scrape_r_rational/data/cache/8doafd.md

[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

Post:

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

Comments:

• u/GaBeRockKing:

  If you're anything like me, the most fun part of writing a story is coming up with a really cool premise (a "plot bunny", in fanfiction.net parlance.) Of course, the vast majority of plot bunnies never see the light of day because, for whatever reason, writing a story featuring them would be unfeasible (have other projects) or undesirable (don't want to commit the time). So let's host a mini-competition!
  
  In reply to this post, write the hook, intro, or prologue to a story, minimum 10 words long, soft-maximum 300 words long (longer if you want, but not too much longer.) The winner is the person who has the most people begging them to continue.
  
  If you want to include multiple entries, go for it! I'll include an example reply.
  

  • u/alexanderwales:

    They were five teenagers, gifted with the power to transform into superheroes, and every week, they fought against one of Doctor Dendric's creations to protect their town. At the end of high school, they finally defeated him once and for all ... but the creations kept coming like clockwork, more vicious and warped than before, no longer the hammy megalomaniacal villains like Cold Shoulder or Tough Egg, instead creatures with long knives and names that could only be said with a gurgle.
    
    ----
    
    In the 1800s, at the height of the Ouija board craze, it was scientifically proven that communication with the dead was possible. What the living discovered was a land of the dead, not so much a hell or heaven as a second life, one embroiled in its own political and military struggles. Once first contact was made, the change to both worlds was rapid, as living nations made negotiations with dead ones, governments and institutions attempted force projection into the afterlife, and (less importantly) metaphysical frameworks needed to be reconciled with the truth of the afterlife.
    
    ----
    
    With her career on a long, slow, downward trend, a fading celebrity is convinced to have her brain scanned in and "leaked" onto the internet as a way of boosting her profile and renewing the focus of national attention on her, at least for a time. This set of short stories examines the consequences for those mind clones and the political landscape that they face as legal frameworks to handle the problem are created to deal with the issue.
    
    ----
    
    A James-Bond-type goes around killing people, but every time he kills someone, we get a chapter-long sympathetic biography of their life leading up to their death. (Maybe use footnotes, so the whole long action sequence is a single chapter, and the rest of the chapters are humanizing stories about the dead?)
    

    • u/CouteauBleu:

      > no longer the hammy megalomaniacal villains like Cold Shoulder or Tough Egg, instead creatures with long knives and names that could only be said with a gurgle.
      
      Best *Ladybug* / *Worm* crossover ever.
      
      > A James-Bond-type goes around killing people, but every time he kills someone, we get a chapter-long sympathetic biography of their life leading up to their death. (Maybe use footnotes, so the whole long action sequence is a single chapter, and the rest of the chapters are humanizing stories about the dead?)
      
      I wonder if this has been done before. There's the Heart in Dishonored that kind of has this function, but I can't think of anything else.
      

    • u/ceegheim:

      >In the 1800s, at the height of the Ouija board craze...
      
      I really, really like this one. Of course the world of the dead needs to be fleshed out a lot, but the strong limits on interaction allow us to be very creative with ways of trade and force projection. 
      
      The dead have three things to offer / kinds of force to project: Information, reward and punishment, Schelling points. The latter means: The dead king communicating via Ouija board might end up having more legitimacy than a living heir. 
      
      The living also have three main kinds of forces to project: dead people just caring about the living world, Schelling points, and education / propaganda (the living solely determine the long-term demographics of the dead world). Schelling points, in the sense of e.g. living Queen Victoria being the legitimate ruler of the dead British empire, even for people who died before her time. 
      
      Obvious political plot option: Living queen Victoria begins a grand propaganda / social engineering project to ensure her eternal rule. Or, maybe the current British empire begins a grand endeavor to ensure that the living head of state shall rule both worlds; containing two prongs, projecting power into the current world of the dead, and educating the public to not accept a dead ruler even in the afterlife.
      
      Anything I missed? I mean, there is obvious potential for long-range communication by bouncing via a ghost / Ouija board. I'd like to see this closed as a loop-hole; maybe the dead world has a related geography, and the communication is only possible when you are in corresponding locations. This still allows interesting plots about this, like passing a message through a blockade by transferring it through the other world, but disallows instant intercontinental communication.
      

