David Gross

Karma: 1,837

David Gross 23 Sep 2025 17:14 UTC
3 points
0
on: Ontological Cluelessness
I’m pretty sure I’m ontologically clueless in the way you describe. There are some very fundamental things in my worldview that I suspect are misapprehensions but that I don’t know how to confidently replace with anything better. The yet-unimagined right answer to any of them could potentially knock out the pillars holding up much of what I think I know. It’s unsettling when I pause to think about it, but I muddle through.
Might be worth mentioning Kuhn’s “paradigm shifts” as examples of branches of knowledge jumping from one local maximum to another one, and having to resort their conceptual categories thereafter.
Alasdair MacIntyre’s histories of ethical philosophy also highlight how sometimes when a field jumps from one local maximum to another, it brings along old conceptual categories that no longer can find a place but they continue to haunt as weird, ghostly apparitions.

David Gross 5 Sep 2025 22:12 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: Eye You’s comment on: In Defense of Alcohol
I wonder if what makes alcohol superior to pharmacologically-similar drugs like diazepam in terms of socializing and bonding has less to do with the substance and its effects and more to do with the rituals and folklore around consumption.
Partially, I think alcohol just “comes on” much more quickly, and thus the drug and its effects are more tightly-linked mentally. But all of the hocus-pocus around e.g. mixing cocktails or discussing vintages or hops varieties or what-not, and then holding the potion in your hands in its specially-shaped glass, and yada yada… that’s a lot of extra magic juju being added to the spell.
Put diazepam or gabapentin or what-have-you (or, who knows?, placebo?) in some exotically-shaped vehicle and administer it in some public and unusual ritual with its own exacting connoisseurship, and maybe you get everything you need.

David Gross 5 Sep 2025 5:27 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Eye You’s comment on: In Defense of Alcohol
Yeah, GHB is kind of nice in being alcohol-like without some of the worst effects. But I think the thin line between effective-dose and unconscious-dose makes it unlikely to fill this niche (remembering a Burning Man 20 years or so ago in which we inadvertently posed as Camp Jonestown Massacre after a couple dozen people took just a little too much and ended up splayed at random locations).

David Gross 5 Sep 2025 1:45 UTC
5 points
1
on: In Defense of Alcohol
Thinking slightly outside the box here… seems that most of the benefits you identify could also be satisfied by a drug (e.g. valium) that has similar effects without being so freaking toxic (though I understand valium is similarly addictive, alas). Maybe we need to bring back recreational valium. Casual pop-culture reading suggests to me that back in the 70s-80s, valium & quaaludes & the like were quite the thing in party circles.

David Gross 16 Aug 2025 23:29 UTC
−11 points
0
on: The Comprehensive Case Against Trump
In addition, the government is increasingly being staffed by pansies
Would that this were true. Make America Gay Already. “Toadies” is I think the direction you were aiming in, maybe “patsies”?

David Gross 30 Jul 2025 12:48 UTC
4 points
0
on: My Empathy Is Rarely Kind
Some (actually, Much) additional nuance about empathy and its components that might add some context to this discussion at this link: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SMziBSCT9fiz5yG3L/notes-on-empathy
In particular, as other commenters have already pointed out, there is something about “perspective taking” (the shift from considering how you feel about what they feel to considering how they feel) that may be resulting in the OP’s frustration.

David Gross 4 Jul 2025 18:44 UTC
2 points
0
on: Outlive: A Critical Review
VO2max
FWIW, I would find it helpful for you to define this term on first use.

David Gross 12 Jun 2025 14:59 UTC
3 points
0
on: When should you read a biography?
A wikipedia-style short biography of a person will tell you what they did and accomplished.
A good, critical, book-length biography can help you see, in something more like real-time, what decisions the person made along the way, what constraints they were operating under, how the effects of those decisions looked as they happened (without the benefit of hindsight), and what atmospheric effects contributed to the arc of the person’s life. This is much more personally applicable to you as the reader who has to live your life in real-time.
I enjoy reading biographies of people who made unusual commitments so I can imagine what that sort of pioneer work might have felt like. An extremely weird example (both in the writing style and the subject matter) that has stuck with me is Gabriella Fiori’s biography of Simone Weil (Simone Weil: An Intellectual Biography). Another good one is Fiona Joseph’s biography of Beatrice Cadbury (Beatrice: the Cadbury Heiress Who Gave Away Her Fortune). Sue Prideaux’s I Am Dynamite! A Life of Nietzsche was everything I wanted in a Nietzsche bio.

David Gross 2 Jun 2025 15:52 UTC
3 points
0
on: 1. The challenge of unawareness for impartial altruist action guidance: Introduction
I have just a superficial familiarity with the lit around this, and I’m wondering if what you’re calling “unawareness” is the same concept as what other people have been calling “cluelessness” in this context, or if it is distinct in some way. They seem at least similar.
In any case, thanks for trying to set forth in a rigorous way this problem with the EA project.

