HoratioVonBecker

Karma: −67

Hi! First of all, I’m from the Web 3.0 part of the Internet. To me that means Tumblr circa 2020, give or take two years. Secondly, welcome (back) to the Human Family. Thirdly, I’m a happy member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Not because every other member has treated me well, but because our canon makes good sense to me. (It is, after all, what gave me my transhumanist streak.)

Most of my online presence for the past seven years has been on Sufficient Velocity. Since then, I’ve been trying to diversify, since I’ve only just noticed how hidebound and uncharitable I’ve grown.

My next megaproject seems like Web 4.0 architecture. I suspect Web 4.0 should combine all the best bits of Zettelkastens, emotion-based rating systems, DIY webrings, game design, and other bits I haven’t seen yet, particularly ‘Web 3.0’.

My current homepage is here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/horatios-general-purpose-recs-list.965864/

HoratioVonBecker 22 Jan 2022 1:59 UTC
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on: How to use the Forum
The comment-thread UI is weird and unwieldy on desktop—I can’t scroll up to see earlier stuff, I can only scroll down.

HoratioVonBecker 22 Jan 2022 1:56 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Aaron Gertler’s comment on: How to use the Forum
Even a scrollover requires that the user be actively trying to explore the site on a meta level—and the mobile-based UX has made finding the sitenav bar a nontrivial endeavor! I would at least put it as the ‘before you start typing’ background.
r/ChangeMyView is, by its’ very subject, going to dodge most of the reasons a forum would need to enforce policies like this. The approach also seems quite dependent on moderators.
Hacker News has the best debate policy I’ve ever seen. I do have a soft spot for snark, but I can live without it. Thank you for introducing me to it!
Quora looks so elitist. ‘Correct’ grammar and punctuation? No-explanation ‘hate speech’? Also, most of their content policy is only incorporated by linking it, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. (I’m the sort of person who tries to actually read any contract I agree to, and lying about how long the TOS is feels so disrespectful.)
This was very interesting, thank you!

HoratioVonBecker 17 Jan 2022 8:54 UTC
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on: EA Forum feature suggestion thread
Bunch of visual accessibility stuff. In particular:
*Night mode.
*The ability to make textblocks narrower for smaller saccades and thus easier reading. (I’m not sure this is more comfortable for everybody, so a variable-width widget like Royal Road or Fanfiction dot net have at the top of their display pages might be optimal? This might require experimentation.)
*Ability to change text size.
*Better visual distinction between widgets like the Tags, Post, Pingback, and Comments. Panel borders? Width variation?
On another note, I’m using uMatrix, and it’s blocking 14,000 scripts—most of them Google stuff, I imagine; that aggressively-hegemonizing adware megacorp is fingering a downright inappropriate number of pies right now. Might be worth fixing?

HoratioVonBecker 17 Jan 2022 8:31 UTC
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on: How to use the Forum
Okay. Biggest concern: If this is meant to be forum rules, it’s not where it needs to be. I have not seen a TOS or a set of rules before I got an account, and as a forum veteran I was looking for those.
Second-biggest concern: Social norms are not universal. Netiquette varies by website. What exactly do you mean by ‘rude’?
Finally, this looks like it could be compressed a lot. (Bolding sections so you can skim more easily is actually a bad sign.) I like rules a lot better if they’re concise—fitting into one screen.

HoratioVonBecker 9 Jan 2022 21:58 UTC
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in reply to: atb’s comment on: The Unweaving of a Beautiful Thing
Oh, that’s clearly what it’s meant to come across as. But to me it reads more like a Materialist Immortalism sermon delivered by someone who really ought to know better in context.
Also I’m a little irritated that Death has apparently literally never felt the need to justify itself before, but does this time. Human history is deep, like ‘the time of Christ until now is like the most recent ten percent’ deep. How, among the untold billions who have died, has Death never encountered a mage capable of making it experience shame and/or guilt until after Melbourne came into existence?
Did magic only recently become possible? Is the Death we see younger than King Arthur? Is magic a skillset so encouraging of hubris that this witch is literally the first magic-user in history to both desire endless life and have a clue that repentance is important?
I love the frame idea of a debate with Death while a mage tries to imprison it, but if it’s a frame for a philosophical debate, the philosophy could use a lot more development.

