It’s easy to lie with statistics, but it’s easier to lie without them.
Jayson_Virissimo
Karma: 7,573
[Poll] Less Wrong and Mainstream Philosophy: How Different are We?
We have to reinvent the wheel every once in a while, not because we need a lot of wheels; but because we need a lot of inventors.
-- Bruce Joyce, as quoted by Michael Serra in Discovering Geometry
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
I do like this sort of instrumental rationality post, but would like to see actual citations rather than mere claims of “overwhelming” evidence. Thanks for your service.
...beliefs are like clothes. In a harsh environment, we choose our clothes mainly to be functional, i.e., to keep us safe and comfortable. But when the weather is mild, we choose our clothes mainly for their appearance, i.e., to show our figure, our creativity, and our allegiances. Similarly, when the stakes are high we may mainly want accurate beliefs to help us make good decisions. But when a belief has few direct personal consequences, we in effect mainly care about the image it helps to project.
-Robin Hanson, Human Enhancement
Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.
I wish I would have memorized this quote before attending university.
*This comment was inspired by Will_Newsome’s attempt to find rationality quotes in Summa Theologica.
I write this because I’m feeling more and more lonely, in this regard. If you also stand by the sequences, feel free to say that. If you don’t, feel free to say that too, but please don’t substantiate it. I don’t want this thread to be a low-level rehash of tired debates, though it will surely have some of that in spite of my sincerest wishes.
Why must we stand-by or stand-away-from? Personally, I lean towards the Sequences. Do you really need to feel lonely unless others affirm every single doctrine?
I think the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is the closest to correct and you’re dreaming if you think the true answer will have no splitting (or I simply do not know enough physics to know why Eliezer is wrong, which I think is pretty unlikely but not totally discountable).
I accept the MWI of QM as “empirically adequate”; no more, no less.
I think cryonics is a swell idea and an obvious thing to sign up for if you value staying alive and have enough money and can tolerate the social costs.
Cryonics is interesting and worth considering, but the probabilities invovled are so low that it is not at all obvious it is a net win after factoring in signalling costs.
I think mainstream science is too slow and we mere mortals can do better with Bayes.
“Science” is so many different things that I think it is much more responsible to divide it up into smaller sets (some of which could really use some help from LessWrongists and others which are doing just fine, thank-you-very-much) before making such blanket generalizations.
I am a utilitarian consequentialist and think that if allow someone to die through inaction, you’re just as culpable as a murderer.
This is a point on which I side with the mathematical economists (and not with the ethicists) and just say that there is no good way to make interpersonal utility comparisons when you are considering large diverse populations (or, for that matter, the “easy” case of a genetically related nuclear family).
I tentatively accept Eliezer’s metaethics, considering how unlikely it is that there will be a better one (maybe morality is in the gluons?)
I am confused about Eliezer’s metaethics. If you ask 10 LessWrongers what Eliezer’s metaethical theory is, you get approximately 10 distinct positions. In other words, I don’t know how high a probability to assign to it, because I’m very unsure of what it even means.
“People are crazy, the world is mad,” is sufficient for explaining most human failure, even to curious people, so long as they know the heuristics and biases literature.
I agree. The world really is mad. I seriously considered the hypothesis that it was I who am mad, but rejected this proposition, party because my belief-calibration seems to be better than average (precisely the opposite of what you would expect of crazy people). Of course, “madness” is relative, not absolute. I am no doubt insane compared to super-human intelligences (God, advanced-AI, Omega, etc...).
Infallible, adj. Incapable of admitting error.
-L. A. Rollins, Lucifer’s Lexicon: An Updated Abridgment
Who knew acausality could reach that far back?
Shit, if I took time out to have an opinion about everything, I wouldn’t get any work done...
-- L. Bob Rife, Snow Crash
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance we can solve them.
-- Isaac Asimov
After all, the essential point in running a risk is that the returns justify it.
-Sennett Forell, Foundation and Empire
Doubt, n. The philosophical device Descartes so cleverly used to prove everything he previously believed.
-L. A. Rollins, Lucifer’s Lexicon
The greatest weariness comes from work not done.
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration. It is from him only that we learn the real littleness of ourselves, and of whatever relates to ourselves, and the natural misrepresentations of self-love can be corrected only by the eye of this impartial spectator. It is he who shows us the propriety of generosity and the deformity of injustice; the propriety of resigning the greatest interests of our own, for the yet greater interests of others, and the deformity of doing the smallest injury to another, in order to obtain the greatest benefit to ourselves. It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters.
-Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
As a 911 Operator, I have spoken to hundreds of suicidal people at their very lowest moment (often with a weapon in hand). In my professional judgment, the quote is accurate for a large number of cases (obviously, there are exceptions).
The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes primitive again.
-Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
In other words, politics is the mind killer.
George Bernard Shaw