Hi, welcome to LW! I will reply to your comments here in one place, instead of each of them separately.
Do you mean I should only post there until I mature enough that I can post here?
No. It is okay to ask, and it is also okay to disagree. Just choose a proper place. For example, this is an article about “explaining hard ideas with simple words”, therefore this discussion being here is quickly getting off-topic. You are not speaking about explaining effective atruism using simple words, but about misconceptions people have about rationality and altruism. That’s a different topic; and now the whole comment tree is unrelated to the original article.
Don’t worry, it happens. Just know that the proper place to ask questions like this is usually the latest Open Thread, and sometimes there is a special thread (like the “stupid” questions) for that. (I would say this is actually the website’s fault, for not making the Open Thread more visible.)
if someone is “rationally” interested in one’s own well-being only
Then of course such person will act rationally by caring only about their own well-being, and considering others only to the degree they influence this specific goal. For example, a rational sociopath. -- Sometimes we speak about paperclip maximizers, to make it more obvious (and less related to specific details of sociopathy or whatever). For a paperclip maximizer, it is rational to maximize the number of paperclips, and to care about human suffering only as much as it can influence the number of paperclips. So for example, if people would react to their suffering by destroying paperclips, or if they would respond to paperclip maximizer’s help by building many new paperclips out of gratitude, then the paperclip maximizer could help them. The paperclip maximizer could even pretend it cares about human suffering, if that helps to maximize the number of paperclips in the future. -- But we are not trying here to sell effective altruism to paperclip maximizers, nor to sociopaths. Only to people who (a) care about suffering of others, and (b) want to be reflectively consistent (want to care about what they would care about if they knew more, etc.).
There is this “Hollywood rationality” meme, which suggests that rational people should be sociopaths; or even should consider themselves imperfect if they aren’t ones… and should feel a pressure to self-modify to become ones. I guess most people here consider this bullshit; and actually exposing the bullshitness of similar ideas is one of the missions of LW. Perhaps the simplest response is: Uhm… why? Perhaps someone had a wrong idea of rationality, and is now optimizing for that wrong idea. (See the nameless virtue.)
Essentially this would be a debate about whether people truly care about others, or whether we truly are self-deceiving sociopaths (and therefore the most rational ones should be able to see through this self-deception). What does that even mean? What does it mean for a human? There is a ton of assumptions and confusions, so we shouldn’t expect to solve this all within five minutes. (And until this all is solved, my lazy answer is that the burden of proof is on those people who suggest that a self-modification to a sociopath is the best way of maximizing my values which currently include caring for others. Because optimizing for values I don’t have seems like a lost purpose.) We will not solve this fully here; perhaps at some other place.
Do you usually expect people to read all the sequences before they can ask questions?
It would be nice, because we wouldn’t have to go over the basics again and again. On the other hand, it’s not realistic. Perhaps the nice and realistic solution could be this: A new person asks something that sounds already-answered to the veterans. The veterans give a short explanation and links to relevant articles from the sequences. The new person reads the articles; and if there are further questions or if the original question does not seem answered sufficiently, then the new person asks additional questions in an Open Thread.
Again, if people here agree with this solution, then it probably should be a policy written in a visible place.
Hi, welcome to LW! I will reply to your comments here in one place, instead of each of them separately.
No. It is okay to ask, and it is also okay to disagree. Just choose a proper place. For example, this is an article about “explaining hard ideas with simple words”, therefore this discussion being here is quickly getting off-topic. You are not speaking about explaining effective atruism using simple words, but about misconceptions people have about rationality and altruism. That’s a different topic; and now the whole comment tree is unrelated to the original article.
Don’t worry, it happens. Just know that the proper place to ask questions like this is usually the latest Open Thread, and sometimes there is a special thread (like the “stupid” questions) for that. (I would say this is actually the website’s fault, for not making the Open Thread more visible.)
Then of course such person will act rationally by caring only about their own well-being, and considering others only to the degree they influence this specific goal. For example, a rational sociopath. -- Sometimes we speak about paperclip maximizers, to make it more obvious (and less related to specific details of sociopathy or whatever). For a paperclip maximizer, it is rational to maximize the number of paperclips, and to care about human suffering only as much as it can influence the number of paperclips. So for example, if people would react to their suffering by destroying paperclips, or if they would respond to paperclip maximizer’s help by building many new paperclips out of gratitude, then the paperclip maximizer could help them. The paperclip maximizer could even pretend it cares about human suffering, if that helps to maximize the number of paperclips in the future. -- But we are not trying here to sell effective altruism to paperclip maximizers, nor to sociopaths. Only to people who (a) care about suffering of others, and (b) want to be reflectively consistent (want to care about what they would care about if they knew more, etc.).
There is this “Hollywood rationality” meme, which suggests that rational people should be sociopaths; or even should consider themselves imperfect if they aren’t ones… and should feel a pressure to self-modify to become ones. I guess most people here consider this bullshit; and actually exposing the bullshitness of similar ideas is one of the missions of LW. Perhaps the simplest response is: Uhm… why? Perhaps someone had a wrong idea of rationality, and is now optimizing for that wrong idea. (See the nameless virtue.)
Essentially this would be a debate about whether people truly care about others, or whether we truly are self-deceiving sociopaths (and therefore the most rational ones should be able to see through this self-deception). What does that even mean? What does it mean for a human? There is a ton of assumptions and confusions, so we shouldn’t expect to solve this all within five minutes. (And until this all is solved, my lazy answer is that the burden of proof is on those people who suggest that a self-modification to a sociopath is the best way of maximizing my values which currently include caring for others. Because optimizing for values I don’t have seems like a lost purpose.) We will not solve this fully here; perhaps at some other place.
It would be nice, because we wouldn’t have to go over the basics again and again. On the other hand, it’s not realistic. Perhaps the nice and realistic solution could be this: A new person asks something that sounds already-answered to the veterans. The veterans give a short explanation and links to relevant articles from the sequences. The new person reads the articles; and if there are further questions or if the original question does not seem answered sufficiently, then the new person asks additional questions in an Open Thread.
Again, if people here agree with this solution, then it probably should be a policy written in a visible place.