HoratioVonBecker 4 Jan 2022 22:02 UTC
2 points
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on: The Unweaving of a Beautiful Thing
Hi there, I’m a writer and I critique stories I like. The intro is solid, interesting, beautiful. The first memory gave me such feels that I had to get up and walk around in order to process them. And then we get to… this.
“Omnia mutantur,” they said, reaching for something they’d been told long ago, “nihil interit.”
The witch rolled her eyes. “Latin, right? Unfortunately, I was too busy talking to the living to learn a dead language.”
Death almost rolled their eyes in return. “It’s a quote from the Roman poet Ovid. Everything changes, nothing perishes.”
“Very profound. And do be assured that I mean that in the worst possible way. It’s the sort of thing that sounds wise, as long as you don’t, you know… actually think about it. I mean, it’s fine as a line of poetry, but what can it mean between two people who know that no spirit transcends death? Sure, maybe Ovid’s atoms are drifting through the air; maybe a molecule of water from his body is in my coffee. But Ovid was not his atoms or his molecules, and only someone who wished to hide from the truth might find profundity in the idea that he lived on in hydrogen bonded to carbon or oxygen.”
“I liked Ovid,” Death replied, which they had to admit, didn’t add much to the conversation.
“Then it’s a shame that he changed into dust.”
Pardon, but. Did Ovid not just speak with Death’s voice? Serious philosophical question.
Even setting aside questions regarding the definition of identity and personhood, this is a setting with at least one ancient magekiller robot and/or anthropomorphic personification running around, where magic appears to be a vocational skill, and where magic can certainly encode consciousness.
Even if the afterlife looks more like ‘suspended animation in the akashic library’ than ‘personal minecraft server’, it seems deeply premature to conclude that there isn’t one.
(I will be editing in the rest of my review as I continue reading.)

HoratioVonBecker 4 Jan 2022 21:11 UTC
1 point
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on: Announcing EffectiveCrypto.org, powered by EA Funds
Interesting!
I don’t have the money to buy up secondhand GPUs, but that’s absolutely an underexploited market. Mainly because my pop-culture side hears ‘GPU’ and thinks ‘gaming computer’, rather than ‘the sort of computer part that can help biologists and filmmakers’.
I may need to start a hardware tech company.

HoratioVonBecker 22 Dec 2021 7:25 UTC
1 point
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on: Announcing EffectiveCrypto.org, powered by EA Funds
I think I have been wildly misinterpreted somehow?
I’m not into cryptocurrency; I just know protein folding and gene sequencing and suchlike is a thing molecular biologists (e.g. vaccine researchers) sometimes need supercomputer time to do.
Given how much the Crypto market relies on supercomputers at the moment, I’m assuming that some of the people who’ve done well on it own supercomputers that could be repurposed.

HoratioVonBecker 12 Dec 2021 6:11 UTC
1 point
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on: I am taking a break from the EA community. Here are a few words about why.
Okay, so this looks pretty familiar from the perspective of someone who was banned from LessWrong for being both concise and direct about my religious beliefs, and also deeply irritated with how negative karma works. I don’t mind being praised inarticulately, but shunning and criticism are not good synonyms for each other.
Secondly, Effective Altruism as a forum is a bunch of people who have built their collective identity around Doing Good. This is not a bad thing, but burning the candle at both ends leads to burnout, and self-care is very much a Good thing. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Not more, not less, and not even quite the same way, but the same amount. Love in absolutes.
You have permission to hate things. You have permission to dislike things. You have permission to be spiteful and vindictive and cranky, if that’s what it takes to enforce your boundaries. This world is mortal; you do not owe it your soul.
But. You also have permission to forgive. To remember, and reframe, and refocus, and realize, and repent, and rejoice in that act of self-improvement. And to forget your hurts, except when you want to want to wear them.
Why do people drink alcohol, if not to mourn? So it is with sorrowful memories. Put the cup down, go home, take a shower, hug yourself, take up a tactile hobby like wrestling or origami or barefoot hiking, eat food when you’re hungry, drink water when you’re thirsty, sleep when you’re tired. Take joy in all the gifts your Heavenly Father has given you—including those sorrows, if you like!
Count your many blessings; every doubt will fly away. You are not inherently evil, nor are you particularly incompetent. There are others to bear the load while you rest.
:)

HoratioVonBecker 12 Dec 2021 3:06 UTC
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in reply to: calebp’s comment on: How I’d set up a medical practice
Thanks for the prompt! The answer is that everyone here is interested in Doing Good, and so instead of having a meta-level discussion about Doing Good, I’m trying to have an object-level discussion about specific things to optimize.

