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What is going on? World Blogs Clogs Elections The Bar (talk) (talk) (talk) (talk) (hic) Welcome to RationalWiki, KnightOfTL;DR! Check out our guide for newcomers and our community standards! Tell us how you found RationalWiki here! If you are interested in contributing: Read what our articles are intended to be Check out the to-do list See our help page and Wikipedia's formatting cheatsheet If writing a new article, consider writing up a draft And most importantly: Pull up a goat and have some fun!

Hello and welcome to RationalWiki. Please pull up the nearest goat and enjoy your stay! The Symphony of Noise ^{The official spikey-haired skeptical punk} 16:16, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be Dame of TL;DR? Sophie^{because liberals} 21:31, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

'Dame' just doesn't roll off the tongue in the same way, you see. KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 22:07, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Not that I'm trying to impose stereotypes... Sophie^{because liberals}#

ts;dr. Тy^Yarrr 21:53, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Ahah, it seems I have stumbled upon good company! KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 22:07, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Just wait till you discover userboxes :D Тy^Talk 22:14, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh... Dear... Lord... No... ^narchist 22:19, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Oooh oooh! and randomized colored sigs :D Тy^{Lonely. Ever so lonely.} 22:22, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

But are they tools, or are they toys? Should we be more responsible in their usage? WHAT WILL THEY DO TO THE CHILDREN?! KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 22:25, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Userboxes are harmless toys... Тy^{Lonely. Ever so lonely.} 22:32, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

But what is that ellipsis for? Do they hide some sort of hidden secret? ... nah. KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 22:33, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Damn, well, some people find flashy random sigs a mite bit annoying. Тy^YAUA 22:34, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

It is pretty hard to annoy me unless you try and convince me that aluminum causes Alzheimers or some-such garbage. KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 22:36, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Then all should be fine. Тy^{Lonely. Ever so lonely.} 22:44, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

What, aluminum doesn't cause Alzheimers? I remember reading that years ago. Guess I can cross that off my "list of irrelevant trivia I know" now. Dang. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 05:40, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

No, it does not. This misconception arises from a prominent Alzheimers study that found slightly higher levels of aluminum in the brain tissue of affected individuals, but no further link has ever been found in any study proving alluminium somehow causes Alzheimers. Unfortunately, it became a slight hysteria before that: blaming things such as aluminum cans, foil and cookware as causing Alzheimers. This was very embarrassing for me, actually; a goofy woo-spouting professor of mine recently tried to convince the class that cans and pans were going to put holes in our brain, not knowing that someone in my family was part of the study that discovered the aluminum and it was not in any way causal. "Sir, I have someone on the phone who helped do the study you're misquoting. He says you're wrong." KnightOfTL;DR (talk)

So how many nutty professors do/did you have? Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 06:10, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

So far, two... but they consistently made/make two or more crazy statements a class. Multiply this by more than 15 classes in a semester, and the result is one very frustrated Knight of TL;DR furiously trying to find her happy place.KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 06:13, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Same kind of woo? Or would they fight it out if in the same room together? Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 06:30, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Different woo, but overlap. The Asian Lit teacher was a yoga fiend, and pretty much used the class as a way to tell us how inferior our culture is and to show us 'facts' about science. He did a lot of the 'ancient wisdom is true' stuff, and repeatedly tried to prove that the absurd things said in the books he taught (all indian religion, I was very sad we didn't get to read Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Journey to the West...) were somehow accurate according to 'science' or because of ancient secrets the industry/government doesn't want you to know. The human biology teacher is a diet woo and government conspiracy person. He has SOME valid ideas, such as the fact that the corn, soy, wheat industries have enormous power in government, and agriculture is duplicitious and is sweeping itself under the rug... but that's NOT a secret. It's only a secret if you don't pay attention to the world. But he also sprinkles in lots of diet woo to make 'western diets' seem much worse than they really are. Where the two professors overlap is their hatred of the 'drug industry' and their mistrust of medicine. Lit teacher wants us all to go back to herbs and 'natural' remedies, and Bio teacher thinks 80 percent of doctors in Europe practice homeopathy, which "unlike WESTERN MEDICINE which treats the symptoms only, homeopathy is the opposite and treats the root cause!" This is especially baffling about the bio teacher because other than his 30-minute woo speeches at the beginning of each class (he once wasted three classes by showing us a horrible logic-error-ridden documentary that I should put up on this site as a bad thing one of these days), he keeps teaching stuff in class that proves homeopathy WRONG. You know, like human biology, that he's supposed to teach? I should just make a page dedicated to "Shit Bad Professors Say" and let people gawk at it. It is shameful these people are educators and honestly listening to them makes ME embarrassed.KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 16:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

