turboshitnerd asked: you could always try method one to work your way BACKWARDS from where method two takes you. like, for everything that's not at the point where it needs to be for it to happen, you could be like, "why would there be x? maybe because y happens, so why would y happen? maybe because of z". and maybe it's less boring if you're doing it in reverse, because wild situations may require wild explanations

That’s pretty much what I currently do.  The problem I tend to run into is stopping the wild explanations from having their own implications that are too wild to work with 

(“Q: why did this magic thing happen?  A: a wizard did it, because wizards exist.  Q: okay, if wizards exist, what else do they do?  A: uh, a whole lot of … other similarly wild things?  oh no”)

(That’s a contrived example, but that’s the shape of it)

turboshitnerd asked: It's the equivalent of seeing a group of friends joking around with each other on the street and butting in because hey, after all, they're in public, right?? anyone COULD intrude on them at any time so that naturally makes it automatically totally fine to do it, because can = should, OBVIOUSLY

Yes, exactly

“You were just saying these things, out loud, where I could hear them, and I, a stranger, can also say things, so what’s the problem here”

turboshitnerd asked: FWIW I have only ever really jokingly called you a rationalist, or if I was serious I just meant more about what you liked talking about and your circle of friends. But I don't really think of you that way, you're just my cool friend who likes to talk a lot about smart things (or stupid things that smart people love to discuss for whatever reason, e.g. chickenfuckgate)

:)

I mean that last bit is also part of why I don’t like the label “rationalist” or even “aspiring rationalist” – it sounds so lofty and then what “the community” actually does most of the time is shitposting and having these hilarious arguments over weird shit.  So it kind of invites the “i, a rational intellectual, spend my time investigating important issues like chickenfucking” sarcastic takedown

turboshitnerd asked: I think Tumblr has more of that kind of mentality the deeper you get into it? Maybe it's just it was a different time when I started on this site before SJ was as big of a thing in fandom, but like... it felt very friendly to me at first. It may also be a quasi-generational gap? I mean I don't know how much, you're not that much older than me, but like. enough to maybe be a bit more of a thing where you're like "what's with these kids?"

That’s possible?  I think any changes that have happened have probably been too gradual for me to notice while immersed in tumblr, and also have probably been partly compensated for by me getting more used to what tumblr is like in general

The thing I found offputting about tumblr at first was that it was … overly chaotic, in a way that almost offended the part of me that has Tourette’s and is maybe partially OCD?  Compared to Facebook (ca. 2011) or LJ, it had much more heterogenous content – fandom gifsets, pretty pictures, cats, political signal-boots, long arguments containing seven different typing styles and as many worldviews, etc. – and everyone’s personal thoughts/feelings tended to be spread out in a bunch of tiny little posts interspersed with all these things.

It felt very ephemeral, and like a very weird mixture of the intimately specific and the generic – like, “judging from the personal posts this looks like a portrait of someone’s innermost soul, except it’s 50% cat gifs and I somehow don’t think their innermost soul is 50% cat gifs”

I got used to all that, though.  If anything, I find that stuff kind of nice now, because it tends to reduce the potential for a “crab bucket” atmosphere – it’s harder to pretend one is superior to everyone else when one’s own blog is partly made up of reblogs (without comment).

turboshitnerd asked: Honestly, I just think the problem with that chapter is literally just the lack of dialogue tags. If you had done the script format again no one would've had a problem with it. Regardless of the effect you were "going for", purposefully obscuring who's talking is just not fun for the reader, who's going to struggle to at least some extent to figure out who's saying what. It's kind of like that shaky-cam BS in action movies. I get what you were going for, but I don't think it works.

Yeah, like I said I just didn’t think it would be that frustrating.  This is probably just the result of hanging out with too many William Gaddis fans, TBH

turboshitnerd asked: OK, I have to ask: What, exactly, is actually wrong with the Chu article? That takedown basically just seems to amount to "ARTHUR CHU WANTS COMMIE CENSORSHIP TO TAKE AWAY OUR FREE SPEECH" so... I don't get it?

Read the takedown more closely.  Its objections have nothing to do with communism or censorship, it’s about a bunch of practical problems with Chu’s proposal, like

“it would create an environment in which web hosts immediately take down any content upon request because it’s never worth the potential costs of going to court about it, hence it becomes impossible in practice to talk about being harassed or abused, or in general say anything bad about any person unscrupulous enough to use this mechanism”

and

“anyone who hosts their own blog would be vulnerable to the strategy ‘post anonymous criticism of yourself in the comments using a proxy, then sue the blog owner because they hosted criticism of you,’ making it impossible to host your own blog – or any kind of site allowing comments – unless you are incredibly rich and have all the free time in the world”

turboshitnerd asked: This whole thing is just reminding me that god the internet is so weird

It is so weird.  Everyone does a lot of talking that anyone else in the world could hear, in principle, and usually just forgets about that fact