I know. I woke up at 07:30

I tried not to. I just stayed in bed and read new scientist. but I was still awake

(Countess Dowager: "Week-end? Week-end? Hwat is that?")

:D

What time did you go to bed?

1am I think

Hmm that's 6.5 hours of sleep.

yeah, not bad.

how was your sleep cycle? more than 3 hours?

Don't you need eight, like everybody else?

I woke up after 4 hours.

But today I'm not taking a nap, and I will take a pill tonight. That ought to do the trick.

well, eight would be ideal. but I can cope fine with 6.5

@Cerberus fingers crossed

Do the Dutch say "bite thumbs" for good luck?

Hmm no.

We do say "duimen".

must just be a South African thing then

duimen?

It means turning your thumbs around each other for good luck.

oh, maybe that's what they mean!

But the biting?

hmmm. Well, things change over time, plus there's the interference from the British. You know how meddlesome they can be!

Yeah taking our colonies away.

How selfish! perhaps you can have them back now?

No, they are messed up now.

I mean, look at America.

Could have been ours!

that was yours?

nah, you were just trading there, like the French

we were settling

Bollocks. You beat us in a war and then demanded that we should exchange N.A. for Suriname.

No fair.

@Cerberus seen this comment thread yet? i've just stumbled across it (someone linked to it in re: the fireplace delusion) and i am reading the commnets now

@Cerberus all's love in war fair

@MattЭллен Haha. a pospositional adjective, no less?

am I that clever? am I just keeping one bluff ahead of the pack?

Oh, we form packs here?

@Vitaly Hmm what kinds of a weird subject is that?

I don't understand the background, but I don't see what's interesting about it.

Forgive me if I am unjust.

i'm reading them to see if anyone actually managed to come up with something not just controversial, but unthinkable in modern society that might still be true

kind of like atheism was unthinkable at some point in human history

True?

Even the Bible mentions it, I think.

at some point in human history? :P

in some places? :P

@MattЭллен I was trying to find a video where people duimen, but I only found this.

@Vitaly Could be.

But what do you mean by "true"?

@Cerberus reflecting the territory more correctly than whatever humanity has come up with before

@Cerberus awwwwwwwwwww, that is so cute.

@MattЭллен Duimen can also mean sucking your thumb, and that's what the kitten is supposedly doing.

@Vitaly But that only applies to beliefs, doesn't it?

Most of those things didn't seem beliefs.

@Cerberus hypothetical beliefs?

Like instating a brutal dictatorship, or culling the weak.

Actions.

oh, are you tired?

Ctrl+F opinion

> Zoophilia is perfectly fine.

Haha.

What?

@Cerberus I see.

@Cerberus lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/9kf/…

still, not exactly “unthinkable”, more like controversial

Yeah I think the hype about zoophilia is silly.

The one about paedophilia is also exaggerated I think.

@Cerberus mentioned there too

Yeah I saw it.

Have you read that paper on wood smoke?

It looks long and boring, so I suppose I will read the conclusion.

nope

and the conclusion was boring too

Hmm.

I wish they would compare actual realistic fireplace smoke levels with cigarettes and waiting at a bus stop.

> People with high IQ should get money for having more children, dumb people for having less

nah, that doesn't make sense. IQ is not a good measure of the ability to produce off spring that are beneficial to society

it's not a good measure full stop

it's only real use is to indicate people who need help

@MattЭллен why is that so?

oh, and:

> Intelligence is mostly heritable

hahahahahahahahahahaha

no

well, I suppose it depends on how you look at it

but smarts are 99.99% hard work

there is very little genetic component

i have something like Spearman's g-factor in mind

speed of information processing, capacity of short-term memory, that kind of stuff

smart people can be able to raise better kids, but it's not necessarly correlated with IQ at all

@Vitaly but what you really need to the ability to understand how to apply it, and that is gleaned through experience, which is not so easy to score on a test

@MattЭллен unless there's nothing to apply in the first place

what?

Besides, we needs lots of dumb workers.

Look what happened when people became more educated: chaos and revolution.

yeah! who else are we going to lord our GMAT scores over?

Hahahaha.

Yes, for example.

@Cerberus what for, to fill those jobs that exist because those dumb workers are against automating those jobs with machinery in the first place?

@Vitaly Most dumb jobs are not physical labour, but rather services, at least in Western countries.

No-one wants a computer receptionist.

call centre workers, for example

@MattЭллен if people with high g-factors breed more, there are higher g-factors to apply, and more high-g-factor people who could learn how to apply their heritable cognitive abilities

@MattЭллен Or that.

@Cerberus I do want computer receptionists. Real people are real dumb.

@Vitaly just gonna read up on this g-factor

@Vitaly But most people don't want that. Besides, computers are still dumber.

@Cerberus I happen to be of the opinion that people are mostly dumber than computers as receptionists …

I disagree, then.

what in Aumann's name are you saying? :p

If I walk up to a counter with a normal receptionist, he will most likely know where I need to go or whom I need to speak to, in my experience.

