wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

He's trolling. It's a useless tangential argument about something that does not affect intended conveyance.

He may be forum sliding, creating crufty noise, to dilute communication.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

The title is:

  The Lovers & The Despot

Not:

  Lovers and Despot movies

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

In what way should that change my reaction?

What's your reason for believing it should?

I'm asking these questions rhetorically.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

  ...if caffeine were a new drug, I wonder what 
  Schedule it would be in and if people might 
  be even more leery of it than modafinil.

  ...

  So I eventually got around to ordering another 
  thing of nicotine gum...

  A second dose was similar, and the third dose 
  was at 10 PM before playing Ninja Gaiden II 
  seemed to stop the usual exhaustion I feel after 
  playing through a level or so.

Okay, I'm no longer part of the gwern fanclub. I could pick apart other aspects of this article, but I'll refrain, since it's not without a modicum of practical utility.

Yes, he writes very lengthy, detailed articles. Lovely. But they are anecdotes. And artisanal anecdotes at best.

To summarize gwern: A layman tries some stuff that is innately accessible to any layman, and writes haughtily aloof essays.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

The premise of the experiment is akin to considering whether or not people are prone to being swindled by a three card monte con-game.

The premise of the example only demonstrates a susceptibility to a situation where the individual is not expecting to be judged based on technicalities.

Technically, in a three card monte game, on the street, you have no assurance that the dealer is operating the deck with integrity. Technically, on the street, you have no assurance that other players are not collaborating with the dealer.

Does this prove that humans are often innately irrational? Maybe insofar as any other parlour trick does.

The claim that a bystander should know that their own capacity for estimation of the likelihood that Linda's occupation may be bank teller shall be poor, is masked, in terms of relevance to the rest of the context of the presented scenario. A bystander's estimation of feminist alignment is anticipated and intended.

When the bystander chooses option (B), an assertion that they have no insight into whether Linda was a banker or not, suddenly becomes the defining aspect of the test.

So now we've proven that given an unexpected context, a bystander is surprised by a sudden ambush within that context.

While such nuances may be interesting on a much grander scale, in most cases, the experiment is not framed that way, as a design to misdirect the individual, and certainly, the authors of this op-ed article make the same mistake in pointing at the idea that a bystander should be expected to know that they have no way of knowing whether or not Linda might be a bank teller.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

The article presents the following experimental premise:

  “Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken 
   and very bright. She majored in philosophy. 
   As a student, she was deeply concerned with 
   issues of discrimination and social justice, 
   and also participated in antinuclear 
   demonstrations.” 

  Then they asked the subjects which was more 
  probable: 

  (A) Linda is a bank teller 

  or 

  (B) Linda is a bank teller and 
      is active in the feminist 
      movement.

This example is bullshit, for several reasons.

We have several known personality attributes provided in the example, and all of them relate to the subjective opinions of an individual and are designed to provide belief in the potential for associations with similar political alignments.

Then we're provided with 2 choices, and each choice couples a previously unknown detail to the individual described, regarding occupation, with no opportunity to exclude the occupation.

We are asked to make an assumption about the individual, based on previously provided information, and guide the formation of our assumption with intuition.

According to The Letter Of The Law, the example asks the respondent to parse probability ONLY, and then penalizes according to the transitive property of equality, because technical interpretations of probability state that, when information has not been previously presented, an individual trait in isolation, is more probable, than a coupling of rare traits.

  Which one is more probable? Oh wait, you're 
  wrong because you misinterpreted our 
  context-sensitive definition of the word 
  "probable." You lose.

According to The Spirit Of The Law, the example appears to present the respondent with a set of details, and prompt the respondent with a request to parse the details and demonstrate a display of reading comprehension, such that they show they've observed the relevant details, and drawn a conclusion by associating multiple cultural norms of common political alignment.

  With the presentation of choice B, and
  based on other personal details about
  Linda, do you feel it likely that Linda 
  could be a feminist? Keep in mind that 
  we've offered clues to her political 
  alignment, and these may play a role 
  in the correct answer.

The example reads as:

  Given: [0, A, 2, C, 4]

  Is [E] likely?

  or

  Does [E, 6] make more sense?

But claims to present:

  Given: [0, A, 2, C, 4]

  Which is most probable?  

