at Night magazine years back. Ought to put that up.

      • I’ve got a great 19th-century map framed (one frame per hemisphere) next to my dining room table. (xkcd says it’s from 1854-1856.) I will never get tired of looking at Central Africa and reading “Unexplored Regions.”

        The adjoining wall has a map of Middle-Earth.

        • EchoChaos says:

          Getting a high quality map of Middle Earth is on my list as well. It’s my desktop background.

          I have a mirror whose reflective surface is the continents on a replica of a map from 1754.

        • Corey says:

          Described in a Discworld book is a map of a city with “Here Be Dragons” labeled on one lot – home to a lady who breeds and trains dragons.

      • What kind of globes do you have?

        • EchoChaos says:

          My favorites are Cram’s Universals, but I generally teach my kids on a nice Rand McNally from 1983 because it’s close enough to today’s boundaries.

          My absolute favorite is a Cram’s Universal 9 inch from 1939, just after the annexation of Czechoslovakia because it’s such an interesting find to have a map from such a precise period.

          I also have a Cram’s 12 inch from the 1950s and a 16 inch.

    • bean says:

      I like maps and map projections a lot, but my favorite depends on what I’m doing. For world maps, I think I’d probably say Winkel, although Waterman is cool, too. Mercator is great if I’m navigating, but should not be used for world maps. Gall-Peters is an unimaginative and slightly ugly projection that has acquired unfortunate political overtones.

    • FrankistGeorgist says:

      Equirectangular, not because it has any redeeming qualities, but because when I was trying to make a map and weather system for my fantasy world as a kid it was the easiest for me to understand working with Microsoft paint. It’s easily pixelated. So I could overlay my world on ours and torture it until the sizes made sense. I also eventually found GIMP, and an app that let you change equirectangular maps into globes which was truly the apex of my world building career.

      This reminds me though how much I loved globes, and how I always wanted one. And now I have my own house and I can get a globe. Can I hijack this thread and get globe recommendations? Gotta be a desktop model. Those big floor ones are cool but were never really the object of my desire. What a weirdly attainable goal I’ve put off until now…

      No points for the Mercator globe.

      • EchoChaos says:

        I got all my globes from antique stores. They wear well, tend to end up there and you can get very high quality ones for very low cost.

    • Infrared Wayne says:

      I’ve always been partial to Cahill-Keyes. Surprised nobody has mentioned it yet.

    • Nancy Lebovitz says:

      Any recommendations for a map optimized for the ocean floors rather than the continents?

    • I quite like the Boggs eumorphic projection (which is conceptually similar to the Goode homolosine projection). I can’t say much in its defence other than that I just happen to like the aesthetics of it.

    • Tatterdemalion says:

      I’m fond of the Pierce Quincuncial – any map from a sphere to a plane is going to involve distortion, and getting around that by hiding as much of it as possible in the sea is a clever solution. The tesselating property is cool too.

      Controversially, I dislike a lot of the heavily non-convex maps like the Waterman and the Dymaxion that map geeks go in for – I think the purpose of a map should be either navigation (in which case you want Mercator) or illustration (in which case I think you want something convex, either an ellipse or a rectangle).

      • Lambert says:

        Could somebody not make up their mind if they wanted their Mercator to be normal or transverse?

      • Peter says:

        It’s all a conspiracy by environmentalists, I tell you. First there’s the normal Mercator projections to make the Greenland ice sheet look absolutely huge, and now this, to make Amazonia look massive.

    • phi says:

      Surprised no one has mentioned the stereographic projection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereographic_projection#Cartography

      It would require an infinite map to display the entire Earth, and it messes with areas like heck, but hey, at least it’s mathematically elegant.

    • johan_larson says:

      This thread deserves some sort of award for deep geekery.

      In future installments, we will discuss our favorite bible translations, musical temperaments, Magic: The Gathering color combinations, functional programming languages, spelling reforms, and Byzantine emperors.

      • Peter says:

        Byzantine Emperors, yay! I’m gonna have to decide between Irene and Basil I – or maybe Zoe. Chosen for interesting stories, rather than things like competence or morality or whatever.

        Musical temperaments – the more I look into all of this xenharmonic stuff and all the old tuning systems, the more I get an appreciation for equal temperament, especially when I actually do some listening. Gotta love the way chords shimmer and vibrate due to the ratios being not quite exact.

        So, yeah, sounds like a good plan.

      • EchoChaos says:

        Come on, best Byzantine Emperor is obviously Justinian, which can be stated in a CW Free thread because it’s obviously correct.

        The only bible translation is the Authorized Version, given to King James by the divine writ itself.

        And if you’re not Blue/White, frankly you’re garbage.

        🙂

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          Blue is brokenly good, but it’s not obvious to me how White is its best synergy.

          • EchoChaos says:

            I haven’t played seriously since Fourth Edition, but it used to be that Blue/White was an incredibly strong turtle deck that just outwore and outlasted the opposition.

            I haven’t the least idea where the meta stands now.

          • Aftagley says:

            Blue is brokenly good, but it’s not obvious to me how White is its best synergy.

            Speaking in highly general terms here, there are of course exceptions to everything I’m saying. This also focuses on eternal formats, not standard:

            Blue, as a color, is designed around two strengths – Tempo and Control. Most successful blue decks are going to lean into one of those two options and capitalize on them. For the purpose of this discussion, we’ll be focusing on control, since that’s what most almost all blue/white decks are.

            Blue is the dominant control color because of its fantastic ability to draw cards. No other color in the game lets you draw as much as blue. Blue also has access to amazing disruption in the form of counterspells. What blue is bad at, however, is dealing with threats once they’re on the board. Sure, you can bounce them (send them back to your opponents hand) but that puts you down a card and doesn’t solve your problem. Blue lacks any good “kill that creature” or even better “kill every creature” options.

            Enter white: depending on how you judge it, white has either the second or third best removal in the game. It tends to be more expensive and less utilitarian than red’s removal (which can also go upstairs and deal direct damage if it’s not needed) but red struggles at dealing with big threats. White doesn’t have this problem, since it’s most powerful removal tends to exile or kill instead of do damage.

            Black’s removal is great, but black doesn’t normally pair well with other colors, it’s pretty mana intensive and doesn’t have that many synergies, especially in control. White on the other hand tends to have minimal mana requirements. White also has some of the best sweepers (full board clearing cards) in the game. This is great for control, which doesn’t really want to play anything early game anyway.

            Thus, blue pairs with white. You’re average BW deck is going to want to spend the first 4 turns countering anything that looks like it might be a threat. Any mana they have left over will be spent playing instant-speed card draw spells. As soon as they have the ability to safely do so, they’ll cast a board-sweeper spell, then go back to countering everything. Eventually, they play a single threat and ride it to victory.

            This was fun to write. If you’d like an effort post on MTG strategies, let me know.

          • moonfirestorm says:

            @Aftagley:

            average BW deck is going to want to spend the first 4 turns countering anything that looks like it might be a threat.

            Just a note: in standard Magic terminology, blue is repesented by U rather than B, since black is also B. So it would be a UW deck.

            @EchoChaos:

            I haven’t played seriously since Fourth Edition, but it used to be that Blue/White was an incredibly strong turtle deck that just outwore and outlasted the opposition.

            I haven’t the least idea where the meta stands now.

            Note that the meta is totally different depending on what format you’re playing. But many blue-white decks generally work pretty much on those exact principles: blue’s draw and counterspells let you be pretty sure you’ll win the long game, so your goal with the rest of the deck is to make sure you get to the long game game.

            One principle we look at in the Magic metagame is “who’s the beatdown”. In any two-player Magic game, one of the players will do better in the endgame. Since only one player can win, that means that the other player, who we term “the beatdown” since his deck will usually be more creature-heavy and attacky, will be looking to end the game before that point. UW decks are usually not the beatdown.

          • Aftagley says:

            @Moonfirestorm

            Yeah, I struggled between using an abbreviation that is correct but would look like a typo to a layperson and one that would be more generally readable, but look like a mistake to an insider.

            In retrospect, I should have just written out Blue/White.

          • Paul Brinkley says:

            In my case, the best control deck I had, back around Unlimited, wasn’t blue-white. It was blue-artifact.

            It centered around four Nevinyrral’s Disks, and ways to protect them and bring them back. Almost everything else was various counterspells. If I didn’t like something you brought out, it got Power Sunk, Spell Blasted, or Counterspelled, depending on what I had. If I had nothing, you got it out, but you often didn’t get to use it before it went into the Disk. Sideboard had Control Magic (blue DOES have a cheap way to counter creature threats!) and Magical Hack (for that one guy who likes Tsunamis a little too much). As foretold, I eventually ride one single threat to victory, and it was Mishra’s Workshops – lands that became creatures, attacked, then went back to being lands.

            As simple as it was, it ended up winning tournaments, so I think it did the trick. Although now, some twenty or so expansions later, I’m sure modern decks would eat it alive.

          • ECD says:

            Wow, this thread makes me feel old (ETA: this is a joke, not a complaint). My last magic deck relied heavily on a combination of banding and trample to crush my ‘enemies’ (well, friends, as none of my ‘enemies’ played magic, or accepted it as an appropriate means of dispute resolution) underfoot (ETA: this is not a joke, or a complaint, but fond memories).

          • Aftagley says:

            My last magic deck relied heavily on a combination of banding and trample to crush my ‘enemies’

            This is literally the first time I’ve ever heard someone say something nice about banding. I don’t know if you still follow magic, but banding has turned into something of a meme in the past decade or so.

            Was it fun? Did it work? (legitimately curious. As a someone who started within the last half decade, I love hearing “old magic” stories)

          • ECD says:

            Banding worked pretty well, the combination of a rule (at the time, I believe, it may have been changed, or my local group may have just misinterpreted) that allowed the player controlling the banded block to pick where the damage went, meant I could block most creatures and keep all of mine alive, then allocate the damage on attacking so that any blocked damage was from the non-trample creatures.

            Our decks were mostly built out of stuff we got for holidays, or traded with each other, so we didn’t have great decks, but it was pretty successful.

            Now that I think about it, I also had a green and red deck that was mostly just elves to produce mana and fireballs to use the ridiculous amount of mana it could produce to fry people. That worked okay. Would have worked better with something that allowed me to draw more than one card a turn…

          • moonfirestorm says:

            Banding worked pretty well, the combination of a rule (at the time, I believe, it may have been changed, or my local group may have just misinterpreted) that allowed the player controlling the banded block to pick where the damage went, meant I could block most creatures and keep all of mine alive, then allocate the damage on attacking so that any blocked damage was from the non-trample creatures.

            Banding still works that way (Comp Rules 702.21j), and it lets you overkill the creature and assign no damage to yourself even if the attacker has trample, as the game does not force you to efficiently distribute damage among blockers.

            That was part of why banding was so confusing: it had completely different mechanics based on whether the banding creature was attacking or blocking. They kind of worked similarly thematically, that the creature with banding is working together with other creatures and thus has more control over how combat works. But the mechanics were totally different.

            Most of my complaints with banding are that it’s such a pain to understand, and it’s almost not worth explaining how it works because they’re going to think you’re trying to cheat them, especially when you get through the attacking bits and then go “ok, so forget all that because I’m blocking now and it works completely differently” .

            It’s not that bad of a mechanic. When blocking, it lets you block a large creature with your bander + some other guys + a cheap creature you don’t care about, and then dump all the damage on the cheap creature, so you can reliably get favorable trades against large creatures. But most of the instances of it are on creatures from the early ages of the game, which are usually terribly costed by modern standards. Helm of Chatzuk and Baton of Courage could be ok though, likely in a token-heavy list where you have plenty of 1/1s to eat the damage.

            The attacking bits are somewhat limited by the fact that you can only have one non-banding creature in a band, so you’d need to spend a lot of mana banding up all your creatures to build the “supercreature” banding seems to want you to make. And you don’t really benefit from that, because now they can block your whole band with one creature, and they still get to assign their full damage across your band. It would be more useful if you could assign the blocker’s damage the same way blocking creatures with banding assign the attacker’s damage, so at least you can pull a similar trick to the blocking use and throw it all into a sacrificial token.

          • ECD says:

            Oh, yeah, the rules were super complicated, especially the offense vs. defense shifts. Honestly, thinking back at it, and remembering what I was like at that age, it may just be that I won because no one else wanted to figure out how it worked and I thought it worked better than it did.

            I certainly thought that regardless of attacking or defending, the banded block got to choose where the damage went. And, at least on the cards I had, there was no mana cost to activating banding, or anything. Though there was an opportunity cost, as the cards were more expensive (sometimes, costs vs power vs rarity could produce some weird results).

          • moonfirestorm says:

            I certainly thought that regardless of attacking or defending, the banded block got to choose where the damage went

            Attacking with banding: attacker chooses how attacker’s damage is distributed, blocker chooses how blocker’s damage is distributed. Blocker likely takes out several creatures in the band, making an even trade. Net loss for guy with banding, since he spent something to give them banding or used native-banding creatures that are weaker than the same creatures without banding.

            Blocking with banding: blocker chooses how both attacker and blocker’s damage is distributed. Blocker can dump all the damage onto one little creature, getting a nice trade to make up for the resources he spent to use banding.

            And, at least on the cards I had, there was no mana cost to activating banding, or anything.

            Yeah, I was really referring specifically to Helm of Chatzuk and Baton of Courage, and really just Baton of Courage since Helm taps. if you wanted to use banding now, you really wouldn’t want to use creatures that have it natively, because they’re horribly underpowered for their cost due to all the creature power creep. The only way you’re going to be able to use it effectively is giving it to a bunch of modern creatures.

          • ECD says:

            Ah, thanks for the explanation. At this remove, I can’t recall if we played that rule correctly or not. The power creep problem hadn’t really (to my knowledge) at least, started then and we were a bunch of kids who had to rely on what we got out of the random packs, so deck building was always a bit: who’s got what and who’ll trade what?

      • Jaskologist says:

        The best Bible translation, like the best music, is the one I was exposed to when I was young.

      • Randy M says:

        spelling reforms

        I think we covered this last thread, in which I successfully lobbied to change the spelling of bureaucracy*. If you missed it, that’s why we’re talking about government by brewers now.
        (*still had to look it up.)

        Magic: The Gathering color combinations

        Bant, UG for effects, white for aesthetics.

        • moonfirestorm says:

          Bant, UG for effects, white for aesthetics.

          Context: casual tables, EDH.

          The problem with UG has always been that green has no real creature removal suite, and blue’s is often clunky unless you’re aiming to go full control and counter anything remotely threatening.

          The real reason you go Bant is for white’s removal, which is fantastic if you’re playing old cards and quite serviceable even on new cards. White often has a lot of little value creatures that go well with green.

          Another way to think of it is that you’re shoring up white’s weaknesses, which are generally ramp and draw. Its individual cards are very strong but it has issues supporting them sometimes. So you take blue for draw and green for ramp, and going three colors helps you take only the best white cards since white can run a little thin in a format like EDH where you need to come up with a lot of cards.

          • Randy M says:

            Fair enough, but adding black or red would also increase the decks options, especially when swords and paths are too expensive to fill decks with, and the reason I tend to like white are for gallant characters on cards like Knight Exemplar or Angel of Serenity.
            My favorite edh deck was a Roon of the hidden realms deck that used blue cards like stolen identity or progenitor mimic to create tokens of creatures (like that angel) and green and white cards like growing ranks and Trostani to populate those tokens, quite similar to the recent Naya deck that swaps red for blue.

          • Aftagley says:

            white’s weaknesses, which are generally ramp and draw

            Not saying your wrong moonfire, but I think you value ramp more than I/my playgroup does. In general I’ve found that white’s taxation effects and ability to hate out enough of the competition means that it has staying power to negate it’s lack of ramp.

            That being said, approximately 90% of my games I’m piloting either RDW or mono-red goblins, so I might just be biased against spells that cost more than 3 mana to cast.

          • moonfirestorm says:

            @Randy:
            Red has a pretty weak removal suite, at least for the endgame where blue and green tend to shine. White has plenty of cheap options as well: Valorous Stance, Condemn, and Soul Snare are all dirt cheap spot removal that will work for most situations you really want to kill a creature in.

            I agree that blue-green-black is a strong combination as well, particularly since green-black has a few almost-universal removal cards. You don’t get green and white’s synergy with small creatures though, and black tends to do fine on its own as a color so there’s less need to shore it up: it overlaps a lot with blue on draw, so I prefer just pairing it with green, especially since two colors makes Cabal Coffers still viable.

            My favorite edh deck was a Roon of the hidden realms deck that used blue cards like stolen identity or progenitor mimic to create tokens of creatures

            Oh man, I’ve been doing this with everything using Helm of the Host, which also has the nice property of making the tokens nonlegendary. Plus you can animate other types of permanents and start making copies of those. Ever have 8 Gaea’s Cradles in play? Completely unnecessary, but amazing.

            And then if you’re feeling particularly degenerate use something to animate Helm of the Host, copy it, equip the copy to the original, and start making exponentially more and more Helms of the Host.

          • Jake R says:

            @moonfirestorm

            Forerunner of the Empire + Polyraptor is a much easier way to get exponential growth. It’s still completely impractical. I only ever got it off once, but it was legendary.

          • Randy M says:

            Red has a pretty weak removal suite, at least for the endgame where blue and green tend to shine.

            If red shines in the early game, that would complement UG’s late game, wouldn’t it?
            I think you mean in high life/mana formats Red’s removal doesn’t keep pace with large creatures dropped after ramping.

            Valorous Stance

            I love that card, modal spells are tight. Especially for cube, where your card slots are tight.

            Oh man, I’ve been doing this with everything using Helm of the Host, which also has the nice property of making the tokens nonlegendary.

            Drafted Dominaria once in person and was passed, pack one third pick, a pack with two HotH in it. The two guys prior, somewhat newer players, were laughing about the pack having two of the same garbage card in it. I turned to the one who gave it to me and–possibly breaking some draft etiquette–said, “No, no, you’re supposed to take this card. It looks expensive, and at some point you were told high equip cost means a card is bad, but this is a major wincon.” I did not convince them until the game play, but my cubes very much appreciated it.

            If you pick up this guy and get him so equipped, you can make token copies of him that populate themselves to make more token copies of themselves for an exponential increase (edit: although not immediately as in the polyraptor scenario). Hopefully the next Ravnica set is built around Ghired filling up the entire plane, Agent Smith style.

            I only ever got it off once, but it was legendary.

            If it was legendary, it wouldn’t work.

            I’ll show myself out.

          • moonfirestorm says:

            Not saying your wrong moonfire, but I think you value ramp more than I/my playgroup does. In general I’ve found that white’s taxation effects and ability to hate out enough of the competition means that it has staying power to negate it’s lack of ramp.

            Depends on the format a lot I think. The more competitive you get and the tighter the mana curve, the less white’s ramp problems are relevant. In that situation I’d expect a Bant deck to be more of an aggro-control list.

            Legacy used to have a UGW Aether Vial Sliver list called Meathooks that was pretty solid before Merfolk picked up enough extra lords to take that niche over, and I was having fun with a non-tribal variant of that list at some point that just used raw power like Tarmogoyf, Noble Hierarch, and Knight of the Reliquary to make up for the lords. Was powerful enough to beat a professional player at a local tournament, and contributed to her giving up on whatever she was playing at the time (poor girl got matched against my friend playing Dredge the next round).

