So we're all agreed that we're going to ignore Tod's implicit suggestion that we hold off on discussing this stuff until the more formal request for ideas? :)
Re registration, I don't know what WordPress allows, but there are lots of sites that support both registration and anonymous comments -- best of both worlds?
Re content and commenters, there are going to be a lot of conflicting opinions, so I'm hoping that the shadowy cabal that runs this place is currently trying to better define what sort of place they want this to be.
By the way, if we do create a daily open thread and if we want a fixed name for it and if we want some other candidates besides "our daily thread" (which is good, I like it) and if it's OK to steal another site's idea, the latest SlateStarCodex open thread is entitled "Tragedy of the Comments", which I think is fairly awesome.
If there is a church, temple, or mosque out there that doesn’t hire those kinds of jobs from its own [parishioners] I have never seen it.
How many have you seen? For things like janitorial services, lawn care, etc., the churches I've attended might start by asking within the given congregation (especially to get volunteers or reduced rates) but don't care about anyone's faith once they have to go outside. Our current child care person is Jewish, which is a great fit because there's no service for her to miss on Sunday morning.
As for secretarial work, all else being equal, the more familiar the person is with the given faith and especially the given faith community, the better, just because there are fewer communication/"translation" issues that way.
Yes, Games is still around - I get a subscription every now and then. But a lot of their puzzle makers have their own websites and apps now. If you like Battleships and similar deduction puzzles, check out Conceptis Puzzles or their apps on the App Store -- they offer a certain amount of free puzzles before you have to start forking out dough to support your habit.
Mandating that food-service workers wash their hands is not, in and of itself, a real problem. That they should wash their hands in not really in dispute, The problem is that a government that can do these things can also impose regulations of much more dubious utility—and will, every chance it gets.
I think even this grants too much to the argument in the OP. A serious, non-ideological-signaling analysis of even the hand-washing case would have to consider all the various possible regulatory approaches, determine the likely marginal benefit of each and weigh that against the costs in enforcement and compliance. E.g., forcing companies to put up signs incurs costs for the companies (not just to make and post the signs but also to put processes in place to make sure it's happening at all sites and is being maintained) and costs for the government (sending around inspectors to make sure companies are following the rule); so one question is, what's the marginal increase in employee hand-washing over time based on the posting of these signs? It might be smaller than one would thing -- as a bit of anecdata, we have signs posted in our office for various things, and I can tell you that they're noticed for a few days and then just become part of the background, even when they're there for our own benefit (e.g. the sign in bold letters reminding people not to leave the office without their security fob -- it was very helpful for about a week. and then...).
"It's important and there are externalities so we should mandate it" is too simplistic even when there's general agreement about the importance of the thing.
Wow, that's a strikingly unfair reading of that article. Did you just not read it, or did you see that it was written by a conservative and just translate it in your head back into the original R'lyehian?
Perhaps we're miscommunicating, but the problem I think is in the term "determined". To the extent that the argument is over the term and not over Aaronson's sincerity or self-knowledge, there are basically two possible outcomes in your dialogue with JR -- either you reach some sort of agreement about the proper extension of the term, or you fail to reach agreement (which seems more likely). In the latter case, what has been determined other than the fact that you disagree?
J R and I, in our back and forth, were determining the extension of a term.
The problem with this statement is that it implies that there's a single correct answer to the question, as if you and JR were trying to pin down the value of pi to the 1000th decimal point. You and JR and Aaronson all have different extensions of the term "feminism" and it makes no sense to say that one of you is right and the others are wrong -- all you can really do is compare to majority usage within a specified language community, and/or make rhetorical appeals to extra-linguistic factors (e.g. giving primacy to the opinions of people in a particular category who you feel have some claim of ownership over the term).
I remember getting into a semi-serious argument with someone about the difference between "a few" and "several" -- I had said "a few", which to her meant 3 or 4 in the given context, and in fact there were five or six of whatever it was, and we quarreled about what exactly these terms mean and finally agreed to disagree. So, which of us was right? What would it even mean to be "right"? We each had a strong feeling that our own usage was correct, but the dictionary didn't resolve the question (and dictionaries are merely the restatement of common usage anyway).
Not the same thing but it reminds me of Bertrand Russell's game of Conjugations:
I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.
I'm an idealist. You're a Utopian. He's a fuzzy-thinking radical.
I'm cautious. You're timid. He's chicken-hearted.
I'm glib. You're garrulous. He can't keep his mouth shut.
I'm human. You're prone to err. He's a blundering idiot.
This is awesome -- we should have a whole thread devoted to OT action figures and accessories. I can totally imagine playing with the BSDI Twins in the Motte and Bailey arena.
