So it’d be like playing Minecraft?
On reflection, I’d probably at least ask for a wiki pretty quickly.
So it’d be like playing Minecraft?
On reflection, I’d probably at least ask for a wiki pretty quickly.
The bit about drugs is just stupefying. Did you really, really, mean what came out?
“Lots and lots of people on Less Wrong love drugs that are outlawed in the U.S., use them all the time for the explicit purpose of intelligence stimulation, and refuse to hear anything about their harmful effects, because Less Wrongers are extremely quick to explain away evidence they don’t want to believe in—especially when it’s supported by “uncool” people and groups—and probably can’t even contemplate any long-term effects due to their geekishness and hidden immaturity. Here’s a wise, fatherly-sounding warning to them, full of ol’ good common sense that those naive kids haven’t learned to trust yet.”
I’m not voting this down because I’m just feeling a flat what.
Oh, to anyone who agrees with the decision but is still disturbed/looking for a 3rd option due2 those specific victims: THEY DIDN’T DIE AND WERE IN LITTLE DANGER, Eliezer told us an implausible lie to make us think. In fact, the ship was a flotillia and it sent a runner home for each developement, AND they didn’t settle 15b people in a frontier system—because people had read previous centuries’ good SF and heeded its warnings. Same goes for every scenario with simple precautions or hidden third options.
I’m a nervous, anxious, karma-whoring noob, that’s why I retracted it after a downvote arrived within 5 minutes of posting. Would anyone please explain the downvote, so that I know why I shouldn’t write statements like this one?
I was eighteen when I first encountered the ‘Jesus myth’ in its full, meme-honed-to-maximum-virulence form, and the story arc captivated me for a full six months. I still cry during every Good Friday service. But I must have missed some critical threshold, because I can’t actually believe in that story. I’m not even sure what it would mean to believe in a story. What does that feel like?
I understand. I -absolutely- love the Gnostic narrative, having stumbled upon it through the books of Philip K. Dick. That’s a really cool story, and I’d love it to be true, and Eliezer’s schticks can’t quite explain how PKD saved his child on 2-3-74… but I’d never rely upon it in any expectations, so it’s not a belief in the strict sense. It’s just a science fiction/fantasy story I really love.
OK, I can sort of understand your gripes with fanfiction in general (I have a few too, although they don’t outweigh the enjoyment factors for me), and author tracts (they don’t bother me). But why the hell should our community care about LW-fiction being “publishable”? For profit. On paper. Isn’t that kind of irrelevant here? Can you visualize a person who’d read a “rationalist fic”, but only if it was available to him* through 20th century channels?
*(sorry, switching to genderless pronouns is hard if you’re Russian)
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Hmm, is the intent behind LW’s karma system really OK with me being cleared for main-level posting for a single comment along these lines (exploiting a silly mistake by the community’s opponent while citing the community’s values, as long as I maintain a solid image of fairness; yes, the sole true reason for not voting down was my hunger for karma)?
I certainly see your point. I’m also inclined to think that my strategy of shutting up, bailing out and headdesking whenever smarter people downvote me might be more useful than it sounds...
Yeah, that’s a fairly useless post as of now and that’s what karma is good for. Feel free to punish me however much you believe necessary.
On the other hand, simply discussing the possible structure and themes might prove useful for someone else doing something else along these lines.
There’s nothing irrational against kicking the collection of fallacies and aging heuristics commonly dubbed “reason” to the curb (especially in the face of first hopeless misery and then x-risk), the question is what you replace it with. In fact, Eliezer has several posts on doing the impossible, seeing the invisible, touching the untouchable and breaking the unbreakable.
Well, I’ll be making up for a rather embarrassing start now. I’d say that’s a decent source of motivation (if you have any commitment to the idea in the first place).
Yeah! I’ve got to run myself through a checklist on the Sequences now btw, don’t want to miss any of the core stuff.
Y’know… that’s a very weak guess supported by few observations, but the current, say, 12 year olds are growing up with fanfiction just as we grew up with SF and fantasy (another stigma-carrying dorky thing of old), and I just can’t see them having much prejudice against it.
This might mean that they’ll have lower standards, but it might also make them more open to looking for good ideas in unorthodox places.
This sequence preview looks definitely promising...
...and, to a noob (that is, a me in the grip of Mind Projection Fallacy) screams “WEIRD SELF-HELP CULT” in huge neon letters. Anyone else notice this?
You so completely miss the damn point that, after downvoting you once for willfully insulting Eliezer’s completely rational and well-expressed intimate feelings, I’d downvote you 10 times for general stupidity. “Reason” can only be driven by an external cause! (whether it’s hedonism, ambition, curiosity, altruism, etc) If all YOU truly cared about was the “things-just-are”, you’d act completely at random, which is hard to conceive even in a mental patient.
