Greetings, fellow thinkers! I’m a 19-year-old undergraduate student at Clemson University, majoring in mathematics (or, as Clemson (unjustifiably) calls it, Mathematical Sciences). I found this blog through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality about three weeks ago, and I spent those three weeks doing little else in my spare time but reading the Sequences (which I’ve now finished).
My parents emigrated from the Soviet Union (my father is from Kiev, my mother from Moscow) just months before my birth. They spoke very little English upon their arrival, so they only spoke Russian to me at home, and I picked up English in kindergarten; I consider both to be my native languages, but I’m somewhat more comfortable expressing myself in English. I studied French in high school, and consider myself “conversant”, but definitely not fluent, although I intend to study abroad in a Francophone country and become fluent. This last semester I started studying Japanese, and I intend to become fluent in that as well.
My family is Jewish, but none of my relatives practice Judaism. My mother identifies herself as an agnostic, but is strongly opposed to the Abrahamic religions and their conception of God. My father identifies as an atheist. I have never believed in Santa Claus or God, and was very confused as a child about how other people could be so obviously wrong and not notice it. I’ve never been inclined towards mysticism, and I remember espousing Physicalist Reductionism (although I did not know those words) at an early age, maybe when I was around 9 year old.
I’ve always been very concerned with being rational, and especially with understanding and improving myself. I think I missed out on a lot of what Americans consider to be classic sci-fi (I didn’t see Star Wars until I got to college, for example), but I grew up with a lot of good Russian sci-fi and Orson Scott Card.
I used to be quite a cynical misanthrope, but over the past few years I’ve grown to be much more open and friendly and optimistic. However, I’ve been an egoist for as long as I can remember, and I see no reason why this might change in the foreseeable future (this seems to be my primary point of departure from agreement with Eliezer). I sometimes go out of my way to help people (strangers as much as friends) because I enjoy helping people, but I have no illusions about whose benefit my actions are for.
I’m very glad to have found a place where smart people who like to think about things can interact and share their knowledge!
No offense intended, but: If you could take a pill that would prevent all pain from your conscience, and it could be absolutely guaranteed that no one would ever find out, how many twelve-year-olds would you kill for a dollar?
(Perhaps you meant to say that you were mostly egoist, or that your deliberatively espoused moral principles were egoistic?)
Eliezer, please don’t think you can offend me by disagreeing with me or questioning my opinions—every disagreement (between rational people) is another precious opportunity for someone (hopefully me!) to get closer to Truth; if the person correcting me is someone I believe with high probability to be smarter than me, or to have thought through the issue at hand better than I have (and you fit those criteria!), this only raises the probability that it is I who stand to benefit from the disagreement.
I’m not certain this is a very good answer to your question, but 1) I would not take such a pill, because I enjoy empathy and don’t think pain is always bad, 2) peoples’ deaths negatively affect many people (both through the ontologically positive grief incurred by the loss and the through ontologically negative utility they would have produced), and that negative effect is very likely to make its way to me through the Web of human interaction, especially if the deceased are young and have not yet had much of a chance to spread utility through the Web, and 3) I would have to be quite efficient at killing 12-year-olds for it to be worth my time to do it for a dollar each (although of course this is tangential to your question, since the amount “a dollar” was arbitrary).
I should also point out that I have a strongly negative psychological reaction to violence. For example, I find the though of playing a first-person shooting game repugnant, because even pretending to shoot people makes me feel terrible. I just don’t know what there is out there worse than human beings deliberately doing physical harm to one another. As a child, I felt little empathy for my fellow humans, but at some point, it was as if I was treated with Ludovico’s Technique (à la A Clockwork Orange)… maybe some key mirror neurons in my prefrontal cortex just needed time to develop.
Thank you for taking time to make me think about this!
If your moral code penalizes things that make you feel bad, and doing X would make you feel bad, then is it fair to say that not doing X is part of your moral code?
