I’m not going to read all of your post, but from what I understood I will say the following:
the fact that a lot of people here think that being religious is irrational doesn’t mean that it actually is irrational.
there are people here, including some in the very top according to karma points who hold beliefs that are not religious but clearly irrational IMHO.
what one humans deems rational another might deem irrational
I don’t see any problem with you having obtained a lot of karma here. Again, a lot of people(probably all) here have irrational beliefs why should you be different? Aumann is considered irrational in respect to his religious beliefs but no one denies his contributions to science.
Religion is now considered a great example of irrationality but only because of the current political and social context(being atheist is “in”). There are beliefs as irrational as but that are simply not pointed out as vehemently.
Suggestion: if your time is too valuable to read a post from beginning to end, in all likelihood it is also too valuable to comment on the portions you did read.
I downvoted, “I’m not going to read all of your post, but...” for the dismissive tone*. After reading this comment I recognized that the tone was something I was projecting onto the comment and removed my downvote. I downvoted “Fuck you whoever downvoted …” for pointless combativeness*. After downvoting the other two I downvoted “I’ll be the judge of that” reflexively but removed the downvote after actually thinking about it for five seconds.
* under the general category of “do not want to see comments like this”.
Fuck you whoever downvoted this! It’s my time and I decide how to invest it and if you can’t live with that, it’s your problem! Yeah, downvote me more, I don’t give a fuck!!!
Thanks for your supporting comment Vladimir. It’s just that I feel I’ve been downvoted quite often recently(feel free to read through my recent comments and see for yourself) and honestly I don’t think many of those are justified. If you think otherwise I’m all ears. I simply don’t know how to express myself other than the way I did(refering to my venting off). I was thinking about writing a top level post about this issue but I’m not sure if I want to play this game.
The recently downvoted posts I see begin with “I’m not going to read all of your post, but”, “I’ll be the judge of that.” and “Fuck you”. I don’t think it’s very surprising those have been downvoted. Consider whether other people are likely to feel you’ve added something useful to the discussion when you post and you’ll probably avoid the downvotes. If you just feel the need to vent occasionally then accept the karma hit as the price for your satisfaction.
I don’t think it’s very surprising those have been downvoted.
Can you be more specific, except regarding the “Fuck you” comment?
My view:
“I’m not going to read all of your post, but”
I had already read a considerable part of the post, commented once and read other comments. Based on what I had already read and understood I just decided I didn’t want to read more of the post(I think this is my right) but since I had already thought about what I read and the other replies considerably I nevertheless decided to comment based on the information I had. I could have made that very same comment without mentioning the fact that I didn’t (intend) to read the whole thing but I decided to be honest about the state of my knowledge so I added that in. So from my perspective I’m being penalized for honest self disclosure.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Was given as an answer to someone suggesting how I should use my time. I still don’t see where I’m wrong with that.
In the first case, my downvote had nothing to do with whether you’d read the entire article or not. It had to do with your apparent lack of understanding of the purpose of the site. You came very close to suggesting that rationality and irrationality are subjective, and essentially indicated that you think rationality shouldn’t be valued as highly as is the norm here. The comments about other posters’ rationality seemed inappropriate, too: We’re here to learn to be more rational, and all of us have areas of irrationality to work on.
The downvote in the second case was based primarily on tone: Morendil offered what appears to me to be a suggestion on how to avoid being downvoted in the future (I’ll grant that it’s not the best advice that could have been given, but it seems to me to have been given in good faith if nothing else), and you responded in a way that looks both defensive and status-oriented to me, without actually adding any useful information. Such reactions are rarely useful, especially here. If you’d stated your disagreement in a way that opened the issue up for discussion, rather than apparently trying to end the conversation by asserting dominance, I wouldn’t’ve downvoted you. In fact, I may even have upvoted in that case; I like to see good discussions of our group norms—at least, the norms that don’t define the group.
The comments about other posters’ rationality seemed inappropriate, too: We’re here to learn to be more rational, and all of us have areas of irrationality to work on.
If I understood you correctly the part after the colon is referencing my viewpoint right? I don’t get what is wrong with it unless you want to assert that there are already lots of people here with 100% rationality who don’t need to work on it anymore.
Incorrect; I brought it up because it’s part of how-things-are-here that you seemed not to realize that we realize. We acknowledge that we’re not perfectly rational, or even rational to the limits of what human minds can accomplish, but we still do have expectations and standards.
