To be clear, I am not the author—this is an article that was submitted to the journal. If you want to read the article just reach out the email above (if you want to take a look without registering to be a gardener that is okay).
rogersbacon
Karma: 481
How to Become a World Historical Figure (Péladan’s Dream)
Moral Weights of Six Animals, Considering Viewpoint Uncertainty—Seeds of Science call for reviewers
I’ll just post a twitter thread here that I wrote in response to criticism. Maybe this will clarify my goals/intentions
I want “nerds” to realize that we are not above performative attention-seeking behavior, that we can really easily slip into a failure mode of “write a blog post that embraces some high-minded ideal that no one disagrees with and then propose some law/policy/program that will supposedly increase this thing and then pat yourself on the back and move on”. I wanted to expose my own emotions and insecurities around really caring about science/progress/altruism/etc. while also really wanting people to read and praise my writing because I think other people struggle with this too. I want people reflect on the fact that writing =/= thinking and if you aren’t careful it’s easy to forget that. I wanted people to consider that explicitly trying to be innovative, creative, or smart might not work as well being as earnest as possible in your pursuit of curiosity, love, beauty, etc and that internet/social media can make it really hard to be earnest in your intellectual pursuits. I also just wanted to entertain and make people laugh; of course I was making arguments but I also view this essay as art (pretentious, I know)– I want people to know it’s okay to do both, not everything has to be a Very Serious Essay That Convinces You of Something. In fact, I would argue that there is a dearth of aesthetic sensibilities in the science/progress/EA space and that we all might benefit from a little more style, emotion, beauty, and humor.
Fuck Your Miracle Year
Also, check out the substack :) - https://rogersbacon.substack.com/
Being a little tongue-in-cheek with this one, but I think recent US history shows racial preferences are more malleable than we might think. Will there be a tipping point when everyone is either mixed or has a close relative that’s mixed where it will seem a little more silly to argue about race? I don’t know about Brazil and would be curious to hear more like Ben Pace.
Thanks! Yup, just finished and enjoyed DoE :)
A good reminder, I’ll start getting worried when discussion of these heresies moves beyond niche internet message boards.
I don’t think anything—this is a heresy not something I believe in (I would argue your question is evidence that this view is a modern heresy). “politicians were generally older”.… the average age of senators is 57 for example.
I hope it goes without saying that this is a heresy and not something I actually believe. A recent article in the Journal of Controversial Ideas makes the case for animal-rights terrorism.
“There is widespread agreement that coercive force may be used to prevent people from seriously and wrongfully harming others. But what about when those others are non-human animals? Some militant animal rights activists endorse the use of violent coercion against those who would otherwise harm animals. In the philosophical literature on animal ethics, however, theirs is a stance that enjoys little direct support. I contend that such coercion is nevertheless prima facie morally permissible.”
Interesting. I guess in some ways yes because it’s giving people access to another form of identity but it’s also kind of orthogonal in that the identity is only used in virtual environment and it’s pseudonymous. The argument in this heresy is that we being less attached to our names IRL would cause a shift of some kind in cognition/consciousness.
Yea that’s fair, I didn’t write this with LW in mind but I should have considered dropping/trimming introduction as it’s not as necessary for this audience.… Interesting, I’ve heard similar thoughts to yours regarding music from quite a few people. This makes me think that the ubiquity of art in the modern world is affecting us more than we may realize. Curious what research exists on long-term effects of music/art consumption, although this would be hard to study I guess (which is why I’m suspicious that there is something we haven’t yet appreciated).
I was in Denver recently and there is street art (giant colorful murals) everywhere. It seems like this is almost universally regarded as a good thing vs. looking at concrete walls, but now I’m skeptical. There is at least some evidence that students learn less and get more distracted in busy classrooms for what it’s worth.
yes
20 Modern Heresies
Sure, I don’t deny that there are some ideas which should be kept secret for at least some time so that you can better capitalize on them. But I think for most people this category of ideas is much smaller than they think and that it would serve them better in the long run to be less stingy with their ideas. This kind of gets to the crux of my thesis—if you have a scarcity mindset with ideas than they probably will be scarce for you. Maybe you will end up losing out on an opportunity or some concrete short-term benefit, but there are more intangible, long-term benefits to be had by being open with your ideas—the difficulty is that these benefits are inherently more nebulous/illegible and therefore easier to discount.
Exegesis
You are right about the use of impact as a metric, definitely not perfect, and I think both of those sources probably oversell how poor scientific evaluation is in general. Some of the problem is that people are not incentivized to really care that much and they don’t specialize in grant/paper evaluation, the idea of having “professional reviewers” is interesting, but not sure how practically achievable it is.
I hadn’t heard about the idea of depth first search but it is exactly what I am talking about and you explained it very well, thank you for sharing.
Thanks
“We often observe that the solutions found by genetic algorithms, or NNs, or cats, are strange, perverse, unexpected, and trigger a reaction of ‘how did it come up with that?’; one reason is just that they are very thorough about exploring the possibility space”
Do you have any specific examples in mind here that you are willing to share? None are coming to mind off the top of my head and I’d love to have some examples for future reference.
Yes