  • u/Afforess:

    Intelligent life has slowly spread throughout the cosmos, and everything discovered in the vastness of space has been as physics predicted. FTL, FAI, and all other hard problems were solved ages ago, and their successors live in an age of peace and expansion.
    
    Generation ships have arrived at a new, uncharted galaxy. Again, everything was as distant observations and prediction engines expected. 
    
    Settlers have engaged in terraforming the frontier systems. Subtle problems plague the early settlers. Terraforming schedules keep going off track. Early dyson spheres suffer from unforeseen delays, because of misalignments and miscalculations. 
    
    Eventually, scientists narrow down the cause of the mysterious incidents. The gravitational constant isn't - local anomalies are slightly altering the constant, and more improbably, entropy seems to decrease at these instants. The epicenter of the effect is eventually tracked to a specific system, one with eight planets and indigenous life, some of whom seem capable of manipulating these constants at a whim.
    

    • u/Prezombie:

      I haven't seen any original fiction following the idea of a sci-fi tech level civilization of any size encountering a planet of wizards, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some around.
      
      There's quite a few fanfics that cover the idea, mixing Harry Potter or MLP or Dresdenverse with The Culture, Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, or some other 'verse.
      

    • u/Loweren:

      What happens next is basically the [plot of Madoka Magica](http://i54.tinypic.com/15qtfgx.jpg) (spoilers).
      

  • u/GaBeRockKing:

    Example Entry:
    
    >The nuclear launch codes are secured behind six factor authentication, a lead lined, buckminsterfullerene reinforced briefcase, and armed secret service agents.
    
    >I knew, because I had just stolen them.
    
    >Not that it really mattered; nukes were just mythical anyways.
    
    >I should probably step back a bit.
    
    >When two or more people decide on something, that’s called an agreement. When an agreement has an enforcement mechanism, that’s called a contract.
    
    >Everyone has a contract with reality. We act as if we’re real, and in return we can’t tell that we’re not. If we renege, we die. If reality reneges… well, suffice to say, there’s a reason I’m stealing the nuclear football.
    

  • u/buckykat:

    The Galactic Empire has reigned across a thousand worlds for a thousand thousand years. Its kilometer long dreadnoughts, teeming with the Emperors's sailors and marines, command the spacelanes. Last week, Imperial astronomers saw a flash in the outer reaches of an imperial system.
    
    Then another, and another. Something has been flashing in the cold darkness of deep space ever since. Coming closer.
    
    The vast Central Computer of the Imperial Astronomical Society just went silent, its cams and gears ticking into their final alignments as a tiny strip of paper emerges. An answer.
    
    Whatever it is, it's decelerating.
    

  • u/xamueljones:

    You and an enemy both have the power to look into the future. However, the power is *not* recursive. The power can't be used to see what visions a future you/enemy would see. Both of you can only see what actions would be taken assuming no further use of the prophecy power.
    
    You and the enemy are trying their best to win the presidential election. Writers may make use of a different culture than the US, but it must include a competition to become the next ruler/leader.
    

  • u/artifex0:

    I just wrote [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8dp3tp/if_band_names_were_literal_who_would_you_want_to/dxpdgio/?context=1) in response to the "If band names were literal, who would you want to see live the most?" AskReddit question and the answer "Godsmack"- although that may be slightly too long.
    
    For a shorter answer: 
    
    I awoke to the sight of three billion faces.  I screamed, and at least two billion of the people screamed back. "What the hell is going on?" I asked, and each of the people answered in a different way, mostly in languages I didn't understand.  Somehow, I realized, I could perceive each person perfectly, contemplate their response and consider a reaction, as though they were each the only person I perceived- and yet, there were billions.  Not only that, but I could speak to each person individually; utter billions of different sentences simultaneously.  The feeling was profoundly strange, and as I considered it, I began to feel the first hints of the mental power that might come from distributing my thoughts across that vast multiplicity.
    
    It soon occurred to me that some of those I was perceiving had grasped what was occurring more quickly than I had.  "This is a dream," they'd said.  And so began my first night inhabiting the dreams of all of humanity.
    

