"I'm naming my daughter Climara."
"Bro, you know you're not going to have any kids if you stay on that stuff."
Monthly Archives: December 2016
An Element Which Is Nameless
I had always thought Twilight Sparkle was the pony that best exemplified the spirit of epistemic rationality. If anypony should possess the truth, it must be the ones with high p (p being the letter used to represent the pony intelligence factor first proposed by Charles Spearpony and whose existence was confirmed by later psychometric research by such ponies as Arthur Jenfoal) who devote their lives to tireless scholarship!
After this year, however, I think I'm going to have to go with Applejack. Sometimes, all a pony needs to do to possess the truth is simply to stop lying.
Just—stop fucking lying!
Philanthropy Scorecard Through 2016
(In accordance with "To Inspire People to Give, Be Public About Your Giving".)
Joined
(Previously on Star Trek: An Algorithmic Lucidity.)
The morning of Thursday the eighth, before heading off to see the new LCSW at the multi-specialty clinic, I was idly rereading some of the early Closetspace strips, trying to read between the lines (as it were) using the enhanced perception granted by the world-shattering insight about how everything I've cared about for the past fourteen years turns out to be related in unexpected and terrifying ways that I can't talk about because I don't want to lose my cushy psychology professorship at Northwestern University. (Victoria tells Carrie, "Not to mention you don't think like one of 'them'"; ha ha, I wonder what that means!) When I got to the part where Carrie chooses a Maj. Kira costume to wear to the sci-fi convention, it occured to me that in addition to having the exactly the right body type to cosplay Pearl from Obnoxious Bad Decision Child, I also have exactly the right body type to cosplay Jadzia Dax from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, on account of my being tall—well, actually I'm an inch shorter than Terry Farrell—thin, white, and having a dark ponytail.
Okay, not exactly the right body type. You know what I mean.
Your Periodic Reminder I
Aumann's agreement theorem should not be naïvely misinterpreted to mean that humans should directly try to agree with each other. Your fellow rationalists are merely subsets of reality that may or may not exhibit interesting correlations with other subsets of reality; you don't need to "agree" with them any more than you need to "agree" with an encyclopædia, photograph, pinecone, or rock.
Fighting Game Ideas I
Évariste Galois vs. Aaron Burr
particularist special-snowflake fox vs. broad-brush dimensionality-reducing hedgehog
the pain of arguing with creationists vs. the pain of being a creationist and not understanding why those damned smug evolutionists won't even talk to you
Resisting the Narrative
Culture wars are a subtle thing to wage, because they determine everything without being about anything. Explicitly political contests are at least ostensibly about some particular concrete thing: you're fighting for or against a specific law or a specific candidate. But how do you fight a narrative, when your enemy is less of a regime and more of a meme? How do you explain to anyone what you're trying to accomplish when you're not trying to get anyone to do anything different in particular, but to renounce their distorted way of thinking and speaking, after which you expect them to make better decisions, even if you can't say in advance what those decisions will be?
Picture me rushing into a room. "People, people! The standard map is wrong! Look at this way better map I found in the literature; let's use this one!"
"Our map isn't wrong. It has all the same continents yours does."
"I mean, yes, but it's a Mercator projection. Surely you don't really think Antarctica is larger than Asia?"
"Why do you care what size Antarctica is? What difference does it make? People are perfectly happy with Antarctica being the largest continent."
"But it's not true!"
"It sounds like you're assuming your beliefs are true. What is truth, anyway?"
And it being the case that no one will die if she gets the size of Antarctica wrong, what can I say to that?
Prescription II
that feel eighteen months post-Obergefell when you realize you missed your chance to be pro-civil-unions-with-all-the-same-legal-privileges but anti-calling-it-marriage while that position was still in the Overton window
(in keeping with the principle that it shouldn't be so exotic to want to protect people's freedom to do beautiful new things without necessarily thereby insisting on redefining existing words that already mean something else)
Alpha Gamma Phi
In the oneiric methodlessness of my daydream, my bros at ΑΓΦ are telling me that E is the best party drug and that I have to try it.
"I don't know, guys," I say.
"Nah, bro, you've got to try it!"
"Okay," I say, "just don't expect me to mentally rotate any 3D objects tomorrow."