David Gross 30 May 2025 14:39 UTC
6 points
0
on: Virtues related to honesty
Notes on Honesty mentions a few more, including trustworthiness/reliability/dependability/conscientiousness (being honest about your promises by following-through on them), parrhesia (a sort of super-frankness pioneered by the Cynic philosophers), reputability (earning a reputation for honesty), sincerity/earnestness/authenticity (being honest in deed, not behaving ironically or in plausibly-deniable ways), straightforwardness (communicating directly, not requiring interpretation or second-guessing).
See also Notes on Sincerity and such.

David Gross 29 Apr 2025 15:06 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Notes on Honesty
Notes on Optimism, Hope, and Trust

David Gross 14 Apr 2025 3:22 UTC
11 points
0
on: Thoughts on the Double Impact Project
A very similar project called “Repledge” launched in 2012, but then fizzled. I don’t know why. But you might try to track down their story and learn from their fail if you want to make this project succeed.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120415055024/http://www.repledge.com/

David Gross 4 Apr 2025 0:34 UTC
17 points
−6
on: Why Have Sentence Lengths Decreased?
There is a relatively new, practical reason to write short sentences: they are less likely to be mangled by automated translation software. Sentences often become long via multiple clauses. Automated translators can mangle such sentences by (for example) mistakenly applying words to the incorrect clause. If you split such sentences, you make such translations more reliable. Most of our writing now potentially has global reach. So you can be understood by more people if you meet translation software half-way.

David Gross 12 Mar 2025 14:24 UTC
2 points
0
on: (Anti)Aging 101
Where life finds death as counterpart, aging is unopposed, yet frames our understanding of both....
What if we take a first-principles approach when defining aging, looking at decay as the derivative of the path between an 80-year-old and a 10-year-old across?
Some of these sentences need to be reworded such that they mean something more precisely, requiring less creative interpretation from the reader.
This post is a good example of one where AI assistance would be helpful. If you asked, say, Claude to identify the various assertions made in this post and then to rewrite them as grammatically-correct English sentences, you could come up with something more concise and easier for the reader to grapple with.

David Gross 1 Mar 2025 1:42 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Existentialists and Trolleys
I assume the audience here is a mix of sophisticated people who of course know all about the trolley problem, etc., and newbies who are attracted to rationalism or the LW ethos and are here to learn more about stuff. So I write in a mix of modes. I can’t say I’m confident about how I navigate this… it’s just kind of a gut feeling that there’s room for multiple styles.
As for your first point about ”...crazy quilt,” I expand on this later in the essay when I discuss how responses to the trolley problems show that commonly people sometimes lean on deontological reasoning, sometimes on consequentalist reasoning.
For the second point, I think my “so from one perspective” caveat anticipates your objection. If you are first confronted with the lever-pulling scenario and think “well, this is just a matter of simple mathematics,” the second scenario reminds you that there are other factors to consider.
For the third point, congratulations on having an existentialist perspective on this matter, but I’m confident that this is far from universal.