We need the truth as a weapon to carve what we want from an uncaring universe and keep it from squashing us. Yet it can only illuminate and clarify our desires, not shape them.
EDIT: after looking at Mr. Bider’s profile and contributions, I have a weak suspicion that he’s a troll. Well, I don’t care about that.
As noted above, 50 years of torture WITHOUT ANY CONSEQUENCES is a fucking useless, contradictory definition that’s part of an overzealous effort to confuse intuition. If, say, the victim’s mental state was carefully patched to what it once used to be, 5 years after the experience, so that the enormous utility tax of the experience would disappear, then it wouldn’t be so contradictory, and Eliezer would still make his point (which I vaguely agree with, although this doesn’t imply agreement with this particular decision).
Or, he could call it “purgatory”, or “missing the world’s greatest orgy due to lethargic sleep”, or whatever. If torture is a loaded definition, you switch to a different definition to describe a different thing, not complain about LW’s collective blindness.
Someone who thinks there’s a moral failure in refusing to stick together with your in-group under adversity should remember that this instinct could have put you on the wrong side of the Holocaust
From a strictly utilitarian standpoint, if one had a strong commitment to the common good, but uncommonly little knee-jerk reaction or natural empathy, would it have made more sense to passively tolerate the Holocaust/offer only safe resistance, and live to affect the post-war world, where there could be more one could do for oneself/humanity?
Or make a stand and give your all to saving as many as possible, feeling plenty of moral gratification, and trying to go out in a blaze of glory when They came for you, which could also make you an inspiring example in, say, half a century?
I used to hold the former completely unacceptable after being strongly influenced by Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism (a great read, highly recommended) and her notion of “Radical evil” (somewhat deontologically loaded), but I have yet to attempt a rationalist evaluation of what I’ve read.
I take joy in the merely real, because I learned to; I take joy in seeing a vastly improbable coincidence where there is none, because of a hiccup of evolutionary psychology. The first is motivating, the second is blinding, but before I deconstruct the second (and perhaps build the first from its parts), I can take it in, short-term. There’s no reason not to stop for a moment and feel the joy/marvel/amazement that you suspect you’re feeling for a stupid reason; just don’t let your guard down.
What would your ideal public image of LW be, if you’re implying that “at best, a fringe community” is so much less preferable to it? Most of us who care about the issue probably think that LW must broaden its reach somewhat, yet not waste time and effort catering to—ahem—the less genetically fortunate, those who’d have trouble even considering the possibilities of radical change, and all the nice but unsalvageably deluded (yes, the T-word) people.
So do you fall somewhere between those, or in fact have a case for the latter? Not a loaded question; I’m purely curious.
I’ve read this about half a year ago, enjoyed it, completely more or less agreed with Eliezer’s point and filed it away.
Then, this morning, I literally woke up screaming. This is not an exaggeration, I must’ve dreamt of something that reminded me of 3WC, and my first waking thought was: “It’s WRONG to be right!”. I do believe that the human condition and human individuality are easily worth practically any number of lives (although holding ourselves hostage and threatening to voluntarily increase the amount of suffering customary for human culture unless the Superhappies give all people a choice in the matter might have worked as a third option—but wriggling out of the author’s intent is pointless). I don’t have a single problem with this logic.
What I have a problem with is myself. I was born with some brain damage (diagnosed only at 19, unfortunately for my teenage years) that, among other socially inconvenient things, strongly inhibits my instinctive empathy; I might value and respect individual people, but can feel very little compassion for them on a personal level, and I wouldn’t hesitate in murdering someone if I believed it was right and necessary. In short, I exhibit traits of an actual sociopath. So I could see myself jumping at the decision, carrying it out and suffering from zero irrational guilt.
That caused a rebellion of sorts inside me. Suddenly I contemplated writing something really, really stupid, sending Eliezer a death threat, hated the thought of becoming transhuman or ever having to deal with a real Hard Choice, devoting the rest of my life to opposing, attacking, slandering and scaremongering against everything that Less Wrong and SIAI stand for. After about two hours it burned out, and now I feel more or less in control. I’m quite puzzled as to what the bloody hell that was. “Fear of having to grow up again” probably comes close.
I can’t name a good reason for posting all this, except for suggesting that strong moral biases could shift into self-defense mode during a Hard Choice scenario, the very moment one would make an honest effort to examine and prioritize his values. Your beliefs could just shut everything down along with themselves to avoid being changed.
(as an aside, with all the shout-outs, it’d be cool if it chapter 8 was called “One More Final”, as it has quite a few parallels with The End of Evangelion and its final scene),