Funny that you mention music. My experience with practicing guitar all through high school was what led me to believe that natural talent is dwarfed by hard work. This is a oft repeated phrase, but I don’t think it does anything for anyone until they experience the results of it themselves.
You can find my instrumental metal project here.
As a relatively new member of this site, I’m having trouble grasping this particular reasoning and motivation for participating in FAI. I’ve browsed Eleizer’s various writings on the subject of FAI itself, so I have a vague understanding of why FAI is important, and such a vague understanding is enough for me to conclude that FAI is one, if not the most, important topic that currently needs to be discussed. This belief may not be entirely my own and is perhaps largely influenced by the amount of comments and posts in support of FAI, in conjunction with my lack of knowledge in the area.
With this lack of understanding, I think it is clear /why/ I haven’t given up my life to support FAI. But it seems to me that many others on this site know much, much more about the subject, and they still have not given up their lives for FAI.
So my brain has made an equivalence between supporting FAI and other acts of extreme charity. I think highly of those who work for years in impoverished countries battling local calamities, but I don’t find myself very motivated to participate. From my observations, I think this is because I have never heard of anyone with the goal of saving the world actually making significant progress in that direction. However, I have heard of many people who have made the world a better place while never exhibiting such lofty motivations.
I guess this is similar to cousin_it’s response in that it seems strange to me to pursue something because it is a “big important problem”. But I am also worried about the following line of reasoning:
Motivation to participate in FAI ⇒ motivation to do charitable work ⇒ I should be motivated to do all sorts of charitable work.
This seems like it would become reality only if my interests were aligned with the charitable work. In the OP’s reasoning, is the motivation to save the world enough to align interest with work? To me, it seems analogous to the effect of a sugar high on your energy level.
If I did find myself working with FAI, it would probably be because I found that these were interesting problems to solve, and not because I wanted to save the world.
I see. I wasn’t asserting that you are going to do work you hate, however. I was mainly looking at the value of having a seemingly unachievable and incredibly broad goal as one’s primary motivation.
I’m sure you have a much more nuanced view of how and why you are undertaking this life change, and I don’t want to discourage you. Seeing as how the general consensus is that FAI is the most important thing to be doing, I think it would take a lot of effort to discourage you. I just can’t help but think that there should be a primary technical interest in the problems presented by FAI motivating these kinds of decisions. If it was me, I would be confused as to what exactly I would be working on, which would be very discouraging.
There was also a very detailed comment thread on Hacker News—someone claimed to have built one from 30$ in parts.
Also, learn to differentiate between genuine curiosity and what I like to call pseudo-curiosity—basically, being satisfied by conclusions rather than concepts. Don’t let the two overlap. This is especially hard when conclusions are most of the time readily available and often the first item in a google search. In terms of genuine curiosity, google has been the bane of my existence—I will start off moderately curious, but instead of moving to that higher stage of curiosity, I will be sated by facts and conclusions without actually learning anything (similar to a guessing the teacher’s password situation). After a couple hours of doing this, I feel very scholarly and proud of my ability to parse so much information, when in reality all I did was collect a bunch of meaningless symbols.
To combat this, I started keeping a “notebook of curiosities”. The moment I get curious, I write whatever it is I’m curious about, and then write everything I know about it. At this point, I determine whether or not anything I know is a useful springboard; otherwise, I start from scratch. Then I circle my starting node and start the real work, with the following rules:
Every fact or concept I write must follow directly from a previous node (never more than two or three reasoning steps away). Most of the time, this results in a very large diagram referencing multiple pages. I use pen and paper only because I like to use it outside.
Wikipedia is a last resort—I don’t want to be tempted by easy facts. I use textbooks → arxiv → jstor → google scholar in order of preference. It’s a lot of work.
If I skip some reasoning or concept because I think it is trivial, I write the reason why it is trivial. Most of the time, this results in something interesting.
Doing this has revealed many gaps in my knowledge. I’ve become increasingly aware of a lack of internalization of basic concepts and modes of thinking that are necessary for certain concepts. It also forces me to confront my actual interest in the subject, rather than my perceived interest.
The majority of what I use it for is math related, so it’s more tailored to that use case.
If you can’t trust your evaluation of the moron argument, how can you trust your evaluation of the argument that your moron argument is logically insoluble; or, for that matter, any argument at all?