I think the point Eliezer was getting at is that human morality is very complex, and statements like “I’m an egoist” sweep a lot of that under the rug. And to continue his example: what if the pill not only prevented all pain from your conscience, but also gave you enjoyment (in the form of seratonin or whatever) at least as good as what you get from empathy?
You’re right, human morality is more complex than I thought it was when “I am an egoist” seemed like a reasonable assertion, and all the fuzzies I got from “resolving” the question of ethics prevented me from properly updating my beliefs about my own ethical disposition.
No offense intended, but: If you could take a pill that would prevent all pain from your conscience, and it could be absolutely guaranteed that no one would ever find out, how many twelve-year-olds would you kill for a dollar?
majoring in mathematics (or, as Clemson (unjustifiably) calls it, Mathematical Sciences)
If you mean that mathematics is not a natural science, then I agree with you. But ‘science’ has an earlier, broader meaning that applies to any field of knowledge, so mathematical science is simply the systematic study of mathematics. (I don’t know why they put it in plural, but that’s sort of traiditional.)
You’re right! I’ve been so caught up (for years now) with explaining to people that mathematics was not a science because it was not empirical (although, as I’ve since learned from Eliezer, “pure thought” is still a physical process that we must observe in order to learn anything from it), that I’ve totally failed to actually think about the issue.
There goes another cached thought from my brain; good riddance, and thanks for the correction!
I spent those three weeks doing little else in my spare time but reading the Sequences (which I’ve now finished).
Impressive. I’ve been here for over a year and I still haven’t finished all of them.
However, I’ve been an egoist for as long as I can remember, and I see no reason why this might change in the foreseeable future (this seems to be my primary point of departure from agreement with Eliezer). I sometimes go out of my way to help people (strangers as much as friends) because I enjoy helping people, but I have no illusions about whose benefit my actions are for.
I’m curious — if someone invented a pill that exactly simulated the feeling of helping people, would you switch to taking that pill instead of actually helping people?
Impressive. I’ve been here for over a year and I still haven’t finished all of them.
Thanks! My friends thought I was crazy (well, they probably already did and still do), but once I firmly decided to get through the Sequences, I really almost didn’t do anything else while I wasn’t either in class, taking an exam, or taking care of biological needs like food (having a body is such a liability!).
I’m curious — if someone invented a pill that exactly simulated the feeling of helping people, would you switch to taking that pill instead of actually helping people?
No, because helping people has real effects that benefit everyone. There’s a reason I’m more inclined to help my friends than strangers—I can count on them to help me in return (this is still true of strangers, but less directly—people who live in a society of helpful people are more likely to be helpful!). This is especially true of friends who know more about certain things than I do—many of my friends are constantly teaching each other (and me) the things they know best, and we all know a lot more as a result… but it won’t work if I decide I don’t want to teach anyone anything.
I think there are few humans who don’t genuinely care more about themselves their friends and family than people in general.
Personally I find the idea that I should prefer the death of say, my own little sister, to two or three or four random little girls absurd. I suspect even when it comes to one’s own life people are hopelessly muddled on what they really want and their answers don’t correlate too well with actions. A better way to get an estimate of what a person is likley to do, is to ask them what fraction of people would sacrifice their lives to save the lives of N (small positive integer) other random people.
It’s even more complicated than that. If I see a few strangers in immediate, unambiguous danger, I’m pretty sure I will die to save them. But I will not spend all that much on donating to a charity that will save these same people, twenty years later and two thousand miles away. (...what was that about altruistic ideals being Far?)
However, I’ve been an egoist for as long as I can remember,
I’m not entirely sure what this position entails. Wikipedia sent me to ‘egotist’ and here. I am curious because it seems like quite a statement to use a term so similar to an epithet to describe one’s own philosophy.
The distinction between egoism and egotism is an oft-mixed-up one. An egotist is simply someone who is overly concerned with themselves; egoism is a somewhat more precise term, referring to a system of ethics (and there are many) in which the intended beneficiary of an action “ought” (a word that Eliezer did much to demystify for me) to be the actor.
