Gosh golly gee whiz, that’s me! I’m blushing with gratitude!
Costanza
Net-positive is good! If congratulations are in order, then congratulations!
In my personal experience, the net-positive thrills are terrific, but too few and far between to merit extensive study. If you can arrange to take a bit of a break for a while until your life settles down, then do that. If not, then you probably don’t have time right now to do much more than use a combination of common sense and sheer willpower.
The military and the emergency services have a lot of institutional knowledge of how to function during periods of extremely unpleasant stress. For example: http://www.hooah4health.com/mind/combatstress/default.htm .
Thanks!
This advice is alien to my personal experience (as noted previously) but seems strangely seductive. Note that I am not here at less wrong because I think my thinking processes are in perfect order. In my life, the pleasant distractions from work have included falling in love, the euphoria of getting what I regarded as an honor, and becoming a father. These have been the high points in my life. In contrast my work has been...rather imperfectly fulfilling. When the high points have come, I have benefited by regarding myself as temporarily and happily impaired. I take it you would advise the original poster to find deeply fulfilling work. On reflection, I really, really agree.
Aristotle thought that some people were naturally slaves, and it’s hard to overestimate the historical importance of Aristotle on philosophy. See http://www.suite101.com/content/aristotle-on-slavery—some-people-are-slaves-by-nature-a252374
More recently, George Orwell wrote about the waiters in the Parisian restaurant where he was a dishwasher:
...never be sorry for a waiter. Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, you feel that the tired waiter at your side must surely be despising you. But he is not. He is not thinking as he looks at you, ‘What an overfed lout’; he is thinking, ‘One day, when I have saved enough money, I shall be able to imitate that man.’ He is ministering to a kind of pleasure he thoroughly understands and admires. And that is why waiters are seldom Socialists, have no effective trade union, and will work twelve hours a day — they work fifteen hours, seven days a week, in many cafes. They are snobs, and they find the servile nature of their work rather congenial.
See http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79d/chapter14.html
Lots of people get real pleasure out of pleasing authority. Not out of being abused by authority, but rather by getting little pats on the head. Elves are not far from human at all in that way.
Dogs love to be praised by master, and that’s why we love them. Dogs were bred by humans from wolves to be obedient and submissive, if not sentient.
EDIT/P.S. Slightly off-topic. Epictetus, one of the founders of stoic philosophy, was himself a slave for much of his life. His thought was absolutely a rationalist. As far as I know, he never questioned slavery as an institution.
I’d expect that the Less Wrong community would tend to be unusually independent and averse to hierarchies. But much of humanity is accustomed to obedience, and even regards obedience to authority as a positive good. Some societies are more authoritarian than others, but duty, and humility and respect to superiors are commonly praised as virtues. Disobedience, whining, and malingering are considered bad.
Lots and lots of parents devote a lot of effort to raising their children to be obedient and respectful, not for cynical reasons, but out of love. They deliberately train their children to be servile, not only within the family, but in the context of school and adult life. I take it that some degree of this is traditional throughout the world.
True. On the other hand, historically, perhaps the majority of humans since the invention of agriculture have lived lives of what we would regard as continual drudge work, poverty, little or no protection from authority, and very little opportunity for advancement. Until recently, philosophers—and everyone else—took it for granted that this was how the world would always work. Certainly some “slaves” were privileged, but by the same token, huge numbers of nominally “free” people had it worse than canonical house elves. Even today, this is how it is for many, many people.
On the other hand, there’s the consolation that if and when you do cease to exist, you will no longer be bothered by fear of failure or anything else. You will have no regrets, no regrets at all.
I would. Is it just the number, or is it the composition, or maybe the geographical distribution?
Tangential question:
...good old-fashioned software engineering has revolutionised the financial markets, saving the world billions of dollars of bad investments,...
Is this true? I’d like it to be true for many reasons. But I have seen some plausible arguments that in recent years the financial sector has not been doing its job in the economy very well. For example, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_cassidy?printable=true .
I’ve made an inquiry about a room at Chapman University in Orange, not far from Anaheim. If and when I hear more, I’ll post.