You pay for this? I would have walked out. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 16:54, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I unfortunately have taken/am taking these classes as part of an education requirement, and few other options are available to me in these particular fields without having to go to a 100+ student class of basic chemistry or basic history that I already know. Although a lot of the class is taken up by crap, it would be even more useless to attend a class that I already passed in high school. You can thank the budget cuts to the US education system: although my school is one of the better ones of the bunch, it is still a state school and therefore is hurting bad right now. The available diversity of classes has definitely dropped since I was a freshman here, and they are desperately trying to pour MORE freshman in to pay their bills. My tuition is expected to increase substantially next year. Damn you, school; why must you have the best journalism program in the area, but be a state school that is getting no money? KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 17:00, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

No, no, no - aluminium causes autism. It's coffee that causes Alzheimers, right? Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 05:47, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Coffee reacts with mercury in vaccines to make a magic death atom that gives you a super duper combination of alzheimers, autims, and aids. AutizheimAIDS. KnightOfTL;DR (talk)

Howdy there! I noticed you're in journalism in some capacity, and I was wondering if there's a particular site you use to follow industry news. I already read Columbia Journalism Review, but I thought you might know of something more centralized; i.e. a sort of public JournoList. Oh, also: welcome!--^talk 05:28, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I am a journalism student. I don't follow industry news quite as strictly as I should (alas, I am an undergraduate!) but I will say the Columbia Journalism Review is an excellent place to start that I spend a chunk of my time on. I would also suggest checking out AP (they have a very thorough industry news report) and The State of the News Media, which is an annual review performed by Journalism.Org- run by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Both are very thorough and good sources to learn what's what. KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 06:03, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Demoted to Sysop

You seem like fun. Get drunk on power. --MtD^{Pinko Scum} 08:32, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Welcomes

Maybe "Audaput" sounded like a credible name but with so many spam accounts being created I'd hold off welcoming anyone until they'd made at least one non-spamming edit. Генгис^{You have the right to be offended; and I have the right to offend you.} 14:55, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh. Sorry. ._. I am very new (see:few days) and I really didn't notice that. I'll bear it in mind. The last wiki I was on had a bot that handled welcomes, so it's really all new to me. Thanks for the heads-up though. KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 14:58, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Journotalk

What do you think of the new NPR handbook?--^talk 21:05, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I have an incredibly high opinion of it! NPR has always been one of my personal favorite news sources, even before I decided I wanted to be a reporter, and the new ethics handbook is just fantastic: both acknowledging past errors (such as the miscall on Gabby Gifford's 'death') and striving to do better in I think a rather inspiring vow to good principles. Some of my favorite parts:

"Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth."

"When we find that we can't deliver all the answers to important questions, we explain what we don't yet know and work to fill any gaps in our reporting."

"We avoid hyperbole and sensational conjecture. We may sometimes construct hypotheticals to help explain issues and events, but we reveal any fabrication, and do not otherwise mix fiction with our news reporting."

"Under no circumstances do we skew our reports for personal gain, to help NPR's bottom line or to please those who fund us. Decisions about what we cover and how we do our work are made by our journalists, not by those who provide NPR with financial support."

"We have opinions, like all people. But the public deserves factual reporting and informed analysis without our opinions influencing what they hear or see. So we strive to report and produce stories that transcend our biases and treat all views fairly. We aggressively challenge our own perspectives and pursue a diverse range of others, aiming always to present the truth as completely as we can tell it."

"Mistakes are inevitable. When we make them, we correct them forthrightly, reflect on what happened, and learn from them."

"We don’t allow what is sensational to obscure what is significant."