  • u/ToaKraka:

    Avatar: [Murder the Hypotenuse](https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Murder_the_Hypotenuse)
    
    > Katara desperately flings a shield of water to block Azula's lightning bolt from hitting Aang, and gets zapped. Aang uses the Avatar State to massacre the Dai Li and severely injure Azula and Zuko. Afterward, amnesiac as always, he doesn't know whether or not he's the one who killed Katara; Iroh says he wasn't. A grief-stricken Sokka demands to be dropped off with Hakoda's band of raiders (along with Katara's corpse), while Aang continues his adventures with only Toph (who trusts both Aang and Iroh more than Sokka can bring himself to), Appa, and Momo.
    
    Naruto: A Ninja's Mind Is Her Castle
    
    > Kurenai introduces the [*Time Braid*](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5193644) "mindscape" technique ([known among civilians as the "memory palace" or "method of loci"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci)) to Team 8. Under its influence, Hinata develops a split personality: timid as always inside the Hyuuga compound, but courageous outside it, where she can lock away her painful memories.
    
    Naruto: Mind-Body Merge
    
    > After Naruto's disastrous first year of Academy, Inoichi, perplexed and disgusted by Hiruzen's refusal to train the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki, and with the support of all the Ino-Shika-Chou bigwigs (and possibly of the Hyuuga as well), takes a year to teach to Ino a forbidden technique (developed by Yamanaka researchers during the Second Shinobi World War, but never actually revealed on the battlefield, lest Konoha and the Yamanaka become international pariahs) that (unlike Mind-Body *Switch*) allows the *permanent* controlling of two bodies and minds by a single soul, without deleterious side effects (except the loss of the chakra regeneration associated with the target's soul). (The second soul is painlessly evicted. Because the second *mind* is retained, the target's memories are not lost.) He instructs her to use it on Naruto, so that Konoha doesn't have to choose between having a half-trained idiot as its sole Jinchuuriki (in comparison to Iwa's and Kumo's *two fully-trained jinchuuriki each*) and overthrowing its Hokage without having any good replacement ready.
    
    Harry Potter: Soul-Bond Subversion
    
    > Ginny dies in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry desperately pours his magic into her, and gains control of her mind and body. Dumbledore informs him that this is the original bond of love that was perverted millennia ago by dark wizards into the "Horcrux", but essentially is the reverse of that evil: If *either* body or mind dies, the soul is sent onward. This phenomenon is rare but not unknown, so the Weasleys will understand and accept what has happened.
    
    Naruto: Married to the Village
    
    > An eccentric jounin takes two students. Little do the genin know that the jounin is an expert in genjutsu and poisons who intends to make them fall in love with each other in order to improve their teamwork. (Gekkou Hayate and Uzuki Yuugao composed one of her previous teams, but Hayate's sickness unfortunately tore them apart.)
    
    Naruto: Grand Tour
    
    > After becoming a missing-nin, rather than hiding out in underground laboratories, Orochimaru roams the Elemental Countries to trade techniques with isolated ninja clans, just as Sakura and Hinata do in [Chapter 19 of *Time Braid*](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5193644/19).
    

• u/Kishoto:

  I'd heard the term shut up and multiply before but I'd never read the LessWrong post that (presumably) inspired use of the word. Read it this week [here](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wYTFWY3LKQCnAptN/torture-vs-dust-specks) and wanted this subs collective thoughts and opinions on the conclusion it draws. 
  
  Personally, I feel that the conclusion it draws is incorrect. I believe in the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, of course, but something as negligible as dust specks to so many people doesn't seem worth a person's life being filled with agony. Now, I'm aware that, by that logic, people should be doing a lot more to help the less fortunate by sacrificing the money they'd otherwise spend on leisure activities or luxury items and I can't say I wholeheartedly disagree with that either; I'm selfish enough that I certainly won't be driving myself into poverty to donate to different charities but, from an overarching decision making standpoint such as the one detailed in the post, I feel that's a fine attitude to have (though there are certainly limits that most likely no one will agree on)
  

  • u/electrace:

    The problem with the dust speck thought experiment is that it's impossible for humans to really grasp `3^^^3` of anything. Even if it was only `10^82` dust specks (about the number of atoms in the universe) that's still far greater than we can picture.
    
    So of course it will seem like it isn't worth it. That's by design. Replace "dust specks" with "amputation of the left arm" and `3^^^3` with "Every human on Earth," and see how your intuitions decide then.
    

  • u/OutOfNiceUsernames:

    I think the conclusions it’s trying to lead the reader towards are wrong as well, but for other reasons. 
    
