Hiding in a shrubbery
hamnox
Karma: 1,274
Speaking in E-prime does not help clear the brain of those cognitive errors, really. I tried it for a while, and it soon became clear that The Blind Idiot God engrained it far too deeply into our thinking patterns.
Even if they could not explicitly use the word “is”, they would still use the same thinking patterns to equate things with their arbitrary definitions.
I don’t feel quite comfortable admitting that I am only 18 over the internet. (But I’ll do it anyways, obviously.)
Irrational fear of internet predators is irrational >.>
It’s hard not to feel a little intimidated by the sheer sanity of what’s written here. For a long time I felt like I was obligated to at least get my GenEd done before I could sign up to comment. If I haven’t managed to pass society’s standard of intelligence yet, how can I expect respect and understanding here, where the standards are so much higher? There’s probably quite a few teen lurkers out there, waiting hopefully for some small sign to inform them when they are high enough on the sanity-waterline to converse with gods.
Edit: Oh yes! And I’m a female. Slightly relevant to the original posting :)
(This looks pretty old, but I decided it couldn’t hurt to be the Female with an Anecdote)
I’d found Less Wrong when I was already looking for a better understanding of rationality than could be found browsing through random atheist blogs, so I pounced on the sequences like a rabid kitten. When I went looking for how to actually apply the general principles of rationality, my mind naturally gravitated towards, well… Its own functioning. And the ways I wound up applying what I learned were substantially less about the ‘calibration’ and ‘winning’ that had first caught my eye.
I came for the dissent, like a good Intellectual Hipster, but I think I stayed for Luminosity.
It’s not true to say that I just don’t have a great personal interest in abstract epistemics, or winning, or making sure that my beliefs are correct, because I do. I really, really do. But as soon as I calmed down from Man-With-A-Hammer-Syndrome, I found that I don’t like straight-up arguing nearly as much as I thought I did, though I absolutely stand by the necessity of sharpening our minds against each other. I enjoy pieces on how fully rational people might interact with others more than I like the more abstract musings on the prisoner’s dilemna and newcomb’s box, as fun as they might be. And to me, being able to comprehend and influence your own mindstate has more obvious potential for benefit than the similar idea of improving your entanglement by knowing and correcting for your cognitive biases.
As Eliezer said, there’s no real distinction between “masculine” and “feminine” rationality. The examples I listed do not exist in a vacuum, they depend on or lead to, connect, and interweave with every other facet of rationality. I just highly suspect that Luminosity is a better perspective to form a basic grasp of Rationality from for those who tend towards {Social, Emotional, Passive} traits. I could be wrong or overgeneralizing, but it definitely feels like part of my femininity (or at least the traitset associated with the female gender) exerting itself. A Social, Emotional, and Passive leaning as opposed to Experimentative, Argumentative, and Dominant. Whether that really characterizes women in general is something I’m much less certain about.
I learned my nines like that too, except I think the teacher showed us that trick. Of the things I learned personally… My tricks were more about avoiding the numbers I didn’t like than being efficient.
I could only ever remember how to add 8 to a number by adding ten and then subtracting two. I learned my 8 times tables by doubling the 4th multiple, and 7 by subtracting the base number from that. I suppose I only ever really memorized 2-6 and 12.
I’ll second that motion.
Eliezer is currently working on a book, but I’d love to see an open-source attempt at making an elevator pitch for rationality.
I read this and connected it to the horrible feeling I got from trying to look at myself during my first attempts to grok the world from a stereotypical bible-belt perspective. I got an Error Message: People who have yet to hear god’s word, and satan-lovers who willfully defy or ignore god, sure, but to simply not believe any of it just wasn’t in the domain. I can’t think of non-computer/mathematic terms to describe looking at the blank spot, and those don’t capture the psychological horror of finding yourself in it. (Or rather, not finding.)
I would give this five votes up if I could.
I applaud you on your willingness to share this experience. I might even call it brave, because there is a strong sort of stigma against anything religious in most “rationalist” circles. I also congratulate you on finding a workable solution in spite of those stigmas, rather than sticking to absurd, self-contrived constraints on being Rational(TM). I hardly think that church-going is the best long-term solution to a chronic negativity problem, but when supposedly ideal methods are shown to consistently fail in some way or another.. Well, there’s a word for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The causes of this sort of thing have been discussed elsewhere, and I’m sure are being reiterated in other comments right now. Believe me, Swimmer, you’re not the first person to think of it. It always comes up sooner or later. We even have a few names for it: Reversed Stupidity, Being Half A Rationalist, or even Meta-Signaling. ;-)
Couldn’t tell you what the answer is though, short of starting up a dojo for rationality and drilling the community into us. I would think that an actual Less Wrong group would be a better place to find that sort of positive community than just an assortment of nontheists, since we do seem rather dedicated to moving beyond developing a hard shell skepticism and into the greater realm of Luminous living and group rationality.