Oh NPR. You are after my own heart. On another note, there is astoundingly good word choice in the new handbook as well. For example, treating all views fairly is not the same thing as treating them equally. It's perfectly fair to discard an incorrect viewpoint for a more correct one. Yet the wording is elegant, honest, and friendly. What a way to stick it to mistakes, funding bias, and pandering! KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 21:33, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

One of my big bugaboos is that tendency towards false balance in the media, so yeah it's good to see this (assuming they live up to it). I think they're having the same evolution as Obama: they've realized, painfully slowly and after great lengths to the contrary, that nothing they do will make them anything less of a monstrous bugbear to the right - so they might as well just do a good job.--^talk 21:46, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that's kind of a hard part in journalism ethics. Even on a non-pandering news site, when one creates media that the WHOLE public should see and be informed about, it can be worrisome to turn potential readers and listeners away. Especially when some news sites are turning to at least partially supporting themselves with ads, the hits really count. But the adage holds true: Try and please everyone and you'll end up pleasing no one. Best to worry about just doing the absolute best job possible.KnightOfTL;DR (talk) 22:43, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

An apology

I overdid the snark, and I apologize. P-Foster Talk ""Santorum is the cream rising to the top."" 14:41, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Don't fucking apologize, you braindead moronic retarded homo. GodothasArrived ^{(super crazy fun time!)} 14:42, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

It's OK, you don't have to. I get lessons in vigilance every day. Really, that was an illuminating post to me: most of what I have been following has to do with that Zimmerman hasn't been arrested yet. But really, there are other aspects of this case just as important, substantial as just the arrest. Thinking about how I could have messed up and realizing that I have been remiss in following an entire half of the events is very valuable to me as an experience. Initially, I was a bit Grr at you, but that fades away pretty quickly. The fact that there's something to take away from the whole affair when I make an error usually makes up for any human initial 'argh' I may feel. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{garrulous en guerre} 14:49, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I like you already.

So much for Tl;DR. I read it all. Including the userboxens. Haha. Kimchi for lunch? YUM. Actually, eating that right now. --Dumpling (talk) 19:27, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Ohhh I wish I was eating kimchi right now. But unfortunately the town my university is in has a terrible supermarket that doesn't carry it. And I'd ask my family to send me some, but they're afraid the fermentation of the kind I like could cause mailing problems (exploding due to pressure changes, etc). I'm craving it so badly right now. What I would give for a local H-Mart...!

To tell you the truth, I am a fan of your work as well. Your essays are fascinating to me; I have a very neutral cultural background, either skipping a generation (From great-grandmother to my mother to me) or re-engineered (it is my secular jew mother, not my mexican granfather who makes guacamole and tamales), or borrowed from family friends. Hearing about your experiences is pretty incredible to me. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{garrulous en guerre} 20:17, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

GASP! They don't carry even the fail 'Kimuchi' Japanese kimchi in the supermarket? (Don't get it. It's not that's great anyways. HMPH.) Interesting. Exploding kimchi. That'd be fun. Hahaha. NO it wouldn't. It'd smell horribly.

And...woah. O___O...Erm...thank you. I don't remember when I wrote that essay. I just know that it was some time ago. I'm glad you found it fascinating, and I would have to say that my experiences...were...interesting, but it's those experience that make me, well, me. --Dumpling (talk) 02:46, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

My university is in the middle of ski/rock climbing country, and the primary population of the village (not town, village) is the students that don't know kimchi from ketchup. There is an enormous aisle of frozen foods and pre-prepared foods and junk foods and single-person meals, but their meat aisle and their produce aisle and other making-things-from-scratch aisles are pathetic. They only have one kind of chili pepper and it's called a 'hot pepper.' I have tentatively identified it as some kind of emasculated Jalapeño. Darn it, I can't cook with this. :S ±KnightOfTL;DR^{longissimus non legeri} 03:15, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

