This isn’t really a “process”. Maybe it could be “guidelines”? Either way, some of them are pretty good. Some of them are pretty bad (No falling in love). Some are just weird (Beware of consumer electronic devices).
This seemed straightforward to me: if you are serious about security, most consumer electronics are not going to be secure enough for your purposes. Don’t write up anything on a computer that would be bad if the wrong people knew, eventually.
Two issues. First, are you serious about security? Should you be? What is the bad outcome you’re trying to protect yourself from? It’s possible that OP has good reasons to want security, but it’s also possible that they are paranoid. Note, OP didn’t say “if”. Presumably they think that everyone always needs security.
Second, what is better than a computer? Surely not paper. Don’t post your secrets to facebook in plain text. Anything smarter than that is probably going to work fine for you.
The point is well taken, but I disagree with your default position. It is important to at least understand enough about security to make an informed choice—if you don’t have any methods available, by the time you know you need them it will be irrevocably too late. Some common activities in this community which have strong security implications:
Running a start-up
Running a website
Intellectual property
The don’t-post-everything-on-Facebook heuristic is not satisfactory in any of those cases.
The “Don’t write up anything on a computer that would be bad if the wrong people knew, eventually.” heuristic is pretty impractical for any of your three cases too tho.
I figured “someone else would express shock and confusion at not falling in love for the obvious reasons”, and I figure the obvious counters were pretty obvious. Falling in love is a serious distraction that can compromise your values if your core values don’t actually include falling in love.
If your core values do include falling in love I assume you would develop a different set of meta principles. I wouldn’t want SquirrelInHell’s own system for myself but I do respect it.
The thing that intrigued me, from SquirrelInHell’s own value system, was:
Being attracted to someone is a sign that your mental security is compromised, and that they are more adequate than you in some respect.
This seemed odd to me—it does seem like an obvious security vulnerability, but the specifics mechanism of “a sign they are more adequate than you in some respect” does not seem obvious, although plausibly an artifact of either Squirrel’s particular psychology, or the effects of employing the rest of the meta system.
I think what goes on in my head when I hear that is how it doens’t seem to go along with the rationalist discourse. Total self-sacrifice isn’t actually popular, rather I see a lot of trying to be reasonable, optimizing everything persistently without being extreme. That, and people have posted about how to optimize dating aswell. This is particualrly true on SSC, but SSC also seems to be functioning as a bridge between rationalists and other very smart people, so I guess that’s to be expected.
In any case, calling love “a sign that your mental security is compromised” is exactly the kind of extreme statement that most rationalists seem to want to avoid, and that would immediately turn off any normal person. Hence why I’m curious about reactions, particularly on LW.
But none of this necessarily means anything. I am actually sympathetic to this view. Falling in love does take away resources, and any happiness anyone experiences before something goes foom can probably be rounded to zero.
I would worry if it was taken as default-value on LW that you’re not supposed to fall in love, but I think a lot of value of the site is being able to seriously entertain counterinuititive ideas.
That said, I also worry that this concept is going to be The Concept That Gets Talked about in a gigantic sprawling thread, ignoring a lot of important substance in the rest of Squirrel’s post. (I’m committing to not further discussing this particular subtopic to avoid contributing to that)
This isn’t really a “process”. Maybe it could be “guidelines”? Either way, some of them are pretty good. Some of them are pretty bad (No falling in love). Some are just weird (Beware of consumer electronic devices).
This seemed straightforward to me: if you are serious about security, most consumer electronics are not going to be secure enough for your purposes. Don’t write up anything on a computer that would be bad if the wrong people knew, eventually.
Two issues. First, are you serious about security? Should you be? What is the bad outcome you’re trying to protect yourself from? It’s possible that OP has good reasons to want security, but it’s also possible that they are paranoid. Note, OP didn’t say “if”. Presumably they think that everyone always needs security.
Second, what is better than a computer? Surely not paper. Don’t post your secrets to facebook in plain text. Anything smarter than that is probably going to work fine for you.
The point is well taken, but I disagree with your default position. It is important to at least understand enough about security to make an informed choice—if you don’t have any methods available, by the time you know you need them it will be irrevocably too late. Some common activities in this community which have strong security implications:
Running a start-up
Running a website
Intellectual property
The don’t-post-everything-on-Facebook heuristic is not satisfactory in any of those cases.
The “Don’t write up anything on a computer that would be bad if the wrong people knew, eventually.” heuristic is pretty impractical for any of your three cases too tho.
I agree that some of them are pretty good. I find the whole thing both inspiring and intruiging.
Not falling in love was shocking to see. I find it interesting… would be curious to hear other people’s thoughts on it.
I figured “someone else would express shock and confusion at not falling in love for the obvious reasons”, and I figure the obvious counters were pretty obvious. Falling in love is a serious distraction that can compromise your values if your core values don’t actually include falling in love.
If your core values do include falling in love I assume you would develop a different set of meta principles. I wouldn’t want SquirrelInHell’s own system for myself but I do respect it.
The thing that intrigued me, from SquirrelInHell’s own value system, was:
This seemed odd to me—it does seem like an obvious security vulnerability, but the specifics mechanism of “a sign they are more adequate than you in some respect” does not seem obvious, although plausibly an artifact of either Squirrel’s particular psychology, or the effects of employing the rest of the meta system.
Yeah, the reasons are obvious.
I think what goes on in my head when I hear that is how it doens’t seem to go along with the rationalist discourse. Total self-sacrifice isn’t actually popular, rather I see a lot of trying to be reasonable, optimizing everything persistently without being extreme. That, and people have posted about how to optimize dating aswell. This is particualrly true on SSC, but SSC also seems to be functioning as a bridge between rationalists and other very smart people, so I guess that’s to be expected.
In any case, calling love “a sign that your mental security is compromised” is exactly the kind of extreme statement that most rationalists seem to want to avoid, and that would immediately turn off any normal person. Hence why I’m curious about reactions, particularly on LW.
But none of this necessarily means anything. I am actually sympathetic to this view. Falling in love does take away resources, and any happiness anyone experiences before something goes foom can probably be rounded to zero.
I would worry if it was taken as default-value on LW that you’re not supposed to fall in love, but I think a lot of value of the site is being able to seriously entertain counterinuititive ideas.
That said, I also worry that this concept is going to be The Concept That Gets Talked about in a gigantic sprawling thread, ignoring a lot of important substance in the rest of Squirrel’s post. (I’m committing to not further discussing this particular subtopic to avoid contributing to that)