I don’t disbelieve you, but that’s not what I was trying to get at. This site is intended for people who are trying to improve their rationality and have already passed a certain threshold of rationality. The top post poses the question of where that threshold should be, not whether we should have one at all. At least three of the points in your original comment are in conflict with that intention:
the fact that a lot of people here think that being religious is irrational doesn’t mean that it actually is irrational.
what one humans deems rational another might deem irrational
Religion is now considered a great example of irrationality but only because of the current political and social context(being atheist is “in”). There are beliefs as irrational as but that are simply not pointed out as vehemently.
Until we have AGI it will always be humans who will judge what is rational and what isn’t. I don’t see my points as being contradictory to the site’s intention unless you want to assert that there is an absolute judge of rationality somewhere.
Passed a certain threshold of rationality? What would that threshold be? Do you think that Aumann has passed this threshold? Who will judge who passed it and who didn’t? Of course we could use religion as a filter but this only tells us that religion has become a salient example of supposed irrationality.
As for the non-subjective definition of rationality I think this is highly questionable even from a bayesian perspective. I’ll say it again: even bayesian superintelligences will disagree if they have different priors. So the question becomes: is there a correct prior? AFAIK this question is still open.
And as humans we certainly all have different priors which implies my point:
what one humans deems rational another might deem irrational
I have other things to do with my evening, so I will probably not be responding to further posts on this thread until tomorrow, and I may not wind up getting back to this thread at all. If someone else would like to pick up the conversation, that’s fine with me.
Until we have AGI it will always be humans who will judge what is rational and what isn’t. I don’t see my points as being contradictory to the site’s intention unless you want to assert that there is an absolute judge of rationality somewhere.
False dichotomy. There are definitely other options between considering all rationality subjective and requiring there to be one person who has all the answers. Many topics have been discussed here and elsewhere in the rationalist community and are considered resolved; our normal method is to use those as benchmarks.
Passed a certain threshold of rationality? What would that threshold be?
Opening that question for discussion was a large part of the point of the original post; I expect it to be answered within the next few days. Also note that the question is context-specific: I’m only referring to the expected-rationality threshold here at Less Wrong.
Do you think that Aumann has passed this threshold? Who will judge who passed it and who didn’t? Of course we could use religion as a filter but this only tells us that religion has become a salient example of supposed irrationality.
Religion is one of the benchmarks, yes, and there are reasons for that. (No, I don’t intend to discuss them; perhaps some of the other posters will give you relevant links if you ask.) As to how the passing of those benchmarks is judged, the whole group is involved in that by way of voting and discussion, and so far that appears to be a useful method that’s less subject to bias than traditional forums with formal moderation.
As for the non-subjective definition of rationality I think this is highly questionable even from a bayesian perspective. I’ll say it again: even bayesian superintelligences will disagree if they have different priors. So the question becomes: is there a correct prior? AFAIK this question is still open.
We don’t have a rationally-determined, uncontroversial method for determining priors, so that obviously won’t be one of the benchmarks that we expect people to pass. Using Bayesian reasoning could be, though, or updating because of evidence regardless of the method.
I have other things to do with my evening, so I will probably not be responding to further posts on this thread until tomorrow, and I may not wind up getting back to this thread at all.
I don’t see anything in your answer that is worthwhile for me to comment on, so yes I consider this finished.
Don’t discount random chance plus miscommunication plus priming.
You’ve been downvoted quite often recently when making a post that says “I espouse a 9/11 conspiracy theory, here is my evidence and argument”. I think we both know why that is, whether or not it’s “justified”.
On this top-level comment, regardless of what you thought you were saying by “I’m not going to read all of your post, but”, it’s very plausible you communicated “I’m going to pull a typical internet-poster and not read what you have to say, now you listen to me:” to a reader. A single initial downvote makes it far more likely the next reader will interpret your statement in a negative light as well. etc etc
the fact that a lot of people here think that being religious is irrational doesn’t mean that it actually is irrational.
True. But if I assumed that I was correct there really wouldn’t be much point in me being here.
there are people here, including some in the very top according to karma points who hold beliefs that are not religious but clearly irrational IMHO.
I think this is relevant to the post and the subject at hand. I am not sure I see why you brought it up, however.
what one humans deems rational another might deem irrational
Hence rationality. I do not consider the rational/irrational line to be fuzzy. Our vision of it is certainly fuzzy, but I think the art of rationality depends on there being an Answer. Am I wrong in this thought?
I don’t see any problem with you having obtained a lot of karma here. Again, a lot of people(probably all) here have irrational beliefs why should you be different? Aumann is considered irrational in respect to his religious beliefs but no one denies his contributions to science.