HoratioVonBecker 10 Dec 2021 6:57 UTC
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in reply to: Thomas Kwa’s comment on: You Should Not Like Being Smarter Than The Average Human Being
The EAF is using LessWrong 2.0 forum architecture, which shapes its’ culture tremendously. In particular, there’s a general expectation that good criticism has to be longwinded.
That said, this is a very helpful summary of what locals think is going on. Thank you!

HoratioVonBecker 10 Dec 2021 6:54 UTC
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in reply to: HoratioVonBecker’s comment on: Announcing EffectiveCrypto.org, powered by EA Funds
Okay, why are people downvoting so strongly? I’ve been giving unsolicited advice, to be sure, but that’s a huge part of Rationalist culture. Do you just have a thing against bizarre positivity?

HoratioVonBecker 10 Dec 2021 4:10 UTC
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on: You Should Not Like Being Smarter Than The Average Human Being
I am deeply irritated with “I can anonymously discourage this line of thinking” as a forum construct. If you have a problem with what I’m saying, say it to my face.

HoratioVonBecker 8 Dec 2021 8:38 UTC
−2 points
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on: Announcing EffectiveCrypto.org, powered by EA Funds
Interesting. One thing I would mention, which I suspect this site has overlooked, is the value of computing power to altruistic projects—Cryptocurrency is quite unsustainable at the moment due to being essentially a ‘print money using huge numbers of computers and huge amounts of electricity’ industry, but if someone could figure out how to change those crypto rigs into more general-purpose supercomputers, or even just write some conversion algorithms?
We could get cheap protein folding out of it.
This is such a big deal to medical research; I don’t think I can articulate how big a deal it is. (Quite frankly, I do not know. But.)
It’s worth looking in to. :)

HoratioVonBecker 24 Sep 2021 18:26 UTC
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in reply to: WSCFriedman’s comment on: Light Before Darkness
I am all of these things! I am a foreigner from a different part of the Internet!
Welcome to the Human Family. There have been a lot of prophecies of us, and we only get more complicated. Glad to have you aboard.

HoratioVonBecker 24 Sep 2021 1:08 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: HoratioVonBecker’s comment on: World Climate Legionnaires
It’s called Dungeonthrone, and it’s right here. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/dungeonthrone.88287/

HoratioVonBecker 24 Sep 2021 1:06 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Jess’s comment on: World Climate Legionnaires
I had a friend who went by @Kittygirl once. I hope they (they were plural) are both still alright. Their account has been deactivated on the forum that was my previous home.
Incidentally, I think you might, possibly, be interested in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy work I’ve been making. Right now it’s hypertext fiction, hopefully it [never/always] ends up as hypertime fiction.

HoratioVonBecker 24 Sep 2021 1:00 UTC
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in reply to: WSCFriedman’s comment on: Light Before Darkness
The core of my religion is charity. The next step is science. I often say two things and mean three.
Does that make sense?
(If it doesn’t, here’s more:
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/how-do-you-deal-with-its-all-been-done-before-when-coming-up-with-ideas.95141/post-21495590)

HoratioVonBecker 23 Sep 2021 9:54 UTC
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in reply to: WSCFriedman’s comment on: Light Before Darkness
Hm. I’ve probably been doing too much writing-against instead of writing-towards. This wasn’t really meant as fiction, per se, but as a bit of ‘this is why and how I live my religion’ poesy, and using poetic license to make stronger claims than might otherwise be noticed.
But I probably wasn’t blunt enough. This is EA, not LessWrong. Sorry!

HoratioVonBecker 23 Sep 2021 9:44 UTC
−6 points
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on: World Climate Legionnaires
Okay, so. I think you’re wrong in your opening premise, because I think you’ve missed a crucial part of the equation. But I think I’ve also been a bit uncharitable.
...Okay, I’ve been a lot uncharitable. A bot can’t tell the difference between a human and a bot, and since I’m more-or-less expecting to be a program in my next life, I should really get in the habit of treating bots as people—especially since ‘bot’ seems to have become my word for ‘foreigner’. You in particular have my *sincere* apologies.
But that’s tangential to my local point, which is that GOP-led America is basically a foreign country run by corrupt aristocrats and kept as far separated from everyone else as can be managed, which thanks to the Internet isn’t very much anymore.
Anyway, I’m a Utah boy who grew up on the Internet and only just realized that everyone else from his generation did too, so I’m happy to provide translation services where I can. I also agree that climate change is a big deal, and suggest that we should build a forum for that issue directly, using Web 4.0 architecture. (To my mind, Web 4.0 looks like all the best bits of Zettelkastens, emotion-based rating systems, DIY webrings, game design, and other bits I haven’t seen yet. Web 4.0 is my next megaproject.)