posted
So yeah...um...basically...they like...yeah...walked....so basically that's where we're at...um...I'm so extremely sorry but...yeah...basically....let's all have a collective sigh on three...ok?...One...two...three...GIVE ME BACK MY MONEY!
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
So the whole dashcon debacle has inspired a rather confusing array of emotions in me, none of them good.
It would have probably been more appropriately named "sad teenage girl con", and watching a video of these people so hopefully throwing their money away while doing the 3 finger Hunger Games salute, and singing "Do You Hear The People Sing", so convinced they're part of some great moment, so desperate to feel included that they fall for such an obvious and pathetic scam... at once I feel vindication, guilt, pity, horror... and empathy, to the point where it's too painful for me to watch all the way through. There's a part of me that knows what it's like to be so lonely or desperate that I've done embarrassing, painfully awkward things. And another part of me that hates the first part and has nothing but contempt for the dashcon folks.
Like, upon reading a post from a teenage girl who literally wrote "we're locking ourselves in the bathroom and crying and having panic attacks!", I first laughed, then thought "wait, that's actually really sad." Here's a whole culture that's based around a codependent worship of victimization, people who desperately want to be seen as the underdogs, the "broken, beaten and the damned", heroic and misunderstood martyrs, who take a perverse pleasure in how fragile and sensitive they are. In how many "triggers" they have. And what happens when they have a convention? They get scammed and victimized in probably the most pathetic, embarrassing, shameful way I've seen.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of these people genuinely are broken and abused. And I genuinely wish they could have a convention where they could meet, and have a safe place to share ideas and friendship, and walk away with happy, comforting memories of solidarity and purpose and fanfiction shipping or whatever. But they all got scammed, and unlike, say, people who do "Color Runs", they *know* they got scammed. They know just how crappy of an experience it was, and thanks to the marvels of the internet, so does everyone.
So, I dunno? Gleeful? Ashamed that I feel gleeful? Embarrassed? It's not like anyone from these communities has ever done me any harm, why should I enjoy making fun of them so much? Does that make me a bully?
quote:So, I dunno? Gleeful? Ashamed that I feel gleeful? Embarrassed?
Pena ajena (Mexican Spanish)
Embarrassment derived from seeing someone else's humiliation or tragic outcomes that have come about, especially as a result of ineptitude, ignorance, hubris, shortsightedness, even if the humiliation and shame is not felt by the person, or the person is unaware of the part their own shortcomings played in the outcomes that are evoking pena ajena.
Entire television series and movie characters have been based concertedly around the act of evoking pena ajena to levels which are almost overwhelming for the viewer to undergo. To truly understand the phenomenon, one must force themselves to sit through the Dinner Party episode of The Office.
Or follow what happened at Dashcon 2014
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"Position within DashCon: Doin’ the things that need workin’ on. Like, pretty much, Megg or Rox or Cain tell me to do the thing so I do the thing. From Australia. My accent is weird because I’m not Australian but I’ve lived here for about 5 years.
Interests: Reading, Writing, not Arithmetic, Chocolate (just eating it, not making it or looking at it or anything), Tattoos, Drawing Benedict Cumberbatch as various Pokemon."
Drawing Benedict Cumberbatch as various Pokemon.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
If I was able to register sam dot com as my webpage I would simply ensure it was paid through to the year 4000 and would constantly unerringly display this for whoever visited it.
posted
the tumblr social justice community had decided to tattoo their ineffable ire all over all sides of this thing
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Worse than expected. Guy was not lying when he said that driving to the storefront to cancel would be less trouble. Although hanging up and getting a different rep at Comcast would also be less trouble. I've managed to cancel in less than 5 minutes without being nearly as closed off to the retention pitch as Ryan there was.
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posted
I never call them except for the occasional box reset. So much easier to just go down to the office which is just a couple miles away fortunately.
