dlss

This is a very interesting question, thanks for posting it. For me the answer is yes.

Another question: if someone who isn't addicted to gambling doesn't give up gambling to save those who are addicted, what punishment would you support the state imposing? (jail, fines, forced "treatment", etc)

And another: if someone who is addicted to gambling doesn't give up gambling, what punishment would you support the state imposing? (jail, fines, forced "treatment", etc)

I ask these questions because I don't think analogous ones were considered before launching the drug war. For me the answer to both is a whole-hearted "no punishment".

Hmm. I'm not sure what you mean by reasonable here. I have to admit I'm rather worried that Trump is actually an outsider / non-politician, and that this will result in some rather awful power struggles for the foreseeable future as the government undergoes the bureaucratic equivalent of (hopefully) chemotherapy, or (more pessimistically) leprosy. "Reasonable" to me basically means an exceedingly boring and predictable government.

> Did you also realize back then what the consequences in face of an adverse outcome would be?

Not in detail but in character, yes. I did what I could to calm and reason with the mob. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12734428 for example.

My basic position was and is that shunning, as a tactic, is net negative. Or at least is net negative when done to sophisticated opponents. If the person's wrong, kicking them out will just cause them to continue being wrong only this time with different people and without you around to correct them. If the person's right, kicking them out will just keep you wrong only this time without anyone to help you find the truth.

> And unfortunately it doesn't make a lick of difference.

hah, agree. If commenting on HN isn't its own reward, it's a waste of time :p

* For designing psychology experiments: https://smile.amazon.com/Conducting-Research-Psychology-Meas...

* For Bayesian modeling and inference: https://smile.amazon.com/Bayesian-Analysis-Chapman-Statistic...

However, unless you are already very knowledgeable in these subjects, it will take longer than 10 hours to understand them. Very much worth the read though.

To make this more concrete, in GGP Robert Gates is brought up as a respectable republican who Trump presumably would have appointed were he not engaged in cronyism. Google "Robert Gates Trump" then let me know if you really think cronyism is the best explanation for why Robert Gates didn't get the job.

Twenty-three days ago you and Marco sought to get Peter Thiel removed from YC for his support of Trump[1]. This is to say you were explicitly working to ensure that respectable people would distance themselves from Trump for fear of being ostracized.

Although Peter is still with YC, the broader campaign of social pressure you participated in worked. The respectable Republicans distanced themselves from Trump. As might be expected, Trump is now giving governmental positions to those who didn't distance themselves from him during the election. I don't find that surprising, nor do I find it surprising that those who stuck with Trump were the discredited outsiders (they were already ostracized).

Quite frankly the surprising part of this story is finding you, just twenty-three days after your witch hunt, lamenting that no one respectable is in Trump's inner circle. Isn't this the sort of outcome you were explicitly fighting for less than a month ago?

[1] See all 82 of your comments on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12733024

Also, to answer your question, a quick googling turned up https://www.hnwatcher.com -- dunno if it's any good though.

This is to say that the platform approach has the advantage of allowing actually informed/skeptical/intelligent people to do the talking. They can discuss subjects they know, at their own pace. Contrast with traditional journalism, where even when things go right you're still dealing with someone who's reporting on things outside their profession, probably on a deadline, and beset by an industry (public relations) basically devoted to deceiving them.

This is to say I'm actually fairly sure the platform approach, at least from first principals, beats the traditional approach in terms of quality.

(On a side note, I just had an awful thought: are there PR people reaching out to the top HN authors?)

I was taking Gary's list as "what to focus on if you're interviewing in two days" (ie quite literally "last minute tips" as indicated by his title). Given more time, I agree you should focus on product, team, and traction.

> Garry didn't even relate how pitches he would have said no to got him to say yes - because they 1, used plain-spoken language, or 2, zoomed out, or 3, had a big future, or 4, knew their numbers, or 5, understood something others didn't.

> I mean companies he would have said "no" to but these things made him say yes.

1. Isn't this asking a fish how to fish? :p (Just pointing out we apparently agree; happy to have you on board)

2. I think a fixation on companies that save it in the 9th inning is misplaced. If you're gong to cargo cult from a survivorship biased sample, you may as well pick a group that didn't start off with an error (so imitating "love at first sight" type companies rather than "won me over in the end" type companies).

> http://www.concept-phones.com/apple/iphone-7-kitchen-sink-pa...

I saw this a couple days ago too. I took this as indication you need to interpret customer feedback appropriately, not as indication you should avoid customer feedback.

> But that is not how you get them to invest, and although Garry does know how to get people to invest, he hasn't put it in this article at all.

