I strongly agree. Just to be another data point :)
Ixiel
“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” Susan Ertz
Edit: I read this as “Hey, if I can’t add days to the end I’ll add them to the middle.” It never occurred to me to think the author wanted everyone to die.
I don’t want to sound defensive, but lest people think the same of me: I assure you, reader, whoever you are: I do not want you to die. (Never thought I’d have to make that as a contentful disclaimer)
Me too. I found the quote thought provoking but I feel I should mention, no, I am not stating I want everybody to die.
This reminds me of something Mark Horstman (I think) said, that people are entitled to honest answers to questions to which they are entitled an answer. He was using it in a workplace context, for example that if one’s boss asks about one’s sex life it’s okay to lie, because she is not entitled to an answer thus she is not entitled to an honest answer. Good post.
I surprised (pleasantly) nobody has raised ethical concerns, debt to the world or what not. I worked a nothing bank job for five years despite being very financially secure (which I did nothing to earn) and am quitting in a month or so. (32yo) I was almost completely motivated to work out of guilt, and am just now over it. Thanks for the post; I wish I read it four years ago.
Irrationality game—there is a provident, superior entity that is in no way infinite (I wonder if people here would call that God. As a “superman theist” I had to put “odds of God (as defined in question)” at 5% but identify as strongly theist in the last census)
Edit: forgot odds. 80%
Oh thanks. Fixed.
I was brought up Catholic, and quickly decided religion (later updated to human scribes millennia ago and blind faith therein) didn’t really understand the difference between “bigger than I can understand” and “infinite.” I also have a life so cartoonishly awesome (let me know if you have a solution to this, but I honestly believe if I laid down the facts people would think I’m lying), I figured what I called God not only exists but likes me more than everybody else. As I grew up, I “tested” the theory a few times, but never with any scientific rigor, and I think I’d have to call the results positive but not statistically significant. I have no problem assuming no god at the beginning of a discussion, and if I had strong enough evidence I’d like to think I’d admit I’m wrong. I also don’t correlate anything about God with misunderstanding what “death” means—or as many Catholics call it life after death.
I know it’s a minority view here and would never trot it out in normal discourse, but it seemed appropriate for the venue.
Should we down vote posts with many propositions if we agree with a majority? One? All? There are already two split clusters for me.
Nah, not implausible I exist, but I rarely post, so have no track record. It’s amazing how many people are above average online...
Mentally, I’m materially above average intelligence, but understand that that only goes so far. And I cultivate rationality (I’m here aren’t I?)
Socially, I’m reasonably well liked by everyone I know, people tell me I have a decent sense of humor. I’m engaged to a beautiful blonde doctor, who is eerily similar to the woman I prayed to meet as a teenager, and has been able to put up with my strangeness for four years.
Bodily, I have no known history of any genetic diseases and have never been dependant on prescription drugs. Though I admit the surgeon general would like me to lose a pound or two. Not “Mommy why’s he like that?” fat though.
Financially, I own my own house, and if I (and they) decide to have kids, my kids and grandkids will never have to work, assuming I don’t earn/inherit/win/cetera a penny, and my stocks gain 0% (Admittedly, they could crash). I tell people I have a Forrest Gump approach. “Lt. Dan said I didn’t have to worry about money any more. And I said, well, that’s good. One less thing.”
Attitudinally, I’m hugely optimistic. Not every day, but more often than not, I wake up and am struck by the wonder of how unlikely my good fortune is.
I know it sounds out there, and it is, but it’s also true. Hand to God. Or Bacon, or whomever you’d like, if you dig propriomanual verification.
Oh agreed. My awesome life is not a good proof, but while I came with a high IQ out of the box, I hadn’t learned the tools of thinking yet to the necessary degree. It’s loosely confirmatory, but not a silver bullet. I was just saying that prompted me to have the idea a decade or two before (inadequitely still, but I knew it) testing the idea. My confidence may be too high, but really, it hasn’t been a priority to test mostly because I can’t think of a good one that doesn’t come at too high a cost for too little benefit. I’ve never really tried to prove my Fiancé′s aunt who I’ve never met exists either. Open to ideas.
And the grandkids thing is something I came up with to give my fiancé perspective when she was just my girlfriend. Anything with “illion” in it becomes “a bunch” to non math folk. Think about 4 mil. Now think about 8. I’d say (based on nothing but anecdote) if you said each to fifty men-on-the-street, you’d have at least 85 people thinking of pretty much the same pile of gold doubloons.
Yes, upper, yes, and yes. As stated in the other reply, I do not currently count it as strong evidence.
Sorry if playing marketing guy is too wide the mark on norms here, but my gut says if you have a young business promote it to everyone who’ll listen and some people who’d rather not: whatcha selling and if one of us likes it how do we buy it?
Ha, fair enough.
Sorry if this is obviously covered somewhere but every time I think I answer it in either direction I immediately have doubts.
Does EA come packaged with “we SHOULD maximize our altruism” or does it just assert that IF we are giving, well, anything worth doing is worth doing right?
For example, I have no interest in giving materially more than I already do, but getting more bang for my buck in my existing donations sounds awesome. Do I count? I currently think not but I’ve changed my mind enough to just ask.
Slartibartfast: Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, “Hang the sense of it,” and keep yourself busy. I’d much rather be happy than right any day.
Arthur Dent: And are you?
Slartibartfast: Well… no. That’s where it all falls down, of course.
Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
If the best minds were in charge of designing a bridge, I would expect the bridge to hold up well even in a storm. If the best minds were in charge of designing an airplane, I would expect it to fly reliably. But if the best minds were in charge of something no one really knows how to do, I would be ready for a failure, albeit a failure with superb academic credentials.
Terry Coxon
Being ready for failure is not quite the same thing as considering success impossible.
The context is that economics is in shall we say an earlier stage of development than engineering, so we should be more conscious of the risk of economic tinkering failing than we need be of whether our bridge or plane falls apart underneath us.
I’m a bit of a “Superman theist” and I’m always curious about “Why infinity?”
Everything I hear theists say about ways God impacts the world seems more compatible with a finite-but-a-lot-cooler-than-you provident entity. It’s also not a huge surprise that a people who used the word forty to mean “a whole bunch” might not fully grasp the difference between infinity and a really big number when they were writing things down.
I’m kinda jealous. I run into far more “Because it’s in the bible” theologians than thinking theologians.
Taken.