wonkaWonka

He's trolling. It's a useless tangential argument about something that does not affect intended conveyance.

He may be forum sliding, creating crufty noise, to dilute communication.

The title is:

  The Lovers & The Despot

Not:

  Lovers and Despot movies

In what way should that change my reaction?

What's your reason for believing it should?

I'm asking these questions rhetorically.

  ...if caffeine were a new drug, I wonder what 
  Schedule it would be in and if people might 
  be even more leery of it than modafinil.

  ...

  So I eventually got around to ordering another 
  thing of nicotine gum...

  A second dose was similar, and the third dose 
  was at 10 PM before playing Ninja Gaiden II 
  seemed to stop the usual exhaustion I feel after 
  playing through a level or so.

Okay, I'm no longer part of the gwern fanclub. I could pick apart other aspects of this article, but I'll refrain, since it's not without a modicum of practical utility.

Yes, he writes very lengthy, detailed articles. Lovely. But they are anecdotes. And artisanal anecdotes at best.

To summarize gwern: A layman tries some stuff that is innately accessible to any layman, and writes haughtily aloof essays.

The premise of the experiment is akin to considering whether or not people are prone to being swindled by a three card monte con-game.

The premise of the example only demonstrates a susceptibility to a situation where the individual is not expecting to be judged based on technicalities.

Technically, in a three card monte game, on the street, you have no assurance that the dealer is operating the deck with integrity. Technically, on the street, you have no assurance that other players are not collaborating with the dealer.

Does this prove that humans are often innately irrational? Maybe insofar as any other parlour trick does.

The claim that a bystander should know that their own capacity for estimation of the likelihood that Linda's occupation may be bank teller shall be poor, is masked, in terms of relevance to the rest of the context of the presented scenario. A bystander's estimation of feminist alignment is anticipated and intended.

When the bystander chooses option (B), an assertion that they have no insight into whether Linda was a banker or not, suddenly becomes the defining aspect of the test.

So now we've proven that given an unexpected context, a bystander is surprised by a sudden ambush within that context.

While such nuances may be interesting on a much grander scale, in most cases, the experiment is not framed that way, as a design to misdirect the individual, and certainly, the authors of this op-ed article make the same mistake in pointing at the idea that a bystander should be expected to know that they have no way of knowing whether or not Linda might be a bank teller.

The article presents the following experimental premise:

  “Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken 
   and very bright. She majored in philosophy. 
   As a student, she was deeply concerned with 
   issues of discrimination and social justice, 
   and also participated in antinuclear 
   demonstrations.” 

  Then they asked the subjects which was more 
  probable: 

  (A) Linda is a bank teller 

  or 

  (B) Linda is a bank teller and 
      is active in the feminist 
      movement.

This example is bullshit, for several reasons.

We have several known personality attributes provided in the example, and all of them relate to the subjective opinions of an individual and are designed to provide belief in the potential for associations with similar political alignments.

Then we're provided with 2 choices, and each choice couples a previously unknown detail to the individual described, regarding occupation, with no opportunity to exclude the occupation.

We are asked to make an assumption about the individual, based on previously provided information, and guide the formation of our assumption with intuition.

According to The Letter Of The Law, the example asks the respondent to parse probability ONLY, and then penalizes according to the transitive property of equality, because technical interpretations of probability state that, when information has not been previously presented, an individual trait in isolation, is more probable, than a coupling of rare traits.

  Which one is more probable? Oh wait, you're 
  wrong because you misinterpreted our 
  context-sensitive definition of the word 
  "probable." You lose.

According to The Spirit Of The Law, the example appears to present the respondent with a set of details, and prompt the respondent with a request to parse the details and demonstrate a display of reading comprehension, such that they show they've observed the relevant details, and drawn a conclusion by associating multiple cultural norms of common political alignment.

  With the presentation of choice B, and
  based on other personal details about
  Linda, do you feel it likely that Linda 
  could be a feminist? Keep in mind that 
  we've offered clues to her political 
  alignment, and these may play a role 
  in the correct answer.

The example reads as:

  Given: [0, A, 2, C, 4]

  Is [E] likely?

  or

  Does [E, 6] make more sense?

But claims to present:

  Given: [0, A, 2, C, 4]

  Which is most probable?  

   > [$]

  or

   > [$, 99]

So, the example is an experiment in providing a loaded question, and then changing the context of expected interpretation, and then declaring proof that people are prone to misinterpretation.

The example is like asking someone if they were happy about who won The World Series, and then telling them you're not inviting them to a soccer game, because of their opinions on baseball.

The example the authors have provided is designed to promote assumptions, without providing adequate context for expectations, and that is fucking stupid.

Oh, so much better. Thank you jesus!

In other communities, to circumvent asinine ploys at lock-in, someone would just brute force the pdf file with a burner facebook login, and repost it. But then, you'd still be stuck with a pdf.

  The photos

   > A plugin is needed to display this content.

wat

So, translation is actually:

  blorp blorp! 

  money money! 

  blorp blorp! 

  feed me, seymour!

Yay! I feel reassured that everything is going smoothly, just as planned, and 10% growth as usual.

One could quickly argue that PR articles that skip the details, and make designs to produce the sensation of graphs that "go up and to the right," are a clear indicator that pleasing investors produces a bland gruel of profiteering corporations as ineffective at doing anything useful besides "making money," as is flatlander management, at providing direction to employees (read: millennials) who can't adjust to the sensation of not being subordinate to micro-managing overlords.

Dark patterns ask you to sit in a chair, without telling you that you can get paid to stand. (masking benefit without restricting access to the benefit; misdirection but without total erosion of trust)

This is about exploiting the exposure of unique identifiers (phone number mapped to email), and an interloping tattle-tale ratting out their correlation to the same owner.

It's something more akin to a Prisoner's Dilema, except people aren't cognizant that "They Are The Product" so no one thinks of themselves as prisoners ratting out conspirators.

At least it's supposed to be fiction.