promethea.incorporated

hill-climber asked: Have the bonobo rationalists always been "bonobo-y", or did it mostly start only after you met each other?

2centjubilee:

ozymandias271:

I definitely have always been bonobo-y, but I don’t know about other people.

I was raised into this degeneracy, more or less.

I was assigned prude at birth but discovered that in reality I’m quite bonobo-y when I found out that bonobo-yness exists. That discovery was made on LW though.

2 months ago · 19 notes · source: ozymandias271 · .permalink

osberend:

ozymandias271:

ilzolende:

osberend:

ilzolende said:

If publicly making requests like this is normalized, pretty people will have to deal with more of said requests (and they already don’t seem to like the attention they get) and ugly people will have another thing reminding them of it. I see few advantages.

What about liberty? Lack of repression? Mutually beneficial and commensal interactions occurring that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise?

I have little to no sympathy for pretty people who “have to deal with” saying “nah, not feelin’ it” (or just “no,” or even nothing at all while simply walking away) from time to time.

I also am not terribly sympathetic toward people (ugly or otherwise) who prioritize purely positional goods over absolute ones, which is how I see “given that I’m rarely or never going to be asked to show my bits, I’d prefer that no one be asked to show their bits.” Especially since it seems to me that even the vast majority of conventionally unattractive people would benefit from such a norm in an absolute sense, since there are not very many people who aren’t attractive to anyone, and a system that cuts out the unnecessary social dance crap between finding someone attractive and asking to see them naked can only increase the ease of people with unusual features and people with unusual tastes finding each other.

It is my (potentially false) belief that few people would enjoy having complete strangers express an interest in viewing their bodies. Given that I’ve heard many people complain about it and no people express appreciation for it (even in private channels), as well as the fact that I don’t model myself as appreciating it (given that I am annoyed by being stuck in environments with music with sexual lyrics), I have nonzero evidence for this belief.

I therefore think people on average appreciate the ability to not have to listen to those kinds of requests without explicitly stating permission for people to make those requests more than they would appreciate the ability to make those requests to people who hadn’t explicitly opted in and not face social consequences for doing so.

The unnecessary social dance crap is a huge part of the attraction process for many people (mostly but not solely women). Charm, intelligence, kindness, wit, social savvy, etc. are for many people more important than appearance, even for casual sex. There’s a reason there’s no such thing as a straight bathhouse. 

Furthermore, AFAICT most people who aren’t at serious risk of involuntary celibacy like the social dance stuff, and may even postpone the sex so the social dance stuff goes on longer.

Possibly relevant clarification: When I say “the unnecessary social dance crap,” I’m not necessarily talking about everything that intervenes between finding someone attractive in a purely physical sense and actually successfully seeing them (partially or fully) naked. I’m talking about everything that intervenes between forming a desire to see someone naked, whether based on solely on appearance or not[1], and it being considered socially acceptable to ask to see them naked. In addition to “hell yeah,” “sure, why not,” and “nah,” I’m perfectly happy to see “not at this time, but perhaps in the future; I have criteria for that which I don’t yet know whether you meet” normalized as a response to an also normalized “hey, can I see your tits/chest/ass/dick/pussy/feet/armpits/etc.?”

Hell, someone who actually likes the whole ridiculous guessing game business is perfectly free to add “and it’s up to you to figure out what they are; no points for asking explicitly.” (Or, for that matter, to say instead “Sorry, the answer right now is no, and that means it will always be no, since not asking before being certain of a yes is one of my criteria for a yes.” That’s frankly idiotic, in my view, but people are free to have idiotic preferences.) And I’m free, along with anyone else of similar tastes and/or capacities, to add them to our respective “Hot? Yes. Worth pursuing? Oh, hell no!” lists. Hooray for freedom.

What I’m against is the existence of norms, especially but not exclusively norms enforced by government tyranny, which label it “harassment” or otherwise fundamentally unacceptable to make the request without first satisfying an extensive and ill-defined list of criteria. That’s not merely inefficient, although it certainly is that; it’s fundamentally unjust.

[1] I certainly find intelligence, kindness, and wit attractive myself. “Social savvy,” as most people would define it, not so much.