David Gross 26 Feb 2025 17:05 UTC
5 points
0
on: Matthew Yglesias—Misinformation Mostly Confuses Your Own Side
For what it’s worth, here’s an excerpt from my book on historical tax resistance campaigns that makes a similar point:
Radical honesty means abjuring subterfuge—conducting your campaign in the open, in plain sight, without trying to take your opponent by surprise through trickery, and without trying to influence people by “spin” and lopsided propaganda. It also means studiously refusing to participate in the dishonesty by which your opponent holds on to power and deceives those who submit to it. Radical honesty has several potential advantages:
1. Honesty provides a stark moral contrast between your campaign and whatever institution you are opposing.
In The Story of Bardoli, Mahadev Desai described how this played out in the Bardoli tax strike:
…a regular propaganda of mendacity was resorted to [by the Government]. The Government’s way and the people’s way presented a striking study in contrasts. On one side there were secrecy, underhand dealings, falsehood, even sharp practice; on the other there were straight and manly speech, and straight action in broad daylight.
This contrast can make your campaign more appealing to potential resisters and to bystanders, and can increase the morale of the resisters in your campaign.
2. Honesty itself is a threat to tyranny.
The way people signal their loyalty to tyranny is to participate in the lies that bolster its power. When everyone around you goes along with the lies, it feels like everyone is loyal to the tyrant. Czech dissident Václav Havel wrote of how this worked under communist tyranny:
Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.
But, he said, people may start to refuse:
Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can coexist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.
Tolstoy went further, and claimed that radical honesty not only threatens tyrants but constitutes a revolution:
No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen’s unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aërial navigation; but a change in public opinion.
And to accomplish this change no exertions of the mind are needed, nor the refutation of anything in existence, nor the invention of any extraordinary novelty; it is only needful that we should not succumb to the erroneous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which governments have induced artificially; it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.
And if only a small body of the people were to do so at once, of their own accord, outworn public opinion would fall off us of itself, and a new, living, real opinion would assert itself. And when public opinion should thus have changed without the slightest effort, the internal condition of men’s lives which so torments them would change likewise of its own accord.
One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress them; it is only needful not to lie.
3. Honesty keeps your campaign from deluding itself.
In a tax resistance campaign, as in any activist campaign, there are frequently temptations to take short-cuts. Rather than winning a victory after a tough and uncertain struggle, you can declare victory early and hope to capitalize on the resulting morale boost. Or, rather than doing something practical that takes a lot of thankless hours, you can do something quick and symbolic that “makes a powerful statement.” Or, rather than fighting for goals that are worth achieving, you can pick goals that are easily achievable but that aren’t really worth fighting for.
Radical honesty gets you in the habit of avoiding temptations like these. By facing your situation forthrightly, and by evaluating your tactics unflinchingly and without self-flattery, you become more apt to make effective decisions.
4. Honesty is itself a good thing worth contributing to.
If you conduct your campaign in a radically honest way, you contribute to a cultural atmosphere of trust and straightforward communication. In this way, even if you do not succeed in the other goals of your tax resistance campaign, you still may have some residual positive effect on the world around you.
5. Honesty means there’s a lot you no longer have to worry about.
When you practice radical honesty, you don’t have to worry about keeping your stories straight, you don’t have to worry about leaks of information that might cast doubt on your credibility, you don’t have to be as concerned about information security, and you don’t have to worry about spies and informers in your midst who might blab your secrets to the authorities. This leaves you free to spend your energy and attention playing offense instead of defense.
When Gandhi heard concerns that government agents had infiltrated the Indian independence movement, he wrote:
This desire for secrecy has bred cowardice amongst us and has made us dissemble our speech. The best and the quickest way of getting rid of this corroding and degrading Secret Service is for us to make a final effort to think everything aloud, have no privileged conversation with any soul on earth and to cease to fear the spy. We must ignore his presence and treat everyone as a friend entitled to know all our thoughts and plans. I know that I have achieved most satisfactory results from evolving the boldest of my plans in broad daylight. I have never lost a minute’s peace for having detectives by my side. The public may not know that I have been shadowed throughout my stay in India. That has not only not worried me but I have even taken friendly services from these gentlemen: many have apologized for having to shadow me. As a rule, what I have spoken in their presence has already been published to the world. The result is that now I do not even notice the presence of these men and I do not know that the Government is much the wiser for having watched my movements through its secret agency.
What’s the catch? For one thing, for a campaign to be radically honest it needs to have fairly tight control over its message. Not just anyone can be a spokesperson, but only those with the talent to speak precisely and to cut through the sorts of baloney that characterize political debate in this era of spin doctors and pundits and talking points.
Another difficulty is that if your campaign already has a credibility problem, it’s going to take a lot of radical honesty to dig you out of that hole.
Also, it seems that at least some of the benefits of radical honesty only emerge when it has become really radical and pervasive. Half-hearted gestures of radical honesty are just another form of machiavellian communication. If you’re not prepared to go all the way, it may not be to your advantage to put in the extra effort.

David Gross 21 Feb 2025 18:23 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: adamShimi’s comment on: Notes on Prudence
I just finished that book. He seems to think of practical wisdom as being what helps with things like bounded rationality, fuzzy categorization, reasoning by analogy with previous experience, and developing mastery in a craft. He gives lots of examples of how institutions degrade practical wisdom by using rules or incentives to guide people instead (e.g. the practice of medicine being taken over by insurance companies, childhood education becoming drills to cram test-taking knowledge, judges’ judgement being replaced by mandatory minimum sentencing). And he discusses ways in which institutions can buck that to empower people to develop and deploy practical wisdom.
I didn’t feel I learned a lot from the book. I think it could have been usefully reduced to a long essay. There was lots of rehashing of anecdotes, tangents into questionably-related subjects, and arguments that seemed more like assertions and applause-lines. Nothing egregious: pretty much on-par for mass-market nonfiction stuff these days.

David Gross 20 Feb 2025 3:23 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: LWLW’s comment on: How to Make Superbabies
There are some promising but under-utilized interventions for improving personality traits / virtues in already-developed humans,* and a dearth of research about possible interventions for others. If we want more of that sort of thing, we might be better advised to fill in some of those gaps rather than waiting for a new technology and a new generation of megalopsychebabies.

David Gross 19 Feb 2025 22:53 UTC
63 points
21
on: How to Make Superbabies
How robust are these calculations against the possibility that individual gene effects aren’t simply additional but might even not play well together? i.e. gene variant #1 raises your IQ by 2 points, variant #2 raises your IQ by 1 point, but variants #1+2 together make you able to multiply twelve-digit numbers in your head but unable to tie your shoes; or variant #3 lifts your life expectancy by making you less prone to autoimmune disease A, variant #4 makes you less prone to autoimmune disease B, but variants #3+4 together make you succumb to the common cold because your immune system is not up to the task.
It’s hard for me to tell from the level of detail in your explanation here, but at times it seems like you’re just naively stacking the ostensible effects of particular gene variants one on top of the other and then measuring the stack.

David Gross 19 Feb 2025 16:46 UTC
1 point
−1
on: Rationality Quotes—Fall 2024
- “[I]t is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies & to end as superstitions.” [T.H. Huxley, The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species 1880]

David Gross

Notes on Optimism, Hope, and Trust