candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

Clear Communication is Important

Some people say “greens aren’t actually more intelligent on average” and they mean it literally. They are saying they do not believe the existing research, and think that, according to the common definition of intelligence (both in academic settings and general conversation), greens are not more intelligent than other castes.

Some people say “greens aren’t actually more intelligent on average” and they mean “we should define intelligence differently”. They have many different preferred definitions, which typically bare little resemblance to how the word intelligence is used. When pressed, they will often agree that greens are better at the skills an IQ test is testing for, but they think ‘intelligence’ should refer to something else.

Some people say “greens aren’t actually more intelligent on average” and they mean “I feel like people don’t take me seriously on [topic], and I feel like they would if I were green”. This meaning has nothing at all to do with what skills greens do or do not have.

Some people say “greens aren’t actually more intelligent on average” and they mean “greens have to much social capital/ability to influence policy/money/percentage of the vote/other useful thing”. This group will sometimes overlap with the first or second group, but sometimes they will agree with the common definition of intelligence and agree that greens have more of that skill on average. They in fact believe the exact opposite of what their initial claim would imply, and are using it as a political slogan to represent their actual beliefs, typical “greens should have less power than I think they currently do”.

These are not useful ways to communicate. The person you’re talking to does not know which of these you mean. If people consistently meant just one of these, it would be manageable. But we can’t just assume that people mean something else, because there are multiple non-literal meanings that people often use. If you care at all about communicating with other people, or about ever convincing anyone who disagrees with you, say what you actually mean.

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

Things I Believe About Intelligence (an Incomplete List):

On average, green people are more intelligent than non-green people.

There exist members of every caste as smart as the average green person.

Intelligence is not the only trait that matters, and there are members of all castes who make valuable contributions to society.

Ideas should be judged on their merits, not merely the IQ of the person proposing them. 

On average, intelligent people are more likely to produce good yet novel ideas.

Everyone, regardless of caste or intelligence, should be prepared to support their assertions with reason and evidence.

All people, even stupid people, have valuable lives.

#amenta RP

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

IQ is a lie made up by greens so they can pretend their smarter u just wanna feel special dont u

wow, you caught us out! 

in other news, did you know that we only have one moon? the second was invented by astronomers to cover up an embarrassing mistake in someone’s calculations back before there were reliable telescopes, and we’ve just been faking it ever since 

#Amenta RP

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

The credits thing is probably a complaint about the inflated green credit numbers (and corresponding subsidies) from the Planets! gamble.

Claims about green intelligence are what underpin green votes, green credits, and green influence in policy decisions. All those things come at the expense of other castes, so it shouldn't really be a surprise when they challenge us on it.

Okay, but this is dumb. There are lots of good reason to oppose vote-weighting, just not “greens aren’t actually more intelligent than non-greens.” Because that’s false. 

My favorite argument is that there are diminishing returns on intelligence in the realm of political decision-making. It’s not quantum mechanics; it doesn’t really matter if your IQ is 120 or 180. After a certain point (and I think that point is well below the green average), things like being well-informed and epistemically disciplined are much more important. Pushing against the idea of green intelligence might be understandable but it isn’t strategic; to the people in charge, it just looks like non-greens don’t care about evidence when really that’s mostly not true. 

Green political influence is more complicated, since it’s mostly in the form of recommendations by green researchers coming to conclusions about the effects of various social policies. Yellows as a caste have a lot more direct political influence than we do. We can’t directly work in politics. So, such as green influence is - I’m actually totally fine with it? It’s important that policy decisions are connected to reality, and gathering data about how things work in the world is generally a green job. It’s not like greens are a powerful special interest group lobbying for policies that hurt other castes. Finding out how policies that effect everyone really work happens to be a green job. 

(I’m not really sure what the issue with green credits is? I mean - yes, all credits are zero sum? generally credits are issued in the expectation that children will have traits that are beneficial for their castes? What’s the point here?) 

#Amenta RP

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

The thing is, physical strength is not (as far as I know) particularly correlated with strength of convictions. (Leaving aside the point where "strong convictions" is probably the very thing you don't want to favor in an electorate) IQ is correlated with things like ability to understand complex systems, tendency to plan for the long-term instead of the short-term, and other things that we want the electorate to have!

(And... "High caste?" Are caste hierarchies fashionable again? Or just arguing against them?)

Alright, let’s say we live in an au where grays are a high caste. One of the major justifications for this is, grays are strong. Grays are strong, goes the official line, so they get more votes than lower castes, because they’ll stand on what is right for our country and not be swayed by petty things that would sway others. Grays are strong, goes the unofficial line, so if you disagree with a gray clearly you’re wrong, because they’re the ones able to stand on what is truly important and defend it bravely.

And people getting attention to and fighting against and pissed off by all this inequality say ‘uh, stop saying that grays are stronger than everyone’. Meaning, ‘this voting inequality is shit’ and ‘just because a gray disagrees with me doesn’t mean I’m wrong’ and ‘uh people from all sorts of castes stand strong for important thing and plenty of grays support terrible ideas’. 

And get in response - but it’s factually true that grays are stronger than other people, look at these test results that say they can lift the most weight and run and swim the longest.

Of course, since we live in our world instead, people instead carefully specify that “grays are on average physically stronger” (emphasis mine).