The reason I bring up karma is because I see flaws in the karma system. These flaws are not so much that I happened to get some, but rather than karma has a limit in its ability to predict rationality. As in, it can’t. The relevant question is how LessWrong plans to deal with irrational people that slip through the karma system. The answer I feel coming from the community in the short time this post has been live is that it will be handled on a case-by-case basis. (No one has explicitly said this. I am reading between the lines.) I see no problem with that until LessWrong gets ridiculously large.
Religion is now considered a great example of irrationality but only because of the current political and social context(being atheist is “in”). There are beliefs as irrational as but that are simply not pointed out as vehemently.
Religion was chosen because I am religious. I completely agree with you.
I’m not going to read all of your post, but from what I understood I will say the following:
[...]
Enough said.
Okay. If you are curious, I didn’t notice an answer to the primary question: “How do we deal with the irrational amongst us?” Did I miss it?
True. But if I assumed that I was correct there really wouldn’t be much point in me being here.
Why not? I’m here to improve my rationality I suppose you are here for the same reason. Would you dismiss Newtonian physics once you discover that Newton had irrational mystical beliefs?
Hence rationality. I do not consider the rational/irrational line to be fuzzy. Our vision of it is certainly fuzzy, but I think the art of rationality depends on there being an Answer. Am I wrong in this thought?
I tend to agree. But as far as my understanding of Bayesianism goes, even two bayesian superintelligences starting off with different priors will disagree on what is rational(they will arrive at different beliefs). The question then is: is there one correct prior and if there is how do we find it?
The relevant question is how LessWrong plans to deal with irrational people that slip through the karma system.
I didn’t notice an answer to the primary question: “How do we deal with the irrational amongst us?” Did I miss it?
Who will be the judge of what is rational/irrational? I have seen perfectly rational posts being downvoted into negative numbers while irrational ones have been upvoted. From my observation points are really given more by the heuristic “does this comment conform to my point of view”. And when more people join LW the average level of rationality here will approximate the average in the general population. So hoping that people will be able to vote correctly is wishful thinking.
Why not? I’m here to improve my rationality I suppose you are here for the same reason. Would you dismiss Newtonian physics once you discover that Newton had irrational mystical beliefs?
If I assumed I was correct, I would be going to other people who believed the way I did and learning from them. I don’t assume I am correct, so I try learning from people who believe differently and seeing what sticks.
I tend to agree. But as far as my understanding of Bayesianism goes, even two bayesian superintelligences starting off with different priors will disagree on what is rational(they will arrive at different beliefs). The question then is: is there one correct prior and if there is how do we find it?
I thought there was a way to deal with this? I could be wrong and I haven’t read the relevant articles. I just remember people talking about it.
I am not sure I agree with this use of “rational”. I would expect these two superintelligences to be able to explain their priors and see that the other has arrived at a rational conclusion given those priors.
What I am talking about is someone who is arriving at an obviously irrational conclusion.
Who will be the judge of what is rational/irrational? I have seen perfectly rational posts being downvoted into negative numbers while irrational ones have been upvoted. From my observation points are really given more by the heuristic “does this comment conform to my point of view”. And when more people join LW the average level of rationality here will approximate the average in the general population. So hoping that people will be able to vote correctly is wishful thinking.
Okay, let me reword the question: “How do we deal with the obviously irrational among us?” I am not talking about people near or close to the line. I am talking about people who are clearly irrational.
It sounds like you are saying, “Not with karma because people are not using it that way.” I agree.
I’m not going to read all of your post, but from what I understood I will say the following:
the fact that a lot of people here think that being religious is irrational doesn’t mean that it actually is irrational.
there are people here, including some in the very top according to karma points who hold beliefs that are not religious but clearly irrational IMHO.
what one humans deems rational another might deem irrational
I don’t see any problem with you having obtained a lot of karma here. Again, a lot of people(probably all) here have irrational beliefs why should you be different? Aumann is considered irrational in respect to his religious beliefs but no one denies his contributions to science.
Religion is now considered a great example of irrationality but only because of the current political and social context(being atheist is “in”). There are beliefs as irrational as but that are simply not pointed out as vehemently.
Enough said.
Suggestion: if your time is too valuable to read a post from beginning to end, in all likelihood it is also too valuable to comment on the portions you did read.
I’ll be the judge of that.
To those who downvoted me. Could you provide me with your specific reason so that I could actually learn something from this?
