I fear the implication is that the creator was not entirely, as you put it, sane. It is obvious that his logic and AI programming skills left something to be desired. Not that this world is that bad, but it could have stood to be so much better...
Articulator
Let’s not even pretend that physical attractiveness, especially facial, doesn’t factor just as highly, if not more-so, in the female perspective. That’s about the hardest thing to cheat, especially for guys, who can’t make use of make-up as easily, both social-acceptability-wise, and simply never being taught how, in most cases.
Furthermore, for many people, sociability and ‘faking it’ are by no means easy. For instance, I have Aspergers, and let me tell you, sociability for me is likely a lot harder than wearing a push-up bra, just as an example.
Even if none of the above was true, or mattered, women are just plain pickier, because evolutionarily, it makes sense.
And lastly, they don’t need a technique. The only reason it would become a problem for 90% of women (random made up rhetorical statistic disclaimer) is if they’re aiming high. Men don’t even bother aiming high, in general, unless they’re so low down that the only direction is up. In modern society, sexual and to a lesser extent, romantic relations conventions are largely dictated by the woman. On equal footing, attractively, what is the likelihood a man is going to turn down a woman?
Maybe women have slightly less mobility, but they start with a massive offset, in my experience.
Spoken like somebody who’d far enough up the food chain that the difference between them seems pretty small.
If you have to pay them, then this is likely not satisfying their values in itself. Surely satisfying your values without dissatisfying others’ is better?
Also, really? You think Dating Advice is enough?
But I don’t think it would be at all bad if people continued to have normal relationships, but occasionally fooled around with a catgirl on the side.
Especially when it comes to non-mutual fetishes. Why should you bring down your own satisfaction if you don’t have to?
Must… resist… archive binge!
You know when you generalize about “Women”, you are probably going to annoy most the females on here, who tend to be less gender-normative.
Less gender-normative being key. We’re not complaining about the statistical outliers, as nice as you are, because most people aren’t lucky enough to find many of them.
To be honest, I really don’t see men being anywhere near as complex as women. I fully admit that I’m biased, but I honestly believe that men have simpler drives in relationships, and are far more open, especially collectively, as as to what those drives are.
Men and women have the same amount of heterosexual intercourse on average.
Look at that statement. Tell me what’s wrong with that statement. But, on the flipside, thank you. That made my night. I may have woken somebody up laughing.
This means that most of the sex going on is different women having sex with the same superstuds, and that the typical woman has sex with about 3 times as many people as the typical man does.
Because, as should be obvious, women almost certainly have an easier time of obtaining sexual partners, albeit perhaps not within the standards they would like to set.
A very good idea, that.
I’ll concede the first point, but bear in mind that as I said, it is harder for men to change their facial appearance than women, so while I couldn’t comment on the magnitudes involved, I’d estimate it somewhat cancels out, at the very least. I also daresay, examining my understandings that lead to this point that my mistake was implying a direct causation where a slightly finer touch was necessary. Because let’s not pretend that more facially attractive men don’t have an easier time of it. Of course, this presumably increases their self-confidence, etc.
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure 20% effort is too low to yield anything at all. I’ll let you know if I ever find a point where a given amount of effort pays off.
Hmm, I see what you’re saying. However, my counterargument, as I said previously, is that males start at a disadvantage, so even if they have an easier time evening the playing field, that still requires work I would broadly define as ‘harder’. Perhaps that is partially my individual biases talking, but I’m not the only person I know who has expressed similar sentiments.
My claim, to paraphrase yours, is that while men are more likely to hit the threshold with training, women are more likely to without. To be honest, I think I’d take that offset over mobility any day.
For casual sexual partners specifically, however, I would point out that the libido difference between men and women means I daresay the gender ratios in that sort of environment aren’t quite equal. As a result, I would expect a higher proportion of men than women are left without a sexual partner out of those who were looking for one.
They sell themselves short as just an anti-aging formula.
Hi everyone, I’m The Articulator. (No ‘The’ in my username because I dislike using underscores in place of spaces)
I found LessWrong originally through RationalWiki, and more recently through Iceman’s excellent pony-fic about AI and transhumanism, Friendship is Optimal.
I’ve started reading the Sequences, and made some decent progress, though we’ll see how long I maintain my current rate.
I’ll be attending University this fall for Electrical Engineering, with a desire to focus in electronics.
Prior to LW, I have a year’s worth of Philosophy and Ethics classes, and a decent amount of derivation and introspection.
As a result, I’ve started forming a philosophical position, made up of a mishmash of formally learnt and self-derived concepts. I would be very grateful if anyone would take the time to analyze, and if possible, pick apart what I’ve come up with. After all, it’s only a belief worth holding if it stands up to rigorous debate.
(If this is the wrong place to do this, I apologize—it seemed slightly presumptuous to imply that my comment thread would be large enough to warrant a separate discussion article.)