The most famous egoist system of ethics is probably Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, of which I am by no means a follower, although I’ve read all of her non-fiction.
Greetings, fellow thinkers! I’m a 19-year-old undergraduate student at Clemson University, majoring in mathematics (or, as Clemson (unjustifiably) calls it, Mathematical Sciences). I found this blog through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality about three weeks ago, and I spent those three weeks doing little else in my spare time but reading the Sequences (which I’ve now finished).
My parents emigrated from the Soviet Union (my father is from Kiev, my mother from Moscow) just months before my birth. They spoke very little English upon their arrival, so they only spoke Russian to me at home, and I picked up English in kindergarten; I consider both to be my native languages, but I’m somewhat more comfortable expressing myself in English. I studied French in high school, and consider myself “conversant”, but definitely not fluent, although I intend to study abroad in a Francophone country and become fluent. This last semester I started studying Japanese, and I intend to become fluent in that as well.
My family is Jewish, but none of my relatives practice Judaism. My mother identifies herself as an agnostic, but is strongly opposed to the Abrahamic religions and their conception of God. My father identifies as an atheist. I have never believed in Santa Claus or God, and was very confused as a child about how other people could be so obviously wrong and not notice it. I’ve never been inclined towards mysticism, and I remember espousing Physicalist Reductionism (although I did not know those words) at an early age, maybe when I was around 9 year old.
I’ve always been very concerned with being rational, and especially with understanding and improving myself. I think I missed out on a lot of what Americans consider to be classic sci-fi (I didn’t see Star Wars until I got to college, for example), but I grew up with a lot of good Russian sci-fi and Orson Scott Card.
I used to be quite a cynical misanthrope, but over the past few years I’ve grown to be much more open and friendly and optimistic. However, I’ve been an egoist for as long as I can remember, and I see no reason why this might change in the foreseeable future (this seems to be my primary point of departure from agreement with Eliezer). I sometimes go out of my way to help people (strangers as much as friends) because I enjoy helping people, but I have no illusions about whose benefit my actions are for.
I’m very glad to have found a place where smart people who like to think about things can interact and share their knowledge!
No offense intended, but: If you could take a pill that would prevent all pain from your conscience, and it could be absolutely guaranteed that no one would ever find out, how many twelve-year-olds would you kill for a dollar?
(Perhaps you meant to say that you were mostly egoist, or that your deliberatively espoused moral principles were egoistic?)
PS: Welcome to Less Wrong!
Eliezer, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. When I backed up and asked myself whether, not why, I realized that
1) I’m no longer sure what “I am an egoist” means, especially given how far my understanding of ethics has come since I decided that, and
2) I derive fuzzies from repeating that back to myself, which strikes me as a warning sign that I’m covering up my own confusion.
Eliezer, please don’t think you can offend me by disagreeing with me or questioning my opinions—every disagreement (between rational people) is another precious opportunity for someone (hopefully me!) to get closer to Truth; if the person correcting me is someone I believe with high probability to be smarter than me, or to have thought through the issue at hand better than I have (and you fit those criteria!), this only raises the probability that it is I who stand to benefit from the disagreement.
I’m not certain this is a very good answer to your question, but 1) I would not take such a pill, because I enjoy empathy and don’t think pain is always bad, 2) peoples’ deaths negatively affect many people (both through the ontologically positive grief incurred by the loss and the through ontologically negative utility they would have produced), and that negative effect is very likely to make its way to me through the Web of human interaction, especially if the deceased are young and have not yet had much of a chance to spread utility through the Web, and 3) I would have to be quite efficient at killing 12-year-olds for it to be worth my time to do it for a dollar each (although of course this is tangential to your question, since the amount “a dollar” was arbitrary).
I should also point out that I have a strongly negative psychological reaction to violence. For example, I find the though of playing a first-person shooting game repugnant, because even pretending to shoot people makes me feel terrible. I just don’t know what there is out there worse than human beings deliberately doing physical harm to one another. As a child, I felt little empathy for my fellow humans, but at some point, it was as if I was treated with Ludovico’s Technique (à la A Clockwork Orange)… maybe some key mirror neurons in my prefrontal cortex just needed time to develop.