WHAAAAAAT!? That...sounds...horrible. O___O...Even in Baton Rouge, we have Kimchi, and we don't have an H-mart. If anything, have you tried to make your own kimchi? That's not too bad.--Dumpling (talk) 03:27, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I have a fear I would stink up my whole dorm, and I have no counterspace and the kitchen is dirty and... You know what, these are just excuses. If I want kimchi, I am going to have to make my own like a self-respecting person and TOO BAD anyone who wants to say otherwise! If I make some friday or this weekend it has time to get perfect just in time for finals week! My fridge is tiny, though. I'll have to store it in one of my extra, dark closets. Good thing I have no roommates to complain about this! ±KnightOfTL;DR^{yeah, well you fight like a cow!} 03:35, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Hahaha. If you're worried about the smell and the small fridge, use the small baking soda boxes, it absorbs the smell. That's what we use...with our small fridge specifically JUST for the kimchi. Hahaha. Good luck!--Dumpling (talk) 04:25, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Whereas I empathise more with the tamales. Arlo James Barnes (talk) 20:35, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Tamales are delicious but are labor intensive to the extreme. We've stopped tying them shut and now just fold them a different way because it adds an additional few seconds and those few seconds add up when you have 100+tamales. I took photos of making tamales this year for a redux on the recipe (one that isn't hosted on a family member's blog) because we adjusted some ratios but I need to find all of them...±KnightOfTL;DR^{lavishly loquacious} 21:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

100+ tamales? Jesus, that's a lot of tamales. (Incidently, "That's a lot of tamales" sounds like the punchline to a joke that doesn't exist yet. I think you should solve this problem.) Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 03:23, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Hot tamales and they're red hot. Yeah she got 'em for sale... Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 03:28, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, when you make tamales, it sort of involves a large amount of ingredients by the nature of the recipe. I suppose you can make HALF a pork shoulder, or use HALF the amount of lard (yes, they are bad for you), but because they are labor intensive to make you might as well make all of them. The point being you steam all of them and then freeze most of them and take them out only when you have to actually eat them. These are the kind of thing you gotta get at least two family members and an afternoon to make. And you have to make the meat mixture a whole day beforehand, too. This is approximately 50 tamales: one batch in the steamer and we had something like three or four of these batches this year.±KnightOfTL;DR^{longissimus non legeri} 03:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of tamales, did you know that Michelle Obama, is, in fact, a secret diabolical elitist, because she likes tamales? Neither did I :-) Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 04:18, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, can you get tamales at your local Applebee's salad bar? Huh, can you, you coastal liberal elitist?! I thought not. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 04:31, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

So

if you are of the media type of interest, you must understand that field has been destroyed f real integrity, more or less? I apluad you then. --il'Dictator Mikal 22:31, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't say entirely destroyed. But I will say that not only does the outlook not look good on many fronts, but that the way news and media is circulated is also changing. But the thing is that there will always be news or some kind of news media. So while I may inherit a mess of ash and wreckage, it will be my responsibility to make something of it. Somebody's got to do it. I plan on at least being one somebody who's not a crazy person.±KnightOfTL;DR^{going galt: the literal crazy train} 22:40, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Boxen

I beleive I still have more than you. Тy^{communications wire} 20:01, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking of adding more. Really, most of the recent edits going on right now I have no interest in, which makes RatWiki a bit boring at the moment. Also, I think that some more boxen for Everybody should be made. There aren't very many boxen for activities, sports, games, education/knowledge specializations, professions, and other things. They seem to be a talking point for people who like the same stuff and tags to indicate common interests. So it might be nice if people could identify, say, other gamers or other cooks, other athletes, other handicrafts people, etc. RatWikians are people too! ±KnightOfTL;DR^{going galt: the literal crazy train} 20:05, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Go for it. Тy^No 20:17, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Bah. I have no userboxen to protest the reduction of people to a collection of bumper-sticker slogans. Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 21:51, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

How about this?

NO FUN

This user thinks userboxen are bad and that you are a bad person for liking them.

±KnightOfTL;DR^{yeah, well you fight like a cow!} 22:12, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

More boxen! Тy^{Lonely. Ever so lonely.} 22:41, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Is this a request or a statement? I suppose boxen might be fun to do right now. Maybe after supper. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{sufficiently advanced argument still distinguishable from magic} 22:45, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

