Search Ideas
2199 ideas match your query.:
No need for new tabs. This feature could be integrated with the search page by filtering ideas by user. That page already has filters for problematic vs unproblematic ideas.
As I wrote in #4051, it doesn’t matter to me whether replication is necessary for evolution to take place. I’m open to the idea that it isn’t. But what I’d like instead is some argument why it couldn’t figure in the evolution that happens in the mind.
3) From what I’ve seen, the attempt to remove replication from evolution doesn’t actually remove it.
If you take some string of information and vary it, then by definition, only parts of it become different. Other parts are preserved. Even if you vary the string several times, the parts that didn’t change were still instantiated at each stage. So they still replicated. (As I recall, this is how Richard Dawkins defines what a gene is, in his book The Selfish Gene.)
Also, just by thinking about the string of information and how to vary it, you’ve already replicated the information. It now exists in its original medium and in your mind.
2) We can explain more if we use replicators. For example, memory and the origin of creativity just ‘fall out’ of the neo-Darwinian approach. Ideas in a single mind may have static vs dynamic replication strategies. All of that is lost without the notion of replication.
My response has always been that I don’t care whether replication is a necessary component of evolution, but that, 1), in the Popperian spirit, we shouldn’t break with other evolutionary theories unnecessarily. Genes and memes both replicate.
My neo-Darwinian approach to the mind suggests that minds evolve knowledge through the imperfect replication of ideas.
Ah, but I can reproduce when I manually make the selection by clicking and dragging to cover the entire quote (and only the quote, nothing above or below).
There’s a way to get what you want: if you select some text in an idea before hitting its criticize or comment button, the selected text should always be inserted as a box quote.
Archiving this criticism for now, but if you’re still seeing any issues, let me know and I’ll take another look.
When you copy text for an inline quote, you wouldn’t want the box-quote formatting.
Done as of 19009b2. Discussions now have a link to search ideas, which points to the search page with that discussion already preselected in a new discussion dropdown.
The distinction is where the knowledge for performing the replication is physically located.
Replication is: an entity in an environment being recreated or copied because of the environment (which can include the entity, as in the case of self-replication). The general case.
Self-replication is the special case of replication where: an entity is replicated as caused by aspects of itself alone. The knowledge for its replication is within it.
What is the distinction between replication and self-replication?
What is the distinction between replication and self-replication? Does anything "truly" self-replicate?
There is now a dedicated discussion on the topic of hard to vary. So I’m archiving this idea. But feel free to continue there.
Tyler recently wrote to me, in the context of a question he wanted to figure out, “would be good to Veritula this.” Cool seeing ‘Veritula’ used as a verb.
I have found myself using this term naturally, as in ‘starting a thread on Veritula’. I believe I’ve heard others say this, too.
Valid. As of c310cbb, the most recent parent is shown above the idea you’re editing.
I spoke to soon. Rolling this back for now. Too jittery when scrolling on mobile. Non-trivial to implement. Need to see how other sites do it.
The diff view can’t handle the removal/replacement of entire code blocks yet. The removed block looks broken, the new block doesn’t show at all. See activity 3207 in dev.
Would be nice if the copy button was sticky-top so that it scrolled with the user.
Just as nations can have different forms of governance, minds can too.
For example: Most probably have that CEO-sense of self.
Some minds with one coercive memeplex are more like dictatorships.
People with "smaller egos" (less anti-rational memes) are more like libertarian societies.
But people with set preferences for less self are more like communist societies. That's a kind of coerced decentralisation.
Split personalities would be akin to a highly polarised society that switches governance back and forth.
Summary
Ayn Rand says one important part of living rationally in an irrational society is to pronounce judgment.
In short, if someone attacks your values, say something! Especially if silence could be mistaken as sanction of evil.
If you don’t pronounce judgment, both good and evil know they can’t expect anything from you. So by default, silence favors evil and betrays good. There’s no such thing as moral neutrality or ‘grayness’.
To pronounce judgment, you don’t need to be omniscient or infallible. But you do need integrity.
Many people are afraid of being judged. They like to say “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” They hope to get a moral blank check by writing one for others.
But the reality is that people have to make choices. To make choices, they need moral values. So moral neutrality hurts their ability to make choices. It’s also a slippery slope toward evasions. When people are morally ‘gray’, they say things like ‘no one is fully good or fully bad.’ That just helps evil along.
The moral principle people should adopt instead is: “Judge, and be prepared to be judged.”
Judging means “evaluat[ing] a given concrete by reference to an abstract principle or standard.” It’s not easy and you can’t do it automatically through feelings. It requires deliberate, rational thought. It must be well-reasoned and can’t be arbitrary.
Judging does not mean going around offering your opinion unsolicited or saving others. It does mean two things: “(a) that one must know clearly, in full, verbally identified form, one’s own moral evaluation of every person, issue and event with which one deals, and act accordingly; (b) that one must make one’s moral evaluation known to others, when it is rationally appropriate to do so.”
Sometimes you can just say you disagree, other times you may need to state your views more fully. It depends on your interlocutor and on context.
Pronouncing judgment protects the clarity of your thoughts against society’s irrational background.
Ultimately, society is run either by “the man who is willing to assume the responsibility of asserting rational values” or by “the thug who is not troubled by questions of responsibility.”
So speak out when someone attacks your values.