I'm getting the feeling you think getting investment is about a con-men skillset. That hasn't been my experience. A focus on product, team, and traction is almost surely a better use of your time.

Yes I absolutely ask that question, and have been asked this question. If you hang out around startups, especially ones using Steve Blank's Customer Development Methodology you'll hear it frequently.

> Also notice how powerful this comment has just become, after I shared a personal story from the dating world

I don't know if I agree with powerful. I will say I'm less optimistic about helping you come to a deeper understanding since, well, it sounds like your mind is made up.

The best I can do is: imagine if you, and 7 billion copies of you, were the only people on this planet. Now picture where the above philosophy gets you in terms of global happiness. Perhaps strategies that emphasize communication would do better?

I think you were joking here, but holy crap yes I would take fishing advice from a fish (provided it was a human-level intelligent fish that spoke english... which if I'm following your metaphor correctly it is in this case)

More generally the issue with "not asking fish how to fish" is it's the exact opposite of how successful companies treat customers. I ask my customers how they liked the product, what they'd change, how they'd sell it to other customers, etc, etc. That isn't an error. It's one of the most effective business improvement tactics I know of.

This is not to say that the information source is unbiased (customers are much less likely to suggest a price hike for example), or particularly skilled at knowing how to address their needs (they'll ask for a "faster horse" when they mean "gasoline engine" to ruin a quote)... but the fact remains that fish (customers or investors) are the best source of information you have.

High res screens require more power to run, and more power to render for... which means you could also blame the FAA for Apple not using high res screens... except Apple does use high resolution screens.

So the situation is not one of forced compromise so much as Apple having different priorities from its users... which is where we thought we were before you brought up the FAA.

Apple produces every osx compatible device. This means it needs to produce at least one device that can meet the needs of power users.

So I'd like to add to your rebuttal that extremely principled people are also capable of awful actions. All it takes is a good theory.

> you should see how unfair and, in fact, terrifying the domestic violence legal situation is for women

Seems bad, though I'm not familiar enough with the situation to say anything specific. I've only recently started looking at politics/ideologies after having managed more or less 10 years of living by an overly literal interpretation of http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ 's title :p

> But having concerns about family law does not make you an MRA.

As you say there are reasonable people doing things related to men's rights. If you choose not to include these people in what I'll now call the "MRA spectrum" (since you've just narrowly defined "MRA" here), that's fair -- I agree the parallel with feminism breaks. If we try to compare a narrowly scoped group of awful people against a much broader and diverse loose coalition of less awful people, it's an apples and oranges situation.

However, we can also create a narrowly scoped subgroup of feminists. I think MRAs might be using the term "3rd wave feminist" for this, but to be on the safe side I'll coin a new term for our use here: FRA (TERF may also work, but I'm playing it safe).

We now have two narrowly defined groups of awful people, sitting inside and more or less agreeing with a broader, more diverse coalitions of politically active less awful people. The broader groups dislike the smaller groups, though are less harsh on their own. Both smaller groups suffer from seeming psychological problems, have a strong ideological streak, and are rather awful to interact with online. This is to say that the relation between FRAs and feminists has a similar feeling to that of MRAs and "MRA spectrum individuals".

If the parallel now makes sense to you, I believe you may have been mistaking a recurring semantic disagreement (namely: people on forums not realizing you have an extremely specific definition of MRA), for a widespread cognitive error (namely: people thinking MRAs-by-your-definition and feminists are similar).

> We cannot argue about the historical context of feminism.

I think we're in broad agreement on the history of feminism. My discussion was about feminists as a group of individuals, rather than an intellectual lineage. (Similar to meaning "people who live in the us" when discussing Americans, rather than "the philosophical descendants of the US founding fathers").

I think you're mistaking your experienced distribution for the true distribution. Like, I'm very willing to believe that of the MRAs you're aware of, they are all hardcore -- it's a demonized subculture, you'd have to be a zealot or have fuck-you money to come out supporting it.

If instead of defining MRAs as "people posting crazy things to (insert website here)" you simply call an MRA someone who's primary political activity is toward fixing issues MRAs discuss, you'll be able to find a large number non-hardcore MRAs with a couple of google searches. Heck, I think most people working professionally with prostate cancer would qualify. The guy in this thread who mentioned lurking on MRA forums for interesting ideas absolutely qualifies (or rather, he didn't sound hardcore to me on first read).

Similarly if you go looking for the equivalent of (insert MRA website here) for feminists, you will also succeed in that endeavor. Your comment re: hardcore Roman Catholics & Branch Davidians makes me think perhaps you haven't gone looking for these sorts of sites.

Which is to say, yet again, that I do not believe the equivalence is false. I'd even go so far as to say that I expect the rates of hardcore ideologues in each group to roughly correlate with the rates of paranoid delusion in men and women respectively.

