posted on February 10, 2022 02:53 AM by
u/textlossarcade
178
u/DELETED106 pointsat 1644462278.000000
Finally, someone who sees Kilgrave as a hero. /s
On another note, these types always think there’s some magical
combination of words that allows you to talk anyone into anything, but
they’re not good with words or especially appreciative of the verbally
gifted, so I wonder where that idea comes from.
It’s because of their limited verbal skill and charisma that they see the charismatic as able to convince anyone of anything. Because they don’t have charisma themselves they simultaneously don’t see the limitations of raw charisma, imagine it as some kind of superpower, and conclude that applying more intelligence to it would make it scale up further.
I'm sure this can't be the first time on SneerClub that I've quoted Grunkle Stan's line about *Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons*: "Only a game designed by nerds would have 'charisma' as a fantasy power."
I'm not denying that they are in D&D. The quote implies that nerds see D&D powers as fantastical, but none of the ones D&D has are. Strength/Intelligence/Dexterity/Constitution are pretty typical human aptitudes.
I take it as misjudging nerds to think they are fantastical powers, rather than just real life abilities also factor in to fantasy worlds.
Just cuz the stats are in fantasy worlds doesn’t mean they are fantasy stats.
Isn't charisma often just being interested in what the other person has to say rather than visibly wanting/needing something and ending the interaction the second it seems like it won't be obtained quickly and easily through the "intelligent" application of strategy? Nothing makes me run for the hills faster than sensing an ulterior motive behind an interaction or that I'm being "gamed." But of course genuine interest is the One Weird Trick these people don't know or care about.
>so I wonder where that idea comes from
Among other things, from a huge unwarranted confidence paired with just world fallacy. When you believe that your idea are unquestionably and tautologically right, but also that people earning a lot of money or with fancy degree are smart and rational proportionally to their achievement, the only logical reaction to the fact that many of them disagree with you is to posit that they were swayed by the irresistible and ultramundane power of word magic.
Yeah, sorry that was a bit mean. I meant it more like 'he created a forum which people flocked too', not all the different lowtax things (also compared to lowtax, he actually seems to be reasonably successful in things, and happy).
But yes, this means that ssc is moot (created spinoff site which has a non trivial amount of racists, which he later abandoned and doesn't take responsibility for).
Still, bad joke, im sorry.
Well, LW isn't SA (esp considering SA's harassment phase), and yud didn't commit suicide (nor do I want him too) and he actually has goals (however misguided they are) and isn't just extracting rent.
> The problem with depicting high character intelligence - actually thinkoomph, English has no word that means "actually good at cognition"
Ha! He has clearly overlooked "supercalifragilisticexpicognitudious".
Through shenanigans I never heard the full story of, someone in my college social circle infiltrated the Church of Scientology and came back with their internal literature. I flipped through it, ~20 years ago now. Suddenly I'm reminded of L. Ron Hubbard being really insistent upon the importance of having a single word for "good deed".
Edit to add: I really want to dunk on this bit in the replies:
> The movie π by Aronofsky is about a secret so smart that in the end, we don't get to see it. Annoying!
Complaining about this feels like a cheap shot, but... Gosh, it's almost like π is a deliberately ambiguous and reinterpretable film that invites questions like, "Are there scientific truths so deep that we could only process them as religious truths? Would pursuing them damage us to the point that we recoil in order to save our humanity?" The math dialogue does spill over into the silly in a few places, even granting the basic premise, but I'd still call the movie an impressive achievement by talented people who were not just working around their practical restrictions, but at times even inspired by them. It's also a pretty good portrayal of how the inside of my brain felt after studying for the final exam in [Mehran Kardar's statistical-physics course](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-333-statistical-mechanics-i-statistical-mechanics-of-particles-fall-2013/).
What do people think of "actually thinkoomph" as a new flair?
I was thinking of switching to "[Bitcoin is the 1st example of people collaborating to a common goal](https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman/status/1491476981753344001)", but that seems a tad off-topic.
