I work for Open Philanthropy. I spent 2019-2021 at the Centre for Effective Altruism, where I ran the EA Forum. I’m also a semi-professional gamer and streamer who placed second at the 2020 Magic: the Gathering world championship (“Grand Finals”).
aarongertler(Aaron Gertler)
Karma: 636
Eh, probably. But given how we normally think about poetry and Middle Eastern culture, at least in Khalil Gibran’s era (1900-1930), it’s nice to see someone from that background talking about how awesome it is to build better boats. I like finding hints of modernism in unexpected places.
Salutations!
My name is Aaron. I’m a college junior on the tail end of the cycle of Bar Mitzvah to New Atheist to info-omnivorous psychology geek to attempted systems thinker. Prospective Psychology/Cognitive Science major at Yale, very interested in meeting other rationalists in the New Haven area. I’m on the board of the Yale Humanist Community, I’m a research assistant in a neuroscience lab, and I do a lot of writing.
Big problems I’ve been thinking a lot about: Why are most people wildly irrational in the amount of time they’re willing to devote to information search (that is, reducing uncertainty around uncertain decisions)? How can humanists and rationalists build a compelling community that serves adults of all ages as well as children? What sorts of media tend to encourage the “shift” from bad thinking to good thinking, and/or passive to active thinking (NPC vs. hero mindset, sort of—this one is complicated), and how can we get that media in the hands of more people?
I read HPMoR without really noticing Less Wrong, but have been linked to a few posts over the years. Last spring, I found “Privileging the Question”, which rang so true that I went on to read the Sequences and much of the rest. I was never very certain in my philosophy before finding the site, but now I’m pretty sure I at least know how to think about philosophy, which is nice.
The next few years hopefully involve me getting a job out of college that will allow me to build savings while donating plenty, while aligning me to take a position in some high-upside sector of tech or in the rationalist arena, but a lot of people say that, and I’m very unsure about what will actually happen if I flunk my case interviews. Still, the future will be better than the past regardless, and that thought keeps me going (as does knowing how many people are out there working to avoid future-is-worse-than-past scenarios).
Buying Debt as Effective Altruism?
This approach isn’t necessarily about improving the same metrics as global disease control, but the idea is that, when those whose debt has been relieved pledge to give, they’ll wind up giving more than was spent to help them, after accounting for the lost value of a potential investment and inflation and whatnot.
Vittana’s approach involves mico-lending for student loans—so that students who then graduate college have plenty of income to pay Vittana back. This approach is similar, but since forcing people to pay us back makes us essentially debt collectors (and student practices are much more established in the first world than in places Vittana services), I thought a giving pledge might be a nice alternative: “We’ll help you if you help others.”
Expressed in pictures rather than words, but a great example of how to respond to humanity-threatening calamities:
http://www.kiwisbybeat.com/minus37.html?Bonjour
Sidenote: Almost every Minus comic is wonderful, and there aren’t that many of them (you can read the whole series in an hour).
I recently bought a print of the same comic from the author. They are still being sold:
“The story of Japanese railways during the earthquake and tsunami is the story of an unceasing drumbeat of everything going right [...] The overwhelming response of Japanese engineering to the challenge posed by an earthquake larger than any in the last century was to function exactly as designed. Millions of people are alive right now because the system worked and the system worked and the system worked.
That this happened was, I say with no hint of exaggeration, one of the triumphs of human civilization. Every engineer in this country should be walking a little taller this week. We can’t say that too loudly, because it would be inappropriate with folks still missing and many families in mourning, but it doesn’t make it any less true.”
--Patrick McKenzie, “Some Perspective on the Japan Earthquake”
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/03/13/some-perspective-on-the-japan-earthquake
(Disaster is not inevitable.)
I would love to visit, but will be interviewing candidates for positions at a publication (standard Yale excuse, I know). Hope I get another chance! I can see about recruiting other likely candidates for future meetings, as well.
Better read than excerpted in full.