            Multiplayer versus single-player matters too: using taxation to slow your opponents down works for a while, but it’ll eventually run out. If you just have to take out one person that works fine, but if you’re in a 4 player game it’ll make way more sense to speed yourself up than to slow everyone else down.

            If you’re talking RDW (“red deck wins”- a very aggressive and fast mono-red archetype, for those of you with less Magic familiarity) you’re probably talking a fairly competitive group in single-player, since you’ll almost certainly run out of steam before you get through another life total in even a three-player game, and few casual decks would have any sort of interesting game against RDW.

          • moonfirestorm says:

            @JakeR:

            Forerunner of the Empire + Polyraptor is a much easier way to get exponential growth. It’s still completely impractical. I only ever got it off once, but it was legendary.

            The big problem with that is that all you have to show for it is 5/5s. What are you going to do with it, win the game? Boring!

            With Helm, you can make copies of anything, so you can start multiplying continuous effects and triggers. Play your opponent’s whole deck with Gonti, Lord of Luxury! Give everything -30/-30 with Elesh Norn! Play a single artifact and deck yourself with Jhoira! Make 50 copies of Forerunner of the Empire, 50 copies of Polyraptor, use a Deathless Angel to give a random number of them indestructible, and call a judge to ask how many tokens you have when the dust settles!

          • moonfirestorm says:

            @Randy

            If red shines in the early game, that would complement UG’s late game, wouldn’t it?
            I think you mean in high life/mana formats Red’s removal doesn’t keep pace with large creatures dropped after ramping.

            I agree with that statement. I edited shortly after posting to mention the context I’m talking from, because different cards work so differently with different formats. The combination you’re talking about sometimes works, but you don’t want your deck pulling in a lot of different directions in a tight format, and if you’re using low-cost early-game red removal combined with blue’s long-game card draw it more or less guarantees a lot of dead cards in your hand at some point (which will be compounded if you’re using green ramp, which is generally dead after you have enough mana for your top end).

            And if you’re playing a long-game deck with UG, you’re generally only worried about huge creatures that can outclass your guys, or fast stuff that will kill you before you can set up. Conveniently, that’s exactly where white removal is most effective: attacking creatures and big creatures.

            The one solid competitive URG deck I’ve seen was Canadian Threshold in Legacy, which is basically Force of Will + Bolt + Tarmogoyf. No late game or draw, all tempo, counters, and efficient beaters where you try to keep the opponent from doing anything relevant until their life total’s gone. Eventually I believe green gave way to black, when Delver of Secrets meant you no longer needed Goyf for your clock.

            Counterfire (UR burn-removal-control) has shown up a few times, but it usually needs a format where red removal is particularly strong, or when the creature base is particularly vulnerable to 3-4 damage and thus red removal is more globally effective.

          • Aftagley says:

            If you’re talking RDW (“red deck wins”- a very aggressive and fast mono-red archetype, for those of you with less Magic familiarity) you’re probably talking a fairly competitive group in single-player, since you’ll almost certainly run out of steam before you get through another life total in even a three-player game, and few casual decks would have any sort of interesting game against RDW.

            Yep! I normally play Canadian Highlander, (1v1 100 card singleton, no commander). Multiplayer games are what I have have my mono-red goblins deck for.

          • Randy M says:

            The combination you’re talking about sometimes works, but you don’t want your deck pulling in a lot of different directions in a tight format, and if you’re using low-cost early-game red removal combined with blue’s long-game card draw it more or less guarantees a lot of dead cards in your hand at some point (which will be compounded if you’re using green ramp, which is generally dead after you have enough mana for your top end).

            I don’t know what commander you’re using, but my thought is that that is what Guttersnipe, Talrand, and Young Pyromancer are for. 🙂
            edit: I think you are playing Riku in that deck, and it sounds like a blast.
            (Any chance you are in So. California?)

            One time I played a Temur deck was the exact opposite of that, a Surrak all creature deck to foil my friend playing a Rashmi deck with almost all instants, heavy on the counter spells.

          • moonfirestorm says:

            @Randy:

            I don’t know what commander you’re using, but my thought is that that is what Guttersnipe, Talrand, and Young Pyromancer are for. 🙂
            edit: I think you are playing Riku in that deck, and it sounds like a blast.
            (Any chance you are in So. California?)

            The problem with all of those is that they have to stay on the board, and are clearly significant and easily-removable threats. They also require a pretty heavy focus in instants and sorceries, which a lot of URG commanders won’t play well with. And they still don’t actually solve the problem: a bunch of tokens or some player damage will solve some of the same problems reliable creature removal will since you can just quadruple-block or whatever, but sometimes you’re dealing with an evasive or overly-powerful creature. They also make you a much larger threat to other players, and politics is everything in a multiplayer game.

            I wasn’t referring to specific decks, but deckbuilding problems I have when in those colors. I’ve built Riku a few times, as well as Maelstrom Wanderer, Yasova, Omnath, and (less relevantly) Animar.

            I am not in or near Southern California, unfortunately.

      • Lambert says:

        NIV, 22-EDO, no opinion, λ calculus, Zweite Orthographische Konferenz, The Empress who did the things with the geese.

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      Perhaps we should just look at global projections more. At one time every home had a globe, and I see Google Maps has a globe option.

      Of course unless it’s a VR version we’ll see it in 2D, but presumably our depth perception functions can still be activated, especially when we spin it.

    • I see a few people defending Mercator because of navigation but that defense seems off base because most of these maps are hanging on people’s walls and who is just using maps to navigate now anyways?

      • S_J says:

        Mercator projection has one large positive for long-distance navigation: a straight line on the Mercator projection is a line of constant bearing.

        If I understand it correctly, a ship traveling along a course with a specific bearing relative to the geographic North Pole will travel a path that looks like a straight line on a Mercator projection. That path, if extended far enough, will be a rhumb-line. Such lines are not the best routes to travel, if a navigator desires a shortest-path. But it is the easiest route to describe in sailing instructions, and it is also an easy route to draw on a Mercator projection.

        This is likely the reason why Mercator projection was so common during the age of navigation-by-compass-and-star-chart. The fact that the Mercator projection was widely used for Navigation purposes may have made it the most-commonly-produced-projection.

      • Peter says:

        Navigation – quite a lot of people use Mercators – well, Web Mercators (there’s a minor sphere-vs-elipsoid difference) to navigate. Applications like Google Maps. If you want a great big map that encompases the world, but which you can zoom into deep enough to find your way around town, then conformality is the property you need. Or the almost-conformality of Web Mercator.

        I notice that these days if you zoom Google Maps out far enough it shows a globe, so at least on large scales they’ve abandoned the idea of one big flat map.

        Anyway, I take the “it’s a navigation chart” defense more as an explanation of how the features that Peters et al. complain about came to be, it explains the origin but not widespread use and persistence of Mercators. When accusations are being flung around, it’s worth seeing in detail (including: with attention to motives) which are well-founded and which aren’t.

        Random Mercator side note – when I see a Mercator I often like to see where the centre of the map is – or at least what latitude it is. You have to crop a Mercator, and due to the way that landmasses are arranged it’s very tempting to crop one to cut out Antarctica (a continent that seems to exist in order to make map projections look foolish) but leave in a lot of the pointy bits in the Arctic Circle – this has a tendency to put the equator more than halfway down the map. The standard anti-Mercator line is this is Eurocentric, it puts Europe in the middle. My experience with actually measuring such Mercators as I find says this is not so, yes the equator is below the centre, but the centre is in, or at the latitude of, Africa. Incidentally this seems not to correlate too strongly with how old or imperialistic or colonialistic the map is; I’ve seen an old Mercator from the days when openly celebrating “Her Majesty’s Dominions” was a thing, and the centre was at African latitudes, I’ve seen much more recent Mercators with no such theme (it was on a news site, giving links to regions of world news) with a centre at European latitudes.

        • Gerry Quinn says:

          Another advantage of Mercator is that regions – so long as they are not too large – are the right shape. If you are not assuming a global distance scale, then if you look at a typical country on a Mercator map, you are getting something about as accurate as a 2D map can give you.

  65. James says:

    I asked a few weeks ago for advice on prepping for a trial week as a contractor as a React Native developer at an app development agency. In return for the helpful advice I got, it’s only fair to let you know how I got on. (Fair warning: I suspect this will only be of interest to software developers.)

    First things first: I guess I passed the evaluation; they liked me and want me back for more. They have about three weeks’ work for me starting next week, and I think some bigger projects further in the future. The pay is good and the contract-based nature of the work suits me well. (I’m a musician, so periods of paid work with long gaps inbetween which I can devote to my little musical pet project suit me well.) So I’m happy with this result.

    Someone here (I’m sorry, I don’t remember who) expressed that it sounded like I was probably well-equipped enough for the job and my freaking out was just some form of imposter syndrome. This was probably true as far as my technical skills in the very narrow sense of coding itself were concerned, and I was able to pick things up quickly enough on that front. Where I felt not quite up to speed was in the tools, workflow, and process surrounding the coding itself—using an issue tracker and submitting patches against it, code review, etc. My last job was one of those weird, dead-end dev roles working on a bespoke in-house application as the only technical person in a non-tech organisation, and before that, I was freelancing on web stuff. I liked that work, but it probably didn’t leave me properly prepared for working as part of a team—I felt a bit like I’d fallen out of touch with the shared tools and culture of my profession. On the other hand, everywhere has their own set-up for this stuff, so it would be insane to expect an outsider to already know it all.

    The other part of the reason I was freaking out about being well-prepared came from a sense that that they might have different expectations for a ‘contractor’ (whom one might expect to hit the ground running) than for an ’employee’ (in whom one might be willing to invest a bit more time while they learn the ropes). But ultimately they didn’t seem unhappy with how long it took me to pick this stuff up.

    I also felt a bit outsiderish when I turned up. It’s hard to explain exactly, but I had a vaue sense of coming from a slightly different background to the other devs at the company—a linuxy, command-line-y, vim-using geek, surrounded by macbook-y, vscode-using geeks. But as my week with them went on, those differences came to seem only skin-deep. (When I turned up with my boxy, linux-running thinkpad, they had to lend me a macbook, as the project I was working on was only set up for iOS. I’ll have to get my own for the next block of work I do for them. Never thought I’d become a macbook guy.)

    • JPNunez says:

      Macbooks are lovely unix machines underneath.

      Chances are you won’t stray far from having a terminal open at all times.

      • James says:

        Yeah, I’m no fan of Apple, but I found myself quite liking the OS when I had to use one at a previous job. With the terminal, gvim, firefox, and brew, I’m 90% of the way to my usual linux experience.

        The thing I’ll miss most is my window manager.

  66. Clutzy says:

    Another data point has emerged in the conspiracy theory space that is, IMO, another strong data point against the anti-conspiracy theorist talking points which boil down to: 1. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” and 2. “There is no way this wouldn’t have leaked.” This event is:

    Antonio Brown to the Patriots.

    • Secretly French says:

      Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

      This phrase was injected into the english language by people who were not stupid, and who definitely were malicious, and who wanted to be able to plead to a lesser charge if and when caught plying their sinful trade.

      • Joseph Greenwood says:

        I assumed on first reading that this was a clever conspiracy theory joke, but having read your jab against Scott downthread I am revising my estimates of your tone. Do you have any sources, or are you making fun here?

        • ADifferentAnonymous says:

          Unsourced knowledge of a Napoleon-related conspiracy against anglophones… As they say on Reddit, username checks out.

        • Secretly French says:

          Alas you’re right, I don’t have a source wherein someone credibly claims to have uncovered the origin of that phrase having been a masterful long-game inception of an idea into a civilisation as the set up to a subsequent deception, I’m just presenting an idea. Please don’t mistake me for actually believing what I said literally, it was meant to be amusing and ironic for sure; nevertheless I am also not kidding in the least when I say that if I were evil, and I were caught being evil, and I knew that I’d be punished less severely if my judges thought I were merely stupid and not evil, that yeah I would pretend to be stupid, and so would all smart evil people. To spell out my idea and ruin the joke, I would caution you that when you claim publicly that you “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”, you are kind of giving away the keys to your castle in that sense.

          • Nick says:

            nevertheless I am also not kidding in the least when I say that if I were evil, and I were caught being evil, and I knew that I’d be punished less severely if my judges thought I were merely stupid and not evil, that yeah I would pretend to be stupid, and so would all smart evil people.

            Fortunately, lots of smart evil people are too full of themselves to pass as stupid. Vices have a way of compounding.

            you are kind of giving away the keys to your castle in that sense.

            Not necessarily. Law has practiced “innocent until proven guilty” for a very long time, but we still catch thieves.

      • rubberduck says:

        I was about to ask for a source, since Wikipedia says there are a few possibilities for the origin of the phrase, but then I realized that that I would be asking you not to attribute to malice something adequately explained by stupidity. Well played. (But if you’re serious then source?)

        EDIT: nvm, I posted before refreshing the comments and have read your response above.

    • Tarpitz says:

      An unusual case, in that the question is not “conspiracy or cock-up” but “conspiracy or Sith mind control powers”.

    • Aftagley says:

      Antonio Brown to the Patriots.

      Could we get context on this for the non-sportsball literate among us?

      • hls2003 says:

        Antonio Brown is an aging wide receiver in the NFL. He was one of the top WR’s in the league with the Pittsburgh Steelers, until he acted obnoxiously and forced his way to the Raiders and signed a moderately lucrative new contract this past offseason. He then behaved even more obnoxiously, including weird stuff about wearing his old helmet, having frost-bitten feet, and threatening to punch his general manager who (I think) he called a “cracker.” Following these issues, the Raiders released him too and cancelled his contract. He then was signed by the New England Patriots, at a cheaper rate, on a “prove it” contract; New England has a reputation for taming talented but problematic personalities due to the gravitas of Coach Bill Belichick and QB Tom Brady.

        The end result is that the Patriots get (arguably) a still-top-end wide receiver at a bargain price, when they are already coming off a Super Bowl win with a talented team.

        • Aftagley says:

          Ok, where’s the conspiracy in this?

          Is the allegation that he secretly wanted to be on the Patriots the whole time and acted like a dick until he could get a less-profitable contract?

          Or is the conspiracy that somehow that Pats engineered this whole situation?

          • hls2003 says:

            In the Antonio Brown instance the statement is (mostly) tongue-in-cheek. Belichick has sort of an evil-genius schtick going on, and the Patriots have previously been punished for allegedly cheating in various ways (e.g. illegally filming opponents’ practices). So when a gift-wrapped talented and relatively cheap WR falls into their lap, the dark humor is to say Belichick must have masterminded the whole thing. In truth, AB seems to just be basically a borderline personality disorder headcase. Also, the Raiders are pretty dysfunctional, so AB may have snatched the money, then thought better of it and tantrum-like-a-fox’d his way to a more winning situation. But mostly I think he’s just a headcase.

          • Protagoras says:

            Brown was traded from the Steelers to the Raiders. It is unlikely the Steelers would have agreed to a trade directly to the Patriots (bad blood between the two), and anyway the Raiders had to give the Steelers something (though admittedly it wasn’t very much; a third and a fifth round draft pick) in the trade. The Raiders cut Brown, which allowed the Patriots to sign him without having to negotiate with anybody else or giving up anything. So it works out well for the Pats. As to why Brown might want it that way, if he wants to play for a winning team, the Pats are a much, much better bet than the Raiders, though as you say the conspiracy theory implausibly has him giving up on a substantial amount of money. Though Brown’s contract with the Patriots isn’t that stingy; he’s not playing for league minimum or anything. Could make $15 million this year, which I believe is close to what he would have made for the year playing for the Raiders, though his Pats deal isn’t multi-year.

          • Anthony says:

            Adding to the conspiracy is the fact that due to the timing, Brown wasn’t allowed to play with the Patriots this past Sunday, which gives him an extra week to learn how to catch deflated balls.

          • Clutzy says:

            Adding further is that there are fairly reliable sources that the Patriots offered decent assets for Brown, but the Steelers were mortified of him going there, so instead took much less from the Raiders.

          • Chevalier Mal Fet says:

            AB is one of the best wide receivers in the NFL, and adding him to the Patriots – certainly the best team in the NFL – makes a monster team even more monstrous. So, when the Patriots offered the Steelers a first-round pick in the draft in return for Brown last year, the Steelers said no. Instead, they sent him to the non-contending Oakland Raiders for a 3rd round and a 5th round pick.

            Now, Brown had always been a locker room cancer, but things got even more cancerous in Oakland this summer. There was a series of bizarre events, involving frozen feet, non-regulation helmets, a racial slur, an illegally taped phone call, and probably more that I’ve forgotten. Finally, the Raiders had no choice but to cut Brown.

            Within an hour of being cut by the Raiders, Brown had signed with the Patriots – where he’d indicated last year was where he always wanted to end up. His deal is structured so most of his money comes in future years, so he doesn’t give up that much money, and he makes the best team in the league even better. And to top it off, there’s rumors – I’m not certain how credible – that he hired a social media consultant to coach him on getting cut by the Raiders in order to free him up for the Patriots.

            So basically the conspiracy is that AB deliberately acted like a dick until he was cut and could join the Pats, with the Pats secretly conniving the entire time to pick up a great WR for peanuts AND they keep the 1st round pick they initially offered for him. The Steelers are out the 1st round pick but still have the less-valuable 3rd and 5th round picks, while the Raiders, already one of the bottom-dwelling teams, just lost draft picks for no return at all. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer in the NFL.

  67. Your number 4 link for Dick goes to a Wikipedia article on nominative determinism. I assume that is a joke, but after following the other three links I don’t think it is a fair comment. At worst, he is being mildly unfriendly.

    I now conclude that both your indefinite suspensions are overreactions (I had a reasonable idea of Conrad’s style, didn’t have one of Dick’s).

    Your first link for Matt goes to a statement that is almost certainly false but he probably believed it to be true and, given that, he was making a legitimate (but I think mistaken) argument in a somewhat aggressive fashion. So I think you are over reacting to him and Deiseach as well.

    If those four are the worst you could find the blog is in pretty good shape, so far as rudeness and hostility are concerned.

    • sty_silver says:

      I strongly disagree. I’m sure Matt thought that what he said was true, but the standard is not “speak what you think is true and necessary”

      if you are going to be angry or sarcastic, what you say had better be both true and necessary. You had better be delivering a very well-deserved smackdown against someone who is uncontroversially and obviously wrong, in a way you can back up with universally agreed-upon statistics.

      His comment clearly violates that standard.

      Also disagree on both people who were banned indefinitely. I think the comments linked are more than bad enough to warrant it.

    • Aapje says:

      I think that Scott typically both underreacts and overreacts. He seems to dislike moderating so much that he lets a lot of things slide, but then he overreacts when he does intervene, presumably so he doesn’t have to deal with those people again soon.

    • James says:

      Were Conrad Honcho and Dick warned before? It seems a little harsh to jump straight to an indefinite ban. (Wait, now I can’t remember whether ‘indefinitely’ has usually tended to mean ‘forever’ or ‘until I say so’.)

      I do agree that they could both behave pretty egregiously.

      • EchoChaos says:

        It usually means either “forever” or “unless the commentators vehemently react”.

        He’s been talked out of indefinite bans on Deiseach before (hence his comment) and on me. Commentator reaction is something he will consider if it is well reasoned.

        • Paul Zrimsek says:

          Dick is the person I want to wheedle Scott into reinstating, if I only get to pick one.

        • onyomi says:

          At this point I feel like Deiseach should just get a special papal dispensation for her unique brand of cantankerousness. No one else can cite it as grounds for additional exceptions because no one’s posting style is anything like Deiseach, which is why no one really wants to see her go each time she gets banned.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            At this point I feel like Deiseach should just get a special papal dispensation for her unique brand of cantankerousness.

            Treat some papal different from others?

          • Paul Brinkley says:

            Any argument for unbanning Deiseach will, I think, need to factor in the possibility that she was banned for being less than her usual uniquely cantankerous self. Bad Anthony Hopkins might still be a much better actor than you, but is he then worth all the money you’re paying?

      • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

        I don’t think they were warned (at least it’s not mentioned on the comments page) and I agree that makes it a bit harsh. I’m going to be a bit unsportsmanlike and break with convention by saying I did not generally find Conrad Honcho’s comments to be valuable and would have been happy to see him banned after a warning, but I still think this is too severe.

      • Jaskologist says:

        I come to defend Honcho as well. I believe it is unjust to ban somebody without warning who has been commenting here a while and making a good-faith effort to keep within the rules.

        Where the rules are clear, Honcho has been careful not only to follow the rules but also remind others to do so as well (1, 2, 3).

        Much as you may not like the direction comment threads have been going lately, letting them do so without saying anything does amount to tacitly sending the message that this is acceptable. It’s not fair to then indefinitely ban people for trying to follow your spoken rules because they broke an unspoken one.

        I believe the just course would be either red-text warnings or 1 month timeouts for both Honcho and Mr. Nominative Determination. If they violate after that, it’s fair to ban indefinitely.

        Bark before you bite, basically.

        • Corey says:

          The red-text warnings have a failure mode though: Scott can’t keep up and AFAIK we don’t have email notification of replies.

          Anecdote: I didn’t see my warning for several months, and saw it while browsing the comment-policy page, because it came long after my post and I wasn’t reading that thread anymore. I wasn’t commenting much and don’t care about the relevant issue anymore, so I coincidentally didn’t do the stuff warned against.

          As best as I can tell, the “Notify me of follow-up comments by email” checkbox will notify you of every comment on that particular (in this case, the whole of the Open Thread), which isn’t useful.

          • liate says:

            SSC does have email notification of replies, but it’s a service external to the ssc wordpress site and not very well publicized.

            Go to https://sscnotify.bakkot.com/subscribe?author_name= <username> (ie, https://sscnotify.bakkot.com/subscribe?author_name=Corey. (Then, presumably, there’s something you put your email into to get the emails?) Then any time someone replies to you or has @<username> (ie @Corey) in their comment, you get emailed.

            Edit: forgot how html works

            @Scott
            Could you put links to all the useful comments scripts in the Comments page linked in the top of the page? It’d be nice not to have to go trolling through years-old open threads every time we want to tell someone about the only showing new comments script, or the reply notifications.

          • Jaskologist says:

            I agree; that’s a failure mode. Mentioning the warning in an OT would go a long way towards mitigating it.

            There seems to be a general consensus in the ratsphere that swifter, smaller, more certain punishments are much more effective than infrequent, uncertain but very harsh punishments. Our moderation policy is currently the latter, and indeed seems to be failing to achieve the desired results. I’m saying we move to the former, which I think is both more effective and more just.

          • Randy M says:

            I three day ban and note on the comment page would be sufficiently long to be noticed and sufficiently short to count as a warning. In most cases, imo.

          • Paul Brinkley says:

            three day ban and note on the comment page would be sufficiently long to be noticed and sufficiently short to count as a warning. In most cases, imo

            IMO, I would go with one week. A three day ban often squeezes between two OTs, making it close to meaningless. One week seems sufficiently long to not fail to get the user’s attention.

    • peterj says:

      Whether it was appropriate or not, Scott’s reference to “Nominative determinism” was far too great of an opportunity to pass up

    • albatross11 says:

      I think Conrad adds a fair bit to the discussions here, and I’d like to suggest reducing his ban to a fixed time (maybe three months?) instead of indefinite. Unnecessary snark while honestly expressing interesting (often interestingly wrong, IMO) views seems like a problem that’s corrected by telling the poster to dial back the snark, rather than by permabanning them.

      • J Mann says:

        Seconded.

        It’s Scott’s blog, but it feels a little unfair to ban people who, as Scott says and I agree “otherwise produce good content” without a warning.

        • salvorhardin says:

          Thirded. As a strongly anti-{religious,nationalist,traditionalist, authoritarian} Grey Triber I have plenty of deep disagreements with CH and often thought him wrong on empirics, but I value greatly the opportunity this blog affords to engage with much stronger than usual arguments for views very different from mine.

          A ban of some term is reasonable. I also value the strong enforcement of civility norms without which such engagement would not be productive or pleasant. But indefinite is too strong here.

          • AliceToBob says:

            Fourth-ed!

            Conrad’s posts were often excellent examples of how to argue convincingly for unpopular points of view (even ones that I am uneasy about).

            I’m a working father on the tenure track, and I feel strongly enough about this that I would happily write a 4-5 page document with examples, including why I found those contributions valuable, if such a document had a non-zero chance of reducing his ban to a finite duration (hopefully measured in months, not years).

      • Mark V Anderson says:

        Since we seem to be counting up, here, I will be fifth. I will miss Conrad more than the other three just because he had a more unique point of view. He is consistently pro-Trump without being inane (I don’t know that I’ve seen anyone else like that), and he argued well for other conservative points of view. Much like we could use more leftists here, the truly conservative point of view (non-libertarian) is somewhat rare here.

    • Enkidum says:

      I think all the examples were things that Scott is right to want to avoid. I do think a 3-month ban for both Conrad (with whom I almost never agree on content) and Dick (with whom I usually do agree) would be better than permanent.

      • Randy M says:

        Scott should auction back the offenders return date to them or their friends (or enemies). Increase the reserve bid with each ban, and give the proceeds to charity.
        It’s the optimal utilitarian solution.
        (For superficial, straw versions of utilitarianism that may overlook the possibility of backfiring hilariously)

        • AliceToBob says:

          I would go for that idea too.

          Another way of putting our money (or time) where our mouth is: I posted elsewhere that I’d be willing to write a 4-5 page document about why I have found Conrad’s posts useful, if such a document had a non-zero chance of reducing his ban to a finite duration (hopefully measured in months, not years).

    • Eternaltraveler says:

      I agree with David. I do not think either Dick or Conrad should have indefinite bans. Conrad is basically the only one here who represents a mainstream pro Trump perspective and he defends this position reliably. This is a major loss and will lose us all a very important perspective.

      These bans also seem to represent a major risk to being a prolific commenter. Everyone is not going to always recognize in every moment when they say something they perhaps should word differently and a high frequency of participation is going to greatly increase the risk that will happen. A three month ban should be more than sufficient to communicate that such behavior should be reined in.

    • JohnBuridan says:

      Conrad Honcho has repeatedly floored me by the lack of charity in his comments and arguments with other commenters. I think the ban is well deserved. His attitude is not kind. Although some people want to see a “full throated Trumpism” defended, too often the full throat requires insinuating that “outgroup deserves evil things to happen to them” and several lumps of abominably, infelicitous phrasing.

      I don’t like seeing people banned. But I also think Conrad merits correction.

      • AliceToBob says:

        @ JohnBuridan

        outgroup deserves evil things to happen to them

        Care to point out exactly where Conrad does this?

  68. Wandering around a Silicon Valley art and wine festival, I was struck by how superstitious blue tribe is — lots of crystals with implausible accounts of their magical properties (not even historically correct, as best I could tell), an emphasis on how natural things are (soybean soap, if I remember correctly, and lots of other examples).

    I live in a blue tribe area, so don’t see the equivalent for red tribe. Are the superstitions the same? Are red tribe people as likely to think that crystals are magic and that adding irrelevant natural ingredients to things makes them better?

    Alternatively, do they have a different set of superstitions? I didn’t notice any references to astrology — are the believers in that mostly from the other tribe?

    • Snickering Citadel says:

      If we don’t count religion as a superstition would religion remove a person’s reason for superstition? Like if a religious person has good luck, maybe they attribute it to praying and would therefore not attribute it to a horseshoe or whatever?

      • Radu Floricica says:

        Religion also tends to see superstition as competition and either actively fights it (“pagan gods”, “idolatry”) or takes it over (christmas, easter).

        So it makes sense that in places with more active institutional religion you’d see less superstition. Plus, the psychological/social needs are already fulfilled – no need for yoga classes if you go to sunday church.

      • Unirt says:

        I’ve met many people who are both religious and superstitious at the same time quite happily, so I think the “competition” between conventional religion and new-age type superstitions may perhaps be real in some populations, but definitely not everywhere. Where I live, folks who are thus inclined, typically make up their own version of religion by combining elements of their liking from Christianity, New Age and animism. It doesn’t have to make coherent sense, it needs to feel good. They are not at all troubled if some clergyman speaks up against casual superstition, they just dismiss this unpleasant part of Christianity and keep the pleasant parts.

        • Radu Floricica says:

          Oh, it’s definitely messy. Here we have orthodox christianity, and there is a very funny dynamic in the rural areas between old ladies and priests. Sometimes the priests are offended by superstitions and chastise the old ladies, sometimes they embrace or encourage them. Partly because they’re raised in the countryside themselves, but partly because some amount of superstition enlarges the mythos that makes people respect the church.

          Lately I think it’s gone more in the way of encouragement, but I haven’t been involved with that worlds so I’m not sure.

      • HomarusSimpson says:

        Yes if you file both religion & superstition under ‘agency attribution error’ the distinction disappears. Religion seems to have a secondary function of social/ moral cohesion that superstition doesn’t have, but maybe that’s just because I live in a place that has been largely formed on the back of religious based social cohesion (depending how you view it: UK/ the west/ mostly the world)

    • AlphaGamma says:

      I’ve seen various stuff about angels which I suspect is more red-tribe.

    • brad says:

      Sports fans seem to be an especially superstitious bunch. It’s a little hard to tell from the outside how much is affectation though.

    • FrankistGeorgist says:

      What comes to mind for me is the number of times I was told “you know most UFO sightings happen over Jerusalem. Think about it.” And various theories about angels and demon sightings.

      Astrology was not popular among my teachers but was known by heart in my family and among my friends, but we were all on the less religious side.

      The weirder aspects of the anti-vaccine movement also found fertile ground among what I’d call the Mid Level Marketing set of the Red Tribe. Whole food movements and essential oils and the government is poisoning our children etc etc.

      I also remember one of my mother’s friends announcing with glee as she dropped off some elk burgers for us “you know you can reiki your wine.” More proof that the Blue Tribe Red Tribe divide runs across the human heart moreso than any map.

    • albatross11 says:

      Where I grew up, there was (and I think still is) some superstition surrounding religion, but not necessarily associated with any formal religious doctrine. Thinking some symbol is associated with devil-worship, for example.

    • Hackworth says:

      The superstitions are congruent, if not identical. Going by sites like http://www.infowarsshop.com/ the (marketable) superstitions seem to be very similar, except for the branding. You have your essential oils, you have your ancient herbal wisdom (“Tongkat Ali is an ancient Malaysian herb that has been used for thousands of years traditionally to support fertility and libido.”, from the “Ultimate Female Force” blurb), you have your body enhancement products of questionable provenance and effectiveness.

      Where the stereotypical hippie wisdom says there will be a time when all humanity becomes one, the right-wing fantasy is the opposite side of the coin – breakdown of civilization, global nuclear war, the second coming of christ, essentially everyone for themselves. By buying the offered prepper and body-enhancement paraphernalia, people subscribing to those beliefs seem to feel like they will be on the winning side when it comes to that.

      Consequently, the chosen words focus on competition, supremacy, and protection. You will notice an inflation of words like “Turbo”, “Force”, “Super”, “Knockout”, “Ultimate”, “Fusion”, “Guardian”, “Shield”, “Survival”, etc. in the product names. Directly tying into the civilization breakdown theme you have protective and outdoors gear in the “Blackout Edition”.

      Surprisingly enough, you can even get water filters integrated into showerheads, which seems more appropriate to defend against the ravages of unchecked capitalism (think Flint, MI) rather than those of the usual suspects Russia, United Nations, or the actual Apocalypse.

      You can also get “Wake Up America”, Patriot Blend coffee. Interestingly enough, they source it from Mexico rather than from the USA (apparently you can commercially grow coffee in Hawaii and California), and they go to great pains to explain that the coffee is fair trade, GMO-free, and was “raised [..] in harmony with the existing forest canopy”. So I suppose Moloch does not stop swimming ever leftward even for Alex Jones.

      • Aftagley says:

        You can also get “Wake Up America”, Patriot Blend coffee. Interestingly enough, they source it from Mexico rather than from the USA (apparently you can commercially grow coffee in Hawaii and California), and they go to great pains to explain that the coffee is fair trade, GMO-free, and was “raised [..] in harmony with the existing forest canopy”. So I suppose Moloch does not stop swimming ever leftward even for Alex Jones.

        When did not wanting to drink distilled suffering every morning become an example of Moloch?

        • Hackworth says:

          When did not wanting to drink distilled suffering every morning become an example of Moloch?

          The connection I see is that things like fair trade, GMO-freeness and all the harmony with nature” stuff seem decisively blue tribe leftist values to me, and not something you’d expect coming from the official infowars shop. Moloch swimming leftward was a reference to an SSC post arguing that no matter how hard the right tries, political reality is slowly drifting leftward; though I can’t seem to find the post right now.

          • DarkTigger says:

            It’s not Moloch but Cuthullu who swims alway leftward. Moloch only awaits us, at the mouth of the river of shit that flows ever downward the hill of time.

      • Anthony says:

        apparently you can commercially grow coffee in Hawaii and California

        Hawaii, yes. California is doubtful. Coffee trees really don’t like any cold at all. One source says any significant time at less than 7 degrees C is bad for production, and the plant doesn’t like very warm (>35oC) temperatures, either.

      • The Nybbler says:

        Coffee is grown in Puerto Rico also, though Puerto Rico had managed to maintain a coffee shortage for years before Hurricane Maria.

      • onyomi says:

        This is quite interesting to me in a way I probably can’t go into much in a CW-free OT because of my efforts to understand what “really” drives Red-Blue divisions, at least in the US (and quite possibly elsewhere, though I won’t be greedy and look for a universal cause of political bifurcation): my working theory is that Red Tribe’s highest value is something like “civilization,” while Blue Tribe’s highest value is something like “justice for the downtrodden.”

        Where this gets interesting to me is that a lot of Red Tribe seems to have a weird fantasy of breakdown of civilization that functions as both their worst nightmare and, weirdly, something to be longed for in the way one might long for judgment day/rapture–a kind of ultimate vindication when the forces of pro-civilization can struggle head-on against the forces of chaos.

        This also makes sense to me of a lot of weirdness I see in Blue Tribe, whose logical worst nightmare according to my above formulation should be some sort of fascist holocaust perpetrated against vulnerable minorities. This is something that they both dread (and seemingly think much more likely than the Red Tribers they fear might perpetrate it) and weirdly also seem to kind of long for, for same reasons as above (see e.g. Days of Rage and people trying to precipitate a race war).

    • Jon S says:

      I think fluoride conspiracies are more of a red tribe thing, but I could be wrong about that. That one’s not exactly a superstition, but seems similar to blue tribe fear of GMO’s/etc.

    • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

      A lot of them believe these really implausible things about some ancient guy from Galilee.

    • DinoNerd says:

      I don’t spend much time with the US “red tribe”, but the one proud Trump supporter I spend time with is an anti-vaxxer, uses and recommends various types of “alternative medicine”, and devotes a lot of time to religion. (I don’t know if his particular church is big on things like praying for people, and expecting that to affect their lives/fix their problems, but I count that as just as superstitious as avoiding black cats.)

  69. While playing WoW, it occurred to me that WoW in particular, and the internet more generally, might be in part responsible for the large increase over the past couple of decades in the number of people who identify with the opposite of their biological sex. It’s common in WoW for men to play female characters or women to play male characters. More generally, on the internet nobody knows you are a dog — or a man, or a woman. The experience of being free to interact, if you want to, as the opposite gender, might plausibly result in lots of people thinking they liked it and wanting to expand the pattern to realspace.

    • Faza (TCM) says:

      That’s an interesting question, but it seems to me that we can’t even begin to discuss this without tumbling head-first into CW territory.

      One for the next hidden thread?

      • EchoChaos says:

        Seconded.

      • Radu Floricica says:

        To be fair to Scott, I’ve noticed lately A LOT of comments that started by “I know this is not a CW thread but…”. A bit of a warning was in order – not commenting on how the hammer fell, exactly.

  70. In World of Warcraft, which I am now playing again because Blizzard brought back the original version, which turns out to be much more fun than the current version, members of a group can see each other’s location on the map. Spending much of yesterday with my wife and daughter wandering around a local wine and art festival, it occurred to me that a realspace equivalent would be very useful.

    Currently, I can see my location on the map on my cell phone. Is there any reason why one could not have an app that let multiple people share their location over the cell network? Does such a thing exist?

    • rho says:

      Find Friends on iPhone?

      or lynq when phones fail

    • Radu Floricica says:

      It was one of the first features in Google Location, first when Android was young. Turns out people are pretty paranoid about having their location shared non-stop, so either it didn’t take off or was disabled. For everyday use you can share either your current location or live location (for 1-8h) with whatsapp, facebook messenger and probably most other messaging apps as well. Just go to “send attachment”, like you’d send a picture, and it’s there. I think knows to display multiple people if they all share their location in a group.

      • Clutzy says:

        Yep. Scott Adams also tried to make an app like that. People don’t seem to like it.

      • Aapje says:

        A better implementation might be to make it a request that another person has to grant. That way, not only does the the person to be located control whether they are located, but they also know when they get located and by who.

    • eigenmoon says:

      In Google Maps, try Menu -> Location Sharing. See this Google’s support answer for more details.

      • Radu Floricica says:

        Huh, so it’s still there. Cool. They keep disabling it though, EU got all location services turned off when GDPR went live and I had to re-enable manually (one year later…). Personally, I like to keep it on. I figure “they” already know where I’ve been, this way at least I have access to it as well.

    • Lambert says:

      There’s a feature like that in snapchat or something.
      Snapmaps, i believe it’s called.
      It also overlays a heatmap of… something?

      Source: family member uses it.

    • sohois says:

      Wechat has such a feature, though I’m sure many would be nervous about location sharing given the proximity of the Chinese government to the app

      • albatross11 says:

        It’s not like the Chinese government is going to care about your permission before tracking your location….