I apologize in advance for a possible lack of precise terminology for already existing concepts. As I’ve said, I’m partially self-derived, and without knowing the name of an idea, it’s hard to check if it already exists. If you do spot such gaps in my knowledge, I would be grateful if you’d point them out. Though I understand correct terminology is nice, I’d appreciate it if you could judge my ideas regardless of how many fancy words I use to descrive them.
My thought process so far:
P: Naturalism is the only standard by which we can understand the world
P: One cannot derive ethical statements or imperatives from Naturalism, as, like all good science, it is only descriptive in nature
IC : We cannot derive ethical statements
IC: There is no intrinsic value
C: Nihilism is correct
However, assuming nihilism is correct, why don’t I just kill myself now? That’s down to the evolutionary instincts that need me alive to reproduce. Well, why not overcome those and kill myself? But now, we’re in a difficult situation – why, if nothing matters, am I so desperate to kill myself?
Nihilism is the total negation of the intrinsic and definitive value in anything. It’s like sticking a coefficient of zero onto all of your utility calculations. However, that includes the bad as well as the good. Why bother doing bad things just as much as doing good things?
My eventual realization came as a result of analyzing the level or order of concepts. Firstly, we have the lowest order, instinct, which we are only partially conscious of. Then, we have a middle order of conscious thought, wherein we utilize our sapience to optimize our instinctual aims. Finally, we have the first of a series of high order thought processes devoted to analyzing our thoughts. It struck me that only this order and above is concerned with my newfound existential crisis. When I allow my rationality to slip a bit, a few minutes later, I stop caring, and start eating or taking out my testosterone on small defenseless computer images. Essentially, it is only the meta-order processes which directly suffer as a result of nihilism, as they are the ones that have to deal with the results and implications.
Nihilism expects you to give up attempting to change things or apply ethics because those are seen as meaningful concepts. However, really, the way I see it, Nihilism is about simply the state of ‘going with the flow’, colloquially speaking. However, that’s intentionally vague. Consider: if your middle-order processes don’t care that you just realized nothing matters, what’ll happen? They’ll just keep doing what they’ve always done.
In other words, since humans compartmentalize, going with the flow is synonymous with turning off your meta-level thought processes as a goal-oriented drive, and purely operate on middle-level processes and below. That corresponds, for a Naturalist, with Utilitarianism.
Now, that’s not to say “turn off your meta-level cognition”, because otherwise, what am I doing here? What I’m doing right now is optimizing utility because I enjoy LessWrong and the types of discussions they have. I bother to optimize utility despite being a nihilist because it is easier, and less work, meta-level-wise, to give in to my middle-level desires than to fight them.
To define Nihilism, for me, now comes to the concept of passively maintaining the status quo, or more aptly, not attempting to change it. Why not wirehead? – because that state is no more desirable in a world with zero utility, but takes effort to reach. It’s going up a gradient which we can comfortably sit at the bottom of instead.
I fear I haven’t done the best job of explaining concisely, and I believe my original, purely mental, formulations were more elegant, so that’s a lesson on writing everything down learned. However, I hope some of you can see some flaws in this argument that I can’t, because at the moment, this explains just about everything I can think of in one way or another.
Thank you all in advance for any help given,
The Articulator (It’s kind of an ironic choice of name, present ineptitude considered.)
Okay, whoa, hey. I clearly and repeatedly explained my lack of total understanding of LW conventions. I’m not sure what about this provoked a downvote, but I would appreciate a bit more to go on. If this is about my noobishness, well, this is the Welcome Thread. Great job on the welcoming, by the way, anonymous downvoter. At the very least offer constructive criticism.
Edit: Troll? Really?
Edit,Edit: Thank you whoever deleted the negative karma!
Okay, noted. It’s just that from what I’ve seen so far, a post with a net downvote is generally pretty horrible. I admit I took some offense from the implication. I’ll try not to let it bother me unless N is high enough for it to be me, entirely, that’s the problem.
Thanks. :)
Thank you for taking the time to give constructive criticism.
I will attempt to make it more coherent and summarized, assuming I keep any of it.
I appreciate I am likely to inexperienced to come up with anything that impressive, but I was hoping to use this as a method to understand which parts of my cognitive function were not behaving rationally, so as to improve.
I will absolutely continue to read, but with the utmost respect to Eliezer, I have yet to come across anything in the Sequences which did more than codify or verbalize beliefs I’d already held. By the point, two and a half sequences in, I felt it was unlikely that the enlightenment value would spike in such a way as to render my previously held views obsolete.
I’ll bear your objections in mind, but I fear I won’t let go of this theory unless somebody points out why it is wrong specifically, as opposed to methodically. Not that I’m putting any onus on you or anyone else to do so.
