Wondermark

I disagree - the truth should never be harmed because lies are dressed in fancy clothes and the truth is a madman running through the streets in rags.

I am totally fine with bad faith actors making ad hominem attacks since it weakens their argument, but responses made in good faith should keep it civil to not erode their own argument. By the way, I can sympathize with you somewhat as this can essentially lead to sealioning[1] and that is extremely common elsewhere on the internet. But with strong moderation and flagging mechanics that actually work quickly on HN obvious sealioning can be quickly called out and quashed. I understand that some folks get their jollies by making low effort arguments and forcing others to put thought and time into crafting a well formulated counter argument - this will happen on the internet and it can be depressing to realize it after the fact but I think it's still worth it to try and craft well structured[2] responses when you can.

I don't actually disagree with this statement:

> Falsehoods do not deserve equal footing to truth.

and if I were running a talk-show called Hacker News then I wouldn't invite on folks with obviously racist viewpoints, but this is an internet forum where we can't pre-emptively screen participants. So I'd argue it's less about putting falsehoods on equal footing to the truth and more about making sure the truth of the truth isn't eroded by it coming out of a poor mouthpiece that biases opinions against it.

If…

Frankly, intelligence is not very high on my list of attributes I value in people. Plenty of terrible people are intelligent. And although I'm not deeply versed on the collective works of Yarvin/Moldbug, I know enough from osmosis, and also that, a) dark enlightenment type discussions that I've witnessed on Reddit et al. over the past few years — which have seemingly morphed into today's alt-right — are downright nauseating in their toxicity, and b) "roleplaying" and/or "it was just a joke" is one of the most disingenuous and overused excuses on the internet today. I equally loathe Thiel's ideas, and he appears to be closely tied to the project. There's really not much wiggle room here, even if the tech is great.

Tribalism. Is something like GNU equally tribalistic, then? Are we not permitted to shape the world by selectively choosing which personalities and projects will help us towards a better future? Tech by itself is worthless; it's the people who handle it and the social contexts in which it exists that make all the difference.

As for debate, there's the sea lion principle[1][2]. Unfortunately, with some genres of ideas, prim and proper debate is simply impossible. You're pitting reason against waves of the unreasonable. It is a war of attrition and you will lose.

It makes no difference to me whether any one particular person will "dig in to their beliefs and decide for [themselves]". I am personally not concerned with changing hearts and minds, but as a member of…

Unsurprisingly, your reply has demonstrated typical leftist techniques, such as selective omission, dismissal, and strawman, complete with the standard condescending attitude.

> Your example quotes Schneider as recommending honesty, explicitly, while admitting the utility of simplifying the story for the public. Not really an example of what you were claiming.

False. This is an example of selective omission and dismissal. Let's look again at what Schneider actually said:

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have....Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest."

The last sentence, speaking of a balance, implies that being honest is not effective, and being effective requires being dishonest. He says that each scientist has to decide for himself how dishonest he is justified in being in order to "get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination...getting loads of media coverage."

You couch his words as "recommending honesty," while he actually recommended dishonesty, believing that it is justified by "the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change."

You see, when it comes to honesty, it's a binary: you're either honest or you're not. Anything less than 1.0 is dishonest. A scientist ought to be ethically obligated to be completely, 100% honest--because this is what the public expects, and because, since he is a human with…

> What's the logic behind that distinction? If a child stumbles into a pond and drown, or is mauled by a wild coyote, will you let them die on the basis of non-interference?

Great point, you got me there. All life forms being equal, then yes if I adhered to my own system I suppose I would have to silently watch a child get mauled by a coyote. Obviously, I wouldn't take it that far, so perhaps there's more criteria to the decisions than I'm admitting or able to even dig out of my psyche at the moment. I'll think about this.

Your other points about utilitarian math are well-taken, and perhaps I misunderstood you there.

> If I follow that logic and extend my caring to insects, I should care about all insects.

So if you care about starving children, and apply the same rules you apply to children to insects, you'd be donating a lot to charity, basically. Makes sense =]. So once again, my live-and-let-die attitude towards insects is at odds with my "help unfortunate members of humanity" "morality." Another good point (granted, I don't donate much to charity, but if I did, I would probably donate to poor/starving people as opposed to insect charities).

> I'm a dumb ape who tries (and even maybe succeeds) to be logical sometimes, my moral 'system' is a hodge-podge of intuition, rule-based and consequentialist thinking, I don't claim I have found a fully logical moral system.

This is probably the most coherent, self-aware moral system I've heard. Most people try to ascribe…

My evaluation is that the original usage of the "sealioning" accusation was indeed as a generic dismissive, and its application was dishonest as well; I don't accept the term as a well-founded descriptor of troll behavior in the first place.

If you look at the original comic[1], the sea lion follows the couple around in public, into their house, and even into their bedroom, without permission; that is what makes the sea lion's behavior bad (criminal, in fact). However, "sealioning" in practice refers to people responding to public internet comments with other public internet comments. To treat the latter like the former is dishonest.

Furthermore, the sea lion is objecting to unsubstantiated criticism of his species, which is a form of bigotry. Imagine people searching Twitter for criticism of, say, their race or religion and arguing back at it. I suspect that 90+% of those who complain about "sealioning" would consider that behavior permissible and probably downright virtuous (and would add that the arguing-back need not be scrupulously polite). I'm frankly surprised that "social justice"-associated people managed to decide that objecting to speciesism was worthy of mockery. I think they just really wanted some term of disparagement for their opponents, and happily accepted this one when it appeared without analyzing it too closely.

[1] http://wondermark.com/c/2014-09-19-1062sea.png

> I thought the OP was a joke, BTW.

Well balls to you too, I guess? Or not. We're all just trying to have a good time here. And from the look of this thread, people are having fun.

I think golfing fizzbuzz into an unreadable mess sorta misses the point, but most people here are software engineers because they love to code and build stuff. So let's enjoy the moment.

> why on earth would one want to hire somebody who loves complexity for its own sake?

You remind me of: http://wondermark.com/333/

It's not complexity for its own stake. I daresay the functional patterns tend to be simpler. Certainly moreso than things like Visitor or AbstractFactory.

> To me, the following is the clearest way to express this (in C anyway). I suppose it says a lot about me!

Your version is almost identical to the Ruby version I listed. And it's an appropriate solution for C.