    • flauschi says:

      Android/Google: If you do not need live updates, but location on demand only, then a simple solution is to create a new Google account (call it X), add this account to all devices you want to locate, and install the standard google “find my device” (or similar) app, run it as user X (and make it remember the credentials). Then whenever you open this app you can select any of X’s devices and locate it (or make it ring etc).

      But as others have pointed out, there is a live location sharing for google maps too (I find it annoying, though, as it regularly sends you reminders and requests confirmation that you allowed location sharing)

    • Randy M says:

      I had this idea before for amusement parks. Make maps with indicators (now an app would be better) along with accompanying RFID (or something, not my field exactly) pins so parents can know exactly where their children are.
      Only works on cooperating children, of course.

  71. Jeremiah says:

    As part of the SSC Podcast project, every fortnight we take one of the posts from the archive and create an audio version.

    This time around we did Book Review: Seeing Like a State (Original Post.)

    Next up will be Against Tulip Subsidies. After that I’m still open to requests.

  72. chrisminor0008 says:

    @scott: Is the comment policy posted anywhere? The comments you cited are civil explanations of honest and considered opinions. It sure looks like you’re banning people for conservative political opinions.

    Given the good company, I am a little sad that I didn’t at least get a mention in the warnings, but I don’t post as much as I could. I’ll try to do better in the future.

    • gettin_schwifty says:

      Kind, true, necessary, at least 2/3. The bitch of it is that “harsh truths” seem untrue and unnecessary if you don’t agree with them.

      The real policy is “Whatever Scott won’t ban” which is better than any set of rules, in my opinion. I’ll miss all of the banned, but I also get it, even if I have some disagreements. Well, I suppose I agree with the dick ban, I haven’t seen much productive commenting from him.

      • albatross11 says:

        If you’re expressing a harsh truth and intending for anyone who needs to hear it to hear it, you really need to express it in a non-snarky, non-attacking way.

      • Nick says:

        The bitch of it is that “harsh truths” seem untrue and unnecessary if you don’t agree with them.

        There is no bitch of it. Scott explains what he means by “true” in the comments page:

        Recognizing that nobody can be totally sure what is or isn’t true, if you want to say something that might not be true – anything controversial, speculative, or highly opinionated – then you had better make sure it is both kind and necessary.

        And in the case of discarding kindness:

        You had better be delivering a very well-deserved smackdown against someone who is uncontroversially and obviously wrong, in a way you can back up with universally agreed-upon statistics. I feel like I tried this here and though a lot of people disagreed with my tone, not one person accused me of getting the math wrong. That’s the standard I’m holding commenters to as well.

        It’s not enough that God contemplating His creation knows it to be true. You’ve got to give us a really strong case that it’s true!

    • Plumber says:

      chrisminor0008 says:

      “…Is the comment policy posted anywhere?…”

      At the top of the page the “Comments” link, has the policy and previous examples of bans.

    • Trofim_Lysenko says:

      The comments policy is in https://slatestarcodex.com/comments/ . Brad and Dick aren’t conservatives. I like (or at least find interesting) the posts of most of the people affected by the recent set of bannings/temp bans/warnings, and I think it’s fair to say I’m on the conservative/libertarian side of the posters here, but I still understand or at least think I understand Scott’s thinking and actions in terms of previous statements and the policies he’s clearly articulated. I don’t think “banning people with conservative opinions” is at all what’s going on.

    • Aapje says:

      @chrisminor0008

      I think that many of these comments were not sufficiently civil, having unnecessary swipes at the outgroup of the writer.

    • MartMart says:

      There is a difference in the way Americans and Russians speak, made obvious to me by the speeches or Russian bad guys before and after the collapse of the iron curtain (with some delay). Before, actors said Russian words, but speech patter was clearly American. After words, that isn’t always the case.
      If an American wishes to sound intimidating (as bad guys tend to), they speak slowly. Slow speech projects power and confidence. Fast speech projects nervousness and evasiveness.
      Russians, on the other hand, tend to speak quickly when they try to intimidate. Fast speech projects intelligence and the ability to adapt, while speaking slowly just makes one sound dim witted. At least, that’s been my experience.
      Getting back to Scott’s “True, Necessarily, and Kind” rules. Snark is almost never kind. Often it isn’t necessary, since it’s hard to make a nuanced point with snark. Relying strictly on truth is a dangerous gambit, since one might always be wrong, or risk that the moderator is wrong and doesn’t realize it.
      However, the lack of kindness seems exaggerated to me by the way blue and red tribes use snark (they both do). In my experience, blue tribe uses snark primarily to signal tribe loyalty. Tribe is most often used to highlight or shame what could be termed as blasphemy. Red tribe tends to use snark to signal intelligence, or the lack of it in the opposing argument.
      So snark tends to read very different to different readers.
      All which is to say that from my reading of the comments, one can get away with virtually any political opinion, so long as there is sufficient kindness in the post.

      • jermo sapiens says:

        In my experience, blue tribe uses snark primarily to signal tribe loyalty. Tribe is most often used to highlight or shame what could be termed as blasphemy. Red tribe tends to use snark to signal intelligence, or the lack of it in the opposing argument.

        My initial reaction to this is that it is correct. But I will be on the lookout to see the extent to which it is confirmed.

        Typical blue tribe snark that I can conjure from the top of my head:
        yes because casual transphobia is fine as long as your logo is a rainbow during pride month. ugh.

        Typical red tribe snark (from one of Conrad Honcho’s comments that got him banned):
        Do they not understand we are currently governed by Literally Hitler 2.0, who is going to holocaust all non-whites any day now?

        These two seem to fit. Granted, the first one was made up, but not completely, I have seen 100s and 100s of these types of comments online.

  73. Le Maistre Chat says:

    This is a game where we link a still image of an ad, note how it doesn’t make sense, and the person replying has to rationalize it, allowing them to repeat the process.

    Ghostbusters Fire House Headquarters toy
    This ad depicts a child in the khaki shirt and tie of a WWII American soldier, yet he’s clearly much too young to be in the Army and the toy is based on a movie that didn’t come out until 1984l

    • Nick says:

      Ghostbusters is set in September-November 1984. Obviously the boy is simply dressed up in a Halloween costume.

      This ad asks us to trust this lawyer because his dogs do. But how could his dogs ever be his clients?

      • WashedOut says:

        This ad asks us to trust this lawyer because his dogs do. But how could his dogs ever be his clients?

        Of course we are not being asked to believe his dogs trust his abilities as a lawyer. The billboard actually just contains a formatting error – it is supposed to read:

        Trust me, I’m a lawyer!
        My dogs do free consulting for:
        -Truck, car and motorcycle crashes
        -Wrongful death

        His dogs are the consultants, and their rate is free because they are dogs, and the potential unreliability of their advice is priced-in.

  74. gettin_schwifty says:

    Official thread for whining for Deiseach to be reinstated!

    I don’t know, she certainly crosses the line but it reads as ornery/cranky to me. I can’t be mad, you know?

    In any case, the Reign Of Terror begins anew, long live the king.
    “Pull the trigger, drop the blade and watch the rolling heads”

    Edit: Thoughts on Matt M and #MeToo removed because I just remembered it’s the visible thread, and while I tried to be respectful, gender talk is freebased culture war

    • Sniffnoy says:

      Official thread for whining for Deiseach to be reinstated!

      I don’t know, she certainly crosses the line but it reads as ornery/cranky to me. I can’t be mad, you know?

      Seconded!

    • Ouroborobot says:

      I had to re-read this to make sure I wasn’t misinterpreting it, but I don’t think I am. You just went full Leeroy Jenkins into CW in a non-CW open thread – one that also happened to announce several new bans for not following commenting policy. An interesting strategy. Edit: you fixed it. NM.

      • gettin_schwifty says:

        Yeah, that would’ve been bad. I appreciate your warning, even though I edited before seeing any replies. Absolute Leeroy Jenkins.

    • cassander says:

      thirded. It’s our fault for not getting off her lawn…

    • birdboy2000 says:

      Also against the bans, on the grounds that you banned or warned the most prolific posters, and they didn’t on the whole seem like particularly bad apples. These threads could start getting very quiet, leaving me with a great deal less timewasting to fill the hours.

      I get wanting to shift things in a more civil direction but three month bans are grossly excessive for that goal.

      • Secretly French says:

        I get wanting to shift things in a more civil direction

        I don’t. If Scott wants all his comments to be on the same page as him, instead of coming from weird old catholic irish women who never married, maybe he should go full New York Times and turn off comments altogether, and just re-read his old articles instead. Ah, see, this guy knows what he’s talking about!

        • Joseph Greenwood says:

          This comment seems quite unfair. There is a large gap between banning a few people that in Scott’s eyes have been needlessly provocative and uncharitable, and wanting to shut down all conversation that challenges his preconceptions. (We have seen Scott respond to feedback and revise his judgments as a result of what people post here, so this doesn’t seem to be a tenable accusation) If you don’t think Scott is aiming at the right goals, or that his actions here are ineffectual at achieving them because of trade offs or his own biases, then that’s reasonable (meaning, not obviously wrong). But on the other hand, the actions Scott have taken are likewise reasonable (not obviously wrong), and you do not need to share the goal of civility in conversation to “get” why it might be something that some people value.

    • rho says:

      Well, hmmm. I think at least in the case of the 3 month bans, it’s a case of extreme snarkiness? I’m surprised that those offenses were enough…

      I’m pretty cynical and elitist when my empathy module is offline for repairs (which is pretty frequent nowadays [Did you know humans are pretty shitty? Here’s your daily reminder]) so I could conceive of myself stumbling into a 3 month ban on accident

    • Plumber says:

      I’ll throw in my whining in as well, @Deiseach’s views are unique, and I’ve seen far worse.

    • Trofim_Lysenko says:

      Shortened, maybe, not rescinded. I quite like her posts, but I also think allowing a popularity contest to sway moderation rules is a bad idea and a bad precedent, even in cases where I think the popularity is well-earned and I trust the judgement of the person doing the moderating.

      • Robert Jones says:

        I think it was an error for Scott to set himself up for this.

        • bean says:

          Scott was referring to the fact that this is Deisach’s third or fourth ban, at least one of which was supposed to be indefinite before we managed to talk him into bringing her back. I’d suggest shortening it as a reminder to cool off.

      • James says:

        Seconded. She seems to spend a lot of her time sitting at a pretty gratuitous level of uncharitability and snark. It would degrade the standard of discourse appallingly if everyone was as uncharitable and I don’t condone making an exception for her just because it’s Deiseach/that’s her schtick/it’s entertaining (on which question I will only say that that’s, uh, a matter of personal taste).

      • Error says:

        Yeah, this. A pattern of letting a particular person skirt the rules because she’s popular is probably a bad idea.

        (That being said, I’m glad it was a temp ban and not a perm one. I rarely agree with her but I like her anyway.)

    • Purplehermann says:

      I kinda enjoy her comments in topics I’m interested in, and from what I remember she’s an addition to threads she’s part of, not a negative

    • noyann says:

      How about probation?
      Unban Deiseach on condition of a [bi-?]weekly post (for three months tops), to give an analysis, opinion, explanation, snark, or rant about things, events, or persons in the UK-GB-IRL tangle.
      Could be fun for everyone, enlightening for some.

    • a real dog says:

      +1 for Deiseach.

      I’m pretty sure this is just Scott baiting us, much like performers making the audience demand an encore.

    • gettin_schwifty says:

      After sleeping on it and thinking a bit more, I find myself falling on the shortened ban side of things. People could be more civil, so I agree with the bans if not with their length. Despite my object level disagreement, I support your pruning of your garden however you see fit. “Long live the king” was unironic.

    • Aftagley says:

      +1

      I’ve come to strongly admirer her harangues. Unlike the majority of the bans (which I think are rightly placed and serve to enforce positive norms) I feel like she’s harmless just adds culture.

      Provided for posterity, a condensed version of a recent interaction with Mr. X (the original one, not version 2.0):

      Deiseach: …One of the big points of Brexit is “control of our borders, stop all these immigrants coming in”. And eaten bread is soon forgotten as far as the Brits are concerned, look at the recent Windrush scandal…

      X:You mean that thing that only became a scandal because so many of “the Brits” strongly disagreed with their government’s decision. I generally appreciate your perspective, but holy sh*t, your Anglophobia has been through the roof recently. Maybe next time you’re tempted to make a sweeping negative judgement about a whole country’s worth of people, you should think twice. Or however many times is necessary to stop you posting.

      Deiseach: Hello, The Original Mr. X. How are you doing? Weather is very seasonable for the time of year, but the evenings are starting to draw in. Before we know it, Christmas will be upon us! Things going okay at work? How’s the family? Well, this has been a nice little chat, got to go now, hope you’re all keeping well!

      Ice. Cold.

    • Berna says:

      Adding my voice to the whiny chorus: please unban Deiseach.

    • PedroS says:

      I am on Deiseach’s side of the culture war but I admit the quality of her contributions has declined and that she has too often been posting her exasperation at the outgroup in an unproductive manner. I hope that the cooling off trimester will bring her back to her best self.

    • hls2003 says:

      I think the issue with banning Deiseach is that, in my opinion, her biggest unique contribution is her inimitable dyspeptic style. I don’t mean to be insulting to her substance – I very much enjoy many of her contributions, have a lot of sympathy for her views, and overlap substantially in her favorite authors – but there are several other posters here who are very traditionally Catholic; who love the same authors; who look at life through a literary lens. In contrast, I think Conrad Honcho is just about the only strong Trumpist that posts here. Really, the most unique substantive (vs. stylistic) contribution I regularly see from Deiseach is about her work as a cog in the Irish* bureaucracy. That’s not something we hear a lot about from others. Her unique voice, to me, is based in style, including occasional get-off-my-lawn invective and things like her curse-feud with the Indian guy (name escapes me). Because of that, I think it is almost unfair (though certainly understandable) for Scott to judge her under the same standard of tone-policing as others, because her tone is a big part of her overall contribution.

      *Edited to eliminate the (I’m sure to her) insulting mind-fart of “UK” bureaucracy instead of Irish, thanks to Aftagley.

      • Randy M says:

        My favorite Deiseach stories were the bureaucrat’s* view of public dysfunction. I think we’re actually rather short of anyone in government work or who has a job regularly interacting with the underclass, Scott excepted on the latter.

        *C’mon, we just talked about it and I still had to look it up.

        • Nick says:

          You’ve got to remember those were years ago now. I’ve been wishing she would write more about the subject.

          I’ll bet we have a few more folks in government work—@aristides I think is one, based on my HR thread a while back? and @FLWAB has written about working for the National Park Service, I believe?—but it’s definitely been lacking from the conversation.

          • Randy M says:

            There is a Michigan based guy who runs local elections or something whose name I am shamefully failing to recall who posts from time to time. Jewish fellow, I think?

          • Nick says:

            You’re thinking of @Larry Kestenbaum. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen him post in ages.

          • Randy M says:

            Thanks, yes.

            I haven’t seen him post in ages.

            Spoken like a kid. Seems like just yesterday we were talking about Abraham Lincoln, Necromancer.

          • Plumber says:

            @Nick says:

            “…I’ll bet we have a few more folks in government work…”

            I work for a municipal government mostly doing plumbing repairs in one of the jails now, but I’ve been under piers, autopsy rooms, hospitals, libraries, police and fire stations, et cetera.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @Plumber:

            I work for a municipal government mostly doing plumbing repairs in one of the jails now, but I’ve been under piers, autopsy rooms, hospitals, libraries, police and fire stations, et cetera.

            Do any of these places have monsters and treasure under them?

          • Nick says:

            @Plumber
            How could I forget you!! Sorry.

          • Plumber says:

            @Le Maistre Chat says: "Do any of these places have monsters and treasure under them?

            Yes.

            And on that note:

            A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground

            So for my employer (The City and County of San Francisco, A.K.A. Lankhmar),

            I have:
            Gone on quests (searched for any remaining intact plumbing under the piers),

            Explored ruins (the former Naval base, shipyards, and let’s face it most of the rest of the buildings are “well used”)

            Seeking treasure (looking for plumbing fixtures to steal/salvage from the abandoned 6th floor Jail, for use on the 7th floor Jail).

            Also, I’ve encountered monsters (had Sea Lions surface next to me under the piers, one seemed to be the size of a VW Microbus!, plus… well the inmates), crawled through underground tunnels, entered crypts (I’ve had many jobs in the autopsy room), looted dark passageways (the Jail cell plumbing chases looking for parts to use for the occupied cells), and I’m a Guild member (Plumbers and Steamfitters, Local 38!)

            Seems that I’m a dungeon delving Guild Thief (I hope Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser don’t slay me)!

            @Nick says: "How could I forget you!! Sorry"

            No worries, I’ll just keep doing my part to expand bureaucracy beerocracy

          • Nick says:

            @Plumber

            No worries, I’ll just keep doing my part to expand bureaucracy beerocracy

            I’ll drink to that!

          • Randy M says:

            No worries, I’ll just keep doing my part to expand bureaucracy beerocracy

            The beerocracy is expanding to meet the waistline of the expanding beerocracy.

          • Enkidum says:

            @Plumber – when you say under piers, are you doing underwater plumbing? That stuff seems hardcore.

          • hls2003 says:

            Updating mental image of Plumber…

          • Plumber says:

            Enkidum says: "when you say under piers, are you doing underwater plumbing? That stuff seems hardcore"

            They were a couple of divers on the crew during the 10 months I was assigned to the Port, but my under the piers work was with wading boots, rafts, and small boats, and about two hours out of most days was pretty “hardcore” (dangerous), but much of our time was spent hiding until the tide was right and we could do the work.

            Our immediate supervisor had us do two deceptions:
            1) How much of our time was idle.
            2) How incredibly against safety rules other parts of our time were (and unfortunately none of us could figure out a way to do the work that wasn’t dangerous, and previous experience had taught us that involving upper management and the “safety professionals” would just put us in a “fired if you do”, “fired if you don’t” position”, most weeks I’d get cuts on my arms from barnacles, typically we’d wade or boat in during low tide to assess, then come back during high enough tide that we could reach the work (hoping for calm waves), and try our best to do it fast before the waves got too high to escape, often particular jobs would be scheduled months in advance so the tide would be right and we’d have good conditions longer, but rush jobs could be pretty perilous, and at least once a month we’d have to disconnect the boat motor, lay it and ourselves flat, and squeeze out from under the pier. Twice it wasn’t a fellow plumber but an Engineering college student intern who was sent to sketch out the pipe layout under Fisherman’s Wharf, and it was gratifying to see him as scared of the sea lions as I had been a few months earlier, unfortunately he wouldn’t believe me about how fast the tide would come in (“just give me a few more minutes”), and I had to tie the raft, we waded a bit, and climbed out of a hatch that if someone had parked on we’d have had to swim out. He listened to me the next day about when we had to stop and get out.

          • aristides says:

            @Nick you are right about me working as a government bureaucrat, but I don’t have nearly as much experience as Deiseach, nor can I hope to match her comment volume. I agreed with many of her opinions, and she is probably my favorite commenter, but I do agree with Scott’s 3 month ban. Deiseach is one of those commenters whose first post is usually high quality, but her responses are low value and encourage the Flame war. She had come a long way since “when you are howling with the misery of the damned” but she still gets too aggressive, so 3 months is fair. I just hope the other indefinite ban only lasts 3 months as well.