I am not terribly sympathetic to people wishing to push the costs of social interaction entirely onto me with no way to avoid it. Being bombarded by requests for my whatever when I am not interested in showing my whatever to the kind of people who would most significantly increase their requests for my whatever is basically the interpersonal equivalent of spam, except that I can’t filter or block meatspace people, and that is highly suboptimal. This set of claims is completely ignoring the fact that receiving an unwanted request for whatever does cause negative utility to me, and therefore I shall obviously try to filter out the kinds of whatever-requests that are the most likely to fall within the category of “unwanted”.

Just for the information of everyone, promethea’s whatever policy is that promethea is a mean-ass enbie who is the only one who gets to have an opinion on whether someone’s whatever request is okay or not, after the request has been made, and only people who are okay with that policy should request whatever. I will also exercise my freedom of association by preferentially associating with people who abide by this standard. Your right to request whatevers ends where my eardrums and/or inbox begin. I do not consent to whatever requests that do not comply with this standard, and this declaration shall be construed as pre-emptively asking people to stop requesting whatevers for the purposes of determining whether someone keeps requesting whatevers despite getting a “no” as an answer and is therefore a harasser.

I would also like to know what symbol I should wear in public places to signal this policy, as surely this lovely freedom includes the freedom to opt out, no? Surely this lovely freedom includes the freedom to disassociate from people who will not honor my asking them not to ask for whatevers unless they are willing to be subjected to my judgment according to my “extensive and ill-defined list of criteria”?

Besides, it’s not like my criteria are vague or anything; the criteria for being allowed to ask for whatevers without risking the possible consequences are “has promethea explicitly and unambiguously expressed that you are allowed to ask for whatevers?”. This is a very well-defined criterion which shouldn’t be too hard to follow. Of course, not everyone who requests whatevers without fulfilling the criteria gets scorned, but they will be expected to accept the possibility and judge their position in the unnecessary social dance crap accurately enough if they wish to get an exception to the otherwise whitelist-only criteria for not being scorned.

If this policy is somehow terribly unjust, I’d really like to know how, why, and where.

In addition, considering that most people are likely to prefer a policy somewhat more similar to mine than yours, I’d like to know why people who prefer my policy should be the ones who need to signal it, instead of people who don’t have such a policy because the latter certainly seems more efficient. I am definitely in favor of people getting to set their own policies because a ‘one size fits nobody’ approach doesn’t work, and surely you aren’t implying that everyone should be forced to follow your preferred policy? After all, my mailbox has a “no advertising” sign on it that advertisers are expected to respect and not being allowed to stuff their messages into my non-consenting mailbox isn’t considered a violation of the advertisers’ freedom of speech, and my physical existence as a person who has a whatever and who is unable to not be perceived as being in possession of a whatever and who therefore needs to find a different solution to the problem of the deadweight loss incurred by people requesting whatevers despite promethea not wanting to be requested for whatevers, than stopping being a whatever-possessor, is a far more significant question than physical junk mail.

Please send your unsolicited whatever-requests only to people who do not have this kind of a policy. Assuming that anyone who wishes to interact with anybody must be okay with arbitrary requests for whatever from said anybody is liable to dis-occur far more mutually beneficial and commensal interactions than classifying requests for whatever as a different interaction from most of them and therefore subject to different default protocols.

2 months ago · 37 notes · source: osberend · .permalink

Does anyone know how to reply to replies? It’s kind of awkward to do it this way, but I don’t know a convenient alternative.

@ozymandias271: obviously Better involves emotional labor in many cases (just like the competitors), but the tagging and filtering and adaptive learning works every way. If you want a driver who just shuts up and drives, you can be matched to one! The tags help, so looking for “no-nonsense” drivers (or something like that) and selecting personal matches with those who don’t behave annoyingly helps get a better experience. I’ve heard they are trying to figure out how to do the initial learning faster; they can’t exactly give an okcupidful of personal preferences in the short info blurb, but at least after some time the experience does get really customized when the algorithms figure things out (what they did add in the last patch was a sociableness level for the preferences and that one seems to be a pretty big deal). I know there’s a problem if the demand for emotional labor outstrips the supply but I don’t really know how they could fix that one.

2 months ago · 1 note · .permalink

The Better Ridesharing Platform

I select my destination and let Better’s autobidder do the rest based on my profile; moderate price, prioritize good service over a fancy car, no need for accessibility, adventurous matching. The airport is a bit far away and a lot of people are going that way so I bump my willingness to pool from my usual ‘medium’ to ‘high’.

