apotheotic (she/her)

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 11th, 2023

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  • So like, its not necessarily about offense. Some folks who have suffered abuse and aggression because of their minority status have visceral, trauma responses to certain things. When I hear the t-slur used, for example, it invokes a deep anxiety and panic. That doesn’t mean that I think that anyone who says it is a transphobe (like the car guy in your example might be talking about his transmission or some silly thing like that) and I’m not going to rage and scream at him. But I’m not weird or wrong for asking him not to say it because it triggers me. This isn’t a discussion about how we should cancel people for using words, its a discussion about how we can accommodate our fellow people.

    The OP shows some folks making a change that is so minor we shouldn’t even be talking about it, so that they can be just a touch more likely not to affect someone negatively. Even if its performative, who cares, they did it and it affects nobody negatively.

    More concerning, I think, is the people jumping in this thread acting like this is woke cancel culture gone wild and we can’t use normal words anymore.


  • I have realised, upon reflection, what I take issue with with your argument.

    It places the onus on the intention, as opposed to the result.

    If the result of me doing something particularly mundane, that I could do another way with zero extra effort, is that some people are offended or othered or hurt, then it seems blatantly obvious to me that the action to take is to change what I’m doing. Theres nuance in the wider discussion but you can’t judge intentions, since nobody can know what someone else’s intentions are. You can judge actions and outcomes.

    The action in this case is mundane, and I don’t place any blame or hate toward the people who took the action (made the Tycoon joke). The outcome is potentially negative, and I would argue demonstrably negative since people felt compelled to comment about it. It still doesn’t mean that the folks who wrote the joke are massive racists or fascists or whatever, but the outcome related to their action is negative. Hence they chose to change the action to change the outcome.

    Seems pretty cut and dry that this was a wholly positive thing, no?








  • I think its less about precisely where you draw the line, because that would assume you will be able to perfectly practice your ethics.

    More important is that you are imperfectly practising your ethics, rather than not at all. Do you consider nestle evil enough to boycott but you haven’t found a suitable replacement for 1 product? That’s fine, boycott the rest of the products you would have got from them.

    The harder you try to define the line, the harder it gets to actually implement in practice, which is the most important part.

    Where I draw my line is a gut feeling more than anything. I won’t support meta or amazon or any of Musk’s ventures, I try to avoid nestle but they own half the food industry so if a product isn’t from nestle or one of the subsidiaries that I’ve memorised, I’ll consider it fair game most of the time. I’d probably look for a job elsewhere if my company started being evil but I wouldn’t leave until I had a job lined up.







  • Hmm, you’re quite right. My intuition is that the Bayesian portion would exactly offset the Monty hall portion. I think, at a glance, Bayes would give door 1 a 2/3 probability of having 6 gold, but Monty Hall would give door 2 the same probability, so we can effectively cancel these out and just consider a raw probability

    You either have 5 gold or 2 gold 3 silver behind door 1, and 6 gold or 3 and 3 behind door 2, which gives door 2 a very slight edge. Does that check out?


  • The ball grid problem

    Albert knows that Albert doesn’t know where the ball is, and also knows that Bernard doesn’t know where the ball is, which means the ball is in a row where every ball has another ball in its column, which narrows it to C or D

    The information that the ball must be in C or D is enough to exactly select the ball given knowledge of the column, which makes it either C3, D2 or D4

    The information that Albert knows which cell it is once Albert knows that Bernard knows means that it must be C3 because if it was a D cell then Albert would still not know

    C3 is the ball that was pulled from door 1, thus there was a gold ball behind door 1

    Monty hall problem

    Which means we dont know whether there were 6 or 3 gold behind door 1, which means its essentially a slightly different Monty Hall problem

    The first door either has 2 gold balls (and 3 silver) behind it or 5 gold balls, and the second door either has 3 gold balls and 3 silver or 6 gold balls

    The second door has a 66% chance of having 6 gold balls (guaranteed gold) and a 33% chance of having 3/3

    The first door has a 66% chance of 2/3 and a 33% chance of 5 (guaranteed gold)

    Thus door 1 has a 2/3x2/5 + 1/3 = 3/5 chance of you pulling a gold ball

    Door 2 has a 2/3 + 1/3x1/2 = 5/6 chance of pulling a gold ball

    You should switch doors to maximise your chance of being allowed to swap tracks