Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What kind of girl do you think I am?

manylogue.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 113 posts

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#91

Post by MichaelSalib »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #68
btmorex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to invent scenarios, you should invent realistic one's. For example, I'm fairly confident that you couldn't solve the problem of brain duplication for a trillion dollars. The NIH budget in 2010 was ~32 billion which isn't close to a trillion, but it's a lot closer to a trillion than we are to duplicating a brain. On a philosophical level though, a lot of people would probably disagree with your propos…

CLoning would be cheaper/possible

You couldn't replicate memories and consciousness though. And cloning involves a long lead time since we only know how to clone embryos. So from your family and friends' perspective, it would be like you died, since they're not going to enjoy the company of your clone for a few decades and even then it won't have your memory or much of your personality.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#92

Post by MichaelSalib »

Tycho wrote: post #54

It is the characterisation of moral systems as either 'deontological' or 'teleological' which I find invalid, thus undermining the usefulness of this here debate. In the articles terms, you could be moral according to the category of your actions, or according to the consequences of your actions. The first one ignores reality ('whatever happens, don't lie'), and the second one negates judgement ('the right action dep…

Consequentialism encompasses all value systems that incorporate consequences to any degree at all. So your "applying judgement according to reality and a measurable standard of value" system is actually consequentialist.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#93

Post by ErrantX »

dkarl wrote: post #90
ErrantX wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She knows she'll sleep with a guy for a million dollars. She's thought about it. A reasonable point; except you've asserted that and I'm not sure it's true. Do you have any data to back up the theory? Because one of the things that became clear to me was people hadn't really and truly considered it; there was a lot of thinking going on. I realise the experiment was flawed; and we tested too few people to really make…

It doesn't matter how many people you test, because you can't establish a credible offer of that much money. Can you describe a situation that you could actually set up in which a woman would think she was more likely to get a million pounds than to get dragged into a basement, tortured, raped, and murdered? Of course both of those scenarios would be far outside chances compared to the chances that somebody was just…

because you can't establish a credible offer of that much money

Of course you can; that is pretty easy to do. (also you might note we tried a lot more credible monetary amounts as well).

Can you describe a situation that you could actually set up in which a woman would think she was more likely to get a million pounds than to get dragged into a basement, tortured, raped, and murdered?

This is something of a strawman... because clearly it all depends on the individual and how they perceive a situation. But it seems reasonable to suppose you can ask the person (as I did) to visualise a situation where they were receiving a serious offer (a lot of phsyc testing uses this premise).

"What's the safest way to deal with this situation?"

When I said bartering I should point out it wasn't actively bartering over the idea of sex; it was a discussion about the ideas and this concept of a "price". Or in opther words it was explained what the point was. Most said it was an interesting thought experiment.

So where your seeing this as the individuals thinking "oh crap, this crazy person is saying really weird/scary things" that was not the situation. We used the opening line as a gambit to provoke this idea of a "price".

I'm actually most interested in your currently undefended assertion that people have thought about their "price". It's the most interesting part of this for me.

EDIT: it's worth pointing out this is less about establishing what cash amount people want for having sex with you than about getting people to discuss a social idea that is almost certainly frowned upon, but which could make them rich via minimum effort/skill. We could have tried something like.. would you kill for £1 Million - but there were strong reasons against that (sex itself is not frowned on (just paid-for), where murder is. Sex is more interesting because there is a divide between how men and women react to it).

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#94

Post by liedra »

anamax wrote: post #74
liedra wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons why you have to start talking about governance in these situations. Businesses should have governance strategies. They probably mostly do for finance, or safety, or similar, but they should also have governance strategies in place for ethical/social/cultural impact as well. Things like risk assessment or technology assessment can help here, but they're just part of a wider strategy needed t…

> Of course this is quite tricky, but I think in Europe they're starting to move towards the right idea: they have the precautionary principle The precautionary principle can't be satisfied. Also, its application is extremely political. For example, it should applied to folks who might become parents. Note that the precautionary principle is typically invoked by folks who don't don't have much skin in the game and do…

Yeah, but you missed the second half of my sentence :) It's not the only thing they do, and it's certainly not the whole of a good governance mechanism. I do agree with you about the PP, but it's a move in the right direction, at least they have awareness of the issues that need to be addressed. There is no silver bullet, but they can (hopefully) work toward something that works most of the time.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#95

Post by dkarl »

ErrantX wrote: post #93
dkarl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter how many people you test, because you can't establish a credible offer of that much money. Can you describe a situation that you could actually set up in which a woman would think she was more likely to get a million pounds than to get dragged into a basement, tortured, raped, and murdered? Of course both of those scenarios would be far outside chances compared to the chances that somebody was just…

because you can't establish a credible offer of that much money Of course you can; that is pretty easy to do. (also you might note we tried a lot more credible monetary amounts as well). Can you describe a situation that you could actually set up in which a woman would think she was more likely to get a million pounds than to get dragged into a basement, tortured, raped, and murdered? This is something of a strawman.…

If you say that the whole point was to provoke people to think, and not to glean any information about what they would actually do, I'm fine with that. However, I'm skeptical that women would devote much thought to the imaginary situation that will never happen when they were in a real situation where they were being asked to discuss their sexuality. It's kind of like you've never seen or heard a goat before, so you walk up to someone with your pet tiger on a leash and ask them to do an impression of a goat. You're going to get an impression calculated not to excite the tiger, without much thought to what a goat looks and sounds like.