I downvoted, “I’m not going to read all of your post, but...” for the dismissive tone*. After reading this comment I recognized that the tone was something I was projecting onto the comment and removed my downvote. I downvoted “Fuck you whoever downvoted …” for pointless combativeness*. After downvoting the other two I downvoted “I’ll be the judge of that” reflexively but removed the downvote after actually thinking about it for five seconds.
* under the general category of “do not want to see comments like this”.
-16 seems massively disproportionate to the initial offense so I removed my down vote. Upvoted this.
What would be the initial offense?
Fuck you whoever downvoted this! It’s my time and I decide how to invest it and if you can’t live with that, it’s your problem! Yeah, downvote me more, I don’t give a fuck!!!
Take it easy.
Thanks for your supporting comment Vladimir. It’s just that I feel I’ve been downvoted quite often recently(feel free to read through my recent comments and see for yourself) and honestly I don’t think many of those are justified. If you think otherwise I’m all ears. I simply don’t know how to express myself other than the way I did(refering to my venting off). I was thinking about writing a top level post about this issue but I’m not sure if I want to play this game.
The recently downvoted posts I see begin with “I’m not going to read all of your post, but”, “I’ll be the judge of that.” and “Fuck you”. I don’t think it’s very surprising those have been downvoted. Consider whether other people are likely to feel you’ve added something useful to the discussion when you post and you’ll probably avoid the downvotes. If you just feel the need to vent occasionally then accept the karma hit as the price for your satisfaction.
Can you be more specific, except regarding the “Fuck you” comment?
My view:
“I’m not going to read all of your post, but”
I had already read a considerable part of the post, commented once and read other comments. Based on what I had already read and understood I just decided I didn’t want to read more of the post(I think this is my right) but since I had already thought about what I read and the other replies considerably I nevertheless decided to comment based on the information I had. I could have made that very same comment without mentioning the fact that I didn’t (intend) to read the whole thing but I decided to be honest about the state of my knowledge so I added that in. So from my perspective I’m being penalized for honest self disclosure.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Was given as an answer to someone suggesting how I should use my time. I still don’t see where I’m wrong with that.
I’m all ears to hear your point of view.
I downvoted all three.
In the first case, my downvote had nothing to do with whether you’d read the entire article or not. It had to do with your apparent lack of understanding of the purpose of the site. You came very close to suggesting that rationality and irrationality are subjective, and essentially indicated that you think rationality shouldn’t be valued as highly as is the norm here. The comments about other posters’ rationality seemed inappropriate, too: We’re here to learn to be more rational, and all of us have areas of irrationality to work on.
The downvote in the second case was based primarily on tone: Morendil offered what appears to me to be a suggestion on how to avoid being downvoted in the future (I’ll grant that it’s not the best advice that could have been given, but it seems to me to have been given in good faith if nothing else), and you responded in a way that looks both defensive and status-oriented to me, without actually adding any useful information. Such reactions are rarely useful, especially here. If you’d stated your disagreement in a way that opened the issue up for discussion, rather than apparently trying to end the conversation by asserting dominance, I wouldn’t’ve downvoted you. In fact, I may even have upvoted in that case; I like to see good discussions of our group norms—at least, the norms that don’t define the group.
If I understood you correctly the part after the colon is referencing my viewpoint right? I don’t get what is wrong with it unless you want to assert that there are already lots of people here with 100% rationality who don’t need to work on it anymore.
Incorrect; I brought it up because it’s part of how-things-are-here that you seemed not to realize that we realize. We acknowledge that we’re not perfectly rational, or even rational to the limits of what human minds can accomplish, but we still do have expectations and standards.
Quoting myself:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lv/the_wannabe_rational/1gei
I don’t disbelieve you, but that’s not what I was trying to get at. This site is intended for people who are trying to improve their rationality and have already passed a certain threshold of rationality. The top post poses the question of where that threshold should be, not whether we should have one at all. At least three of the points in your original comment are in conflict with that intention:
We do have a non-subjective definition of rationality, by the way.
Until we have AGI it will always be humans who will judge what is rational and what isn’t. I don’t see my points as being contradictory to the site’s intention unless you want to assert that there is an absolute judge of rationality somewhere.
Passed a certain threshold of rationality? What would that threshold be? Do you think that Aumann has passed this threshold? Who will judge who passed it and who didn’t? Of course we could use religion as a filter but this only tells us that religion has become a salient example of supposed irrationality.