   > [$]

  or

   > [$, 99]

So, the example is an experiment in providing a loaded question, and then changing the context of expected interpretation, and then declaring proof that people are prone to misinterpretation.

The example is like asking someone if they were happy about who won The World Series, and then telling them you're not inviting them to a soccer game, because of their opinions on baseball.

The example the authors have provided is designed to promote assumptions, without providing adequate context for expectations, and that is fucking stupid.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Oh, so much better. Thank you jesus!

In other communities, to circumvent asinine ploys at lock-in, someone would just brute force the pdf file with a burner facebook login, and repost it. But then, you'd still be stuck with a pdf.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Maybe he's a fan of The Far Side by Gary Larson?

https://www.amazon.com/Unnatural-Selections-Gary-Larson/dp/0...

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

  The photos

   > A plugin is needed to display this content.

wat

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

So, translation is actually:

  blorp blorp! 

  money money! 

  blorp blorp! 

  feed me, seymour!

Yay! I feel reassured that everything is going smoothly, just as planned, and 10% growth as usual.

One could quickly argue that PR articles that skip the details, and make designs to produce the sensation of graphs that "go up and to the right," are a clear indicator that pleasing investors produces a bland gruel of profiteering corporations as ineffective at doing anything useful besides "making money," as is flatlander management, at providing direction to employees (read: millennials) who can't adjust to the sensation of not being subordinate to micro-managing overlords.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Dark patterns ask you to sit in a chair, without telling you that you can get paid to stand. (masking benefit without restricting access to the benefit; misdirection but without total erosion of trust)

This is about exploiting the exposure of unique identifiers (phone number mapped to email), and an interloping tattle-tale ratting out their correlation to the same owner.

It's something more akin to a Prisoner's Dilema, except people aren't cognizant that "They Are The Product" so no one thinks of themselves as prisoners ratting out conspirators.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

At least it's supposed to be fiction.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Because everyone always has to be shipping and disrupting! Big Business! Product! Sales!

Who's to blame?!

Attention, Decision, Interest, Action. AIDA.

We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? (second prize is a set of steak knives.)

Third prize is you're fired.

These are The New Leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold. And you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. They're for closers.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

While we're referencing things from the 70's, including prog rock:

  You can choose a ready guide, 
  in some celestial voice.
  If you choose not to decide, 
  you still have made a choice.
  You can choose from phantom fears, 
  and kindness that can kill.
  I will choose a path that's clear.
  I will choose Free Will.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

In side-by-side taste tests, and even when seltzer is free, I almost always choose water, and usually leave containers of seltzer unfinished, and sometimes wait until they go flat before finishing them off if I'm feeling extraordinarily patient.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

We've had free will debates here on HN before, and the submitted story is usually quickly debunked as pompous and arrogant pseudo-intellectuallism. A flavour of jaded post college nihilism. Fatalistic points of view can jump off a cliff if they find their circumstances so constrained, and without option.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Telltale missing article. The. A. An.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

I have quit and resumed coffee many times over the past decade, and abstained from caffeine during breaks for a month or more.

Migraines are a thing. Lasting up to a full day, but rarely longer.

Beyond that, quitting caffeine is unremarkable. The worst part about it, is trying to find other low calorie beverages that aren't water, and have no aspartame or sacharine, since I find all artificial sweeteners (including the new-school "natural" variety) as disgusting contaminants.

Getting back on coffee after a break is fun. Caffeine is always better after a tolerance break.

Tolerance, after which caffeine becomes the new, ineffective normal, creeps in at month number 2 or 3 of constant use. I've dosed on uninterrupted supplies off caffeine for blocks as long as 18 months. A solid gram of caffeine a day is probably not the best thing, but not debilitating or deleterious as far as I can tell.

I try to not drink caffeine, when incensed as a crutch for obligations at work. Then we're talking dependence and prostitution, of a sort, know what I mean?

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

The domain probably costs to much.

Squatters.

wonkaWonka

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

Oh, okay, yeah, we'll just MAKE people live however we want. We know best, so no one would ever resist.

wonkaWonka

Submissions

Pixel, Phone by Google

OS X El Capitan

Edward Snowden Joins Twitter and Follows NSA

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