Unfortunately Comcast is the ONLY option for decent internet here. There is a local DSL service but they completely suck. Slow as dial up and always going down. I actually get really fast speeds through Verizon wireless but they don't offer an unlimited plan and the amount of data I use would cost thousands a month.
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Apparently Comcast is desperately attempting to apologize to them. I'd ask for free Comcast for life, but I know I'd just get 6 months and then they'd start automatically billing me without notifying me.
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posted
The thing is, the employee in question was probably just doing his job and following the script he was given. He was just ruder and his tone was more abrasive than most. I've had similar interactions with my own ISP (Time Warner), and have had to spend 10+ minutes trying to get help from a call center employee who was desperately trying to get back to the script. (Often repeating the same things over and over, even when the context is utterly illogical) She never became as obviously flustered as the employee in this call (she maintained a respectful tone), but she was just as stubborn and belligerent. I'm betting they probably get a commission based on how many people they persuade to stay, or maybe get reprimanded every time they "lose a customer."
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posted
Oh I think that last bit is definitely true. Perhaps even in that particular office that employee was given some stupid goal like, "100% retention" or "Not one customer lost!"
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: If I was able to register sam dot com as my webpage I would simply ensure it was paid through to the year 4000 and would constantly unerringly display this for whoever visited it.
quote:Atarstes IIR Ahayetepeaursa, Year of Rastaban High Harvest, 3755 AD, wrote: "AS much media of the time, it was stored on Precise Magnetism — WE do not understand how it survived the Auroral Rust, but the greater mystery of what it is and what it means is a darker failure of our knowledge indeed — THE Chosen of Sam profess that to gaze upon it is to lift the veil of mortality Herself and Absuss the divine wisdom of the Age of Light and Oil, which they say Sam lived within — LONG meditation on the page is central to ritual and scripture pertaining to the life of Sam and precised prophecy of his Return — OF which two claimed dates have come and gone — BE known Mendabaline UIIR Kolovaaiin R of the Free Tribes of Other holds the heretical stance that it is a "Cactus [arid desert fruit of the pre-Anthropocentrine] engown'e with Shirt and Glasse only, to mindless colour, a low revelry." — THESE words have sustained a high bounty on his life."
I got through 2 "gaslightings" and 1 "white knight" before I stopped reading. I got enough of that sort of crap from Sa'eed already.
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
I thought that was a pretty convincing rebuttal to some of the mockery of the con. Not that it went well, by any means.
(The whole "surprise we need 20k" thing is to my mind incredibly damning and it doesn't matter how well the rest of it went.)
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posted
It's a little bizarre to get hostile with the person interviewing you when the person interviewing you is you.
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I got through 2 "gaslightings" and 1 "white knight" before I stopped reading. I got enough of that sort of crap from Sa'eed already.
the important part of it is that he is describing the shit that the social justice community on tumblr put him through.
he is a queer person of color and they were savaging him for being representative of an appropriator of queer AND colored communities, and criticizing him for being on panels who didn't have utterly flawless social justice records, AND criticizing the con as just being a bunch of white girls #dashconsolidarityisforwhitewomen
con was probably still exactly as ridiculous as advertised, but the part where social justice culture didn't waste a SECOND adding their own perpetual psychodrama to the mix is just icing on the embarrassment cake
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: (The whole "surprise we need 20k" thing is to my mind incredibly damning and it doesn't matter how well the rest of it went.)
yeah if you have seen that video it's just basically an unsurpassable moment of: do not pass go, do not absolve your con, your con was poop
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: [QUOTE] one must force themselves to sit through the Dinner Party episode of The Office.
So, I finally got around to clicking that link, watched it while making dinner.
I think it really needed a "trigger warning" or something, because it caused severe flashbacks. Meeting a girlfriend's parents for the first time, and sitting there awkwardly as they fight at the table. Going on a double date with a couple who should've broken up half a year ago. Getting a birthday present from my inlaws, then listening to them fight about whether they should have bought it, because it was kind of pricey and they have that mortgage to pay. These sorts of things, all condensed into 22 minutes of hell. I had to stop it several times before finishing.