As for the non-subjective definition of rationality I think this is highly questionable even from a bayesian perspective. I’ll say it again: even bayesian superintelligences will disagree if they have different priors. So the question becomes: is there a correct prior? AFAIK this question is still open.
And as humans we certainly all have different priors which implies my point:
I have other things to do with my evening, so I will probably not be responding to further posts on this thread until tomorrow, and I may not wind up getting back to this thread at all. If someone else would like to pick up the conversation, that’s fine with me.
False dichotomy. There are definitely other options between considering all rationality subjective and requiring there to be one person who has all the answers. Many topics have been discussed here and elsewhere in the rationalist community and are considered resolved; our normal method is to use those as benchmarks.
Opening that question for discussion was a large part of the point of the original post; I expect it to be answered within the next few days. Also note that the question is context-specific: I’m only referring to the expected-rationality threshold here at Less Wrong.
Religion is one of the benchmarks, yes, and there are reasons for that. (No, I don’t intend to discuss them; perhaps some of the other posters will give you relevant links if you ask.) As to how the passing of those benchmarks is judged, the whole group is involved in that by way of voting and discussion, and so far that appears to be a useful method that’s less subject to bias than traditional forums with formal moderation.
We don’t have a rationally-determined, uncontroversial method for determining priors, so that obviously won’t be one of the benchmarks that we expect people to pass. Using Bayesian reasoning could be, though, or updating because of evidence regardless of the method.
I don’t see anything in your answer that is worthwhile for me to comment on, so yes I consider this finished.
Please don’t; make it an Open (or Meta) Thread comment instead.
Don’t discount random chance plus miscommunication plus priming.
You’ve been downvoted quite often recently when making a post that says “I espouse a 9/11 conspiracy theory, here is my evidence and argument”. I think we both know why that is, whether or not it’s “justified”.
On this top-level comment, regardless of what you thought you were saying by “I’m not going to read all of your post, but”, it’s very plausible you communicated “I’m going to pull a typical internet-poster and not read what you have to say, now you listen to me:” to a reader. A single initial downvote makes it far more likely the next reader will interpret your statement in a negative light as well. etc etc
True. But if I assumed that I was correct there really wouldn’t be much point in me being here.
I think this is relevant to the post and the subject at hand. I am not sure I see why you brought it up, however.
Hence rationality. I do not consider the rational/irrational line to be fuzzy. Our vision of it is certainly fuzzy, but I think the art of rationality depends on there being an Answer. Am I wrong in this thought?
The reason I bring up karma is because I see flaws in the karma system. These flaws are not so much that I happened to get some, but rather than karma has a limit in its ability to predict rationality. As in, it can’t. The relevant question is how LessWrong plans to deal with irrational people that slip through the karma system. The answer I feel coming from the community in the short time this post has been live is that it will be handled on a case-by-case basis. (No one has explicitly said this. I am reading between the lines.) I see no problem with that until LessWrong gets ridiculously large.
Religion was chosen because I am religious. I completely agree with you.
Okay. If you are curious, I didn’t notice an answer to the primary question: “How do we deal with the irrational amongst us?” Did I miss it?
Why not? I’m here to improve my rationality I suppose you are here for the same reason. Would you dismiss Newtonian physics once you discover that Newton had irrational mystical beliefs?
I tend to agree. But as far as my understanding of Bayesianism goes, even two bayesian superintelligences starting off with different priors will disagree on what is rational(they will arrive at different beliefs). The question then is: is there one correct prior and if there is how do we find it?
Who will be the judge of what is rational/irrational? I have seen perfectly rational posts being downvoted into negative numbers while irrational ones have been upvoted. From my observation points are really given more by the heuristic “does this comment conform to my point of view”. And when more people join LW the average level of rationality here will approximate the average in the general population. So hoping that people will be able to vote correctly is wishful thinking.
If I assumed I was correct, I would be going to other people who believed the way I did and learning from them. I don’t assume I am correct, so I try learning from people who believe differently and seeing what sticks.
I thought there was a way to deal with this? I could be wrong and I haven’t read the relevant articles. I just remember people talking about it.
I am not sure I agree with this use of “rational”. I would expect these two superintelligences to be able to explain their priors and see that the other has arrived at a rational conclusion given those priors.
What I am talking about is someone who is arriving at an obviously irrational conclusion.
Okay, let me reword the question: “How do we deal with the obviously irrational among us?” I am not talking about people near or close to the line. I am talking about people who are clearly irrational.
It sounds like you are saying, “Not with karma because people are not using it that way.” I agree.