As I said, I am reading them, but have found them mostly about how to think as opposed to what to think so far, though I daresay that is intentional in the ordering.
Thanks again for your help and kindness. :)
Thanks!
Thanks for that link. I probably should have read that sequence, I’ll admit, but what is interesting is that, despite me not having read it previously, the majority of comments reflect what I stated above, albeit that my formulation explains it slightly more cognitively that ‘because I want to’. (Though that is an essential premise in my argument)
Though this is probably unfortunately irrational on my part, seeing my predictions confirmed by a decently sized sample only suggests to me that I’m on to something, at least so far as articulating something I have not seen previously formalized.
It seems like my largest problem here is that I absolutely failed to be concise, and added in non-necessary intermediate conclusions.
I think of this as less an ethical system in itself, rather a justification and rationalization of my position on Nihilism and its compatibility with Utilitarianism, which, coincidentally, seems to be the same as most people on LW.
I know that this’ll be probably just as failed as the last attempt, but I’ve summarized my core argument into a much shorter series of premises and conclusions. Would you mind looking through them and telling me what you feel is invalid or is likely to be improved upon by prolonged exposure to LW?
P: Naturalism is the only standard by which we can understand the world
P: One cannot derive ethical statements or imperatives from Naturalism, as, like all good science, it is only descriptive in nature
IC : We cannot derive ethical statements
IC: There is no intrinsic value
C: Nihilism is correct
P: Ethical statements are by definition prescriptive
P: Nihilism offers a total lack of ethical statements
IC: Nihilism offers no prescriptive statements
P: Prescriptive statements are like forces, in that they modify behavior (Consider Newton’s First Law)
IC: No prescriptive statements means no modification of behavior
C: Nihilism does not modify behavior, ethically speaking
P: Humans naturally or instinctively act according to a system very close to Utilitarianism
P: Deviation from this system takes effort
IC: Without further input or behavioral modification, most intellectual individuals will follow a Utilitarian system
IC: To act contrary to Utilitarianism requires effort
P: Nihilism does not modify behavior or encourage ethical effort
C: Nihilism implies Utilitarianism (or a general ethical system akin to it that is the default of the person in question)
I apologize if trying again like this is too much to ask for.
Some of the most worthless and nonsensical philosophy has come from professional philosophers
Oh, I know. I start crying inside every time I learn about Kant.
Well, I’ll take what you’ve said on board. Thanks for the help!
Firstly, thank you for replying and spending the time to discuss this with me.
P: Humans naturally or instinctively act according to a system very close to Utilitarianism
Were this true, the utilitarian answers to common moral thought experiments would be seen as intuitive. Instead, we find that a minority of people endorse the utilitarian answers, and they are more likely to endorse those answers the more they rely on abstract thought rather than intuition. It seems that most people are intuitive deontologists.
I admit I made a bit of a leap here, which may not be justified. I was careful to specify ‘very close’, as I realize it is obviously not an exact copy. I would argue that most people do attempt to follow Bentham’s original formulation of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain instinctively, as that is where he derived his theory from. I would argue that though people may implement a deontological system for assigning moral responsibility, they are ultimately using Utilitarian principles as the model for their instinctive morality that describes whether an action is good or bad, much the same as Rule Utilitarianism does. I don’t think I can overstate the importance of the fact that Bentham derived the idea of Utilitarianism from a human perspective.
I don’t think “nihilist” is an interesting term, because it smuggles in implications that I do not think are useful (like “why don’t you just kill yourself, then?”).
In the longer formulation, I tackled this exact question, pointing out that is is more effort to overcome your survival instincts than it is to follow them, and thus an illogical attempt to change things which don’t matter.
I like ‘nihilist’ as a term as it is immediately recognizable, short, punchy, and someone with a basic grasp of Latin or maybe even English should be able to derive a rough meaning. It also sounds better. :P
The practical advice I would give: do not seek to use ethics as a foundation, because there is nothing to anchor it on.
Well, as it currently stands, I’m happy with the logical progression necessary to reach my current understanding, and more importantly, it has given me a tremendous sense of inner peace. I don’t think that it as such limits my mental progression, since I arrived at these conclusions through rational means, and would give them up if confronted with sufficient logic contrary to my understanding.
If there is no intrinsic value, then let us look for extrinsic value.
Would you mind elaborating on looking for extrinsic value? Is that like the Existentialist viewpoint?
Well, I just looked it up, and I’d agree with it, though I do use it more as an intermediate conclusion than an actual end point.
I have to say, though I recognize that this is four years on, I would be extremely interested in your actual shot at Applied Fun Theory. The best thing I’ve ever read in that category so far is Iceman’s Friendship is Optimal, which you of course are already aware of.
I, along several others, were perplexed at your distaste for the world it portrayed, and while I’m sure better could be achieved, I’d be interested to see exactly where you’d go, if you found FiO actual horror material.