The Contrarian Sequences
A series of posts wherein I outline my disagreements with Shishou (Eliezer Yudkowsky).
When I discovered the sequences was my second epiphany (the first was when I became atheist, and my world was turned upside down). Eliezer’s charisma, his arrogance, the force of his personality, and his eloquence all combined to make a deadly drug. I was hooked, and seized with a fervour greater than when I first gave my life to Jesus Christ. Eliezer became my new Jesus, and I was drinking the koolaid pretty badly. Some months later (in light of criticism from both friend and foe), I realised I was a cultist, and began trying to sanitise myself. Due to the Halo effect, I accepted everything Eliezer said unconditionally, and never bothered trying to ascertain for myself the veracity of his claims.
I am stronger now than I was then, and aspiring higher still. This is a project in raising my epistemic hygiene. I will only react to posts that I feel were wrong in the overarching thesis, and develop my counterarguments in them. I expect I should write counter posts for at least 1% of all posts (if I don’t reach the target, I’m probably not being critical enough), and at most 5% (if I exceed that, then I’ve probably just biased myself in the opposite direction, and/or I’m getting a kick out of disagreeing with Eliezer). Posts in the contrarian sequences would be in chronological order of how I wrote them, and not in the order of how they appear in the sequences, or in any ontological order.
I strongly encourage you to do this!
Most likely, it will be worse than the original, the “LessWrong Sequences”, but there is a chance, it will be overall better. There is a room for improvements, there is a room for correcting some big mistakes, too! And there is room to cover the uncovered, but equally or more important stuff!
Just do it!
Thanks for the vote of confidence, I’ll do my best.
I think contrarians are severely undervalued. I was originally a contrarian because 1: it’s fun to have a whole room made at you; and 2: I always found it unnerving when a whole group of people all agreed on something, even if I mostly agreed with them. I found people’s comfort zone discomforting. Now, thanks to my research into Group Think, and the evidence even one dissenter is enough to cast doubt on someone’s perceptions and opinions, I’ve become something of a contrarian crusader. Pedophiles, terrorists, Nazis: the more toxic, the better. I do this for the reasons above… and because it’s a whole lot of fun.
This looks promising.
Also, the link to the Reality of Emergence is broken.
Thanks, I’ll fix it.