I'm actually most interested in your currently undefended assertion that people have thought about their "price". It's the most interesting part of this for me.

As a kid I had multiple conversations in different groups of guys where the question of having sex with another guy for money came up, so I think I can vouch for guys. Even in groups of guys who weren't particularly intimate and didn't trust each other, you'd get exchanges like, "Dude, you are so in love with that guy you would suck his duck." "Fuck you, I'm not sucking anybody's dick." "So you wouldn't even for a million dollars?" "You saying you wouldn't? What are you trying to hide?"

As for girls, girlfriends have told me about giggly conversations they had with their friends when they were thirteen. The question naturally arises from the question of whether you would marry a gross old guy who had billions of dollars -- and that's something that all young girls talk about. It's an irresistible mixture of horror and fantasy. Start altering that story and you're only two or three steps from outright prostitution. (Amusingly, in the one story I remember pretty well, the question posed was, "Would you have sex with a guy for a million dollars, even if you didn't love him?" I guess to thirteen-year-old girls, love is the factor that makes everything okay or not okay, even prostitution.)

Another reason is how people reacted to the movie Indecent Proposal with Robert Redford, Demi Moore, and Woody Harrelson. It wasn't an alien idea for most people. Anytime people talked about it, they seemed to be picking up the threads of conversations from a long time ago. Of course, people are a lot less likely to talk about it with people they don't trust, especially when the intent seems to be hostile or transgressive.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#96

Post by derefr »

henrikschroder wrote: post #49
derefr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I've always ignored that sort of question—there's no such thing as morals or utility, really, only what animals are programmed to think in their animal brains. Robotic arms don't care when other robotic arms die—and neither do we. Paperclips don't care about increasing in number, even if someone is trying to make it so. What we have to ask is not "what does the universe say about right and wrong?" (because the an…

there's no such thing as morals or utility, really Just to counterpoint the frenzy of moral nihilism and relativism I suspect will appear, I respectfully disagree, I'm a moral universalist, i.e. morals do exist, moral judgements can be true or false. But I also realize that this is a question of philosophical faith, and arguing about that is usually pretty futile. :)

A few questions:

1. Given the laws of physics, could you derive your morality? 2. If we didn't exist, and in our place were an alien species that, say, ate their babies[1], would that make the universe contain less utility as a whole?

[1] The same story I linked to above: http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/. Who is in the right? Do we have the "moral imperative" to destroy the baby-eaters? Do the third species have a moral imperative to destroy us?

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#97

Post by Herring »

jules wrote: post #60
Herring wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys really don't see how misogynistic these articles are, do you?

Is that a good reason for downvoting all comments? The example may be misogynistic, but the idea that the example is an example of is not. Also, suppose that the genders were removed: X: “If I gave you a million dollars, would you sleep with me?” Y: “A million dollars is a lot of money, and you don’t look that bad, so I guess I would consider it” X: “Ok, since I don’t have a million dollars, would you sleep with me f…

>Is that a good reason for downvoting all comments?

If you think karma is the least bit important, I suggest you close your browser for a few weeks.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#98

Post by noamsml »

I feel like the problem with this is that sleeping with someone for money is not inherently unethical, i.e. it hurts no one. Certainly, if you were to replace it with "kill a person", the spread of answers would change significantly.

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#99

Post by nostrademons »

hga wrote: post #82
Tycho wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand: Chernobyl

Chernobyl is an example of people violating very clear safety rules, " Do not pull out the control rods past this point! " (It's a lot more complicated than that, but it is most certainly not a "normal accident" like the BP one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster .)

BP was too. The blowout preventer was damaged in a previous accident. The Transocean contractors wished to stop and get the well under control, but they were overruled by the BP manager at the site. Is it any wonder that when you continue drilling while the blowout preventer is damaged, there's a blowout?

Re: What kind of girl do you think I am?

#100

Post by ErrantX »

dkarl wrote: post #95
ErrantX wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because you can't establish a credible offer of that much money Of course you can; that is pretty easy to do. (also you might note we tried a lot more credible monetary amounts as well). Can you describe a situation that you could actually set up in which a woman would think she was more likely to get a million pounds than to get dragged into a basement, tortured, raped, and murdered? This is something of a strawman.…

If you say that the whole point was to provoke people to think, and not to glean any information about what they would actually do, I'm fine with that. However, I'm skeptical that women would devote much thought to the imaginary situation that will never happen when they were in a real situation where they were being asked to discuss their sexuality. It's kind of like you've never seen or heard a goat before, so you…

I suspect what you're talking about is something entirely different... because they are just jokey/giggly conversations with no real meaning (there are all sorts of social pressures that set your price, for example).

Have you, as an adult, considered your price? My suggestion is few people have.

Post reply on HN