Love that the quoted tweet 'the goal is for everybody to agree' isn't even correct. The algorithm forces consensus, which is different from 'getting everybody to agree'. And due to how the system works what you think what might be agreed upon might not even be what eventually is the agreement. (somebody said you should only considered transactions to be done after it was done 6 blocks ago, but not sure if the 6 blocks was an example or a written rule (the security nerd in me wonders if there is an innovative attack here which could be pulled off if you have enough of the mining pool/control the network/etc)). And im not even [talking about forks here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bitcoin_forks#Intended_hard_forks_splitting_the_cryptocurrency).
Sure on the long term everybody agrees, but it is a mess while you use it in the moment.
(Basically it is the difference between 'Biden is the elected president of the USA' and 'everybody agrees that Biden is the president')
> AI-Box capability
intelligence is when the question of "should I unleash the evil machine god on the world" becomes an interesting philosophical conundrum.
He is prob referring to his own experiments where he played the role of the ai in the box, for money, and convinced people to let him out.
No idea if the logs for that ever got released.
> No idea if the logs for that ever got released.
Let me guess, either convincing the human that they're in the simulation, and will be tortured for all eternity if they don't press the button, or promising a pie in the sky utopia so immeasurably vast that it would be worth flaying a trillion orphans to get there? Whatever happened to the concept of not negotiating with terrorists?
I don't know what happened, iirc people who did the experiment agree to not reveal the logs. Here is [a rational wiki page about it](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/AI-box_experiment)(the whole 'persuasion is taking people minds over' thing is here again), there [is also this](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FmxhoWxvBqSxhFeJn/i-attempted-the-ai-box-experiment-and-lost).
> Finally, before the experiment, I agreed that it was entirely possible that a transhuman AI could convince *some* people to let it out of the box, but it would be difficult if not impossible to get trained rationalists to let it out of the box. Isn't rationality supposed to be a superpower?
lel
He is making it sound super hard to write charismatic characters when in reality you simply let them succeed at lying and manipulating people. It’s even happened earlier in the exact fanfic/forum-roleplay earlier: have the character blatantly lie with a straight face (to be fair though that was lintamande’s character, and lintamande is a better writer). Perhaps for Eliezer it is difficult though… he felt the need to explicitly mention the augmented splendor/charisma of several of his characters instead of just letting them be successfully manipulate/deceitful/charming (the classic show vs tell problem of novice writers).
>he felt the need to explicitly mention the augmented splendor/charisma of several of his characters instead of just letting them be successfully manipulate/deceitful/charming (the classic show vs tell problem of novice writers).
Honestly this just makes me think that EY has no idea what charisma is at all. As though charisma is some kind of D&D stat as opposed to people just thinking someone is inspiring, relatable, interesting, etc.
I agree it's hard to write super likable characters, but I'm not convinced it's any harder than writing other kinds of characters. People form parasocial relationships with fictional characters all the time.
I can't help but think that the reason EY doesn't understand charisma is that he thinks (like in his stupid fanfic) that charisma is something used by the superior on the inferior. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but pretty much everyone on this planet is in some form of parasocial relationship and presumably with someone who is charismatic.
>in-story it literally is a kind of D&D stat
Makes sense! Also as watching the Legend of Vox Machina has illustrated beautifully, D&D is a game about having fun with your friends but it makes for absolutely horrible stories.
> It was like walking through the magical items section of an *Advanced Dungeons and Dragons* rulebook (he didn’t play the game, but he did enjoy reading the rulebooks).
HPMOR, chapter 3
This is obviously someone's id fic so I can't hate on it entirely, but doesn't litRPG encourage people who are already far up their own asses to see others as NPCs? And why is this stuff treated like it's actually good? No one pretends smutty HP fanfics are good. Insight porn -- or, pardon me, \*thinkoomph\* -- is still porn. You're not supposed to be proud of it.
I really don't know much about litRPG, but what I've seen reminds me of Exquisite Corpse and other such writing games (I was on the literary-magazine staff in high school...). The "you had to be there" factor is elevated: It's fun if you participate, but not so much as a spectator, and nobody really expects anything the game produces to have *lasting* interest.