Ahh, apparently the post was less clear than anticipated. Here's a quote from it that evokes what I was trying to say with the link:

"I feel like every single term in social justice terminology has a totally unobjectionable and obviously important meaning – and then is actually used a completely different way."

Which is to say that I disagree with your definition of feminism in this context.

According to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/feminism-poll_n_309... 80% of people should identify as feminists by your definition, yet only 20% do. This means that at least 60% of the respondents to that survey disagree with your definition of feminism. I think that I (and the gentleman who's position in this conversation I took pity on) am using roughly the same definition of feminism as the 60% of the population from that HuffPo survey.

That definition is harder to put into words, but is something along the lines of "someone who primarily sees the world through the lens of gendered power struggles." Kind of like a Marxist, only for gender rather than class.

Using this definition, likening the reputation of Feminists to that of Capitalists is not a false equivalency (Capitalists here are people who primarily see the world through the lens of economic life).

> MRA on the other hand is a new, reactionary & uncommon position. But its proponents routinely try to play this rhetorical trick.

Agreed, I was not trying to imply it was particularly common. My main point was that, in my experience, the more hardcore ends of both groups share a lot of psychological problems and cognitive errors.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-word... ... which is to say I feel like most people understand the word feminist to mean something other than "99.9% of people living in a western democracy"

> the idea that MRA & feminism have equal historical provenance is laughable

Completely agree here, and am confused where I might have implied otherwise.

However, perhaps #1 is the case, so I'll try to clear the air. Here's my take on what the two of you are saying:

> I'm responding to your claim that both MRAs and feminists have "awful" reputations, which is false

I have personally heard more complaining about feminists, though I take that to be more an indication about the relative numbers of Feminists and MRAs in the world.

In my experience people with a strong ideological viewpoint have bad reputations outside of social circles dominated by that ideological viewpoint (Conservative Christians, Scientologists, Anarchists, Hard-Line Libertarians, MRAs, Feminists, etc) <-- hopefully you're not all of those, and so at least one was a good example.

Which is to say I think you're saying that in the circles you personally hang out in, feminists are generally highly regarded... which is to say you mostly hang out with feminists... and that GP is saying that in the circles he hangs out in feminists are not highly regarded... which is to say there are fewer feminists per capita than in your social circle.

I think both GP and you should have been more careful about misrepresenting your personal experiences as somehow universal. If you had, you would probably have avoided this back and forth.

> Feminism, on the other hand, is one of the more important social movements of the last 150 years

Feminism and feminists aren't the same thing. For example, Capitalism was an incredibly important idea globally, and is widely regarded as a good thing. Capitalists on the other hand are generally viewed as greedy. Incidentally, capitalists will often try to frame themselves as part of capitalism to subvert this negative impression... roughly the same thing you're doing here with respect to feminism.

The model was an attempt at describing what the mental states were, rather than the distribution of individuals over those states.

> in fact [interest in gendered issues] are frequently found together

This was quite useful, thank you!

> are frequently found together, but almost never among people who identify as MRA (though often, IME, among people who identify as feminist.)

I disagree with this -- most feminist views on men's rights issues are of a different character than MRA views on men's rights issues in my experience. So while I believe the views are strongly anti-correlated, I disagree that anti-correlation should be the basis for the specific line I drew above, as there's nothing in principal that prohibits a belief in both at once.

I don't think that's a basis for calling it a cognitive trap though. Like, the similarity at the fringes is absolutely there.

> The idea that MRA's and feminists are two ends of a single spectrum is one of those cognitive line-fitting traps we nerds fall into.

While I'm all about detecting and uncovering cognitive biases (hardcore LessWrong expat, reporting for duty!), I don't believe GP's analysis was wrong.

Just a guess, but I expect the people you're using to mentally represent MRAs are the equivalent of tumblr feminists (who also should consider treatment options in my opinion). Here's my line based model that attempts to not straw-man either group:

Fringe-MRA: war on men

Reasonable-MRA: there are some men's issues worth talking about (circumcision, work related injury and fatality rates, prison over-representation, gendered divorce laws, etc).

Middle: Meh, what's on TV?

Reasonable-Feminist: there are some women's issues worth talking about (FGM, right to drive/vote/work, right to serve in the military, pay equality/glass ceiling, etc).

Fringe-Feminist: patriarcy!

I don't see why this way of arranging the data should qualify as falling in to a line fitting trap. It seems like there are genuine issues on both sides, and a significant paranoid delusional component to be found at both ends of the spectrum. What am I missing?

Todo list apps work great for remembering what to do, but don't solve GP's problem one bit.