Thank you for taking time to make me think about this!
If your moral code penalizes things that make you feel bad, and doing X would make you feel bad, then is it fair to say that not doing X is part of your moral code?
I think the point Eliezer was getting at is that human morality is very complex, and statements like “I’m an egoist” sweep a lot of that under the rug. And to continue his example: what if the pill not only prevented all pain from your conscience, but also gave you enjoyment (in the form of seratonin or whatever) at least as good as what you get from empathy?
You’re right, human morality is more complex than I thought it was when “I am an egoist” seemed like a reasonable assertion, and all the fuzzies I got from “resolving” the question of ethics prevented me from properly updating my beliefs about my own ethical disposition.
Statements like I’m an altruist do too. They are however less likley to be challenged.
How much do bullets cost again? :P
As few as possible to earn the dollar! Maxing out at however many I could do in approximately 10 seconds.
If you mean that mathematics is not a natural science, then I agree with you. But ‘science’ has an earlier, broader meaning that applies to any field of knowledge, so mathematical science is simply the systematic study of mathematics. (I don’t know why they put it in plural, but that’s sort of traiditional.)
Compare definitions 2 and 4 at dictionary.com.
You’re right! I’ve been so caught up (for years now) with explaining to people that mathematics was not a science because it was not empirical (although, as I’ve since learned from Eliezer, “pure thought” is still a physical process that we must observe in order to learn anything from it), that I’ve totally failed to actually think about the issue.
There goes another cached thought from my brain; good riddance, and thanks for the correction!
You’re welcome!
Welcome!
Impressive. I’ve been here for over a year and I still haven’t finished all of them.
I’m curious — if someone invented a pill that exactly simulated the feeling of helping people, would you switch to taking that pill instead of actually helping people?
Thanks! My friends thought I was crazy (well, they probably already did and still do), but once I firmly decided to get through the Sequences, I really almost didn’t do anything else while I wasn’t either in class, taking an exam, or taking care of biological needs like food (having a body is such a liability!).
No, because helping people has real effects that benefit everyone. There’s a reason I’m more inclined to help my friends than strangers—I can count on them to help me in return (this is still true of strangers, but less directly—people who live in a society of helpful people are more likely to be helpful!). This is especially true of friends who know more about certain things than I do—many of my friends are constantly teaching each other (and me) the things they know best, and we all know a lot more as a result… but it won’t work if I decide I don’t want to teach anyone anything.
I think there are few humans who don’t genuinely care more about themselves their friends and family than people in general.
Personally I find the idea that I should prefer the death of say, my own little sister, to two or three or four random little girls absurd. I suspect even when it comes to one’s own life people are hopelessly muddled on what they really want and their answers don’t correlate too well with actions. A better way to get an estimate of what a person is likley to do, is to ask them what fraction of people would sacrifice their lives to save the lives of N (small positive integer) other random people.
It’s even more complicated than that. If I see a few strangers in immediate, unambiguous danger, I’m pretty sure I will die to save them. But I will not spend all that much on donating to a charity that will save these same people, twenty years later and two thousand miles away. (...what was that about altruistic ideals being Far?)
Excellent point.
I’m not entirely sure what this position entails. Wikipedia sent me to ‘egotist’ and here. I am curious because it seems like quite a statement to use a term so similar to an epithet to describe one’s own philosophy.
The distinction between egoism and egotism is an oft-mixed-up one. An egotist is simply someone who is overly concerned with themselves; egoism is a somewhat more precise term, referring to a system of ethics (and there are many) in which the intended beneficiary of an action “ought” (a word that Eliezer did much to demystify for me) to be the actor.
The most famous egoist system of ethics is probably Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, of which I am by no means a follower, although I’ve read all of her non-fiction.
See the article on ethical egoism.