At least the Surrealist origin of the "exquisite corpse" game was about prompting unexpected poetic associations and eventually making good art that incorporated the play of chance. Then again, that stuff can be as boring as someone telling you about their dream...
He writes Harry in HPMOR as a charisma black hole. You might expect that of an awkward and lonely child with weird speech patterns, but the persuasion always works on the adults in that world because most have had their intelligence and common sense surgically removed. There's no sign of the killer arguments on the page.
It reminds me of a piece of writing advice I once read: if you have a character in your story who's supposed to be the Greatest Writer Of All Time, under no circumstances should you include any examples of their work.
Dumbledore bends over backwards for him because of prophecy shenanigans, but yeah you are right canon Mcgnagall would have not put up with his antics, even with Dumbledore manipulating her. To be generously fair to EY she does shut down HJPEV a few times, but she gives in others. I suppose the problem is that there isn’t a purely verbal argument that could get canon Mcgonagall to bend, someone with masterful charisma either wouldn’t write a charismatic character trying to manipulate purely verbally Mcgonagall (they would go after easier targets and or leverage outside factors) or would have them fail.
In Mad Investor Chaos, though, it is fair to have them (Cheliax people) succeed with dumb manipulations because Keltham is unable to read the cues or trust his social instincts that the vibe is off because he is is from a culture with pathologically little social deception and he is a horny teenager/young adult (possible dath Ilan accidentally bred out their intuitive social skills and replaced them with explicitly reasoned game theory).
I mean, he convinces Snape to stop bullying kids in fourth year and under, and bullying is one of Snape's few joys in life. Yes, it's partly through blackmail (if I recall correctly) that pressure is applied, but there's a strong hint of internal transformation all thanks to Harry's acting like some kind of moral authority. So it's not even cheap Death Note-style intellectual one-upmanship. These guys write Gary Stus who are admired for their morality too (at least once the dust settles). I'd respect it more if it was just some sociopathic power wanking.
I can't believe I expected Eliezer to have backed off his claims about his super persuasion skills with the AI-box. I don't know why I thought he had any self awareness.
No, an idiot is whomever believes Hanson believes in free will.
I don't know what he believes in, but definitely not that kind of tooth-fairy level nonsense.
This is literally the moral dilemma of every 3rd or 4th X-Men
storyline, especially anything involving Professor X, Jean Grey, or Emma
Frost. Robin Hanson = confirmed jock, apparently.
Robin Hanson? Mr. "Women who suffer a gentle, silent rape aren't as bad off as men who experience infidelity"? I never would have suspected that such an esteemed figure wouldn't understand consent if it bit him in the ass against his will.
This is actually pretty interesting because “brainwashing” as a term
was coined in English to explain why some American soldiers turned to
fight for China and Korea in the 50s. They couldn’t imagine them not
being genocidal white supremacists like many of their colleagues, so
they made up a conspiracy theory that Chinese people actually had a
superpower to brainwash white men.
So the term importation of the term itself has very racist origins,
it actually is pretty interesting to look at how much “brainwashing”
being an evil thing in movies and tv shows has to do with racism and
anticommunism
Of course, in this guy’s mind it’s probably more to do with “is it
really wrong to intoxicate women I want to sleep with, I’m just
being persuasive!!!”
Depends if you want to count Jedi’s or Gandalf as super-hero’s,
because they all do a whole lot of manipulating others, it’s only hand
waved off as being ok because in both cases it only works on the weaker
willed.
They also do it in the sword of truth series (now that is a series with horrible morality (it is prob an example of brainwashing is the same as persuasion, esp considering the golden statue which converts people to libertarianism)), and as mentioned by others in the eternals and my hero academy series. Turns out brainwashing isn't that uncommon. (E: Also umbrella academy)
And there is the xmen of course where this kind of plot point as ethical issue comes up a lot.