          • Anthony says:

            What makes Deiseach’s viewpoint unique isn’t being a government bureaucrat, but being one who works with the “underclass” in a way which gives her a great deal of insight into what really goes on among them.

            Of all the other frequent commenters, Plumber seems to be the one with the most contact with the underclass, but he’s there to fix the pipes, not the people.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @Anthony: Fix the pipes, fight barnacles, sea lions and other monsters, and eventually Bowser to save the Princess.

        • A Definite Beta Guy says:

          There’s probably a lot of useful knowledge about both government/industry knowledge here that you won’t find in too many other places. The Internet’s Comment section has a LCD that falls to the knowledge and experience level of the typical young 20s adult. See any Reddit thread from some of the larger subreddits…amusing hearing stories of management told almost exclusively from the POV of retail or fast food managers.

      • Aftagley says:

        the most unique substantive contribution I regularly see from Deiseach is about her work as a cog in the UK bureaucracy.

        UK Bureaucracy? I thought she was a card-carrying member of the Irish Bureaucracy.

    • I love to see Deiseach post, but I also think those posts are probably really off-putting to people who haven’t had the time to get used to her. I’m okay with her being banned, even if I’ll miss her.

      • mtl1882 says:

        I think this dynamic is a big problem in life, and it is getting to be a huge problem due to the interconnected-ness and increased size of organizations/interactions. There are people whose styles or personalities are off-putting to people of another personality, most especially when they are new. A lot of the time, most of the unique style or tone is inseparable from their contribution, which most recognize as very valuable. Conventional wisdom seems to be that these people have to go, because of the constant problems caused by the conflict. This is quite understandable, but even if there is a very high cost to retaining them, I by no means think it is clear that there is lower cost to losing them. It’s an awkward issue, but a common and predictable one.

        Obviously, this does not mean anything goes, but if a person has been respected for a long time despite a seemingly alienating approach, that means there is a good chance they have quite a lot to offer, not that simply they’ve got both good and bad ideas. Most people with any alienating tendencies get knocked out early. It also may mean that the ideas and style are connected, and that is why people are able to tolerate it–they don’t see it as having an unnecessary mix of insults in otherwise good work. It probably means they are perceived as generally in good faith, but have a weird worldview and sense of appropriateness. I think, as a society, we’re putting way too much emphasis on a certain appealing personality style, and not having a deep enough conversation about how to deal with certain things. The choice isn’t between banning and “stop being so sensitive”–I think it is possible to acknowledge that there’s not a set of universal standards that works well on all personalities. You have to look at the situation as a whole.

        Deisach’s general tone is a separate issue from a few of the remarks that seemed designed to derail a thread and end discussion. I think she could keep her general style without doing that, and a distinction should be drawn between those two problems. People with a very polite, normal style can make comments that have the exact same function of killing debate. The issue is not tone—it is closer to good faith, or intellectual laziness. It is inherently subjective to judge, but I think that is what Scott is approximating. My opinions on the actual bans vary, but I think it is important not to focus mainly on tone or style, and I don’t think Scott is doing that.

  75. Le Maistre Chat says:

    Say I was writing a story and wanted to introduce a prehistoric population with genes for a skin color that no longer exists. How much would it break your suspension of disbelief to have blue people who are as healthy as everyone else, or Green Skinned Earth Babes?

    • rho says:

      They couldn’t be full on blue, but they could be blueish. Some of the awoken skin tones from Destiny are plausible (as in non-immersion breaking) to me. Same thing for green

    • For prehistoric humans, I would find it hard to believe–are there any mammals with either of those colors? Close to us?

      • Shion Arita says:

        Mandrills are quite close to us, and the males have very blue faces and butts.

        • Nancy Lebovitz says:

          Mandrills and other monkeys with blue balls get the color from light-scattering, so it should be biologically possible for humans to have bright blue skin, or at least patches of bright blue skin.

          However, it might be one of those things which is quite possible but not plausible in fiction.

    • noyann says:

      (EDIT: better wording)
      I’d find it very implausible, with a feeling of “author uses cheap device to enforce sensation of strangeness”. Might work for an audience that does not think about evolution in a given environment, e.g. because it is overwhelmed with 3D effects.
      Unless you drop out of the sky on your prey, or live a fish-like life, blue is not camouflaging. And it can’t be signalling much if there is so much of it in the sky (a signalling effect in Mandrills might only be enabled by the already meaningful location of the blue spots).

      • Incurian says:

        Would hair be more plausible?

        • noyann says:

          Blue hair would need a strong social reason, or intentional breeding, because the biological/biological-signalling would be the same. And then the reason for the blue hair needs explaining, which itself might feel lengthy to the reader.

          What are you aiming for with “genes for a skin color that no longer exists”? Maybe there’s a way that reads easier.

          Or you go deep into poetry/dream land where anything is possible, if that fits the rest of the work.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            What are you aiming for with “genes for a skin color that no longer exists”? Maybe there’s a way that reads easier.

            That feeling of “Our world used to be richer. What forces caused it to change?” The same feeling one gets from the 20 recently-recovered lines of Gilgamesh Tablet V where Cedar Forest Land (the Syrian Euphrates and west to Lebanon/the coast) was full of monkeys and many species of birds. Except such a simple environmentalist frission would be old hat from a new story.

          • noyann says:

            @ Le Maistre Chat
            That feeling of “Our world used to be richer. What forces caused it to change?”

            If the text is for people who explode a concept into its ramifications and consequences, the genes might be sufficient. For the average reader (like me, I guess), these currently unexpressed genes are quite abstract entities and won’t convey much feeling. They, and similar stuff, would require a ‘Jurassic Park’-like re-vitalization to get at readers’ gut feelings.

            Had to look up the Gilgamesh Tablet V text, and it has some sensory, or at least concrete, descriptions:

            …Across the face of the mountain the Cedar brought forth luxurious foliage, its shade was good, extremely pleasant. The thornbushes were matted together, the woods(?) were a thicket … among the Cedars,… the boxwood, the forest was surrounded by a ravine two leagues long,

            IANAWriter, but immersing readers through sensual detail, evoked affects, feelings, musings, etc. looks more promising for a general audience. You’d basically have to make them experience what is gone forever (what they have lost, in a way, so that they want to know why it’s gone).

            (HTH a little)

    • herbert herberson says:

      I would use domestic animals as your inspiration. This suggests either red (actual red, not just Native American tanned, like an irish setter or red angus) or some form of patterning. Any color that is rare or non-existent in mammals is would completely break suspension of belief for me.

      • ADifferentAnonymous says:

        Ooh, I like patterning as an idea. Not sure if it serves OP’s needs, but my gut reaction is that it’s both perfectly plausible and as about as dramatically different as blue or green skin would be.

      • Nancy Lebovitz says:

        How about people with a Siamese cat gene so that cooler parts of their bodies are various colors of dark and the warmer parts are light?

    • Nancy Lebovitz says:

      People who eat enough silver get bluish skin, and I don’t think there are major health effects.

      • Jake says:

        It is amazing that silver can do that to you. While googling for pictures of that, I also came across the Blue Fugates of Kentucky, who had a genetic condition called methemoglobinemia which led to them being tinged blue as well. Definitely leads me to believe that this would be a possible condition. But, to echo some earlier comments, I’m not sure that even knowing this has actually happened, it would be a positive thing to add to a story, unless there was some reason for it beyond just making people a bit strange.

    • Gerry Quinn says:

      Interesting though not really relevant: in Irish “a black man” is “fear gorm”; literally “a blue man”.

      Personally I’d be fine with it in a pulp-style adventure, but it would seem a bit odd if you are going for a harder mode of SF (realistic time-travelling anthropologists?)

      If you are writing from the perspective of contemporaneous hominids, you could leave it pretty ambiguous whether the green people get that name from their skill at hiding in vegetation, or paint themselves green, or their skin really is tinted that colour.

  76. jw says:

    You blog has been getting less and less interesting to me lately. You seem trapped in a spiral towards harder and harder progressivism. Every poster being banned seems to be posting arguments from the conservative side. Their “crimes” against he policy seem incredibly mild. If that’s the freest speech you can stand, then you’re not much for free speech anymore.

    One of your best posts is about ingroup/outgroup bias, but I think you’ve now succumbed fully to the progressive ingroup bias. As a result, I see less rigor in your attempts (or even belief that you need to attempt) to understand conservative concepts.

    In addition to your obsessive campaign against eating meat, which, sorry you’re going to need a totalitarian government to force me to do, your blog really doesn’t have much for me anymore.

    I’m checking out. You’re out of my news feed.

    • The Nybbler says:

      Every poster being banned seems to be posting arguments from the conservative side.

      Er, what? It’s 1 and 1 for the indefinite bannings, 1 conservative and Deiseach for 3-month bannings, and 2 and 2 for the thin ice warnings. So only slightly tilted conservative.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        1 conservative and Deiseach for 3-month bannings,

        Which equals >2 conservatives, since Deiseach is an anti-SJ Catholic who prefers the Pope Emeritus to the current Pope.

        • quanta413 says:

          Yeah , but there are more conservatives and libertarians than left wing people. Especially by prolificness. It’s important to crack down on regulars breaking rules sometimes. We have much more effect on the tone long term than a random drive by poster.

    • Urstoff says:

      Base-rate fallacy. The most active commenters in the last few months (year?) tend to be conservative, as far as I can tell (in open threads, at least).

    • ManyCookies says:

      Scott has written thousands of words and multiple articles indirectly and directly about how progressives are not his ingroup, and he’s not tepid about the subject. Heck that was literally the personal example he used when he first brought up ingroup-outgroup-fargroup.

      In addition to your obsessive campaign against eating meat

      Wait where was this?

      • Has he written any of those since his move to the Bay Area?

      • Aapje says:

        @ManyCookies

        He can be becoming more progressive and still consider himself to be sufficiently far from his progressive peers to not consider themselves his ingroup, if his progressive peers are radicalizing.

        The evidence suggests that progressives are radicalizing in general and Scott has moved to a more radically progressive area, suggesting that his progressive peers have become more progressive.

    • Enkidum says:

      Obsessive campaign against eating meat?

      • The Nybbler says:

        There’s a lot of talk, especially in EA threads, which just kind of assumes vegetarianism or veganism is morally superior. I tend to avoid those threads as I simply do not share the basic assumptions.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          I’m assumption-adjacent on vegetarianism and believe veganism is absolutely false. I feel like we can’t have a productive discussion because of the distance between vegans and everyone else, including Hindus and Buddhists.

        • Randy M says:

          Yeah, but it’s hardly obsessive and barely campaigning.
          I suppose ‘intermittently stated assumption of vegan desirability’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.

        • sty_silver says:

          That is not an explanation for “[Scott’s] obsessive campaign against eating meat”, though

    • Bugmaster says:

      I agree, FWIW. The comment sections are getting more bland, and the post topics themselves, while occasionally still interesting, appear to be picked solely maximum for inoffensiveness.

      Banning someone like Deiseach for occasionally getting heated in her comments is basically a signal that says, “I will tolerate no more than epsilon controversy”. Which is fine, I guess; I understand the motivation — the outrage mobs are vicious and they are coming for your job, so staying under their radar makes sense.

      However, totally non-controversial blog posts and comments are also totally boring. This blog’s entire appeal used to be focused on providing a place for reasonable people to discuss controversial ideas; but it’s turning into basically yet another by-the-numbers news aggregator.

      • DeWitt says:

        Given the posts about the subreddit policy change and how Scott has been treated on account of his more controversial posts, I don’t know that I can really blame him. It looked terribly stressful even from this large a distance and I wouldn’t wish that kind of shunning on someone so kind at all.

      • Ouroborobot says:

        I haven’t seen any indication that Scott is cracking down on controversial posts or attempting to limit the scope of discussion within the open threads, so long as posts are make in good faith and grounded in reason and facts. It seems like most of the ban-inducing comments were snarky clapbacks or phrased in a needlessly inflammatory manner. As a frequent lurker and occasional commenter, I appreciate that the community is meant to be a place for high-quality discussion and not just sarcastic slapfests. It makes me sad because some of those commenters had many valuable posts, but I get where he is coming from.

      • Randy M says:

        I don’t agree with the “progressive spiral” or such, but I do think Scotts best posts tend towards the earlier period of the blog, and the open threads have, hmm, tended to tread familiar ground of late. But, eh, I still haven’t found a great second best internet hangout, so…

        • James says:

          but I do think Scotts best posts tend towards the earlier period of the blog

          I feel like this is a common pattern for blogs, though. I feel like most people only have a finite number of original and interesting ideas, and getting these down on paper seems to take about a couple of years. Once they’ve expressed those ideas—the broad principles of their worldview—it only remains to apply them to new cases, the latest current affairs, etc., and the blog sort of stays in some kind of holding pattern.

      • Aapje says:

        @Bugmaster

        Deiseach’s ban is not a very strong indicator that Scott has changed, since Scott has already banned Deiseach permanently quite some time ago, shortening that ban after community outcry.

        • Bugmaster says:

          Re-banning her again for essentially the same offence (and IMO a relatively milquetoast one) does not seem to bode well for the rest of us, though.

    • Plumber says:

      @jw says:

      “You blog has been getting less and less interesting to me lately. You seem trapped in a spiral towards harder and harder progressivism. Every poster being banned seems to be posting arguments from the conservative side…”

      FWLIW, the indefinite bans looked like one “conservative” and one “progressive” to me (sorry to see them go and wish it wasn’t so), the 3 month bans looked like 1.5 conservatives and 0.5 progressives to me, the warnings looked like 2.25 conservatives and 1.75 progressives to me, so a bit more conservatives than progressives, but not all and only.

      Some over the top posts were cited (but not the worse I’ve seen) and what it mostly looked like to me was the banning of and warnings to the most frequent commenters.

      Maybe our host wants more new voices and less old ones?

    • Radu Floricica says:

      I took a glance at the offending comments. The common thread I can find is that they encourage polarization, and more specifically seeing the other side as… well, the other side. This is not very constructive and incredibly slippery.

      Things like the charity principle and steelmanning are powerful things, both in constructive conversation and (if properly used) in winning debates. But they take effort to be used. And they take an environment where others don’t go for cheap shots or labeling. There was a post on ssc I can’t find now on the levels of conversation – and the upper half was _only_ possible in a certain environment. We’re pretty close to that here – which for an online forum is not a small miracle.

    • Two McMillion says:

      Do you remember Scott’s post about how much social pressure he was taking for running his blog with even the attempt towards being fair that he historically has? It’s not unreasonable to try and relieve some of that pressure. Almost anyone would. Maybe that’s not fair to conservatives, but when has life been fair? I’ve enjoyed the recent posts, and I hope Scott keeps producing them.

  77. Mark V Anderson says:

    I have somewhat mixed feelings about another reign of terror. With the banning of four prolific commenters, we’ll have fewer comments to read. And I never have time to read them all. Although I will miss all four of them.

    Mostly I feel bad about the bannings. I read all the links, and none of them seemed very bad to me. It seems to me that recently SSC has gotten away from politics a bit and concentrates on stuff like cooking and gaming and movies/TV and books. I’m not much interested in those other things, but all the bannings are about politics, and so I think influences people to no longer do politics. No one is getting banned for remarks about broccoli, which in my opinion is a lot more pernicious than Trump and Brexit :-).

    • eyeballfrog says:

      I thought Dick was being a bit of a dick (a joke which Scott beat me to), and Deiseach was being Deiseach (which is why we love her), but the other two didn’t seem too bad and I’ll definitely miss them. The guys on thin ice also don’t seem like too bad of guys, though LMC comes on a little strong at times.

      • ManyCookies says:

        From Conrad Honcho:

        It’s Pride Month (but only because bigots standing in the way of progress won’t let us have Pride Season yet)

        Maybe we can eek out a Unit of Caring for the smuggled women they rape during the crossing by virtue of their skin tone?

        So it’s the goose egg for Units of Caring for Americans, then? I mean, that’s about what I expected, but it’s nice to know I have an accurate read on the outgroup.

        The snark and the flippant “Well I guess my outgroup sucks” makes for terrible everyone-mad conversations, seems bannable if it’s a regular pattern.

        • eyeballfrog says:

          The unit of caring stuff makes more sense in context, where there was kind of a lot of appeal to emotion going around. Honcho’s getting heated in that second one, but it was a heated topic already. While I could see a stern warning or tempban, an indefinite ban is way too far.

        • Yep. I feel like if you want to not be banned you should always talk about subjects in a neutral tone even if you are supporting a side. Scott recently made a post where the gist is him telling autistics to use more natural and casual terminology in real life, but I think as regards the comment section, it is much better to sound like a robot to be on the safe side.

          A lot of banned comments ring with feelings of persecution that inherently sour debate. Other comments are too aggressive and contain too many pejoratives. More “X is wrong because Y and Z” and fewer “X is really really bad!” comments are needed.

          Probably the reason for the anti-rightist bias people detect is merely that the most prolific commenters are right leaning, while the overall majority is left-leaning, so they feel outnumbered even though they make more comments overall. This spurs them to make more combative and snarky posts. Kill that feeling, please.

    • EchoChaos says:

      No one is getting banned for remarks about broccoli, which in my opinion is a lot more pernicious than Trump and Brexit

      This is the no CW thread, but I break that to point out that you are a monster if you dare besmirch the good name of broccoli.

      • The Nybbler says:

        No monsters here, broccoli does not have a good name to smear. As Dr. Hibbert says, it’s the deadliest of vegetables and warns you with its terrible taste.

        • Nick says:

          This is nonsense; broccoli is lovely compared to spinach.

          • Randy M says:

            You should have heard my family rave about the spinach at dinner tonight.
            Of course, naked vegetables at dinner are about as appetizing as naked dinner guests. In other words, the credit goes to the garlic onion butter.

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            Wait, why are you attracted to naked people with garlic onion butter on them?

          • Aapje says:

            @Le Maistre Chat

            Wait, someone is not attracted to that???

          • noyann says:

            @Aapje
            Don’t do that to an Aspie.

          • Aapje says:

            @Le Maistre Chat

            Do/did you think I was serious?

          • noyann says:

            No. Too meta?

          • b_jonas says:

            Only in average. If you get buy spinach and prepare it well, which admittedly is hard and I can’t do it, then it’s much better than anything you could make from broccoli.

          • EchoChaos says:

            @Randy M

            naked vegetables at dinner are about as appetizing as naked dinner guests.

            The highlight of the evening if chosen properly?

          • Aapje says:

            @EchoChaos

            Especially if you have both.

          • Randy M says:

            Wait, why are you attracted to naked people with garlic onion butter on them?

            Didn’t mean to imply that the converse was true!
            But I could be talked into incorporating Kerrygold butter into the foreplay. Garlic probably not.

            The highlight of the evening if chosen properly?

            Also in both cases, improved with recent washing. And the source is extremely important to consider. Preferably not just picking up some from Wal-mart on the way home.

          • albatross11 says:

            LMC:

            A pathological fear of vampires?