My first thought in that area was a conference room at the Cerritos municipal library. It’s a surprisingly nice location, but they charge, and I think the rates are unnecessarily high:http://menu.ci.cerritos.ca.us/cc_fees.html
This question comes up a lot! A fan has come up with a very sensible and helpful chart, in many languages no less! http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/
Hello! As you’re no doubt aware, the general tenor of Less Wrong tends toward non-belief in religion. However, in contrast to many religious believers, you have expressed a willingness to alter your views in the face of evidence. Watch out! Even your tentative suggestion that you might “drift towards atheism” might cause you to be regarded as a heretic or at least untrustworthy in some churches. But if you’re willing to commit yourself to pursuing the truth wheresoever it may lead, then congratulations!
As has been mentioned already in this thread, Judaism and Christianity historically do not claim to be non-disprovable. Elijah bet his God against Baal and (in the Biblical narrative) won. Do you think this experiment can be replicated? Alternatively, is there something equivalent to a “similar or better revelation” that could convince you that no organized religion is correct at all?
There were some things I thought of saying, but I think I’ll hold my tongue for now. In short, I think your assertions have some logical errors. This is not a put-down or a personal comment—I’m certainly no more than an aspiring rationalist, at best, myself. I hope you stick around this forum. In the spirit of Tarski I would ask you to join me in saying:
If Christianity is true I desire to believe that Christianity is true. If Christianity is not true, I desire to believe that Christianity is not true.
I would say this, and do!
Again, I hope you stick around. No need to burn yourself out as the lone voice of Christianity—pacing yourself is fine.
Also, this truly is a rationalist site. If you can present well-thought out arguments, people here will listen to you. If you can make a rational argument demonstrating the truth of Christianity, then (according to some denominations) you could save some souls. (I understand the Calvinists would not necessarily agree.) But according to some traditions, good works (not just fide sola) have merit, and evangelizing is one of the greatest of all good works. Is it not?
My ulterior motive in making that argument is that I also think this forum could benefit from the perspective of a Christian who speaks Bayes.
Well, I certainly don’t think Jehovah created the universe. On the other hand, this thread is devoted to the consideration of the proposition that 2 + 2 = 3 -- arguably a settled question—with the understanding that “a belief is only really worthwhile if you could, in principle, be persuaded to believe otherwise.” I don’t know if Xaway is going to be participating any more (hi, Xaway, if you’re reading this!), but I was hoping that this might be a good exercise in practicing rational discussion. In part, I thought we could win him over to the dark side (joking about it being the dark side.)
Chapman officially will not work for this weekend, but remain open to inquiries in the future. preferably with as much lead time as possible.
I’m reminded that “Southern California” is really big, in terms of just plain area. Thanks for all your effort.
My impression is that people tend to be exposed to grammar early on in school, in the form of a lot of arbitrary-seeming rules, which do not necessarily correspond with the colloquial spoken language. In English class in elementary and high school, I was taught never to split an infinitive (maybe I should say, “to never split an infinitive”) and that the verb “to be” takes the nominative -- “that is I” rather than “that’s me.” Later, I learned that serious academic grammar scholars tend not spend their time issuing or enforcing random rules, but rather mostly observe and analyze how people use grammar—regional and temporal shifts in the way the language is used. In that sense, language is value-neutral. Neither French nor English is “better” than the other in a general sense, French is not just degenerate Latin, Shakespeare and Chaucer and the author of Beowulf all use the grammar of English appropriate to their times. Valley-girl English and Ebonics and West Virginia dialect are all equally valid and internally consistent, according to this approach.
Can this same analysis be applied to moral codes? If it can, even in principle, then we have some problems. As I understand it, “morality” is all about values. I think EY has considered this issue seriously, and has alluded to it in Three Worlds Collide.
Sorry I haven’t participated in this sub-thread...I’ve been too busy reading the sequences.
Just kidding. Personally, I’m pretty new to Less Wrong and I’ve read some, but far from most of the material that may be relevant to this and other subjects. In the meantime, I don’t know what I don’t know, so a reference to the sequences is not offensive. I assume everyone who has commented so far has been acting in good faith.
After action review:
Had a great time meeting many folks who were clearly smarter than me but very nice about it. Thanks to JenniferRM and the students of Harvey Mudd who hosted, and to those who presented their thoughts. I seriously wish I had taken notes in an organized fashion.