It's not a competition -- I enjoyed your post too. Plus, yours included the special bonus New Kid announcement (I bet Postrel got way fewer congratulations in response to her article).
FWIW I agree with Chris re Jason's post -- people were bringing up what I thought were some reasonable points and he was quite dismissive, which struck me as not atypical for him. I generally enjoy his writing but he's probably better off posting at a site that's not as commenter-oriented as this one is.
In the wake of clinic bombings, you don’t hear about churches being shot up.
yeah, why bother inspecting yourself for potential cognitive biases when you can find some folks on the other side that are worse?
It's obvious that American liberals as a rule respond differently to generalizations about Muslims than to generalizations about Christians. It's easily explainable by the American context, but explainable is not the same as rational. It would be great to see people make an effort to explore how to be consistent in evaluating group generalizations instead of coming up with ad hoc rules for why your opponents are properly typified by their worst elements but your neutral and friendly parties are not.
@gabriel-controy That was not my experience -- I had to scratch and scrape to get the page count up to a respectable level (and a lot of it was just lists of examples from various dialects). But then all through my schooling I struggled to reach the target page count for papers, so this should not have been a surprise to me.
On a family trip to Europe when I was about eleven years old, we stayed a night with a friend of my father's in Czechoslovakia. For dinner, they served us some sort of meat that I didn't recognize, but I tried it and it wasn't horrible, so I ate it up. My siblings stared at me in surprise and some horror, and they later informed me that that meat was (OMG!) liver.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Repairs Under Way”
So we're all agreed that we're going to ignore Tod's implicit suggestion that we hold off on discussing this stuff until the more formal request for ideas? :)
Re registration, I don't know what WordPress allows, but there are lots of sites that support both registration and anonymous comments -- best of both worlds?
Re content and commenters, there are going to be a lot of conflicting opinions, so I'm hoping that the shadowy cabal that runs this place is currently trying to better define what sort of place they want this to be.
By the way, if we do create a daily open thread and if we want a fixed name for it and if we want some other candidates besides "our daily thread" (which is good, I like it) and if it's OK to steal another site's idea, the latest SlateStarCodex open thread is entitled "Tragedy of the Comments", which I think is fairly awesome.
On “SIHTAF: Pleading Prisoners’ Plasticity of Personal Piety”
How many have you seen? For things like janitorial services, lawn care, etc., the churches I've attended might start by asking within the given congregation (especially to get volunteers or reduced rates) but don't care about anyone's faith once they have to go outside. Our current child care person is Jewish, which is a great fit because there's no service for her to miss on Sunday morning.
As for secretarial work, all else being equal, the more familiar the person is with the given faith and especially the given faith community, the better, just because there are fewer communication/"translation" issues that way.
On “Talk Stupid To Me: Marketing Edition”
The other possibility to consider when a particular marketing campaign looks lame to you is that you might not be the intended audience.
On “Saturday!”
Yes, Games is still around - I get a subscription every now and then. But a lot of their puzzle makers have their own websites and apps now. If you like Battleships and similar deduction puzzles, check out Conceptis Puzzles or their apps on the App Store -- they offer a certain amount of free puzzles before you have to start forking out dough to support your habit.
On “The Impossible Economics of Freelance Blogging”
I didn't realize North was the Sorting Commenter.
On “Help: Unbeliveably Slow Internet”
If I had posting privileges here, I would create an OTC post right above this titled "Help: Unbelievably Low Paycheck".
Which is one of many good reasons why I don't have posting privileges here.
On “Why “I believe vaccinations are good but shouldn’t be mandatory” isn’t as neutral as it sounds”
I think even this grants too much to the argument in the OP. A serious, non-ideological-signaling analysis of even the hand-washing case would have to consider all the various possible regulatory approaches, determine the likely marginal benefit of each and weigh that against the costs in enforcement and compliance. E.g., forcing companies to put up signs incurs costs for the companies (not just to make and post the signs but also to put processes in place to make sure it's happening at all sites and is being maintained) and costs for the government (sending around inspectors to make sure companies are following the rule); so one question is, what's the marginal increase in employee hand-washing over time based on the posting of these signs? It might be smaller than one would thing -- as a bit of anecdata, we have signs posted in our office for various things, and I can tell you that they're noticed for a few days and then just become part of the background, even when they're there for our own benefit (e.g. the sign in bold letters reminding people not to leave the office without their security fob -- it was very helpful for about a week. and then...).
"It's important and there are externalities so we should mandate it" is too simplistic even when there's general agreement about the importance of the thing.