Cool response! Upvoted. But when I saw the comic, I read it as:
“Hey! Certain things are pretty scary and seem to be beyond our human abilities to deal with! But in the face of fear, we should size things up and take action, large-scale action if need be.” In other words, a metaphor for death. (But I’ve been seeing many things as metaphors for death lately, so your mileage may vary.)
The “Yahweh wants it this way” conclusion is interesting, but then again: If God had to put Hell literally underground, he seems like more a Philip Pullman-ish “mortal god” than an all-powerful superbeing, since he works on the same material plane as us, more or less. (Imagine, for example, what the Devil would be in a literal underground hell. Invincible monster? Probably nothing a few nukes couldn’t deal with.) Or perhaps they found the door to Hades and they’ll get to face off against a (very beatable) Greek pantheon.
Either way: Better to wage war on Hell than let it sit there. I don’t trust any superbeing not to send me there, however pure a life I lead (even if we’re just thinking about Christianity vs. Islam, I seem to have only half a chance at Heaven).
“Let’s just seal up Hell and leave it there” = “Let’s just accept the good things about death and leave it there”. But I see lots of things with LW glasses on at this point, so it could be a stretch. Also just a fun example of seeing problems from a new angle
Rational Evangelism
Targeted quick reads are great! That’s one reason I like the quote threads so much—almost anyone will be fond of a few good rationality quotes, and that’s a good way to introduce them to specific LW material.
Sounds like Jonathan Edwards, or maybe Timothy Dwight. Both of them have Yale residential colleges named after them. No one cares much about the Hell stuff here, though, probably because John Calhoun (another college namesake) was an infamous slaveholder.
“These advantages are real, significant, and probably even replicable for a more secular memeset—but I think if we tried it, we’d be missing our own point.”
Interesting. I think that could be true of whatever our “point” is right now. But eventually, that point is probably going to have to involve something that people at the IQ 100 level can pick up and use with some success in their daily lives, the same way so many already do with religious principles. (Though LW principles can hopefully avoid most of the negative downsides that come with living religiously.)
HPMOR is really cool, but I’ve also known several people who can’t stand it. Too long/too Gary Stu/too strange for devoted fans of the original series. Luminosity is just as good, but suffers from some of the same issues. I think we need more short stories that have reasonable, non-utopian endings, things people can pick up and read in an hour. Though I say this knowing I likely won’t be in a position to write any of these stories for a while...
When I visualize Bjorn Lomborg’s “Indonesia 2100 should have the same GDP per capita as Denmark now” future, I start to glow on the inside. There are many things about LW that give me that glow. I just wish I were better at expressing the glow at the right times without sounding weird about it.
Me 70%.
I agree with avoiding identity-claim aspirations.
When I use the Ned Flanders example, what I’m thinking is:
I know Christians who say that belief in Jesus and being determined to love others will make life better, and they express this better-ness in their incredible patience and kindness—to the point where I wish I were equally patient and kind.
I think we could get to a point where Less Wrong members can say “living with a strong awareness of your own biases and a desire to improve yourself will make your life better”, and express this better-ness by being good conversationalists, optimistic, and genuinely helpful to those with questions or problems—to the point where non-members wish they were equally cool/smart/fun/helpful, or whatever other values we hope to embody.
“By poet, I mean that farmer who plows his field with a plow that differs, however little, from the plow he inherited from his father, in order that someone will come after him to give the new plow a new name; I mean that gardener who breeds an orange flower and plants it between a red flower and a yellow flower, in order that someone will come after him to give the new flower a new name; or that weaver who produces on his loom patterns and designs that differ from those his neighbors weave, in order that someone will give his fabric a new name. By poet, I mean the sailor who hoists a third sail on a ship that has only two, or the builder who builds a house with two doors and two windows among houses built with one door and one window, or the dyer who mixes colors that no one before him has mixed, in order to produce a new color for someone who arrives later on to give the ship of the language a new sail, the house a new window, and the garment a new color.”
-Khalil Gibran, quoted in Reza Aslan’s “Tablet and Pen”