RE: let's make a meme

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Mar 21 2003 - 19:36:25 MST

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    Eliezer writes

    > Lee Corbin wrote:
    >
    > > 5. Provoking threads whose entire purpose is to explain
    > > *why* I personally am a troll
    >
    > The amazing thing, really, is that people *care* enough to analyze your
    > psychology in detail. I get that too. Why is it that people dissect you
    > and I, but not, say, Anders Sandberg or Damien Broderick?

    Eliezer goes on to answer this question. Somehow, this does
    not deter me from answering it myself. :-)

    Well, not that it's anything to brag about, but some of us lead
    with our jaws, so to speak. There can be something not a little
    confrontational about how we phrase things. The only reason
    I think that you have been less a target on this list than I
    is that you are less ideological. (In a political sense.)

    Now something *to* brag about is, as I was reminded by an
    offline correspondent, I am number one in the race for
    lowest karma. Gloat.

    Moreover, that proves that I really ticked off someone politically,
    because the aforementioned thread, it turned out, was powered only
    by those upset with my political stance.

    > It is because they are nicer.

    That they are. A number of times I have seen Anders say to
    someone *exactly* what I would have said. Yet it came out
    much nicer. Sometimes I could see what about it was nicer,
    but at other times it was a mystery. And I have seen Damien,
    although sometimes rather mean to a newbie, will refrain from
    saying what he's really thinking to someone out of courtesy,
    and appears to restrain himself in other ways I can't quite
    put my finger on.

    > And possibly because you and I consciously use and *mention*
    > declarative principles of rationality.

    Well, you do that more than I do. Besides, why would that
    itself upset anyone? We don't really have any anti-rationalists
    I know of on this list.

    > Someday I hope to become a nice rationalist.

    Well, I'm already very nice---except, as I said for being
    rather confrontational at times, and sometimes denouncing
    nonsense rather uncompromisingly. But I too have a rather
    long ways to go to get where Anders is.

    Lee



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