    While I *do* think that a very weak positive punishment (like a barely noticeable dust speck irritation) overweights something like a severe and long-lasting torture experience if it gets multiplied by an “inconceivably huge number”, here are some problems with the overall thought experiment and with the argument based on it: 
    
    * to the author, the answer to this dilemma is already obvious, while I think it shouldn’t be
     * perhaps postponing the decision to... 
         * ... study neuroscience first would reveal that the dust irritation would gradually fade away from the conscious awareness of all these people because the brain would simply filter it out, like it filters out many other irritators to our senses that we never notice unless we specifically concentrate with such an intention (if even then);
         * ... study sociology would reveal that torturing someone innocent in the eye of the law for the sake of the rest of the population has some other negative consequences on the overall society which outweight even the “total sum” of the dust speck punishment;
         * ... carry out a “nation”-wide survey would reveal that the majority of the population would prefer to suffer the dusk speck problem instead of having someone go through the long-term torture experience (especially given how it is unknown yet who will be chosen for the position of the tortured victim);
         * ... ask for advice from a number of various experts would reveal other valid counter-arguments that the decision-maker’s own mind had never even thought of taking into consideration.
     * if the decision-maker just wants to torture someone, that’s one thing, but if they are intending to make that choice (one way or another) out of good intentions, then what gives them the right to make that decision in stead of both the person who would be suffering the torture, and the people who would be irritated by the dust speck?
     * if this “galactic population” somehow learns about the tortured person on their behalf, the fact of knowing that alone will create a simulation of that tortured person in the mind of each “galactic citizen” that becomes aware of the torture dilemma and its eventual decision. If you summarise the torture of these simulated victims that mirror the original, the result would outweigh even the annoyance of dust specks. 
     * It is implied as a hidden axiom that the benefit of the many automatically outweighs the benefit of the few (of a single). 
     * What if the person who will get tortured turns out to be someone the decision maker deeply cares about? 
         * Or if for whatever other reason the decision maker just doesn’t care at all about any of these galactic citizens — or even actively wishes them harm? In the first case, alleviating their mass-annoyance by a dust speck stops being something valuable for them. In the latter case, *choosing* that mass-annoyance to happen becomes the preferable option.
    * the thought experiment is too minimalistic and too out of touch with reality to serve as an accurate analogy for making an argument about real-life decision-making.
    
    That article actually serves as a nice example of what I think is a recurring problem in too many lesswrong articles: that they seem to be written from a position of someone who overrates their own intelligence, underrates the intelligence of the rest, and who seems to be someone too clever by half without realising it. With an average person, if you’ve presented them a dilemma like this, they would perhaps wager on one answer or another, but they would still be unsure if the solution they’ve come up with was the best available one. With people who think they are being rational by being over-dependant on logical chains of reasoning and using absurdly minimalistic thought experiments like this as valid arguments, that step of self-doubt seems to happen less often. One could say that they turn into living paperclip maximizers without ever having the insight for realising that.
    

    • u/kingofthenerdz3:

      I think the point of the thought expdriment is this - while people say (correctly) that  that you can add suffering toghther, people do not get an intuitive feel for the numbers. I think the dust specks stand in for minor sufferings and torture stands for major suffering.
      

      • u/scruiser:

        The absurd number used to try to illustrate this point undermines this point.  By using a number that requires [Knuth's up-arrow notation](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/152641/knuths-up-arrow-notation-is-there-practical-use-for-the-numbers-involved) to illustrate his point, Eliezer choose a number bigger than the number of molecules in the observable universe, bigger than the number of planck volumes in the observable universe.  If the Friendly AI uploads everyone and converts everything to computing substrate and then converts the whole universe into to computing substrate, the number of people to exist will stay not reach the number he wants us to consider in his example.  He talks about shut-up and multiple, and then chooses a number to break our multiplication.
        
        If his goal was to persuade people's intuition to except utilitarianism, he did the opposite.  If his goal was to demonstrate a practical example of shut-up and multiple, the numbers involved are so absurd as to make it impractical, thus he did the opposite.  Literally the only purpose that example serves it to make laymen associate rationality with being willing to torture somebody and to make rationalists feel smug for choosing a counter-intuitive answer.
        