Most drivers just let the autobidder match them with riders who seem to be good fits, but if someone has custom bidding (or their autopicker can’t decide) they’d see something like “Promethea, 4.1 stars; tagged: ‘quiet’, ‘polite’; Embarcadero to SFO; pooling: high” and then Better’s suggested price (according to their own specifications, as everything in the platform aims to individualize the service instead of turning drivers into a standardized homogenous product) which they can adjust up or down as they wish, or skip sending an offer altogether.

After a short while the bids start pouring in. I’m pleased to see that Better’s campaign for providing free ADA compliance certification for eligible drivers has been paying off; there are way more accessibility symbols among the offers than six months ago. Most of the offers are the standard stuff, but one catches my eye. Zoe, 4.1 stars service and 4.3 car, with blue hair, tagged as ‘quirky’ and driving a Tesla model 3. Her price is way above what I was planning to pay, but people with similar preferences to mine have liked her a lot, and the adventurous matching likes giving experimental offers. (She’s also got an electricity symbol showing that her car doesn’t guzzle gas, and Better lets people filter or prioritize on all kinds of things.)

However, I don’t choose her offer, I just click “interested” which lets the system know that I’d like to receive a bid from her again even though I didn’t take it this time (I’d like to try a bit shorter and cheaper route for that), because Vijay, one of my favorites just sent his offer. He’s an immigrant with a really thick accent, a 3.1 car, true, and 3.7 service, which shows that people have no taste because I’ve never rated him anything but a 5. Better knows it, and recommends matches it knows (or predicts, based on how people who rate similarly to me have rated) to be better than average. He’s talkative but not in an awkward way, and his prices are really affordable even after including a big tip. Of course, he can still make ends meet easily because the city finally got its head out of its arse in 2017 and started a massive upzoning effort to make affordable housing possible.

Oh, and he’d be arriving to pick me up in 9 minutes. The car is a solid 3; nothing fancy and nothing I’d recognize or remember, but it is clean, works well enough and has passed the safety checks. Better has partnered with financing companies and car manufacturers to help people buy their own vehicles without any devious traps in the terms and conditions, and it also allows companies to offer rides so people who don’t have a car can still work as employees (but I’m filtering those out because I prefer a marketplace of independent workers). The price levels mean that the same platform can serve practically anybody; the experience of someone willing to pay $$$$ for a fancy car and premium service is totally different from mine ($$), not to mention the budget riders who get even cheaper ones ($), but they are still fundamentally a part of a single system, and the flexibility of the algorithms prevents excessive segregation (Zoe seemed to be more like a $$$-level driver and if I upped my price range I’d see more people like her and less working-class immigrants; as it is Better only tries to match me with expensive people it thinks I’d really like and I’m fine with that), and obviously the initial price calibrations are just rough suggestions and the system adapts over time; my idea of what “$$” means might be completely different from someone else’s and Better has a lot of data processing going on to figure out what my actual sweet spot in pricing is.

Along the way we make a small detour to collect another rider or two (again prioritizing those who seem like potential personal matches), pushing the price down for all of us (but also bumping his total earnings up a bit), and we arrive at the airport without issues. Vijay mentions how Better’s (voluntary, as always) savings plan and insurance (basic insurance is mandatory, more extensive coverage with greater risk-pooling is elective) helped him take some sick leave when he needed it, and he’s expecting to even have a pension eventually (I didn’t bother trying to explain why I don’t believe in pensions, but if the world were to grind into a halt tomorrow and nothing significant were to ever change again he could totally stop working one day and not end up destitute; of course he can always withdraw the saved money for augmentations and other cool non-pensiony stuff).

The payment is taken automatically, but I’m given the option of adding a tip. Better doesn’t expect people to tip routinely, just to reward exceptional service and I’m always happy to follow that rule. The standard 20% fee is taken from the base price, plus the fraction of the tip that corresponds to my mean tipping percentage; I usually don’t add anything so the $10 tip pays him $9.80 after fees (if someone were to tip all the drivers every time, fees would catch the “evasion attempt”; of course they don’t say it out loud that way but I recognize what they’re doing). I see no reason to deviate from the standard rating of 5/3, but I’ve stopped spamming the “personal match” button because after a few times it doesn’t really matter anymore. Better knows we get along, and its ingenious manipulation (rumors say they have several psychology experts just working on all the small ways to nudge things unnoticedly) to turn rides into something much more personal than just a financial transaction with yet another identical might-as-well-be-faceless drone is working flawlessly.