On “Linky Friday: Century Edition”
Wow, that's a strikingly unfair reading of that article. Did you just not read it, or did you see that it was written by a conservative and just translate it in your head back into the original R'lyehian?
On “Weekend!”
Wow, I never notice that Zic's handle is a rot13 for MVP. Makes me wonder about her true identity...
On “Talk to Me Like I’m Stupid: A Kind-Of-Sort-of Comments Rescue, False-Scotsman Edition”
where these things are discursively determined
Perhaps we're miscommunicating, but the problem I think is in the term "determined". To the extent that the argument is over the term and not over Aaronson's sincerity or self-knowledge, there are basically two possible outcomes in your dialogue with JR -- either you reach some sort of agreement about the proper extension of the term, or you fail to reach agreement (which seems more likely). In the latter case, what has been determined other than the fact that you disagree?
"
The problem with this statement is that it implies that there's a single correct answer to the question, as if you and JR were trying to pin down the value of pi to the 1000th decimal point. You and JR and Aaronson all have different extensions of the term "feminism" and it makes no sense to say that one of you is right and the others are wrong -- all you can really do is compare to majority usage within a specified language community, and/or make rhetorical appeals to extra-linguistic factors (e.g. giving primacy to the opinions of people in a particular category who you feel have some claim of ownership over the term).
I remember getting into a semi-serious argument with someone about the difference between "a few" and "several" -- I had said "a few", which to her meant 3 or 4 in the given context, and in fact there were five or six of whatever it was, and we quarreled about what exactly these terms mean and finally agreed to disagree. So, which of us was right? What would it even mean to be "right"? We each had a strong feeling that our own usage was correct, but the dictionary didn't resolve the question (and dictionaries are merely the restatement of common usage anyway).
On “What’s Mine, And What’s Yours”
@will-truman
That sort of already spontaneously happened here.
"
Not the same thing but it reminds me of Bertrand Russell's game of Conjugations:
I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.
I'm an idealist. You're a Utopian. He's a fuzzy-thinking radical.
I'm cautious. You're timid. He's chicken-hearted.
I'm glib. You're garrulous. He can't keep his mouth shut.
I'm human. You're prone to err. He's a blundering idiot.
On “For sale: Barbie, never played with”
This is awesome -- we should have a whole thread devoted to OT action figures and accessories. I can totally imagine playing with the BSDI Twins in the Motte and Bailey arena.
"
It's not a competition -- I enjoyed your post too. Plus, yours included the special bonus New Kid announcement (I bet Postrel got way fewer congratulations in response to her article).
Speaking of which, congrats!
"
In case you haven't seen it already, here's Virginia Postrel's take on Lammily.
On “Stupid Tuesday Questions: Nathan Detroit Edition”
I'm a Ph.D -- Phony Doctor.
On “What Myths Hide”
FWIW I agree with Chris re Jason's post -- people were bringing up what I thought were some reasonable points and he was quite dismissive, which struck me as not atypical for him. I generally enjoy his writing but he's probably better off posting at a site that's not as commenter-oriented as this one is.
On ““You exterminate them, and you leave behind smoking building and crying widows.””
yeah, why bother inspecting yourself for potential cognitive biases when you can find some folks on the other side that are worse?
It's obvious that American liberals as a rule respond differently to generalizations about Muslims than to generalizations about Christians. It's easily explainable by the American context, but explainable is not the same as rational. It would be great to see people make an effort to explore how to be consistent in evaluating group generalizations instead of coming up with ad hoc rules for why your opponents are properly typified by their worst elements but your neutral and friendly parties are not.
On “Terrorism in France”
Yes, the important thing to remember is that the nuts on our side are the exception, but the nuts on their side are the rule.
On “Damn You, Dave Barry”
Are you sure that was encouragement? I don't see where Doc Saunders said he thought Dave Barry was funny...
On “The Limits and Impossibilities of Multiculturalism”
Oh -- well, empathy is about emotions, not opinions, thus my confusion.
"
I don't understand this -- empathy for whom? AFAIK most circumcised males don't see themselves as having been harmed by it.
On “Tuesday Questions: Missing the Memo Edition”
@gabriel-controy That was not my experience -- I had to scratch and scrape to get the page count up to a respectable level (and a lot of it was just lists of examples from various dialects). But then all through my schooling I struggled to reach the target page count for papers, so this should not have been a surprise to me.
"
On a family trip to Europe when I was about eleven years old, we stayed a night with a friend of my father's in Czechoslovakia. For dinner, they served us some sort of meat that I didn't recognize, but I tried it and it wasn't horrible, so I ate it up. My siblings stared at me in surprise and some horror, and they later informed me that that meat was (OMG!) liver.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.