Note: Okay, you might notice some of this is jokingly taken from The Simple Truth. I had way too much fun with that reference to spoil it in text, but school has instilled in me a healthy fear of plagiarism so I’m just letting you know.
Yes, of course it’s better to plan so you won’t have to throw food away. But that’s not what’s being contested—A desire to plan efficient meals is as far from the fear of throwing food away as wanting to have accurate beliefs is from fearing having to change your beliefs.
Not even Mad-Eye Moody would suspect that Voldemort and Harry Potter pulled off the prison break together.
Truly, it is insanely mind-boggling to think about. I’m still freaking out about it myself a little, even as I, a reader, was privileged with a much broader perspective on the circumstances leading up to the event than the characters. Except maybe Quirrelmort, he’s a grand mysterious meddler.
My first thought was a slightly more sophisticated version of “OMG, WANT!”. This seems like a brilliant idea, and I’d absolutely love to see it come to fruition. I can taste the sweet hintings of a future rationality dojos, already envision the unfolding of a greater future where more is possible. Ten weeks dedicated strictly to the Art, with other people who will actually CARE DEEPLY about being sane. How could I NOT want to be there? I’m a little iffy on whether or not all of these ideas are really the best, but hey—it’s a work in progress.
I open up an application and start typing. But I’m finding myself intimidated by vastly open-ended form questions, and the mention that they’re looking for “people who’ve demonstrated high productivity” and “who already seem like good epistemic rationalists”. I have no such qualifications; I’m inexperienced, lazy, and honestly, I’ve internalized frustratingly little of what I’ve ‘learned’ on LessWrong. So I close the window.
But, the only way I can possible be sure that I won’t get in is if I don’t apply. And I do want to go, I really want this experience. So I open it and start again.
Then close it once more a few seconds later. Open. Close. Open. Close.
I think I may have a problem.
I think I also understand why rejection therapy is part of the curriculum. Unwillingness to put yourself out there is a severe handicap to winning.
Great! Perhaps we could stage a meetup.
Like the subverter in a paranoid debate? I think that would actually be really useful, or at least a lot of fun (which has a use in and of itself.)
I would stipulate that it NOT be just one person, though. There ought to multiple people, trading off to diffuse attention, or whoever is designated could easily become a strawman effigy to be mocked and denounced.
The story in my head goes: Every once in a while, an ace of spades (if we can get it custom, red or gold on black would be an epic color scheme), will be discretely slipped to a randomly selected acolyte or two before the meeting has begun. These people have license to be as contrary and anti-consensus as they can get away with without being found out. It will be given away at the end of the meeting, unless they’d like the actions and statements they made that day to stand as-is...
And yet it’s a true observation, and entirely relevant if you’re going to concern yourself with convincing other people to resist against being human.
It’s nice to hear (well, read) all this. I bump noses with LDS members quite a bit here in Utah, and I’ve always felt that—despite my issues with its dogmatic authority, literal truth value, and shaming of anyone who doesn’t fit into the proper casting roles—the church is a highly effective force that does a lot of overall good for its members. “If I were a Christian, I thought, I’d be a Mormon.” rings true for me too.
I still disagree with you and doubt that will change, but I’m glad to see you and JohnH here. You bring a strong, unique, and well-reasoned voice with invaluable experience to this forum. I look forward to reading more from you in the future =)
They stopped talking after they taboo’d “rational”. Both can agree that CDT recommends one thing, and EDT recommends another, but if you dropped them into Omega’s lap right now they would still disagree over which decision theory to use. They replaced the word with their own respective spins on its meaning, but they failed to address the real hidden query in the label: Is this the best course of action for a reasonable person to take?
It’s a tragicomedy, of course.
I’m sorry, don’t want to diss the very real idea of the singularity, but I had to laugh for this one. It’s just that the way you asked… Its wording is strongly reminiscent of Rapture/Apocalypse fanaticism, merely translated into the local dialect.
But no, I don’t think it’ll happen within my life time bar cryonics, life extension, or a sudden and dramatic increase in world sanity.
Aha!
This is a very useful and relevant explanation, which would have been unutterably more useful to read in the article itself.
I don’t think words can convey just how happy seeing this post has made me.
I am also from Salt Lake City :)