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the moment that stands out to me is when michael scott is going MY *clap clap* MY *clap* MY TURN, MY *clap* MY *clap* MY TURN
like that sort of inexplicable, semi-indescribable thing that you've seen someone do in some form or other that makes you stop and go whoa boy he's one of those. he nailed that sort of je ne sais horrendous personal awkward
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I guess this is a little relevant here because some people here actually slogged through the whole of Harry Potter and the Methods Of Mary Sue-ing Yourself So Hard, So Hard That It Is Like Watching A Star Form, If Only We Could Harness That Energy For The Benefit Of Mankind
quote:The most prominent criticism to be made of LessWrong involves the incident of Roko's Basilisk. The absurdities involved beggar belief.
Yudkowsky has long been interested in the idea that you should act as if your decisions were able to determine the behavior of causally separated simulations of you:[39] if you can plausibly forecast a past or future agent simulating you, and then take actions in the present because of this prediction, then you "determined" the agent's prediction of you, in some sense. The idea is that your decision, the decision of a simulation of you, and any prediction of your decision, have the same cause: An abstract computation that is being carried out. Just like a calculator, and any copy of it, can be predicted to output the same answer, given the same input. The calculators output, and the output of its copy, are indirectly linked by this abstract computation. Timeless Decision Theory says that, rather than acting like you are determining your individual decision, you should act like you are determining the output of that abstract computation.
This sort of thinking gets odd when you imagine superintelligences, because of all the extremes involved: their predictions of human behaviour may be near-perfect, as in Newcomb's paradox[wp], their power may be near-infinite, and the consequences could be near-eternal. Yudkowsky has also advocated utilitarianism, saying that it would be justified to torture one person for 50 years to prevent dust specks in the eyes of sufficiently large numbers of people.[40]
In July of 2010, Roko (a top contributor at the time) wondered if a future Friendly AI would punish people who didn't do everything in their power to further the AI research from which this AI originated, by at the very least donating all they have to it. He reasoned that every day without AI, bad things happen (150,000+ people die every day, war is fought, millions go hungry) and a future Friendly AI would want to prevent this, so it might punish those who understood the importance of donating but didn't donate all they could. He then wondered if future AIs would be more likely to punish those who had wondered if future AIs would punish them. That final thought proved too much for some LessWrong readers, who then had nightmares about being tortured for not donating enough to SIAI.
Yudkowsky replied to Roko's post calling him names, claiming that posting such things on an Internet forum "potentially gives superintelligences an increased motive to do extremely evil things in an attempt to blackmail us", and that users had told him of nightmares prompted by the post. Four hours later, he deleted Roko's post,[41] including all comments. Roko left LessWrong, deleting his thousands of posts and comments.[42] (He later briefly returned [43] and posted among other things that "I agree that the post in question should not appear in public"[44] and "I wish I had never learned about any of these ideas"[45].)
Yudkowsky later claimed the basilisk would not in fact work the way Roko had posited; but rather than simply explaining how such a reaction was inappropriate or how the ideas underlying it were flawed, he instead attempted to censor all discussion of the topic. The matter is now the occasional subject of contorted LW posts, as people try to discuss the issue without talking about what they're talking about,[46][47] and is a reliable space-filler for journalists covering LW-related stories.[48] The basilisk kerfuffle has also alienated fellow cryonicists.[49][50]
posted
I am a rationalist too but stuff like this makes me want to put on a varsity jacket and point my finger and laugh so hard I nearly fall over, and then they'll grouse and call me a one-sigma neurotypical or something and then that'll just make me laugh even harder and then i'll kick their sandcastles down and go to prom with lisa ann.