In his Encomium of Helen, the Greek rhetorician Gorgias argues that
Helen cannot be blamed for being persuaded to leave with Paris, thus
starting the Trojan War, because the effect of persuasion on the human
mind is akin to the effect of drugs on the human body, and thus, Helen
is no more responsible for being persuaded to leave than someone drugged
into a slumber and carried away is to be blamed. This appears to also be
Robin Hanson’s position.
you know what isn’t unethical? breaking their knees, kicking out
their teeth, shattering a few elbows and possibly breaking their spines,
then tying them up and leaving them to serve tens of years in a prison
system that only deepens the flaws that got them there in the first
place, only to be released afterwards with either a completely warped
sense of morality, or having no prospects in the future because of being
a former convict.
Wait, are we talking about going back in time, mind controlled all
the guards at Dachau and stopped the killing or Gambit’s creepy PUA mind
powers or everything has horrible ramifications, because that’s the
point, Jesse Custer territory?
Finally, someone who sees Kilgrave as a hero. /s
On another note, these types always think there’s some magical combination of words that allows you to talk anyone into anything, but they’re not good with words or especially appreciative of the verbally gifted, so I wonder where that idea comes from.
Bonus: yud says the only way this can be pulled off with super persuasion powers is with a literal eliezer level intellect writing the story
of course he thinks ‘being persuasive’ is some dark art that robs the people its used against of their free will lol
This is literally a plot point in that awful Eternals movie. This man literally has an understanding of ethics below that of a marvel movie.
That last comment is acceptable only if he’s a character in a Platonic dialogue setting up Socrates for an easy dunk.
Talking to people is mind control.
God Robin Hanson is such a tool. It’s nice of him to reveal over and over again that he prizes only results and not how we get there.
We call those “supervillains”
I wonder what Hanson’s opinion on extortion is. After all, what is holding a gun to someone’s head but just a really hard sell?
This is literally the moral dilemma of every 3rd or 4th X-Men storyline, especially anything involving Professor X, Jean Grey, or Emma Frost. Robin Hanson = confirmed jock, apparently.
[deleted]
“Just hear me out,” says the unidentified officer at your black site as they inject Agent BZ into your IV.
I guess Hanson doesn’t know about Shinso from My Hero Academia. They actually deal with the ramifications of his powers extremely well.
[deleted]
This is actually pretty interesting because “brainwashing” as a term was coined in English to explain why some American soldiers turned to fight for China and Korea in the 50s. They couldn’t imagine them not being genocidal white supremacists like many of their colleagues, so they made up a conspiracy theory that Chinese people actually had a superpower to brainwash white men.
So the term importation of the term itself has very racist origins, it actually is pretty interesting to look at how much “brainwashing” being an evil thing in movies and tv shows has to do with racism and anticommunism
Of course, in this guy’s mind it’s probably more to do with “is it really wrong to intoxicate women I want to sleep with, I’m just being persuasive!!!”
Depends if you want to count Jedi’s or Gandalf as super-hero’s, because they all do a whole lot of manipulating others, it’s only hand waved off as being ok because in both cases it only works on the weaker willed.
In his Encomium of Helen, the Greek rhetorician Gorgias argues that Helen cannot be blamed for being persuaded to leave with Paris, thus starting the Trojan War, because the effect of persuasion on the human mind is akin to the effect of drugs on the human body, and thus, Helen is no more responsible for being persuaded to leave than someone drugged into a slumber and carried away is to be blamed. This appears to also be Robin Hanson’s position.
you know what isn’t unethical? breaking their knees, kicking out their teeth, shattering a few elbows and possibly breaking their spines, then tying them up and leaving them to serve tens of years in a prison system that only deepens the flaws that got them there in the first place, only to be released afterwards with either a completely warped sense of morality, or having no prospects in the future because of being a former convict.
Force persuade always bothered me bc it feels like a darkside power even when obi does it.
when you read The Hidden Persuaders and somehow manage to draw a conclusion so wrong that the technocrats and luddites both look at you funny.
Wait, are we talking about going back in time, mind controlled all the guards at Dachau and stopped the killing or Gambit’s creepy PUA mind powers or everything has horrible ramifications, because that’s the point, Jesse Custer territory?
Big Lrrr energy.
b….bruh. BRUH
Watch the boys on Amazon prime video if you want to see this
Watch the boys on Amazon prime video if you want to see this
Watch the boys on Amazon prime video if you want to see this
Laughs in Enchantment Wizard.