An Algorithmic Lucidity

(looking at baby/toddler photos a year apart) "How does he look so different and yet so the same at the same time?"

"Just in case that was non-rhetorical, the answer is that your brain evolved to be good at factorizing overall appearance into orthogonal 'personal appearance' and 'age appearance' dimensions that can be tracked separately, just as [x, y] = [1, 2] and [4, 2] are so different with respect to x, and yet so the same with respect to y, at the same time."

"We really need another bookcase."

"I'm not thinking about that right now. But like, if you got another bookcase, I wouldn't object."

"Where would we put it?"

"I'm also not thinking about that right now, but I've already started speaking a sentence in response to your question, so I might as well finish it. Oh. I guess I just did."

"The sink is full and it's your turn to do the dishes! Ugh, why are you so inconsiderate of others?!"

"Not true! Note that the dishes pile up just as badly when you're away."

"So?"

"So, it's not that I'm inconsiderate of others; I'm inconsiderate towards people in the future, independently of whether they happen to be me."

"—but I am not a vengeful man."

"..."

"I mean, I'm proportionately vengeful, within the bounds of the moral law."

"Plastic flowers? Seriously?"

"They'll last forever! Much like my love for you."

Today, we celebrate the end of the first of no more than three world wars.

"The key to retail success is low prices."

"And you make up for that by selling a lot more stuff?"

"Oh, wow, I hadn't thought of that," she said, with seemingly genuine surprise. "Actually, we make up for it by low wages." She patted his arm. "But your idea might work, too—in theory."

math is hard; let's go shopping—for study aids and flash cards

"Apparently there are hobbyists who try to build nuclear weapons—all they need is the plutonium."

"I was given to understand plutonium is hard to get."

"Yes, there are good reasons for this."

"What, the anthropic principle?"

"Are you eating ice because you're autistic, or because you have an iron deficiency?"

"I think because it's there?—after drinking all of the iced-coffee. Like, Alicorn had an iron deficiency on account of being female and vegetarian, but I don't have either of those problems ... I mean, problems with respect to iron levels."

ADDENDUM (20 May): "Like, I wish I had exactly one of those problems."

In a series of papers published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dr. Ray Blanchard proposed that there are two fundamentally different types of rationalists with unrelated etiologies: instrumental rationalists, and epistemic rationalists ...

"You just used language in a way that ignores psychological harm to people whose dysphoria is triggered by that word usage! That's a bad consequence according to the global utilitarian calculus! I thought you were a rationalist, someone who chooses actions based on their consequences!"

"A common misunderstanding. You're thinking of the good kind," I said. "I'm the bad kind."

(Previously.)

"I'm naming my daughter Climara."

"Bro, you know you're not going to have any kids if you stay on that stuff."

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!

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

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."

(Previously.)

"I'm concerned about the socially-undesirable implications of the correlations documented in these published studies, which seem consistent with my own observations and personal experience."

(studying them) "Hey! These correlation coefficients are not equal to one! In fact, all of them are substantially less than one! How dare you try to construct predictive models about how the world works, when you yourself admit that your model won't assign literally all of its probability mass to the exact outcome?!"

(in despair, as if realizing that the nature of reasoning as an adaptation for arguing with conspecifics in imperfectly-deceptive social organisms implies that no one can ever have a serious, grown-up conversation about anything important) "Just kill meeeeeeeeeee"

kind of tempted to start haveyoureadMTiMBNoAT.com to compete with goddam haveyoureadnevada.com, but it won't help

In the oneiric methodlessness of my nightmare, I am a lieutenant commander posted to the Glomar Explorer; I am pacing the deck while opining that taking the correct, minority position in a scientific controversy necessarily feels just like early-onset dementia (which I can't help but notice makes a perfect pairing with a late-onset case of the other d------ia word).

Something is wrong with the ship's computer. Before I can figure out whether it has to do with HTTP Strict Transport Security or the Accelerated Graphics Port (it has to be one or the other), we sink, and I drown.

(somewhere in the Tumblrverse)

"Hey, you! Yeah, you! Your gender is false!"

"Yes, thank you for noticing! For a while I thought I was a True, but after some careful self-reflection, it turns out that I'm actually a False."