A request :} and what is dinner?Тy^Yes? 22:46, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

not sure what dinner is. Might be noodles. Might be chicken wings. Might be sandwich. Hm, I wonder what boxen I should make. People would probably like them more than the articles I make it seems, though I guess that's also restricted to those who like boxen. :\ ±KnightOfTL;DR^{sufficiently advanced argument still distinguishable from magic} 22:48, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Food boxes? What type of noodles? Тy^Yes? 22:51, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Ohhh! Food boxes would be delicious. There is this noodle stand in the food mart of my college that you can request a sauce and some vegetables and a meat to go on pasta and they saute you some pasta. It's pretty ok, but they recently changed to biodegradable containers which aren't waterproof, so carrying it home to eat it is a pain now. I don't want pasta to leak all over my bag... ±KnightOfTL;DR^{lavishly loquacious} 23:00, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

That is a conundrum. Тy^{sic semper} 23:02, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

A helpful template

{{fact}} Тy^{Please do not click on this} 02:45, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh, it's beautiful! Thank you. :) ±KnightOfTL;DR^{more at 11} 02:51, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

INTJ? Seriously?

Your star sign personality profile is clearly inferior -- after all, I'm in the same vaguely defined and anachronistically applied category as Einstein and Darwin! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 16:13, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

I will sit here and commence to quietly judge you. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{longissimus non legeri} 16:23, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Ooh! That's what INTJs are good at right? Judging? :-) Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 20:25, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Good at being 4 percent of the population yet maybe 80 percent of the engineers. Somehow I pulled the 'really likes to talk to people' trait out of nowhere, but I consider myself introverted because when I'm not talking to people I want them as far away from me as possible. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{walls of text while-u-wait} 21:19, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

OH! Another INTJ! YAY!--Dumpling (talk) 21:21, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• dances around* ±KnightOfTL;DR^{lavishly loquacious} 21:23, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

WOOTWOOT! Hahaha. I don't know of any other INTJ's here. Just a handful of INTPs. --Dumpling (talk) 21:25, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Sig

I don't know where you store your signature code, but one of the options might be lacking the </sub> end tag. ^sshole 12:16, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to bring controversy to your user page

But being a nice person is an uphill battle when the bullies roam freely.--"Shut up, Brx." 02:09, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

My reply to you appearing on my talk page:

±KnightOfTL;DR^{critical thinking is the key to success!} 02:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Whoah, chilly, Billy--"Shut up, Brx." 02:37, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I am pretty chill. It's just that frankly, your talk about being oppressed or supressed is getting on my nerves, because it's that. It's all talk. Nobody is bullying anybody. What is happening here is that a person or persons is/are running around in a public place with their underwear on their head, covered in eggs and bird droppings, and people are demanding said person/people to put some pants on and grow up for the love of all things peaceful. And then said person/people are loudly whining with 1000+character posts on the coop about how EVERYBODY IS SO REPRESSIVE and SO TERRIBLE AND NOT VERY NICE that they don't like pantsless bird poop frolicking.

Brx, I am sure you have the potential to be a valuable person, but you really need to stop and take a good long, hard look at yourself and consider that maybe, 'just maybe', people are objecting to your actions because they are objectionable, not because they are bullies. It pains me that you strive so hard for niceness and civility here, yet do so without any pants, squawking and covered in avian feces. Please, just grow some humility. Please. You are not so important that other people would seek to oppress you. You are just acting so annoying that it's hard to hear oneself think around you. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{just shut up already} 02:41, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Knight of TL;DR is a student of journalism

Never read your userpage before and I see you are a student of journalism, what Hunter Thompson considered a prostitution of writing talent. I myself dabble in the freelance journo field now and again when the mood strikes. Ace^Moderator 02:14, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Ooooh. Though freelance journo is a pretty big topic. What do you cover, by preference? ±KnightOfTL;DR^{critical thinking is the key to success!} 02:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

In london I was covering movie festivals, CD's and gigs. I also meet David Hasslehoff and wrote about it for a magazine. Here in NZ I cover mostly MMA fights and boxing. Mainly just for fun. Ace^Moderator 02:28, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Why Americans Hate the Media

The Atlantic's Fallows crushes it out of the park in a discussion of the stifling lack of journalistic values in the modern media:

Why not go out and interview someone, even if you're not going to get any airtime that night? Why not escape the monotonous tyranny of the White House press room, which reporters are always complaining about? The knowledge that O.J. will keep you off the air yet again should liberate you to look into those stories you never "had time" to deal with before. Why not read a book—about welfare reform, about Russia or China, about race relations, about anything? Why not imagine, just for a moment, that your journalistic duty might involve something more varied and constructive than doing standups from the White House lawn and sounding skeptical about whatever announcement the President's spokesman put out that day? What might these well-paid, well-trained correspondents have done while waiting for the O.J. trial to become boring enough that they could get back on the air? They might have tried to learn something that would be of use to their viewers when the story of the moment went away. Without leaving Washington, without going farther than ten minutes by taxi from the White House (so that they could be on hand if a sudden press conference was called), they could have prepared themselves to discuss the substance of issues that affect the public.