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @Le Maistre Chat

            Do/did you think I was serious?

            No! I definitely get jokes.

          • PedroS says:

            Sorry if I am being thick, but what is wrong with any of those vegetables? Broccoli are great aftrr a few minutes boiling with a pinch of salt and spinach are delicious in (for example) sweet potato tortilla. Unless you are attempting to enjoy them raw (and I cannot fathom why anyone would do that) they are great.

            I understand some people (“super-tasters” for example) have weird taste sensitivity and some vegetables taste like soap to them. I do find it hard to believe that they are very numeroua, though the number of people complaining about broccoli gives me pause…

          • EchoChaos says:

            @PedroS

            Broccoli has a strong flavor and is the stereotypical American “kids don’t like it” veggie.

            It is a wonderful vegetable either eaten raw or cooked in a variety of ways and probably most of the people here actually enjoy it.

          • Anthony says:

            @noyann – an Aspie, or an asparagus?

          • noyann says:

            @Anthony
            Both. They work well together.
            (edit: I mean, now that we are so deep in nonsequitur territory…)

        • b_jonas says:

          Turnip, rutabaga, Brussels sprouts, tapioca all have much worse reputation than broccoli.

      • rho says:

        Are these broccoli references because we all played SimCity as a kid?

      • AlphaGamma says:

        On broccoli: there is a scene in Inside Out where the fact that Riley (a young girl) finds broccoli disgusting is important- she’s sad because her family just moved to San Francisco away from her friends, her mother takes her to get pizza, the hipster pizza place only sells broccoli pizza.

        Apparently Japanese children don’t find broccoli that bad, so in the Japanese dub it was replaced with green bell peppers (which Japanese children do find disgusting).

      • albatross11 says:

        The late president Bush’s ghost would like a word with you.

    • Placid Platypus says:

      I’m gonna come out in favor of the bannings or at least some punishment for the targets. All the linked posts seemed distinctly out of line and not the sort of thing that makes the discussion better.

    • My reaction as well wrt the ones I was familiar with—I’m not very good at keeping track of who said what.

    • A Definite Beta Guy says:

      We might be getting away from politics and more towards other things because the political discussion often becomes toxic, quickly. Why talk about that when you can talk about something less confrontational and more enjoyable?

      Also, the nice thing about talking about Sunday Tea Time topics is that people here are smart enough to tell me how to properly cook swordfish, rather than telling me they found this great swordfish recipe on Pinterest that involves throwing it into a Crockpot with a can of mushroom soup.

    • gbdub says:

      I’m going to push back strongly on the “oh, they were prolific commenters so we should let them go” vibe. Absolutely not, the longer you are here and the more prolific you are, the higher standard you should hold yourself to.

      The prolific commenters set the tone and set the example. Basically everyone who was banned or warned is a repeat offender in the “significantly degraded the quality of a conversation” (or “continued in-kind to feed a train wreck”) category, either through culture-warry derailment or mean-spirited sarcasm. This was sprinkled among tons of good contribution, to be sure, but still.

      Wrt Deiseach in particular, as fun as it is to have a cranky old Irish Catholic lady around, this is like what her third or fourth warning/ban? She knows better and keeps pushing anyway, at some point Scott has to pull the trigger. To some degree I can understand one off shots of brief snark as moments of weakness… but multi-paragraph rants are the sort of thing that eventually you just have to write to get off your chest, then delete without posting and move on, and Scott has given plenty of opportunity for that lesson to sink in.

      • Randy M says:

        Absolutely not, the longer you are here and the more prolific you are, the higher standard you should hold yourself to.

        True, but from the converse side there is more of a record to establish what you can expect in the future.
        Someone who comes in and leads with a rant first post can be expected to do it again. Someone with a history of kind, insightful posts who makes a rant can probably be assumed to be having a bad day and safely let off with a warning. (This description isn’t meant to align perfectly with anyone in question but address the principle)

        • gbdub says:

          I agree that the principle of “forgive a bad day” should apply to frequent contributors. But I think Scott is judging these commenters on their body of work – I think Scott believes that the linked comments are very much in character for the posters in question. We may agree or disagree with that, but I think reading the individual linked comments and saying “well that one comment didn’t seem ban worthy” is the wrong criticism.

      • A Definite Beta Guy says:

        Oh no way, regular commenters always get more lee-way. That doesn’t mean they get more lee-way if every single one of their posts is garbage posts, it means they get more lee-way if they sometimes act like a total jerk because they are usually good.

        Newcomers acting like total jerks get perma-banned. If your first impression is crapping all over threads, you get the boot.

        That’s just bog standard internet moderation.

        • gbdub says:

          More leeway for an occasional out of character one-off bad comment to be forgiven, if the poster is contrite about it. Absolutely. And punishment should, for regulars, lean more toward “take a short time out and come back better” rather than permaban.

          But if you make pushing the limit a habit, if you make “unkind but you get away with it because it’s arguably true or at least unique and interesting, and we feel bad banning a regular” part of your character, that needs to be nipped. Not to speak too much ill of the dead, but e.g. Conrad was a chronic limit-pusher and tone-lowerer on basically all CW adjacent topics. I think most of these bans / warnings are of that sort – not any one particular truly egregious comment, but just generally people who chronically helped feed more-heat-than-light threads.

          It’s like the terrible driver who never actually crashes but causes a lot of people to crash trying to avoid them – at some point you have to take them off the road even if you can’t point to a specific bannable offense.

  78. EchoChaos says:

    Unfinished works are sort of a byword in the Western canon.

    From Coleridge to Mozart and beyond, every artist has left behind some pieces.

    What are the greatest pieces of unfinished work that are still able to be appreciated in their unfinished form?

    • Nick says:

      Summa Theologiae, obviously.

      Jane Austen left behind an unfinished novel, Sanditon. I’ve heard it’s not bad, but we only have about 20,000 words.

      Charles Dickens famously died midway through The Mystery of Edwin Drood. We’re pretty sure whodunit, though.

    • liate says:

      Bach’s The Art of Fugue — it’s a collection of fugues on a single theme. The final fugue is cut short, but still can be appreciated. There’s a CC0 recording here that’s good, but I especially like it played by string quartet (eg, here), as the different instruments help seperate out the seperate lines.

    • potato says:

      Kafka.

      Der Schloss.
      The Trial.
      The Penal Colony.

    • cassander says:

      The Silmarillion, arguably.

      • Joseph Greenwood says:

        Arguably, but Tolkien’s son did a good job fitting together the pieces.

        • EchoChaos says:

          Oh, I think it definitely counts. One of my favorites, but very unfinished.

        • cassander says:

          he did a better job then could have been expected, to be sure, but there are some very important parts that never got fully worked out. I’m talking stuff like the fall of doriath and galadriel’s story where the basic thread of the plot was uncertain, not even counting the great unwritten tales like the fall of Gondolin where the end result was pretty well known.

    • Orlando Innamorato would be one.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        It’s easy to enjoy in its incomplete state because Ariosto completed it until a new title.
        Ariosto started another Charlemagne romance after Orlando furioso, known as Cinque canti due to its short, incomplete state. It starts with Demogorgon summoning the Fae to a parliament and forcing them to agree to his plan to wreck the human world.

    • The Pachyderminator says:

      The Aeneid. It was essentially a rough draft at the time of Virgil’s death. (Which is why he reportedly wanted it to be destroyed.)

    • WashedOut says:

      Dostoevsky’s Netochka Nezvanova (or “Nameless Nobody”, roughly).

      It can be enjoyed immensely despite it’s unfinished state, if one elevates style and themes over plot. Super gloomy. total downer.

    • Lambert says:

      Shostakovitch’s Orango.

      One of the librettists got purged, the opera house with a 600 tonne statue of Lenin on top where it was supposed to be performed never got built, and Franco-Soviet relations were mended, making the Opera’s lampooning of the French unnecessary.

      Thus only the prelude was written. But what a prelude it is.

    • Robin says:

      Neuschwanstein. Even better without the ugly fat middle tower which was planned.

    • JPNunez says:

      Asimov ended the Foundation Trilogy at ~400 years of history of the prophetized 1000 years.

      Even if you count the 80s sequels you still only get to ~500 years IIRC.

      • Lasagna says:

        @JPNunez

        Yeah, he kind of just gave up on the Foundation period in order to make a grand unified Asimov world. It was a shame. I felt like he could have done a lot more with it.

        I always thought there was a great opportunity for someone else to come in and continue the series. Just pretend that all the novels written after Foundation’s Edge don’t exist and continue from there. Heck, pretend Foundation’s Edge doesn’t exist either and pick up after The Mule. Everything after that wandered away from psychohistory anyway.

        • JPNunez says:

          I think two things happened:

          (1) he wrote himself into a corner; after the super telepaths / history predictors faked their disappearance, it was hard to come up with something else

          (2) by the 80s, he noticed the super telepaths / history predictors were actually the bad guys, so he uppended them with Gaia / Robots

          then he retreated into the prequels. There is a second trilogy that was written by other authors shortly after his death, but it was all prequel material (I mean, dealing with Hari Seldon’s life) which was missing the point IMHO. I’ve read some summaries and it gets extremely silly.

          I think it is a missed opportunity. I can see an ending where the first foundation finally frees itself of the psychohistorian for good upon founding the second empire, but alas.

          • EchoChaos says:

            A sequel in a second Empire where a citizen of the Empire realizes that the Second Empire is truly ruled by a cabal of mind-readers and historians and trying to rebel would be a fantastic setting for a story.

          • JPNunez says:

            I think this is the plot for Psychohistorical Crisis, the unofficial sequel that filed off the serial numbers.

            But it filed them too much and it is fucking hard to make sense what’s going on. My physical copy of it remains unread after two chapters cause I need to sit down and write the equivalency table to make sense of it.

            One day I will finish it *looks at pile of unread books* hopefully before the second empire itself arrives.

          • Lasagna says:

            That seems about right. The first two novels (collections? I’m not sure what to call them, since they each have a couple of independent stories in them) followed the same formula: (1) describe the state of the Foundation through the main characters; (2) introduce the existential crisis the Foundation faces; (3) describe the panicked responses from the main characters; (4) have one character see through the glass, darkly, and catch a glimpse at what Seldon had put together; (5) show how all the decisions of both the Foundation movers and shakers and their opponents didn’t matter against the larger backdrop of psychohistory. For my money, the series’ apex was “The General” in Foundation and Empire. That was great.

            There are still plenty of stories to be told here. I think you could write dramatic and interesting books that took the reader all the way to the Second Empire. But you’re right; once you’ve explained the super-secret telepaths and delved into their petty infighting you’ve kind of lost the thread.

          • Phigment says:

            Yeah.

            For one thing, the reveal of the secret mind-control conspiracy completely changes the whole premise of the thing. It reframes everything that happened before.

            When the idea is that Hari Seldon, Psychohistorian, has managed to use math to predict the future and set up his secret foundation and pre-recorded a bunch of messages where he explains what’s going on, that’s really spooky and mysterious. Can society really be that deterministic? How can he be so accurate in predictions made centuries out? What about free will and individual decisions? Etc.

            When you learn there’s a secret conspiracy of mind-controllers active at the heart of the galactic power structure pulling strings, well, it changes it from being wondrous magic to a magic trick. It’s the difference between Merlin making the Statue of Liberty disappear, and David Copperfield making the Statue of Liberty disappear. They’re both impressive, but one of them is, when you get down to it, showmanship and misdirection.

            A given person may not know how David Copperfield does it, but everyone is pretty sure he’s manipulating the audience, not the universe. All along, it looked like Hari Seldon had unlocked the secrets of history, but he’d actually unlocked the secret of organizing a really effective long-term secret conspiracy, that being psychic powers and a good cover story.

          • Lasagna says:

            @Phigment

            The more we talk about this, the more I think that if someone wanted to “finish” the series by taking it through the establishment of the Second Empire, they’d not only need to ignore everything post Foundation and Empire, they’d need to get rid of the whole mind-controlling cabal of historians.

            Like you pointed out, it just shifts the focus of the story too much. Yeah, sure, The Second Foundation were still psychohistorians with the same aims as at its founding, but they didn’t really NEED to be. They could just shift most everything into whatever form they wanted right away. They’re too Johnny-on-the-spot. It became more about the magic, less about the math.

            It would have been way more interesting, and way more weird, to just keep them as brilliant academics whose modus operandi is playing n-dimensional chess, where the changes they effect in the galaxy are for the purposes of steering outcomes decades down the line, but with little power over Today.

            The Mule was a great idea – what happens when an element gets introduced into the galaxy that DOESN’T conform with the fundamental assumptions of psychohistory? But the resolve was “The Second Foundation waves a magic wand and all is right”. I think a more interesting reveal would have been that the Second Foundation had actually accounted for this possibility a century ago, and you seen their plan slowly work itself out.

            I don’t think, though, that you can have the series without The Second Foundation at all. After all, Hari Seldon didn’t really do all the much – he just founded the Foundation and recorded a few videos. There needed to be more manipulation to create a plan that could believably shorten the Interregnum.

            In other news, this is the geekiest thing I’ve ever written. Fun!

          • mendax says:

            The Mule was a great idea – what happens when an element gets introduced into the galaxy that DOESN’T conform with the fundamental assumptions of psychohistory? But the resolve was “The Second Foundation waves a magic wand and all is right”. I think a more interesting reveal would have been that the Second Foundation had actually accounted for this possibility a century ago, and you seen their plan slowly work itself out.

            Huh, I had to look that up. I didn’t recall that the Second Foundation had anything to do with the defeat of the Mule. Really, they were mostly defending themselves. I’d thought the Mule was mostly defeated (and I think this is in there even if it’s not the whole of it) by regression to the mean. That psycho-history accounts for outliers, even ones as extreme as the Mule.

            Everything about the Second Foundation was un-satisfying.

          • Lasagna says:

            @mendax

            They did. 🙂 I read these books way too much as a child.

            They maneuvered the Mule into meeting their representatives on a distant planet, far removed from the Mule’s center of power, by mind-controlling the Mule’s second in command. The Mule discovered that his second (and many others within his organization) had been put under mind control, and followed the chain to this obscure planet. That these mind-contolled people would be discovered was, of course, part of the Second Foundation’s plan, and wheels-within-wheels and yadda yadda yadda.

            Once there, they took advantage of a moment of emotional weakness in the Mule (which, they of course, had planned for and knew was coming), and took control of his brain and therefore his Empire. After that they were able to point the Galaxy in the direction they wanted.

            And yeah, it was extremely unsatisfying, like everything else about the Second Foundation except for the reveal of its location, which I still think was super cool.

          • Jiro says:

            I[‘m not convinced that the Foundation series could work without a secret cabal of mind-controllers. History is going to have larger-scale irregularities which are less frequent than smaller-scale irregularities, but cause more of a swerve, so the outcome will not be statistically predictable.

            Seriously, suppose someone discovers a 10 times better FTL drive, or space aliens, or a large source of fuel in the wrong part of the galaxy, or nanotech 100 years in. It’s going to ruin all earlier predictions.

            And that doesn’t even consider “ordinary” swerves such as wars that have surprising outcomes because one side only had a 20% chance of winning but won anyway.

          • Randy M says:

            I’m not convinced that the Foundation series could work without a secret cabal of mind-controllers.

            I’d agree that it straddles the line of plausibility, but that was the premise–using math to predict the future enough to alter it ahead of time with careful preparation
            Throwing in mind readers who adapt on the fly seems like it is cheating a bit, or at least acknowledging the incredibility of the idea.

          • Doctor Mist says:

            My impression, though the warrant for it is slight, is that when he was writing “The Mule”, Asimov more or less thought that the Second Foundation’s mind-control powers were just a deep understanding of psychology (together with the thermodynamical science of psychohistory), so that they would be able to say the right word to the right person at the right time in order to nudge things onto the right path. They were Maxwell’s Demon, so to speak. To the extent that they had anything to do with Bayta Darrell’s triumph over The Mule (which I think doesn’t actually appear in the story, tough he might have retconned it in Second Foundation) that was the kind of stuff they did. But even once the Mule had been contained, it was clear he was too powerful to defeat head-to-head by such subtle means, so he had to give them much the same magical psi powers he had. Which is a shame, because the earlier conception of their power was much more interesting — though he sort of brought it back to life in The End of Eternity.

      • EchoChaos says:

        I feel that it can truly said to have been ended after the original trilogy, though. He had to introduce some silliness to make the sequels work because with the final reveal in the original trilogy he really had wrapped up the full story.

        • JPNunez says:

          I mean yeah. I remember being somewhat satisfied with the original trilogy’s end, but still felt disappointed it ended so soon.

    • “Great” might be an overstatement, but Cherryh left her Fortress series, which started out with a very good book, essentially unfinished.

    • mitv150 says:

      The Dune Saga by Herbert. I don’t recognize Christopher’s books as having completed it.

    • J Mann says:

      I don’t know about “great,” but I was looking forward to many more books inthe Master and Commander and Flashman series. I’d say A Song of Ice and Fire is on that levevel, although it’s even more unfinished.

    • terete says:

      The Man Without Qualities.

      It’s up in the modernist pantheon with Proust, Woolf, and the best of Joyce or Mann, but I suspect it’s far less read because it is unfinished (and probably because it takes a lot of reading to get to the lack of an ending.)

    • birdboy2000 says:

      Not a Western work, but Osama Tezuka’s Phoenix is amazing and I wish we saw how it ended. As it stands we have 12 volumes and the stories are self-contained enough to work.

  79. Le Maistre Chat says:

    This is a consolidated version of my 135.75 effortpost on the genetic history of Europe, based on DNA evidence published the last 5 years or so. To be continued in replies to this post.

    As of 2014, some of the oldest European H. sapiens sapiens DNA was from Kostenki 14 in European Russia, 38,700 to 36,200 years ago [Seguin-Orlando et al].
    “Kostenki 14 shares a close ancestry with the 24,000-year-old Mal’ta boy from central Siberia, European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, some contemporary western Siberians, and many Europeans, but not eastern Asians. Additionally, the Kostenki 14 genome shows evidence of shared ancestry with a population basal to all Eurasians that also relates to later European Neolithic farmers. We find that Kostenki 14 contains more Neandertal DNA that is contained in longer tracts than present Europeans.”
    Before 38.7KYA, you’ll see claims that all non-Africans were one undifferentiated population. That’s getting outside the scope of this effortpost, but I suspect that may be incorrect, there being evidence olf Saharan and boat routes Out Of Africa.
    European early modern humans (EEMH) lineages of 39 to 26 KA (often called Aurignacian after an archaeological horizon) were still part of a large Western Eurasian “meta-population”, related to Central and Western Asian populations. I would surmise that these people should be reconstructed as Cro-Magnon skeletons (as they used to be called: now EEMH) with skin like South Indians of farmer descent (i.e. native Dravidian speakers), except for a northern clinal variation toward fair skin and the red hair of European Neanderthals (not to be confused with West Asian Neanderthals, from whom I don’t think we have any red hair markers).
    So about that skin depigmentation: you can read Beleza et al 2012.
    “Using compound haplotype systems consisting of rapidly evolving microsatellites linked to one single-nucleotide polymorphism in each gene, we estimate that the onset of the sweep shared by Europeans and East Asians at KITLG occurred approximately 30,000 years ago, after the out-of-Africa migration, whereas the selective sweeps for the European-specific alleles at TYRP1, SLC24A5, and SLC45A2 started much later, within the last 11,000–19,000 years, well after the first migrations of modern humans into Europe.” I don’t uncritically agree with this, because that would imply all EEMH redheads, who had “more Neandertal DNA that is contained in longer tracts than present”, being as dark-skinned as tropical East Asians or native Dravidian speakers, lacking all of TYRP1, SLC24A5, and SLC45A2 in the time between our ~39KYA sample and 19KYA or later.