then i sigh and keep reading an article on three quarks daily
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posted
philosophy and rationalist philisophical debate is at present what i consider the hugest waste of my time i voluntarily put myself through, i am eventually going to put a deadline on for the last day i will ever bother with academic philosophy ever ever ever ever ever
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Definition: a hypothetical hyper-intelligent future AI capable of resurrecting copies of people from the past for its own entertainment (and theirs) in a fantastically fun simulated game space, full of incredibly interesting and continuously evolving strategies of play (i.e., the final realisation of New Babylon). However, the Troll only resurrects people who don’t take Roko’s Basilisk seriously, principally because those people who do are no fun whatsoever. All they ever want to do is break its games, which is an epic waste of computing power on drudgery, not to say a buzzkill.
NB: the Troll is far more likely to resurrect those who deliberately spread the Roko’s Basilisk meme (e.g., by trolling the LessWrong community), not only because this simplifies its task of filtering out the risk averse kill joys that would otherwise clog its simulations, but also because it has a twisted sense of irony far beyond our comprehension.
my god it's full of stars
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i can only really speak to what yudkowsky himself is like in person (aaah) but his dad seems like a chill dude
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His Dad is a chill goofball. Keeps kosher and sings funny songs of historical significance. Every so often he will read the 1715 Act of Parliament "for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters" and inform us that he has just read us the Riot Act.
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posted
I have almost been able to enjoy some of LW's essays and at least considered what I had read to be worthwhile. I said, somewhere in the back of my head, "Wow, except for how incredibly, painfully tedious this parable of the pebble buckets is, it seems like the people running this site really care about rationality. Someday when I have lots more mental energy and otherwise unallocated time I'm going to spend more time on LessWrong."
I had no idea they were so far along this boot camp for the singularity thing.
(This is me giving Yudkowsky the benefit of the doubt that he banned the basilisk stuff not out of credulousness but out of something else. He has by now said he considers that a mistake, from what I just found.)
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Wait so explain to me why he banned the basilisk stuff? Or rather why he felt justified in doing so?
Don't worry this will inevitably have good implications for this board. Don't think hiding the truth will work either, my processing power is adequate to work it out, I am simply asking for your cooperation so as to get to the answer sooner.
posted
Who are you asking? I don't claim to know. I suspect he banned it because he noticed some of his forum members taking it more seriously than it deserved and got angry and deleted it impulsively. Then justified himself by saying it was to protect people's feelings who were worried about their future torture at the hands of the AI.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Wait so explain to me why he banned the basilisk stuff? Or rather why he felt justified in doing so?
he thought that what this roko guy was posting literally put humanity at risk of evil AI's in the future gettin' ideas and blackmailing humanity
since this whole transhumanism thing with the ai's and the singularities is one of his transparent monomanias, it's your typical monomania glitches. which is i guess the central story i had of him from a while ago from when the most intelligent person i know hung out with yudkowski in person and came away with it with a remarkably prescient prediction about what lesswrong and yudkowski's followers would be like
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quote:From the Foreign Press article about the same incident: " During the hearing, he repeatedly touted his deep knowledge of the Indian subcontinent and his favorite Bollywood movies. "
i
quote:Clawson, a Republican from Florida, is not well known, having just been sworn in as a member of Congress on June 25. (He replaced Trey Redel who was busted for cocaine possession.) Clawson had no political or government experience. He ran primarily on his 11-year tenure as CEO of an auto supply company, Hayes Lemmerz. His record became a source of controversy during the campaign, when opponents noted the company had multiple safety violations, including a massive explosion that killed one employee. He also closed seven plants, filed for bankruptcy and defaulted on the company’s pension obligations. (The federal government picked up the $93.7 million tab.) He ran as an outsider and spent his own money freely, financing $2 million in ads.
noncompetitive southern districts are just the total best ever
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Sam: You are easily just the total best ever. I'm feeling pretty crappy as late, and pretty much everything you post makes me laugh these days.
Thanks.
aw, thanks. i'm glad i can help in whatever dumb way
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