So yeah, I don’t really have a quarrel with ‘greens on average can learn calculus easier and are better at quickly making a shape they just saw out of special blocks and are faster at following fake grammar rules someone just showed them, these test results support that‘ and I don’t particularly think that many people do.

That’s also completely not the point.

[context is things on in-a-narrow-land]

#Amenta RP #if a single green disagrees with you that doesn't mean anything #we are very disagreeable #if a lot of greens disagree with you on an academic matter you might just be wrong #(and everything we vote on is a hell of a lot closer to being an academic matter than it is to farming or retail)

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

For the belief meme, 'it is unethical for purples to submit fiction to professional markets'

Studies showing that the number of successful green authors (I don’t have a precise metric of success in mind, but it’s approximately at the level of “has at least one child by the age of 20, at least half the credit cost of which was paid for by the author through authorial income”) is not impacted disproportionately to the number of similarly successful purple authors.

This is the sort of evidence that I am looking for because my concern is that non-green hobbyist authors are using up some of the supply of effectively entry-level publishing opportunities, which prevents some authorially-inclined greens from gaining needed experience.

As an alternate form of “evidence”, you could present me with a recently passed Council decision planning to lower the number of green credits to an actually sustainable value, which would really suck but if that happened I would have fewer ethical objections to non-greens doing OOC green work up to the normal income cap.

#Amenta RP #Anonymous

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

meme: Old Rivikni is not the most interesting thing anyone could possibly learn about!!

Oh, hi there Old Rivikni anon.

If Calla or Afen or some respected linguist (please don’t immediately go bother any of them about this) sincerely told me there was a consensus among linguists that Old Rivikni was far and away the most interesting language to study, I might start studying it. If I then found it the most interesting thing one could possibly learn about I would believe it were the most interesting thing one could possibly learn about.

#Amenta RP #Anonymous

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

meme thing: killing reds is bad

There are two obvious approaches to convincing me I’m wrong about this. The harder one is to prove that reds aren’t moral patients. This requires either first solving the hard problem of consciousness or simply proving that red intelligence is universally highly subamentan (In the latter case, you would need enough evidence to overcome the fact that they have more-or-less identical brains to clean Amentans and most of the same behaviours modulo different environments)

The other approach would be to demonstrate that red lives are not worth living, and are in fact sufficiently subjectively terrible to the reds that killing them is merciful. (And if you are talking about individual reds rather than killing all reds worldwide, their suffering needs to be greater than the additional suffering you would be inflicting on other reds by murdering their friends and family) To demonstrate this, you would need testimony from reds that they would prefer not to exist, and evidence that these reds are a representative sample in experience if not in viewpoint. (Most people have a self-preservation instinct that might override a rational decision about whether or not existing is better than nonexistence)

Further asks in this vein will be ignored.

#Amenta RP #murder cw #reds cw #suicide cw #Anonymous

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

@greenest-memes

new ask meme: send me a belief of mine and I’ll tell you what evidence i’d need to change the belief

ok to reblog even if you aren’t green

also if y'all keep spamming me with messages about anitami folks i’ve never heard of i’ll be a lot less likely to do these memes in the future

#sure why not #amenta RP

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

i have no idea how anyone outside of anitam heard about aitim neli but there's a market for bad movies with hot people in them everywhere and telkam tis is a /very/ good example of the type

I have ever seen a Telkam Tis movie, yes. I am surprised they have the international appeal that they seem to. (I guess nobody’s watching for the dialog, so machine-translated subtitles are probably fine but still.)

#Amenta RP #I *did* say Telkam makes the top of my list #Anonymous

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

It’s kinda weird to be seeing a bunch of foreigners arguing over which of Afen’s kids is the hottest.

Like, Makel stans I expected, but how did they even hear about the others?

#The answer is obviously Telkam but only in spring #Amenta RP

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

Luckily for me, they export it!

I’ve been thinking of taking a bit of a vacation the next time Calla has some time off, anyone have recommendations for places that are nice this time of year?

#amenta RP #murder cw

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

you wouldn't want to live in yvalta but the climate's gorgeous

Oh, that’s a great suggestion! Thanks! I don’t know much about yvalta, do you have any particular spots to recommend? Cities with Mountains and History are good.

#Amenta RP #Anonymous

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

I’ll pass, thanks. I don’t share your gross hobbies.

I’ve been thinking of taking a bit of a vacation the next time Calla has some time off, anyone have recommendations for places that are nice this time of year?

#even leaving aside our ethical disagreements #I don't understand why anyone would *want* to go into a red district #murder cw #amenta RP

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

No.

I’ve been thinking of taking a bit of a vacation the next time Calla has some time off, anyone have recommendations for places that are nice this time of year?

#amenta rp

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

I’ve been thinking of taking a bit of a vacation the next time Calla has some time off, anyone have recommendations for places that are nice this time of year?

#Amenta RP

[candle-in-a-coal-mine-blog]

This isn’t some principled conflict between “people who care about eugenics” and “people who care about happiness,” it’s a debate among those who care about both about where exactly to make the unfortunately necessary trade-offs between the two

If you only cared about alleviating present-day empty spring suffering and didn’t care about eugenics at all the system you get is not the Voan system. The system that minimizes the pain of empty springs gives people a number of children proportionate to how bad their springs are.

#Amenta RP #arrest all tumblr blues