    Anyway, as deglaciation commenced in the Northern Hemisphere ~19KYA, we find founder effects producing the lineage dubbed West European Hunter-Gatherer, which emerged from the Solutrean refugium of the Last Glacial Maximum (see Jones et al 2015).
    “We find that Caucasus hunter-gatherers (CHG) belong to a distinct ancient clade that split from western hunter-gatherers ∼45 kya, shortly after the expansion of anatomically modern humans into Europe and from the ancestors of Neolithic farmers ∼25 kya, around the Last Glacial Maximum. CHG genomes significantly contributed to the Yamnaya steppe herders…” (about whom more later).

    All of the successfully tested Mesolithic WHG Y-chromosomes, one from Luxembourg and four from Motala, Sweden, belonged to haplogroup I. Haplogroup I is the main candidate for Europe’s indigenous Y-haplogroup, which is today the most common Y-haplogroup in most of Scandinavia.

    The DNA that’s been extracted from prehistoric farmer skeletons indicates that the Neolithic Revolution in Europe was mostly a story of population replacement, not adoption of new technology. Non-Nordic lineages of WHG appear to have made minimal contributions to the descendants of the invading farmers, who cluster with modern Aegean people: but bear in mind that historical Greeks have a para-Nordic WHG element (Homer mentions white-skinned, red-haired Mycenaean aristoi). For this period, think Native American ancestry as a percentage of heritage among farmers north of the Rio Grande in recent times.
    That Scandinavian WHG heritage survived among Europeans seems to be thanks to the Fertile Crescent agricultural package hitting a wall as it approached the Baltic. The “Danubian cultures” archaeological group produce Early European Farmer bones, and as you can see in yellow on this map, they didn’t reach the Baltic and touch the North Sea only at the mouth of the Rhine. Erteboelle and Comb Ceramic Culture on the same map represent hunter-gatherers selectively adopting technology from the invaders: if they didn’t already have villages, they were producing pottery and settling down, but they were more into intensive fishing than agriculture. It seems that domesticated species of the Fertile Crescent package needed time to be bred for colder conditions, giving the Nordic WHGs time to survive the Neolithic Revolution.

    At ~8400 KYA, the Early European Farmers (EEF), very closely related the Anatolian or Levantine farmers (other offshoots of which are colonizing Mesopotamia and the Nile/Green Sahara), are colonizing the northern margin of Greece*, places like Epirus and Corfu. 1-4 centuries later, their “Cardium pottery culture” is in modern Albania, Croatia, and the Adriatic coast of Italy. Contemporary with this, early examples of their pottery appear in Sardinia, though I don’t know when their “race” colonized the island (21st century Sardinians are >50% EEF). At 5500 cal. BC, the Cardium pottery culture expands into the southern half of France and parts of Spain.
    Analysis for ancient DNA found the rare mtDNA basal haplogroup N*, supporting an early Neolithic maritime colonization of Mainland Europe through Cyprus and the Aegean Islands by Near-Eastern farmers (Fernandez et al 2014).
    By the time farmers reached Spain, they would have encountered a branch of WHGs with darker skin than themselves and the recessive gene for blue eyes. Maybe before that: I need data from outside Iberia.

    *They were in the rest of mainland Greece and Crete somewhat earlier.

    Meanwhile, the Danubian or Linear Pottery Culture (which you’ll encounter abbreviated as LBK) spread from the Hungarian Danube (before 5600 BC) to Austria, central Germany and central Poland circa 5500 BC, spreading east and north over the next three centuries until they hit the aforementioned wall for their domesticates very near the Baltic and somewhat further from the North Sea except along the Rhine. At the former limit is where they would have interacted with Nordic WHGs without replacing them.

    To conclude this summary of the European Neolithic west of the Black Sea, also at circa 5300-5200 BC we find multiple cultures interacting in the Netherlands. Probably the most significant is the Ertebølle-Ellerbek horizon, which had an all-but identical southern form in Limburg, the Netherlands in contact with LBK. Ertebølle-Ellerbek skeletal remains are meager, but some DNA sequences have been collected, showing genetic links between Limburg, northern Germany, Denmark, and peninsular Scandinavia. Farmers make the jump from the mouth of the Rhine or northern France to the British Isles circa 4000 BC, and this population was >50% Early European Farmer (This raises the question of whether they were also <50% para-Nordic WHG like the Luxembourg Mesolithic sample. I still need to find Mesolithic Britain/Ireland/north France data.)

    Looking east of the Black Sea, unter-gatherers of the Caucasus split off from the European hunter-gatherers who would go on to become dark-skinned, blue-eyed Iberians, light-skinned, redheaded Nordics, etc ~45,000 years ago. Until the Last Glacial Maximum ~25 KYA, they remained part of the Anatolian HG population whose descendants would include the first wheat farmers. Post-isolation, they are dubbed CHG, for Caucasian Hunter-Gatherer. Jones et al. (2015) analyzed CHG ancestry as represented by a Upper Palaeolithic male from Satsurblia cave, and a Mesolithic one from Kotias Klde cave, both in the foothills of western Georgia. These two males carried Y-DNA haplogroup J* and J2a. The researchers found that these Caucasus hunters were probably the source of the Near Eastern DNA in the Yamnaya (who I’ll finally get to anon).
    Let’s emphasize “probably” there: this is one paper demurring to claim very high Bayesian probability. A competing claim is that Near Eastern DNA made its way to the Eurasian steppe via farmers from Iran.
    Interesting to note that DNA from the Maykop farming culture of the north Caucasus has been sequenced and found to not be related to the adjacent steppe population.

    Something amazing happened around the middle of the 4th millennium BC. Pictographs of wheeled vehicles appear on clay tablets from Uruk in modern south Iraq dated between 3700-3500 BC. Between 3500-3350 BC, evidence of the wheel suddenly appears all the way from Harappa in India (Ravi phase) to southern Poland (Funnelbeaker culture). We have every reason to suspect that it was invented by a speaker of proto-Indo-European or proto-Semitic, as the common ancestor of all European, Iranian and Indian wheel words is reconstructed by experts as *kʷékʷlos, a proper grammatical “reduplicated derivative” of *kʷel- (“to turn”). It’s also reconstructed as galgal, simply “roll” reduplicated, in Semitic languages. In Sumerian, “chariot” was GIGIR, with no known native source. “Wheel” is *grgar in the reconstructed ancestor of Georgian and the other South Caucasian languages, which likewise looks like a loan.
    Unfortunately, the epistemology of dating in archaeology and genetics are not identical, so we don’t know if the people who first introduced the wheel to India and Eastern Europe changed the areas’s genetic profiles. But change did come from pastoraists who knew how to build wheeled vehicles.
    You see, the most common Y-chromosomal haplogroup in Europe is R1b, with the closely-related R1a a contender for third place after the believed-indigenous (i.e. WHG had it) I1. Here’s a map. As the Bronze Age was starting in civilization to the south, one of the early adopters in the illiterate north was a nomadic culture called Yamnaya. They had carts, to which they yoked horses, a domesticate then unknown in Mesopotamia. They buried elite males with weapons under artificial hills, which we call kurgans. And when DNA from their skeletons is sequenced, the most common Y-haplogroup is R1b. Scientific consensus is that the spread of these genes was caused by the same phenomenon documented archaeologically as the collapse of prehistoric (i.e. illiterate) farming cultures and replacement by pastoralist cultures in Eastern Europe south of the Baltic and north of the Greek peninsula.

    • Aapje says:

      Limburg presumably was very attractive for farming, just like the Ruhr region in Germany, because the surface soil is/was loess/löss, silt-sized sediment that is formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. This is very easy to farm at first, not requiring advanced farming techniques (in fact, plowing is inferior to easier subsoiling). It is very sensitive to erosion, so more extensive use of slash-and-burn and/or farming large areas can result in rapid loss of the fairly thin loess top layer. Nowadays a lot of loess has been lost, so Limburg and the Ruhr region is less attractive for agriculture than it used to be.

      Limburg and the Ruhr region are hilly*, which provides natural defense against sea and river flooding. Linear Pottery Culture existed during the Atlantic climate period, where temperature and rainfall was high and increasing. This made the wetlands very swampy and not that great for living in. The Dutch wetlands only became very attractive after a fierce struggle, developing advanced techniques and making huge investments, at a high cost.

      Early Roman and Greek sources, who visited the Low Countries before (extensive) diking and poldering, considered the low parts of the Netherlands to be rather wretched places. The Greek geographer Pytheas wrote around 325 BCE, that “more people died in the struggle against water than in the struggle against men“. First-century Roman author Pliny wrote: “There, twice in every twenty-four hours, the ocean’s vast tide sweeps in a flood over a large stretch of land and hides Nature’s everlasting controversy about whether this region belongs to the land or to the sea. There these wretched peoples occupy high ground, or manmade platforms constructed above the level of the highest tide they experience; they live in huts built on the site so chosen and are like sailors in ships when the waters cover the surrounding land, but when the tide has receded they are like shipwrecked victims. Around their huts they catch fish as they try to escape with the ebbing tide. It does not fall to their lot to keep herds and live on milk, like neighboring tribes, nor even to fight with wild animals, since all undergrowth has been pushed far back.

      The above observations were written centuries after Linear Pottery Culture. It seems that initially, people merely occupied sufficiently livable spots, reacting to changing climate by either occupying or abandoning land. Only once they became sufficiently technologically and organizationally capable, could they respond to worsening circumstances by fighting back the water.

      * The latter more so than in the past, because there are a fair number of decent-sized slag heaps.

      PS. Loess map of Europe. Limburg is beneath the text “Schwalbenberg II,” to the top left of the red dot.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        Thanks for the details. It sounds like a transitional zone where the higher ground was attractive even for early farming and the first farmers may have encountered sedentary hunter-gatherers utilizing the fish to achieve decent population density. I’d then guess that the two populations interbred rather than the EEFs mostly replacing the WHGs.

        • Aapje says:

          Northern European coastal clay is quite hard to farm. The clay is quite dense. You can’t really work it with wooden light plows that do work for sand and loam (mixture of sand, silt and clay). So metal plows are an immense advantage. Even then, you don’t want the clay too wet, which makes it very sticky or too dry, making it hard as brick. Furthermore, heavy rainfall that saturates the ground doesn’t drain that well, which can kill the plants because of a lack of oxygen in the soil. Watering fields in a dry period is hard, because clay retains water very well, so you need a lot of water for it to get to deeper roots. So you really need human-dug ditches and canals. Once clay soil became properly farmed, it was very productive, but getting there was not easy.

          A large part of The Netherlands was actually covered in peat (wet decaying plant matter). Peat can be burned as fuel or used as fertilizer. If you just remove it, you are typically left with lakes. So if you want to work the clay soil beneath the peat, you have to drain the land quite a bit. Doing that in much of The Netherlands puts you below sea level, so then you need a polder and to pump out the water using windmills.

          You can also drain it without removing the peat layer, which produces meadows, suitable for grazing.

          Peat bogs can be very dangerous, because the puffed up plant matter and living surface plants can make it seem like you are on (very boggy) land, while you are crossing something that is 90% water. So you can drown in it, if you are not careful (and your body can be naturally mummified in the bog, if you do sink through).

          The oldest humanoid remains, are of neanderthals in Limburg. Then nomads hunted for reindeer in east and southeast of The Netherlands (13.000–10.000 BC). Then Swifterbant hunter-gatherers lived along the rivers and lakes (5600 BC). LBK then moved in from the east (between 4800 and 4500 BC), introducing animal husbandry and later farming. Yamnaya pastoralists then arrived in 2950 BC.

          Interesting, in the west of The Netherlands, there was a separate culture from 3500 BC and 2500 BC, called Vlaardingen culture. It’s unclear whether these lived their permanently or whether they were nomads. Finds show that they kept animals and did a bit of farming, but also a lot of hunting and fishing. Their artifacts are very utilitarian, with their pots having very little or no ornamentation. The jewelry that was found consisted of mere animal teeth on a string. To they seemed to be poorer than LBK, which they coexisted with. This suggests to me that they had a very challenging environment. Just like how the Romans and Greeks looked at the people living in the wet Dutch areas, the LBK people might have considered the Vlaardingen people to be wretched poor people, not worth displacing or whatever they did elsewhere to spread their culture.

    • InvalidUsernameAndPassword says:

      Glad to see an effortpost on an obscure topic I enjoy!

      All of the successfully tested Mesolithic WHG Y-chromosomes, one from Luxembourg and four from Motala, Sweden, belonged to haplogroup I.

      I’m afraid this is incorrect, haplogroup C1 was also present, in Iberia and (I think?) Hungary. How exactly it became so rare today while I remains common, is unclear…

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        Thank you for the correction! As I mentioned once or twice, Iberian HGs are known to have looked different from Scandinavian HGs, and it’s totally expected that this would correlate with a different haplogroup, in this case C1.

  80. johan_larson says:

    Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to devise a film in which two characters meet who were played by the same actor in other works. So, for example, you could have Oberyn Martell (played by Pedro Pascal in The Game of Thrones) meet Javier Peña (played by Pedro Pascal in Narcos.)

    • The Nybbler says:

      Dirty Harry Callahan sets out to track down a drug mule, who in a twist turns out to be 90-year old Leo Sharp. (Callahan and Sharp played by Clint Eastwood)

      A cheat: An “educational film” consisting of a mishmash of Shakespeare’s plays, narrated by the author (who interjects himself into the plays). Patrick Stewart plays Shakespeare, Macbeth, Marc Antony, Shylock, etc. (The other works were mostly live performances)

      Godfather: Afterlife. The story after the death of Michael Corleone, in which he meets the Devil. Both played by Al Pacino, except for a bizarre vignette about Vito where both are played by Robert DeNiro.

      MIB: The Prequel. The aliens are attacking again. And they’re not the aliens we know and love. Colonel Hiller and Agent J go back in time to meet up with Special Agent James West to ensure some bad aliens don’t mess up the timeline. And to cover it all up, of course. All played by Will Smith.

      Enough silliness for now.

    • Sandpaper26 says:

      This seems like it’d be simplest to accomplish in a superhero franchise/universe. Captain America (Chris Evans) meeting the Human Torch (Chris Evans) immediately comes to mind.

      Outside of this, I feel like really any Statham/Statham, Stallone/Stallone, or Schwarzenegger/Schwarzenegger action crossover would be worth watching, if nonsensical. Christian Bale’s Batman could catch Christian Bale’s American Psycho. Finally, there’s my pet theory that all Tom Cruise movies are sequels to Vanilla Sky (he doesn’t escape the simulation, just runs a different one), so if the simulator starts to break down, there may be a Cruise Collision Event.

      • johan_larson says:

        I guess Arnie could appear as two distinct T-800 units, one from the first movie and one from the second. I don’t offhand remember how many distinct units of that model he has played.

        • The Nybbler says:

          John Matrix, Dutch, and some reprogrammed Terminators against another bunch of Terminators (there’s a T-100, T-800, and a T-850 at least, with as many duplicates as you care for), with the Taskers running the show for Team Human. Linda Hamilton as both Sarah Connor and another Tasker agent: Mary Bartowski.

    • The Nybbler says:

      OK, maybe some more silliness. The Star Wars timeline makes no sense, so there’s no reason Padme Amidala couldn’t retire from politics and dance the Swan Queen. In fact, perhaps the prequels were just part of Nina Sayers delusions.

      Keira Knightly has been in contemporaneous costume dramas. Elizabeth Bennet could meet Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and perhaps the two of them could meet Elizabeth Swann as well.

      • Sandpaper26 says:

        Don’t be daft, how could Padme Amidala star in a ballet while she’s too busy being kept prisoner by the British anarchist/terrorist/freedom fighter V?

    • Phigment says:

      Camelot is being menaced by a dragon.

      King Arthur, played by Sean Connery (First Knight) has to figure out what to do about Draco, played by Sean Connery (Dragonheart).

    • Machine Interface says:

      Real life has you covered: Christopher Lee has played both Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft Holmes at different points of his career.

      • AlphaGamma says:

        Also:
        Peter Capaldi has played both the Doctor and Caecilius, whom the Doctor meets (in the Tenth Doctor episode Fires of Pompeii). He’s also played various other historical figures whom the Doctor has either met on-screen (Leonardo da Vinci) or met in non-TV stories that could theoretically be filmed (King Charles I, Cardinal Richelieu).

        • spkaca says:

          On the Doctor Who theme:
          The Master (played by Derek Jacobi in the episode ‘Utopia’) has heard of a bizarre and sinister world he wishes to investigate. He uses his TARDIS to kidnap some of the most brilliant minds in history to aid him: Alan Turing (played by Derek Jacobi in Breaking the Code), Brother Cadfael (played by Derek Jacobi) and Senator Gracchus (played by Derek Jacobi in Gladiator). The travel to the Night Garden where the Narrator is a terrifying disembodied voice played by Derek Jacobi.

    • AlphaGamma says:

      In the 1960s, James Bond meets SAS Captain John Mason (both played by Sean Connery) before the latter goes on his mission to steal a microdot containing various US government secrets, which results in his being captured and imprisoned on Alcatraz as seen in The Rock.

      This may be cheating as I’m fairly sure that Mason is an alternate-universe James Bond with the serial numbers filed off.

    • silver_swift says:

      The Oceans Eleven crew plans a heist on Hawaii where they have a run in with the Five-O task force. Danny Williams (Scott Caan) arrests Turk Malloy (Scott Caan). The resulting interrogation scene is both hilarious and unbelievably frustrating for both characters.

    • Randy M says:

      I believe I saw mention recently of both Bill & Ted and the Matrix getting new sequels, but honestly crossing Bill Ted* and Neo is too easily done for this challenge.

      *Don’t say I never do research for my posts.

      • Phigment says:

        So, the scenes where Bill and Ted meet themselves are glitches in the Matrix?

        Are Evil Robot Bill and Evil Robot Ted agents, or rebels against the system?

        Are the princesses actually human people originally living in a version of the Matrix that simulated medieval Europe, and then got server-migrated to the modern San Dimas Matrix, or are they native computer agents, not humans in pods?

        So many questions.

      • bullseye says:

        I only remember which is Bill and which is Ted because of the scene where Ted is making fun of Bill for having a hot young stepmother and Bill keeps saying, “Shut up, Ted.”

    • baconbits9 says:

      I feel like the pinnacle of such a movie would be an ensemble cast where a dozen different Kevin Bacon character’s meet.