Great stuff.--^talk 03:02, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

This is the kind of thing I lay awake at night thinking about. I may not become a press journalist. I have no idea what I am going to become, what journalism will change into. But it's thoughts like these that are important. Because damn, being a journalism major just makes me hate the media even more and it's not going to change without the next batch of people thinking very hard and saying, 'No. We're going to do Y instead of X, and we're going to make it work.' And yeah, there are realities to face. But sometimes I think that people can do more than they think they can do, especially working together to change an establishment as a whole. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{more at 11} 03:13, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

There is some truly terrible journalism out there. I was reading all the National Magazine Award finalists last week, and was astonished that this piece, "Paper Tigers" in New York, is up for the Essays and Criticism category. It is the most thoroughly mediocre, self-indulgent, crappy thing I've read in a while (if "The Aquarium" doesn't win, the judges should be shot).

Thankfully, there are still some vehicles well-worth our time. Meet the Press is great, The New Yorker is amazing, and In Our Time from the BBC is fascinating.--^talk 03:24, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Journalism could always use more people who aren't stenographers or complacent hacks. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 03:27, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

And some such remain, even now.

"This is reporting. This is what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to turn every page."

Fewer every year.--^talk 05:12, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Just FYI

A friend of yours seems to have dropped by]. I vaped the edit because it names some real people. Theory of Practice "I never set out to hit anybody. It's just that a lot of people got hit." -- Andy Roberts 01:33, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Oh yes. I did link this on the facebook to my Secular Student Alliance because they I volunteered and they wanted to hear more. Somebody from my school likely found it from there. I don't really care about them, though; they can call me arrogant and a twat all they want, but they're the ones editing from an anonymous IP and lobbing stupid insults... when they could find me and speak face to face at my own school. I invite them to. I would be more than happy to discuss my purpose with them. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{sufficiently advanced argument still distinguishable from magic} 01:42, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Tiny Favor

Hey friend, can you please make me a sysop? I really want to delete an essay I wrote. Rand0 (talk) 18:04, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

What do you want deleted? I could just do that for you. I've been here only a few months and sysoping is not really a thing I do. You're better off asking some other person, but thanks.±KnightOfTL;DR^{walls of text while-u-wait} 18:16, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

If you think Forks Over Knives is bad...

...try Food Matters. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 17:30, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I'll keep it short, KOtldr

sterile^{no new information} 05:18, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Question about 'decision theories'

You said earlier that you interned at a robotics company. I've been wondering, given the LW's fascination with decision theory work: is my impression correct that the decision theories (causal decision theory, what ever) are simply something so utterly trivial to those in the field of robotics that nobody from there ever writes such stuff down in a separate paper as a "theory"? I'm asking because it seems to me to be this way in the game programming, where those are never mentioned, and various 'acausal' and 'timeless' stuff, sans the Roko basilisk insanity of course, is utterly commonplace in some networked games where you transmit only the user commands and have each computer run it's own simulation and its own copy of every unit AI, which all are made to work as if the code controls all the copies. But I do not know for sure about robotics. Dmytry (talk) 17:06, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I had to look up what that was because I never heard of it before; not in any technical document nor SBIR I have ever archived have I heard the term 'decision theory.' And that's saying a lot because I have the internet open practically 24/7 to wikipedia pages learning what ridiculous mathematic concepts are that go into robotics so I can them write about the projects. I can't say that it's NOT in robotics (I am not an authority! I am merely an intern that shuffles their papers and reads all of their proposals! My word is only true to the best of MY knowledge!) but I have never seen it. What I see a lot, though, is the development of algorithms that have to do with robot decision-making, data processing, and robot vision/sensing. There IS a lot of bayesian math that goes into this (for example, cutting out false-positives when analyzing sensor input) but it's hardly reminiscent of the 'bayes can solve everything' attitude sometimes present in Yudkowsky's work. Working for a robotics company, and then working for a different technology company that does machine vision and data processing, sort of is making me even less pleased with a lot of LessWrong. Going there for me is now sort of like, after watching adults build, say, space station componants out of difficult and complex math and engineering, going to a day care and hearing kids scream, "I BET WE CAN MAKE ROCKETS WITH SUPER-GRAVITIC PLASMA BOOSTERS." and just make stuff up about technology without really knowing what the things they talk about REALLY contribute to the field.±KnightOfTL;DR^{yeah, well you fight like a cow!} 17:32, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Been my impression also. I am a game developer, used to do special effects software (still do, at times). The LW/SIAI lot seem to see themselves as designing high level stuff, but the truth is, a lot of very 'high level' stuff is utterly trivial - e.g. the 'high level' organization of game loop is an utterly trivial detail, while 'low level' detail of efficient collision detection is complicated, and it is almost exclusively newbies and non-programmers that waste time arguing stupid stuff like opengl vs directx. Dmytry (talk) 18:52, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