Whereas the recordings that I hear when I call my telephone company suck.

I usually click through until I get a human.

Click, press buttons, rather.

@Cerberus but could you open wikipedia on a human receptionist?!?

What?

@Cerberus that's not intrinsic to computers, that's a property of your particular company's recordings

So?

while dumbness is pretty much intrinsic to humans

Hardly.

Most receptionists are fine.

Well, whatever floats your boat! :P

Sometimes they are assigned tasks that should be done automatically through a computer, but it takes time and effort to automatize those things. Other tasks they are good at.

Providing some comfort to visitors, make sense out of they confused ramblings, etc.

ohhh. dumb visitors are the problem, then?

Not so much dumb as shocked, ignorant, lazy...

dumb is a nice umbrella term for those qualities :P

The point is, if you want to replace all dumb jobs with computers, you need to transform the rest of society too.

exactly.

And that is extremely hard.

It all sounds rather utopian and impractical.

the above is nothing less than a very specific proposal as to how achieve that transformation

@Cerberus no? in Germany, all people are paid for having more children, no?

Probably.

They are here.

so you could pay the people half that. definitely not impractical.

Oh yes it is.

Noöne wants that to happen, so first you would need to establish some kind of dictatorship, thereby damaging the economy, science, trade, the arts...

That's off the top of my head, just the first thing that comes to mind.

@Cerberus oh, but someone proposed in that same thread that dictatorship is beneficial :P

Well, that seems, again, utopian and not based on practical experience.

though i could see how dictatorship could damage philosophy, speaking of the arts

all philosophy but philosophy of science and Marxism was virtually non-existent in the USSR

@Vitaly OK, I see where you're going, and perhaps in an ideal world this would make sense. In this world, however, there are certain confounding things that prevent it from working. 1. smart people will not want to raise a lot of children, certainly not more than dumb people. There is only so much money you can give a smart/creative person before it stops being an incentive. However you probably will succeed in lowering the number of dumb people born.

2. the creative people will find ways to off load child rearing on to people more inclined to want to do it, thus creating average children.

you could use this tactic to lower teenage pregnancy.

@Vitaly Its economy was also extremely weak. Look how poor all ex-communist countries are compared to the West.

@Cerberus except that they had never been communist :P

@MattЭллен OK, I agree with this.

and my own suggestion: the perfect human government would consist entirely of psychopaths who only care about the numbers reflecting their people's well-being ^^

@Vitaly They were, to a degree. Was any country ever truly communist?

I mean look at silicon valley - workers there are generally thought to be high g-factor types. There is a far higher proportion of children with autism-spectrum disorders than in areas of lower g-factor people. is that desirable?

@Cerberus — No, not to my knowledge (in re: your second sentence there). And that's sad.

@Vitaly Well, it is sad in the way that it is sad that people cheat and lie and kill: humans don't always do what's good for society. So naïve systems don't work.

Hello people.

hello @mahnax

Hmm, I entered, and conversation ceased.

Carry on.

Ohai.

i'd like to hear some counterarguments, assuming a world where such a government can be created without mass outrage

I say the perfect government is no government

any where there is centralised control you stymie progress

@Vitaly That assumption is moot, so I'm afraid that would be a useless exercise.

@Mahnax Hai!

@MattЭллен there's been more progress with centralised control in the USSR than with ersatz “democracy” in post-Soviet Russia (i know it's not a valid rejection, but still)

Is that so?

I'm not so sure about that.

@Vitaly you're still thinking about this too big. the problem is with having government. any government. a nation state is too big.

I suspect that the economy grew faster after 1991.

why 1991?

@Cerberus well, most of Imperial Russia was illterate, and the state of technology used was 1700ish

after 1991, the nation has steadily become less educated, a lot of factories have been closed, school curriculum has become simpler, etc, etc

a lot of people see the post-1991 era as degeneration

@Vitaly It is probably degeneration in some ways, progress in others.

The same applies to the West, actually.

oh, I see, post-soviet

Gorbachev might be a hero in the West, but here he's disliked by pretty much every educated person

I'm not saying the revolution was a good idea.

It got out of hand after Gorbachev, for which he is possibly also to blame.

Huh?

You mean perestroika?

A slow transition as in China might have been preferable.

@Vitaly Yes, and Yeltsin.

Oh, I didn't mean the communist revolution.

I suppose that was unclear.

@Cerberus hmm, well, i can't strongly disagree that philosophy is harmful

@Vitaly Oh, no!

Now what will you do?

:D

Panic!

Vitaly is at a loss!

The walls are crumbling! CRUMBLING!

I know!!

I am in shock.

<insert obligatory Jasperian 2012 reference>

Ahh you filthy...

I dare you to star my line that you could not "strongly disagree with" if you're a sport.

@Vitaly Oh, no...

There. Unthere.

on topic?

Ack too late, I missed this momentous event.

@Cerberus we all have the outspoken badge anyway. let's not waste the bytes and star someone else instead!