And also to me, if you would.
EchoingHorror
Hi, and all. I just joined and stopped exclusively lurking, despite my love of a certain Starcraft Unit.
A lot of the recent posts revolve around AI and I have level 0 AI knowledge, so the lurking is far from over.
But hi nevertheless. I’ll try to contribute where I can and not to where I can’t, so there.
I think that, very basically, when it comes to ideas rationalists explicitly don’t have anything to protect. Ideas are to be judged by their merits without interference. This has to include the Something to Protect that brought about rationality in the first place, because to the degree that thing isn’t rational there is a contradiction in using rationality to protect irrationality, the defensive attitude and bias you mentioned.
Can “definite major purpose” avoid that problem (beyond sounding unlike what is meant)? I’d shorten it to “major purpose” or make it “prime directive” or “main quest” just to avoid anything definite. It should be subject to change with new information or better thinking while the rational methods used to achieve it stay the same.
I take the “Meh, I’ve had worse” approach to deflecting emotional damage. I’m also partial to considering missed opportunities to be trivial additions to the enormous heap of missed opportunities before them.
No need for sour grapes here. In fact, let’s keep all grapes sweet and succulent just in case we get them later.
Aside from the ridiculous (See: Autism and Vitamin D):
So I should get exercise, moderate sunlight, eat healthy omega-3′s and vitamin D’s (also moderately) and not fried obesity food, and sleep in a dark setting?
Of the 2000 hours of peak mental function per year claimed in the first paragraph, how many are wasted on trendy speculation and obvious repetition?
Awesomeness is a great razor when considering the best course of action, but my tendency to use it as the only criteria kept getting me in trouble. Legendary trouble.
But I’m thinking that “awesome” means “fitting with my ideals”, and is a useful and fun way to deflect both the apathy in question and the question itself by not really thinking, just following the programing. Recommendable.
“‘I don’t care’ is a trivial solution” is what I think when I care. It sets everything equal to zero. From that point forward, that line of thinking has an arbitrarily low probability of being worth my time. As a matter of efficiently using my mental faculties, I have to care.
In the scenario where I’m trying to change someone’s mood, I’d go on to say that I don’t necessarily have to care about everything, but if unimportant things have a predictable effect on important things, I care about them too.
Then I’d set traps to reveal their motivation to care about something, either through exposing the dedication to reaffirming they don’t care or through saying their ability to question whether they should care requires an answer entangled with what they value, so the only possible answers exclude not caring.
And I’d blather on like that until the real trap, which is where they get invested in something to distract from the conversation with me and start to care out of spite.
I hope this helps or is at least amusing.
I used to think I trolled all the time, but then I realized I wasn’t looking for anyone else’s anger or frustration, just trying to find their exact train of thought and get to reasonable arguments. Have you had worthwhile experiences probing for information in ways that could be misinterpreted as trolling or just by asking?
Even when there’s no trolling going on, the discussions I’ve seen online are predominantly shouting matches where no one leaves happy. When there’s a troll, at least someone wins. But when debates become rational, everyone wins.
Polyjuiced Quirrell, mind you.
Probably. And with the Aurors coming, Harry won’t have the chance to recast his Patronus before they all find him and give him a good talking-to.
Prediction in rot13: Bs pbhefr, jura gurl neevir, gurer jvyy or rvtug yrffre cngebav xrrcvat gur srne bs qrngu bss Dhveeryy. Vs gur fghaavat fcryy unf jbea bss, naq gur snpg gung ur guerj njnl uvf jnaq naq ghearq vagb n fanxr zrnaf gur qrzragbef ner uvf ceboyrz, abg gur pynfu jvgu Uneel’f zntvp, V cerqvpg fbzr irel vagrerfgvat guvatf jvyy unccra. Zbfgyl rcvp cjantr. Rvtug vf rabhtu, evtug?
Does that also explain why he turned back into a snake? I must have missed where that and throwing away a wand can help with a magical cascade.
Amorality is a lovely way to protect science from ideology. All the heroes subscribe to it nowadays.
For the first, this paper by Gould agrees with Wikipedia. Creationists are a silly folk.
Tonight, after the Deathly Hallows premier, there are going to be readers who don’t normally advertise HP:MoR flooding social networking sites with posts about the movie. Posting more chapters by the time they get to their computers to do so could get them to include their joy over the superior story in this flood, simply by relevant association, advertising MoR and spreading the love. Using the release of the canon movie in this way is the right thing to do, if there are chapters ready to be posted, and the fact that I desire moar MoR is a mere coincidence.
Three out of sixteen teachers I can think of that mentioned Wikipedia recommended using its references, the other thirteen forbade its use and condemned it as inaccurate. They’re usually alright with other encyclopedias, just not the one that clearly cites and links to its sources.
Be attractive and popular. We need rationalists who will understand the need for x-risk avoidance and be able to get the humans to do whatever they need to do to save themselves. It will also help you get money, which can be used to buy happiness.
I didn’t personify Omega until now.
Now Omega is Dr. Manhattan. This cannot be undone.
Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense. Ozymandius is the smartest man on the pile of paper clips.
Before birth, destruction is the only way to get rid of your babies. After birth, you can give them away. What’s the word? Donate your babies? Or sell them if you’re lucky. That way you don’t produce a little bundle of biohazards and, for those who don’t like killing people, you have the added advantage of never even coming close to killing it after it gets personhood.
“On the way to victory, if you get to choose between destroying and not destroying without negative repercussions from not destroying, don’t destroy” seems like a reasonable moral precept. If victory is having fewer babies, and it is, birth is an objectively special moment.
Hello, community. I’m another recruit from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. After reading the first few chapters and seeing that it lacked the vagueness, unbending archetypes, and overt because the author says so theme that usually drives me away from fiction, then reading Less Wrong’s (Eliezer’s?) philosophy of fanfiction, I proceeded to read through the Sequences.
After struggling with the question of when I became a rationalist, I think the least wrong answer is that I just don’t remember. I both remember less of my childhood than others seem to and developed more quickly. I could rationalize a few things, but I don’t think that’s going to be helpful.
Anyway, I’m 21 with an A.A. in Nothing in Particular and going for a B.S. in Mathematics and maybe other useful majors in November.
P.S. Quirrell FTW