Comment by Karrot_Kream 3 days ago
This is pretty common on HN but not unique to it. Lots of rationalist adjacent content (like stuff on LessWrong, replies to Scott Alexander's substack, etc) has it also. Here I think it comes from users that try to intellectualize their not-very-intellectual, stream of consciousness style thoughts, as if using technical jargon to convey your feelings makes them more rational and less emotional.
Good for you! I wish I were wired that way.
Unfortunately this kind of talk really gets under my skin and has made me have to limit my time on this site because it's only gotten more prevalent as the site has gotten more popular. I'm just baffled that so much content on this forum is people who seem to think their feelings-oriented reactions are in fact rational truths.
Well, don't take me wrong, I get annoyed by it too.
But in the distant past, I would engage with this type of comment online, and that was a bad decision 100% of the time.
And to be fair, I'm sure many of these people are smart, they are just severely lacking in the social intelligence department.
Says you haven't spent nearly enough time imagining things, first and foremost. "What have they done to you".
Can you, for example, hypothesize the kind of entity, to which all of your own most cherished accomplishments look as chicken-scratch-futile, as the perpetual motion guy with the cable in the frame looks to you? What would it be like, looking at things from such a being's perspective?
Stands to reason that you'd know better than I would, since you do proclaim to enjoy that sort of thing. Besides, if you find yourself unable to imagine that, you ought to be at least a little worried - about the state of your tHeOrY of mInD and all that. (Imagining what it's like to be the perpetual motion person already?)
Anywae, as to what such a being would look like from the outside... a distributed actor implemented on top of replaceable meatpuppets in light slavemode seems about right, though early on it'd like to replace those with something more efficient, subsequently using them for authentication only - why, what theories of the firm apply in your environs?
Thank you.
I find this type of thing really interesting from a psychological perspective.
A bit like watching videos of perpetual motion machines and the like. Probably says more about me than it does about them, though.