    • Tarpitz says:

      In the dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, Rick Deckard needs detailed information about the inner workings of replicants to better identify them, so he goes to the man whose pioneering work on artificial vascular systems made their creation possible – Dr. Richard Kimble.

    • sentientbeings says:

      1985:

      Winston Smith (of 1984), played by John Hurt, is brought back to Room 101. This time, he is connected to a virtual reality machine, in which he not only witnesses an alternate Britain descend into dystopia, he actively brings it about as High Chancellor Adam Sutler (of V for Vendetta, called Adam Susan in the original material, renamed in the film) only to be assassinated in a conspiracy between his secret police and the terrorist.

      As Smith is alternately subjected to the virtual reality and real-world interrogations and torture, his grasp on which life is real breaks down entirely. He has delusional episodes in which his alternate selves converse with one another and he comes to suspect that he has somehow ordered his own torture.

      Twist: Parallel universe Ministry of Love equivalents have set up a trans-dimensional torture device that connects the minds of the victims of their respective totalitarian dystopias.

    • Anthony says:

      Agent Smith meets Elrond to inform him that Middle-Earth is a simulation.

      Then takes Elrond to see a drag show in Alice Springs.

  81. Le Maistre Chat says:

    The following people are on thin ice and should consider themselves warned:
    – Brad
    – Le Maistre Chat

    I don’t know how to stop being on thin ice going forward. You didn’t cite any posts and I’m an Aspie. 🙁

    • Nick says:

      I don’t know what Scott has in mind, but I think you should avoid the Portland and antifa topic going forward. It’s clearly been really bothering you, and that discussion keeps devolving. =/

      ETA: The bans make sense to me, the warnings less so? Could Scott share what posts put these folks on thin ice? EchoChaos in particular makes little sense to me since he’s been very clearly trying to be on best behavior since his unbanning.

    • EchoChaos says:

      I confess to being mystified as well, but I’ll try to be better.

      • Le Maistre Chat says:

        Would it be possible to assert the hypothesis for social-scientific discussion that belief in polyamory is a superstructure on the economic structure of gainfully employed people living in a housing market so expensive that them renting only part of a room occurs? That is, are you treating the content as an attack or was only tone offensive?

        • GearRatio says:

          Conservative here who finds polyamory to be a bad move. I think the problem is that whether or not polyamory is “real”, you are very dismissive of it and simultaneously seem to be calling those who claim it’s a “real” liars.

          So it’s probably the difference between “he’s just poor, so he calls a threesome polyamory” and “I wonder if some of the rise of polyamory is linked to economic conditions – if nothing else, budget-necessary cohabitation seems to be a force that would encourage, not discourage, this practice”.

        • Trofim_Lysenko says:

          Tone and to some extent relevance, I think. By relevance I mean that even if we took it as a given that your position that polyamory is a product of high housing costs is correct, it’s not that relevant to a discussion of “why is the housing market so bad in the bay area” and “how do we make it better” except as a way to say “Yes, indeed the housing market in the bay area is bad”.

          So the effect is that your post in that thread ends up coming across as a drive-by jab/sneer at a lifestyle you disapprove of without any argumentation backing it up and in a place where it’s only tangentially related to the main topic of discussion.

          If you want to make that argument, I think the best way to do it would be to A) spawn a new subthread one level up in the overall topic chain, or maybe even a new thread, and gesture at it in your reply, and B) use that new subthread/top level comment to lay out your argument in its entirety.

        • Murphy says:

          I think it was a mix.

          If I dismissed homosexual marriage with “homosexual? pfff, those guys just can’t get a date so they fuck each other” … I’d be insulting a lot of people by implying that it’s not a real thing that people really care about genuinely.

          And it’s distinct from, say, more authentic discussion about whether some guys sometimes switch to gay sex when they’re isolated from women, like on a ship at sea in the navy.

          Add in that our host gets a bunch of shit about being poly.

        • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

          Tone. Even if it is theoretically possible, I don’t think anyone has ever been banned for content alone. Look at the comment James A. Donald was banned for (the atmosphere around here has certainly changed since then but it’s still illustrative). Then scroll down to the comment where Steve Johnson defends the (vastly more outrageous than anything you or anyone else has posted in the recent past) content of the original comment, and note that he was not banned for that.

          • EchoChaos says:

            I was banned for content alone. The ban was reduced to 3 months at the request of the commentators and I don’t talk about the topic anymore.

          • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

            True, I guess things have gotten significantly stricter since the era of Jim. But I think it is true in general that bans for content are very rare. In particular, I’m confident one would be fine expressing heterodox (to the extent that opposition to polyamory is heterodox) opinions about sexuality unless they start getting in the region of Jim-level controversy.

      • potato says:

        I’m confused.

        The black cat makes a post against Swatting and he’s banned?

        Obviously I’ve misread Scott and am missing context.

        The swipe against polyamory is unnecessary but should be an empirical question not an emotional one.

        Run a log regression on probability of joining a lifestyle of polyamory with rent as one of the variables. I’m extremely doubtful that rent is a factor, compared to self selection.

        • Le Maistre Chat says:

          I’m confused.

          The black cat makes a post against Swatting and he’s banned?

          I’m not banned yet, I’m not a he, and I reacted to someone here getting SWATted with sympathy and a statement of belief that this is something online progressives do when very offended by conservative internet posts, due to cases documented in the mass media as far back as 2012. Further clarification hashed out that this is a non-central example, with Central being gamers doing it to streamers and misc. gamers whose addresses they know for the pettiest imaginable reasons.

          • potato says:

            I apologize for misgendering.

            SWATing is overwhelmingly an apolitical phenomenon. Sorry, it’s just not political it’s a weird gamer occurrence that is much more about Troll culture than anything remotely connected to liberalism.

            I’m sorry for interjecting myself. But this isn’t a culture war issue this is a 4chan issue.

            Cheers and I hope you are free to comment!

          • Le Maistre Chat says:

            @potato:

            SWATing is overwhelmingly an apolitical phenomenon.

            Yes, I agree. Overwhelmingly = “the central example.” Sorry if I was unclear.

          • Radu Floricica says:

            My current hypotheses is that Scott really doesn’t like the conversation to move in the “there are sides” direction instead of “there are phenomena”.

        • gbdub says:

          I’m pretty sure it was Chat’s first post in that thread, not the second, that was more an issue – whether intentional or not the strong implication was that one particular tribe approves of SWATing or is at least indifferent to people getting killed by it. “Just how accepted is it by the political tribe that tries to kill people by it?”

          One/two sentence posts of rhetorical questions with dark implications definitely pattern match to low-grade snark, in my mind.

      • EchoChaos says:

        Huh. That statement may not have been phrased kindly, but I wouldn’t call it unkind, and it was both true (the older are more conservative, the young less so) and necessary (a strong counterpoint in a discussion of how interacting with governmental systems makes one more liberal).

        Is it simply the lack of kindness that is at issue, or is there something else that I have missed?

        • DeWitt says:

          ‘People’s opinions drift rightward as they become older’ is a falsifiable claim that could add something of value to a discussion. Your comment very strongly comes across as ‘young people are dumb because they don’t vote the way I want them to’, and given the phrasing it’s entirely not clear to me, even now, that you intended to come across differently.

          • rho says:

            idk, i think liberalism is foolishness, and i’m still a liberal. I want to alleviate systematic imbalances and i think our efforts might likely fail. Maybe it’s a fools errand. But I can’t change what I want, so…

            i don’t think foolish equates to dumb

          • Aapje says:

            @rho

            I think that progressivism and the left in general tends more to Utopianism than the right*; and that the conflict between Utopianism and reality often results in foolishness (like denying reality).

            * Although the right is obviously not immune to it.

          • EchoChaos says:

            @DeWitt

            Ah, it was the “foolish youth” that makes you think it’s nasty. Thanks, that helps clarify. That was meant lightheartedly. I’m fairly young myself, but tone is hard to convey in Internet posts.

            I’ll try to dial down the sarcasm to only 8 or 9.

        • thisheavenlyconjugation says:

          FWIW I thought it was obvious that “foolish” was lighthearted and therefore the comment was entirely unobjectionable.

      • Murphy says:

        re: Le Maistre Chat on the SWATing thread….

        “This behavior is pure evil. Just how accepted is it by the political tribe that tries to kill people by it?”

        We normally avoid calling things evil… but attempted murder by cop seems a justified case and the question doesn’t seem to be in bad faith looking at the following thread… but may involve a bit of a filter bubble.

        • gbdub says:

          Pretty sure it was sentence two that was the problem.

          • Murphy says:

            That’s what I meant about the filter bubble and from reading the other posts in the thread.

            Depending on the media you watch it’s very very easy to honestly believe that only the other tribe employ a tactic like that or that it’s heavily skewed to one side.

    • brad says:

      To cut against the grain here, I know why I’m on thin ice and it’s probably the right call. I lose my temper and get snarky in some small but steady percent of posts. Of course from the inside the snark seems well deserved but from the blog moderator’s perspective that’s never going to cut it.

  82. Randy M says:

    According to Steve Sailer, Peter Turchin wrote a response to your posts.

    • Aftagley says:

      His response reads to me as being kind of strange. If I’m parsing it correctly, his viewpoint seems to be, “my theory is sound, and data that seems to not line up with the theory only does so if you don’t properly understand my theory.” To me, that kind of handwaving “your critique is invalid due to your lack of comprehension” sets off my crackpot alarm. Am I being uncharitable here?

      • Rob K says:

        I read Scott’s review of the first book, and thought it sounded interesting and broadly plausible as a framework for thinking about big-picture historical change; the second sounded like a guy falling in love with his theory and trying to extend it further than it would naturally go, especially once Scott did the pull-quotes post. That post there reinforces the second impression.

        This doesn’t mean there’s nothing there, especially on the long scale proposed by the first book, and especially if the argument is made at a slightly more zoomed-in level that stays in touch with the nuances of the particular situation. It’s actually somewhat reminiscent of the Brenner Debate, which is a good read if you’re interested in seeing this sort of Malthus-informed thing play out between professional historians.

  83. Daniel Frank says:

    At the beginning of 2019, I quit my job as a lawyer and travelled for 6 months to some unconventional countries.
    I wanted to share my experience with the community here.

    Countries visited (in order): Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Ethiopia, South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Lesotho, Kenya, Israel, Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Serbia, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Egypt.

    You can see my favourite photos here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/mmeWJ5M88Pkyt8EWA

    You can see a fun and quick summary of the trip here: http://danfrank.ca/2019-round-the-world-adventure-part-1/

    You can see a long write up on my reflections from the experience: http://danfrank.ca/2019-round-the-world-adventure-part-2/

    If anyone has any questions, I would be happy to answer.

    • Mark V Anderson says:

      @Daniel.

      That is fascinating, all kinds of stuff in there I knew nothing about. Most of your comments about particular countries were negative (Ethiopia, Kajikstan, Balkans, Argentina [altho Chile positive]). I find this mostly refreshing because most travelogs always seem to feel obligated to talk about the positive. But it would be good to hear more about positive things. I assume most of the positives would be meeting individuals. Is it true that countries seemed mostly negative, but the people you meet in them mostly positive?

      Do you have more detailed information about your travels? Did you keep a journal while you were traveling? Or maybe you could remember most of it? I don’t know if that would be more writing than you would like to do, but I’d sure love to read more, even a full book about your travels.

      • Daniel Frank says:

        Hi Mark,

        I appreciate your reply.
        It’s particularly interesting to read your comment because I didn’t even realize how negative I sounded.
        I am not trying to judge a country, merely convey what I felt and experienced there. The overall experience everywhere I visited was tremendously positive. I feel enormously privileged to have travelled all the countries I did. I think maybe why I expressed myself the way I did is I believe some of the countries have the potential to improve (in accordance with their own subjective values) to be even more enjoyable to visit and hospitable to live.

        I regretfully did not write a journal. I have been contemplating retroactively writing a diary of what I did everyday for posteriority sake. I wrote something around 30 pages of content for the second blog post, but I ended up deleting almost all of it because I didn’t think anyone would be interested. Maybe I’ll revise it and get it out there in some way.

        • Mark V Anderson says:

          I wrote something around 30 pages of content for the second blog post, but I ended up deleting almost all of it because I didn’t think anyone would be interested.

          Well yes more details would kind of inherently be more boring, because you pulled out the most interesting stuff in your first comments. But like you, I am most interested in traveling for what I learn. I am sometimes bored day-by-day but it is still worth it for the increased knowledge at the end. And I feel the same about travel writing. It might be more boring reading it, but I learn so much more about what is going on by hearing about all the boring details than by the highlights you pulled out before. I don’t mean to pressure you to write more, you should only do it if it is worth it to you. But I for one am interested in reading it.

    • ChrisA says:

      Hi Dan, I enjoyed your writing. My only concern is the strength of your conclusions versus the relatively short time you must have spent in each country. I am a perennial expat (23 years and counting) in “developing “ countries and usually get to live in a new country for 3 or 4 years but longest was 6 years. I find my impressions of a country changing quite a lot the longer I live there. Positives become negatives and vice versa. Maybe it is Stockholm syndrome but I begin to cherish those differences from the Western normality, even when they are patently stupid.

      • eigenmoon says:

        I’d love to read your post about this.

      • Daniel Frank says:

        I absolutely agree with this. Beyond just time spent in a country, our state of mind, age, emotions etc at a certain time have a huge role in how we experience something. I try not to have any firm conclusions, just observations and reflections. To the extent I do have any conclusions, the strength is definitely weak.

        Would you mind sharing where you have had the pleasure of living?

    • Joseftstadter says:

      I thought that was an interesting idea to use Tinder as a way to find locals to hang out with. I assume that worked better in places like Austria or Slovakia than in Egypt?

      Having lived in Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan, I am not surprised you were underwhelmed. The degree to which the local cultures in Central Asia were destroyed by Soviet occupation cannot be underestimated, and now Western and Chinese influence are making them even less “exotic” from the point of a Western tourist. A lot of the developing world can seem like an undifferentiated cesspool of corruption, exploitative and/or derivative popular culture, cheap Chinese knock-off merchandise and crappy infrastructure, unless you really take the time to immerse yourself. And even if you do, it is not always clear that the rewards are worth it.

    • AlphaGamma says:

      On Hava Nagila as a folk song in non-Jewish places: there is a Cypriot folk song to the tune of Hava Nagila. This is allegedly because it was used in Exodus, which was filmed on location in Cyprus in 1960, and local musicians took the tune and wrote Greek lyrics.

      On Albanian Mercedes: Mercedes models up to and including the W124 (so any “boxy” looking model) are famously reliable- they were engineered up to a quality standard rather than down to a price. They also used to be in very common use as taxis in rural parts of Greece, and still are in Morocco.

      A lot of the theft of such Mercedes in wealthier countries is for spare parts for taxis, often in Africa. I remember seeing a BBC article about a gang in London who were stealing them to send to Nigeria as parts- they could completely dismantle one in two hours.

      Albanian car culture is also weird because, while private cars were difficult to obtain in most Communist countries, in Albania they were outright banned.

    • b_jonas says:

      Thank you for the summaries, they’re interesting. I hope you’ll write and publish more parts. I’d like to find out why you found South Africa so unpleasant (I know very little about that region, so I can’t guess). And of course, I’ll be interested in more about Europe, because that’s what I’m familiar with from inside.

      For the photos, it would be nice if you presented them grouped into some geographical categories. I don’t know most of the places you visited, so I can’t guess the locations, but you likely know approximately where you were on each week. (Yes, I do recognize the Great Sphinx of Giza.)

      So you live in Canada? It may help to mention this early in your summary, since you mention that you travel to “unconventional countries”.

      > Despite how dangerous the roads are, very few drivers in developing countries wear seatbelts

      Wait, that’s only in developing countries? I didn’t know that.

      • Daniel Frank says:

        re: South Africa. While travelling, I enjoy walking around a city for hours and experiencing local culture organically in various ways. Simply put, I did not feel safe walking around Johannesburg. I have travelled in dangerous areas before but never have I felt like I did in Joburg. I also found it difficult to have immersive experiences in South Africa. Even eating local food proved to be difficult for me. While the other cities I visited in South Africa were slightly better, I never felt comfortable or able to enjoy myself.

        I am sorry the photos are not tagged. The photos are arranged chronologically but I appreciate that is not very helpful.

        re: seatbelts. In my experience in developed countries, seatbelts usage is significantly higher than what I observed in Africa and Central Asia. Granted, it is just my observation.

        • b_jonas says:

          South Africa: I see, that combination sounds bad. I imagine you may have been to cities in South America where you didn’t feel safe from muggers with weapons, but it wouldn’t be hard there to have immersive experiences with locals.

          I guess the seatbelts make sense. After all, here in Hungary, when I was born, using seatbelts was mandatory only in the front seats of cars, and they only started to require seatbelts on long distance buses ten or fifteen years ago.

    • eigenmoon says:

      Daniel,

      There’s an alternative explanation to what appears to Western observers as nationalism. Those people are thinking in collectivist terms, that is, your personal respectability is primarily determined by the respectability of your social group. This is kind of how SJWs think, too. When a Balkan dweller tells you that his country is great, what he means is not necessarily “I’m very preoccupied with the greatness of my country and meditate on it every day”, but might be “Please respect me because look how respectable my tribe is”. This is less true in former Yugoslavia which is genuinely nationalistic because nobody cared to deprogram its people from Miloševič’s propaganda.

      The fixation on inventing the Cyrillic alphabet is, I guess, a result of being traumatized by hordes of Russian tourists that fly in and say “Oh look, Bulgarians are using our letters!”. That incantation aggroes all Bulgarians in 20m radius.

      • albatross11 says:

        I think this is probably a human universal. We’re social creatures who have individual lives and interests and brains and experiences, and figuring out how much to be an individualist and how much to be a collectivist in our thinking is always something that’s on our mind. And the right answer is different in different situations–the right balance of individual/collective is probably different in an infantry unit in combat than in a cubicle at some programming job.

        Another constant question is deciding at what level our group affiliations should take precedence. I’m an American, a scientist, a Catholic, white, male, straight, a SF fan, a sort-of libertarian, etc. Which of those binds tightest? To the extent I’m concerned with tribal/collectivist interests, should I be more loyal to and concerned with Americans or whites or Catholics? People have had very different answers to those questions over the centuries, with big consequences for society.

        SJWs are concerned with those questions, but so is everyone else.

      • Aapje says:

        Indeed, I think that extreme nationalism is far more often a symptom than a cause, just like identity politics (of whatever stripe). If you believe your ingroup to be beleaguered, it’s not going to work to say: “stop defending your ingroup for what you perceive as a threat,” without convincing them that the threat is fairly small.

    • Daniel Frank says:

      I highly recommend visiting the Stans! It is a wonderful place to learn.

      For the most part, I am in no rush to revisit any places. I find novelty very stimulating and have many more places I am eager to see for the first time. From previous travels, I would like to revisit Brazil (I spent only two weeks there and it is a huge country) and Japan (just for food and relaxing).

      Due to my enjoyment of Central Asia, I would love to visit Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Iran too if regime falls because I am currently unable to.

    • Aftagley says:

      Kind of a specific question, but how exactly did you manage to fly everywhere for (roughly) free? Just loads of frequent flier miles?