site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4031 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 10, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

INTUITION ESSAY CONTEST FINAL CALL

My Intuition Essay contest, in which a poll will be set up on Sunday to choose among the entrants who will get to pick the charity for the $200 donation, is drawing to a close. Any other submissions made today, 2/10, will be accepted and included in voting Sunday. Right now I count four (4) submissions, all of which were kind enough to note directly that they were entering:

@TheDag entered Intuition in a Scientific Age

@f3zinker entered A Case For/Against Education, Intuition

@felipec entered My Intuition About Intuition

and, last but not least,

@Pitt19082 entered This Untitled Piece Comparing Statistical and Intuitive Approaches in Baseball and Politics

If I missed any appropriate posts, please link them below and I will add them to the list and the ultimate voting. ANY EFFORTPOST ABOUT INTUITION, EVEN IF IT WAS NOT WRITTEN TO BE INCLUDED IN THE COMPETITION IS ELIGIBLE. As long as it was written between my original post and the end of the day today, it can be included in the ultimate voting. I looked through the CW threads for the appropriate period, and found nothing else which made sense to include, but feel free to point out anything I might have missed.

I explicitly abstain from the contest (and time's up anyway), but if anyone cares here's my take in the same vein.

I want to prompt all the contestants: @TheDag, @f3zinker, @felipec, and @Pitt19802.

Did you find the topic difficult to write about?

I think people judging our essays might be very quick to criticize and say: why didn't the writer mention X? how didn't the writer connect Y with Z? (it's obvious)

I think the readers might not be aware of the vast idea space that can be explored. It takes time to explore a branch, and as you do you realize there's many more branches that can be explored that probably would take even longer time. And if you do take the time to explore other branches, you realize that the first branch you explored was not as important as you initially thought, and might not even be worth mentioning (there's plenty of examples I ended up not mentioning).

This is particularly worse if you've never written about the topic (as I), and then of course the time limit doesn't help (although without it I probably would have delayed the work even more than I did).

It's very easy to criticize, but I think only the people that actually sat down and tried to write about the topic would understand why a particular try might not have turned out to be as fruitful as many readers would hope, but it's still worthy of praise. Also, the end result might not necessarily be a reflection of your thoughts on the subject, which are probably evolving as we speak (the very next day I had yet another insight that I feel should be worthy of writing about).

Yes I have mentioned before, its a difficult prompt. Especially if its not something you ever thought about before, like me.

There is also the onerous constraint of making it an effort post that the motte in particular will like. I can go on all day about various intuitions and their nitty gritty details and nuaces about my hobbies of choice, but that wouldnt suffice.

I do wish more people participated. There would have been more (definitelt better than mine) submissions to read and as you mentioned, more people realizing that its hard to write on command, and that might do some work against people thinking they are better writers than they are because they only write about what they like writing about.

Wanted to start off by saying I really enjoyed your submission. I think the model of intuition you laid out is largely one I agree with.

Yeah, I found it to be a difficult topic, which is ok.

I was mostly motivated to submit something because I really like the competition model.

I find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation pretty fascinating.

I really like the idea of scaling it down, both to try and shape a nascent internet community (does this internet community still count as nascent???) you're part of, and even just to generate insights into something that's just bothering you.

I really like it conceptually, so I felt like I should submit something, if nothing else, to support it as a model of something I think we should get more of.

I'm not sure I had any particularly fantastic insight into the topic, certainly none I would have thought to share if FiveHourMarathon had posted 'hey, how do you think intuition works?' in a Small-Scale question thread or something. (Reading over the posts, I think this is somewhat reflected in that my submission seems to do the worst job of staying on the topic).

I think that's sort of what makes the competition model cool though. If nothing else, its a way to break people out of their shells. If there's a particular topic you want to mine the board expertise about, this seems like a good model.

I like it enough that I think I might found a 2nd competition on a different question.

If people have any thoughts about shaping the competition in a way that works well, I'd be interested in that. This topic was pretty broad, would a narrower topic work better?

"I think people judging our essays might be very quick to criticize and say: why didn't the writer mention X? how didn't the writer connect Y with Z? (it's obvious)"

Again, I enjoyed yours quite a bit.

Not sure writing generates these sorts of responses unless its good enough to be engaged with. I would take any such response as a perverse form of flattery.

"then of course the time limit doesn't help (although without it I probably would have delayed the work even more than I did)."

I'll just speak for myself as someone who submitted the final, without the deadline, I wouldn't have gotten around to generating a submission.

"the end result might not necessarily be a reflection of your thoughts on the subject, which are probably evolving as we speak (the very next day I had yet another insight that I feel should be worthy of writing about)."

fwiw, I had the same experience, if anything, I think that's one of the real values of getting it out of my head and into the real world, thoughts that are sort of 80% formed, you can keep 80% formed for a long time in your head, exposing them to light forces them to evolve.

I found it difficult, but mainly because I’m at a very busy point in my career and didn’t have as much time to research as I’d like. It’s definitely a topic I plan to come back to.

I want to come back to it as well. I didn't research anything at all, I just thought about it a lot. But doing a bit of research afterwards I've found some resources of interest for people who want to explore the topic more.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats