Hi! I’ve been reading LessWrong and Slate Star Codex for years, but until the today’s events commented pretty much exclusively on SSC. Hope everything will resolve to the better, although personally I’m rather pessimistic.
In any case, I’ve been wondering for a while is there any online places for casual discussions a-la SSC Open Threads, but more closely related to Less Wrong and the Bay Area rationalist community? Threads like this are one such place obviously, but they seem rare and unpopulated. I’ve tried to fins facebook groups, but with very limited success. Any recommendations?
I genuinely don’t understand, what exactly is the “true self” you’re trying to protect in this case? I can see how drugs and alcohol are essentially wireheading, making you feel like you achieved something of value while in fact your didn’t (or otherwise affecting your judgement through various “undocumented back doors”). But hormones and neurotransmitters are not something external, they are you, or more specifically a part of the physical implementation of any reasonable definition of “your self”. Your motivation for whatever is it you feel it’s appropriate to be motivated for is also mediated by hormones, only (maybe) slightly different ones.
To be clear, I completely understand a position “I want to be more motivated by X and less motivated by Y of my lower-level desires”, e.g. more motivated by the fear of death and less motivated by impulse to eat tasty food. But, I don’t understand how the fact that all of those desires are mediated by hormones makes some of them “less true” than others? Or what does it even mean for them to be “less true”?