• u/OutOfNiceUsernames:

  [There’s an SCP series on Youtube that I haven’t seen mentioned here before.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEXIiC3q94eO992TlwBD98Zast0gret1r)
  
  So far has 5 episodes, nice soundtrack, and a pretty decent overall production quality.
  

  • u/trekie140:

    Seconded. It’s like if Adult Swim made a cartoon about the Foundation. I find the jokes hit or miss, the characters aren’t very rational or complex, and the premise necessitates taking some liberties with the source material. However, the simple animation is expertly directed to convey the spooky yet clinical atmosphere the story needs, the plot gives just enough emotional weight to the characters to keep me invested, and the references spotlight some lesser-known SCPs instead of grabbing the low-hanging fruit.
    

  • u/callmesalticidae:

    This is some good shit. Thanks for sharing.
    

• u/Croktopus:

  God of War is, like, really good.
  

• u/ToaKraka:

  Once again, Scott Alexander [has been caught red-handed](http://archive.is/VnjsR) in editing and ~~deleting~~ "temporarily hiding" articles without notice.
  
  > [Reminder: "Content creators" *cannot* be trusted to refrain from making their content inaccessible. If you care about having the opportunity to reëxperience \[an article\] twenty years in the future, download a copy of it. Don't rely on third-party archives like \[the Internet Archive\], either—they can go down at any time.](http://np.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7xzb1r/d_friday_offtopic_thread/ducic4e/)
  
  ---
  
  [And, from the other bigwig…](https://i.imgur.com/0u5N2ay.png)
  
  > [What (if any) opinions do you have on the changing of names upon marriage?\[…\] I'm inclined to think that \[refraining from changing either name\] is the best option, since changing one's name incurs a risk of mistakes (e. g., on credit reports) and makes filling out forms a hassle ("Have you ever worked under a name different from your current name? If so, list all other names."). I was quite surprised when, some months ago, I saw that the wife of Prophet Yudkowsky (pbuh) had assumed his last name.](http://np.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7gvjhx/d_friday_offtopic_thread/dqm6o6j/)
  
  ---
  
  [Don't forget to pay for your favorite free stuff.](https://i.imgur.com/iZXoSec.png)
  
  (I omit from this screenshot the two entertainers to whom I subscribe on Patreon ([FilthyRobot](https://www.youtube.com/user/FilthyRobotChannel/playlists) and [Port Sherry](http://portsherry.com/)) because I remain [*extremely* lukewarm](http://np.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/80dn8l/d_monday_general_rationality_thread/duuypqp/) on whether I should retain them.)
  
  ---
  
  [McMansion Hell](http://mcmansionhell.com/) is a fun website. I first learned of its existence last year, when I read [a series of news articles](https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?company=mcmansion+hell) that discussed how its author had received spurious legal threats from [Zillow](https://www.zillow.com/corp/About.htm) (a "real estate and rental marketplace" website from which the author took many of the photographs to which she added humorous captions); however, I didn't at that time bother to investigate it. More recently, I was reminded of its existence by [this /pol/ thread](http://archive.is/c4rfQ), in which various people posted some of the site's hilarious captions, which spurred me to actually visit the site.
  
  ---
  
  Unfortunately, it seems that [Voat](https://voat.co) is going through some difficulties (though it's still somewhat accessible [here](https://preview.voat.co)). I glance at it only rarely (except when I want to use its "Preview comment" function, which is useful in writing such posts as these since its Markdown is almost the same as Reddit's), but a lack of alternatives always is bad.
  
  ([My idea for using an HTML file in a Git repository as a private conversation venue](http://np.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/640xbp/d_friday_offtopic_thread/dfz1twx/) remains dormant.)
  

  • u/CouteauBleu:

    > And, from the other bigwig…
    
    > I saw that the wife of Prophet Yudkowsky (pbuh) had assumed his last name.
    
    You're kind of obnoxious, you know that?
    
    EDIT: To expand, you're the cultural equivalent of the guy who calls Hillary Clinton "Crooked Hillary" in every conversation where the subject comes up. That is super irritating and uncalled for.
    

    • u/ToaKraka:

      ❤
      

      • u/CouteauBleu:

        :/
        

  • u/Makin-:

    >except when I want to use its "Preview comment"
    
    Doesn't [Reddit Enhancement Suite](https://redditenhancementsuite.com/) already add that?
    

  • u/vash3r:

    Thank you for reminding me to pay for my favorite free stuff.
    

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