turboshitnerd replied to your post: turboshitnerd replied to your post:kad…

I wasn’t being totally serious, but just like… damn, man. The world of medical quackery is a scary place.

Yeah, it’s had a lot of weird effects on my life, ranging from “probably did some fucked up stuff to my brain that has shaped the guy I am today” to “harmless but hilarious”

In the former category we have being prescribed some pretty scary, probably brain-altering shit for years off-label by an “alternative” doctor who later lost his license

In the latter category we have taking an hour-long car ride after school once a week to go to the office of a strange dentist who was constructing a special dental splint for me, based on his novel theory that traditional human dentistry disrupted the perfect design of the human throat and thus restricted people’s airflows – which he thought was the cause of most medical maladies, including (of course) Tourette Syndrome

Or the brainwave biofeedback system my father bought and used on me and himself and my mother for quite a while.  He claims it did good things for us although I am skeptical of his ability to rationally judge such things, considering that for the first few months he was using it, he had accidentally put it in “demo mode” (like the demo mode of an arcade game) and it wasn’t responding to any input from the electrodes at all.  And he still thought it was “working”

At one point I was given – really – a pendant to wear which was supposed to ward off the negative influences of … some sort of radiation?  I don’t remember?

This pendant cost hundreds of dollars.  I later looked up a blog post where someone had taken apart one of these pendants and found that it contained nothing but a “zero-ohm resistor,” essentially an odd name for a little piece of wire that you can buy for extremely low prices in electronics catalogs

Jesus christ I am worrying about your dad now.

My dad is a strange and complicated person, but in ways I feel like I now mostly understand and am at peace with.  Don’t worry about him (to the extent you can help it).

what are you into. do u wanna fuck an equation? i bet u wanna fuck an equation

Check out those curves

Didn’t you already make this post? I could have sworn you did

I once made it, then deleted it a few minutes later, having decided that the time was not yet right

I appreciate your dedication to my Web Brand

Man I don’t even know who the heck any of these guys you’re talking about are they all just sound like a bunch of pretentious dudes with blogs

Ray Kurzweil invented a bunch of stuff including the the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind

He is famous for writing books that make predictions about the future

I don’t think he has a blog

turboshitnerd replied to your post: I read Scott Alexander’s blog and hang…

why are you even still looking at or even thinking about scott alexander though. you need to get far away frmo him

Why are you still looking at or even thinking about Known Badperson Nostalgebraist, I think is the real question here

But seriously, I appreciate that you don’t see anything good in the guy, but I do, so why are you asking me this?  Do you expect the answer to be anything besides “he says enough things that I find insightful that I think his blog is worth reading despite the issues I have with it”

Look, I like a lot of things written by a lot of people.  I like a lot of what Scott Alexander writes, I like a lot of what monetizeyourcat writes, I like a lot of what Eliezer Yudkowsky writes (really!), I like a lot of what Deirdre McCloskey writes, I like a lot of what Vladimir Nabokov writes

Ludwig Wittgenstein was gay, severely depressed and quite possibly autistic – and also a misogynist, an anti-Semite, an infamous asshole – and also a genius who changed the face of philosophy forever.  People are complicated

If I had to give up all the writers I think have Major Issues with I would also have to give up most of the authors who have ever really struck a chord with me

mercurialmalcontent replied to your post: For a change of pace, here’s Big Yud w…

He’s right, MoR isn’t a mediocre HP fanfic. It’s an INCREDIBLY AWFUL one.

turboshitnerd replied to your post: Incidentally, you know someone who — i…

I’ve never read beyond like the first chapter, and no way. No way that’s anything close to an accurate assessment.

pluspluspangolin replied to your post: Incidentally, you know someone who — i…

I’m so baffled by this

Yeah, I don’t get it either.  I think I finally managed to get to Chapter … 17? before quitting, but it wasn’t even a “guilty pleasure” thing or a “this passes the time” thing, it was an “it takes effort to push myself through each and every paragraph of this” thing

sir-argues-a-lot replied to your post: I think there’s a recurring feature in…

Honestly though, I think that you fall within the “controversial, but really quite interesting” category yourself. Like Hideaki Anno or colwag.

Thank you!

I take the comparison to colwag better than some people would – he’s always struck me as a very reasonable guy despite his bizarre opinions

turboshitnerd replied to your post: turboshitnerd asked:There was a J…

I never saw this post, but yeah. John Green is trash.

I’m not a fan of the “X is trash” diss formula for various reasons but yeah I don’t like what I’ve seen of his stuff

nah that sounds wrong too i think its probably people who can exploit others the best who get all those material gains n stuff

I don’t think that conflicts with what I said!

When I say “being good at what you do,” that can include exploiting people.  I’m not saying success is necessarily morally good, here.  Just thinking about what leads to it.  I’m saying it has more to do with whatever it is you do in particular (whether that’s morally good or bad) than whether you’re especially “rational” in a general sense.

ETA: I’m not saying people who succeed deserve to succeed, either, that’s why I included that part about “accidents of birth.”  That isn’t the conversation I’m trying to have.  Maybe a better way to put this is “imagine you wanted to be successful right now; what kinds of choices would be most likely to make that happen, whether or not the success is deserved, or even a good thing?”