Of course the slogans about a ‘social economy’ or whatever are kind of embarrassing to a cynical asshole like me, but they are creating value that way and the employee ownership plan is pretty smart. As a customer I don’t get shares in the company, but I do get bonuses that turn into discounts if I keep my ratings high enough (although even the drivers’ ability to choose freely on the market makes the unpleasant assholes pay an arm and a leg, wait forever, or switch services, and good riddance I say). Of course, it also ties people to Better to keep them loyal but if they keep up their act I don’t really mind. I just wonder why it took so long for the idea to actually realize properly.

2 months ago · tagged #win-win is my superpower #seriously this shouldn't be too hard to make #so why are we stuck with bullshit like uber #somebody steal this idea #ideas are cheap #implementation matters #somebody implement this idea #i can't fork myself to do everything YGM so others pick up the slack pls · 47 notes · .permalink

Anonymous asked: Ozy on immigration: "I think we should take a gradualist approach and try loosening our borders before completely opening them." Ozy on transgender rights "I WANT MY PUBLICLY FUNDED HORMONES AND GENDER NEUTRAL BATHROOMS AND SOCIALLY SANCTIONED GENDER NEUTRAL PRONOUNS AND I WANT THEM NOW."

ozymandias271:

I mean, you can also find me saying “OPEN BORDERS NOW”, like, there is a difference between the policy I advocate on Tumblr and the policy I would support were I to become dictator

were I to become dictator, I would support selecting one state to be the test case for gender-neutral bathrooms and publicly funded hormones. I am not actually sure how you could do anything other than a gradual rollout of socially sanctioned gender-neutral pronouns

If we only had a country with publicly funded hormones (after obscene and inhumane gatekeeping tho, and where informed consent is actually ILLEGAL), and a language which is in fact incapable of ever having gendered pronouns, so we could see whether it has collapsed into a post-apocalyptic hellscape or not. If only there was such a place.

2 months ago · tagged #sometimes i need a euro pride tag · 14 notes · source: ozymandias271 · .permalink

Anonymous asked: Nothing against multiheaded as a person, glad she's getting some help, but from an EA perspective, how does "funding one particular individual's move out of Russia" hold up as an efficient use of funds? I feel like a dick writing that, but a lot of EA writing is along the lines of "deworming has a much higher DALYs-to-Dollars ratio than helping a fellow church congregant avoid defaulting on her mortgage." Should I just see helping friends like multiheaded as being more like personal consumption?

ozymandias271:

I was going to write up a long explanation of this but fortunately someone already did and instead I will merely remark on the fact that I never get these anons when I say that I spent six hundred dollars on wedding cake.

Also, Russia is a very unhealthy place for some kinds of particular individuals. The ALYs of getting relocated are much higher than those of avoiding defaulting. While EA is definitely very efficient in aggregate, even economists pick up hundred dollar bills lying on the street, and rare opportunities can be significantly more efficient than common ones. In this specific case I find it utterly plausible that helping multiheaded wouldn’t be an order of magnitude less efficient from an impersonal perspective than the best interventions (I wouldn’t have been willing to include that part otherwise). I have insider information, trust me.

2 months ago · 38 notes · source: ozymandias271 · .permalink

h3lldalg0:

theunitofcaring:

i’m just so happy like - the GiveDirectly people have a really impressive track record in terms of turning money into results, being super transparent, publishing literally all of the data they collect on their website for people to look at….they even do stuff like randomly sample the population they serve for the stories they put up on their website, instead of trawling for the most inspirational ones

they preregister their studies

my sacred values are autonomy and empiricism and GiveDirectly is so deeply committed to both of them

if universal basic income works, this is how we’ll know. if it doesn’t, this is how we’ll figure out why. 

This makes me incredibly happy.  :D

In which promethea fanbies GiveDirectly even harder

(via metagorgon)

2 months ago · tagged #promethea's empiricism fetish #nothing to add but tags · 161 notes · source: theunitofcaring · .permalink

Nothing to hide

grugq:

The statement “I’ve nothing to hide” is a clear and simple statement of privilege. It says that one is currently totally in line with existing culture power structures, that one is not a minority, or marginalized, or being sought by security forces. Privileged individuals who have no fear of persecution by cultural power structures are usually content to conduct their affairs in the open. These people have a moral obligation to use their privilege to help those who’re marginalized and in the minority, use secure services, encryption and so on to provide cover traffic for the rest.

(via thetransintransgenic)

2 months ago · 131 notes · source: grugq · .permalink