All the math and logic in the world is nothing in technology without good design and concept. Almost all I write about isn't explaining the math, but HOW that math may be used to solve a problem or accomplish a task. The complex stuff, it's assumed that everybody already knows that, how it can be applied. It's the task, and the design of the solution that people are interested in, not the magical high-level processes. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{yeah, well you fight like a cow!} 19:07, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

In my experience, decision theory is more often used to refer to research at the psych/econ/poli sci side of things. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 19:08, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

That's with agreement with my impression that the AI at LW got confused with the economical notion of 'agent'. Just wasted 30 minutes of my time arguing about Newcomb's paradox with people who think if two agents have source codes of each other they know what each other will do (in general they won't because undecidable problems). The timeless decision theory of theirs will one box on Newcomb's problem with transparent boxes when the box is empty. I suppose if they were to implement such an idiocy (magically), it would indeed do as Roko said, and arguments to the contrary are reading sense into idiocy. Dmytry (talk) 22:03, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of decision theory, I added some papers on it to the rationality page while I was working on it. See Jones 1999 or Gigerenzer and Gassmaier 2011 for examples. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 00:27, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Nice. Yes, I had similar experience with heuristics vs over-thinking when doing a programming contest, but too small sample size. In my opinion the most difficult part of the AI is figuring out what to not think about, and how to minimize the computing time, while all those 'defining AI formally on ridiculously powerful hardware' things are entirely irrelevant and do not even describe anything intelligent in any sense of the word. Regarding LW: cousin_it is beginning to see the real world it seems. I'm pretty curious how this is going to evolve. Dmytry (talk) 08:03, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Ha ha I write about cooperative autonomous units every day and this person is just NOW realizing that people study these things? News flash: it takes months to years for something to go through at a tech company like mine. Before somebody even began those years ago (like, early 2000s on some of the projects I write about) they had to have studied autonomy and had tools to even begin the project at all, or had to invent those tools. It should really not be new news that humans can make units that can cooperate autonomously for weeks to months without input. Of course, they should also bear in mind that such units are doing menial things like measuring data on the seafloor or mapping difficult terrain, not making Skynet. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{longissimus non legeri} 13:09, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I made cooperative autonomous units in form of the CGI software that works on a renderfarm, decentralized, not quite robotics though. The UDT stuff appears unnecessarily obstructive of the fact that you basically onebox because you are uncertain if the 'real world' is really real or its a simulation, and have somewhat non self centred goal, so that you still want the 'real you' to get money even if you are in the sim being predicted. edit: or of the fact that any robot control software that can handle two robot arms wired in parallel to 1 robot controller, can handle the same if its 2 robot controllers running identical code, same with time delay, etc. Pure magic: it's a whole new decision theory without any code change. Typically the case with philosophy. Dmytry (talk) 15:58, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

LOL. Another case of someone who didn't do the homework and rails against the academic establishment because he couldn't be arsed to read the literature. Just like the on-going PR blitz by Richard "I read some denialist blogs and then spent hundreds of thousands of dollars duplicating intro climate science" Muller. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:00, 31 July 2012 (UTC)