I agree that it would be better to realize the low utility in thinking about these types of arguments and file them away to a dusty box in a tiny little nook in the back of your mind. However, I wouldn’t go as far as dusting it off and smacking a “logically insoluble” tag on it; it just seems like an attempt to rationalize with a pseudo logical hack.
And I would consider a test of my “moron”-ness to be very useful if I didn’t deem the argument to be a useless waste of thought, just as any other indicator of new knowledge would be useful. If it turns out I’m a moron, then I’m a moron; wait a minute, now I’m even less of a moron because now I know more than before! But saying it’s impossible to know because logic is a little iffy.
Related:
Robert: You’re gonna be okay.
Catherine: I am?
Robert: Yes. I promise you. The simple fact that we can talk about this together is a good sign.
Catherine: A good sign?
Robert: Yeah.
Catherine: How could it be a good sign?
Robert: Because crazy people don’t sit around wondering if they’re nuts.
Catherine: They don’t?
Robert: No. They’ve got better things to do. Take it from me. A very good sign that you’re crazy is an inability to ask the question, “Am I crazy?”
Catherine: Even if the answer is yes?
Robert: Crazy people don’t ask, you see?
Catherine: Huh.
-- Proof (movie)
I think the subtlety here is that intelligence is used in place of domain specific aptitude, when much more information can be obtained through an enumeration of the latter. Given the sixteen equally competent generals with one who successfully wins four even battles in a row, saying “he won because he was intelligent” gives us limited information in that it does reveal the reason why he won to the majority of people who don’t care for specifics, but does not tell us what this specific general did differently when compared to his equally skilled counterparts.
So using “intelligence” as an answer is not as mysterious as using “magic” or “complexity” in a general context, but in domain specific areas it relays little value—in such a situation, I would think that all participants would ask for some sort of clarification (specific tactics, key responses, etc). It most likely is intelligence that gave him the win though, even if we aren’t about to go into specifics; but perhaps we are missing vital knowledge by saying “intelligence!” and ending.
However, I think this is a subtle and not incredibly useful point when applied in general.
So we should be Less Weird now? ;)
What is the recommended literature related to the ideas both you and wedrifid have been discussing in this thread? I googled but I figure it wouldn’t hurt to ask either. Thanks.
Apologies, I should have thought about the about possible interpretations of such a dialogue; I meant it more as a “feel good” kind of thing rather than a factual assessment about the nature of mentally unstable people. Thinking about it, “crazy” definitely does not map easily into “moron”, and my usage of the above dialogue was intended to convey the notion that logically thinking about whether or not you are a moron is a good sign that you are probably not a moron.
But I think your comment brings up another interesting point. Would it be right to say that your emotional states are changing your definition of “crazy”? That, when you are in a different mental state, “crazy” is referencing an entirely different object? That when you are asking the question “am I crazy” you are actually asking an entirely different question? I would think that if you keep entering these manic states of mind, your normal cached version of “crazy” would slowly be chipped away and eventually you wouldn’t even be able to access it anymore. Then you really have the inability to ask the question.
I’m not defending the use of the above dialogue though. It’s clear to me that it’s usefulness is outweighed by the possible negative interpretations.
I don’t think this is done. The bad things about Rand are emphasized, yes, but that is because that is what we can learn from.
Most people commenting did not seem like they were very familiar with the philosophy, and I think the presentation of 1. the ideas behind the philosophy and 2. the founder of the philosophy were incredibly misleading. If someone (like me) were relatively new the site were to read this, they would have an incredibly biased view of her philosophy. I don’t see how justifying that point by saying people already know her philosophy gives any credence to the way it was portrayed. The bad things about Rand are emphasized with no regard for factual evidence. We can still learn from her errors without resorting to what felt to me like a curt dismissal of an otherwise intelligent and influential character. If we are willing to discard evidence in favor of more elegant rhetoric, I want no part of it.
No, the main character of Atlas Shrugged was a physicist, who invented a motor that harnessed the power of static electricity, and then went on to flip the entire country the bird. Regardless of whether or not you sympathize with him, is Galt’s position so utterly important that it justifies the mass starvation and destitution of the entire country? In my opinion, Galt had a good point to make. But that doesn’t justify letting the entire world burn around you just to make your point.
The world as it was portrayed in the book would not have survived long if Galt hadn’t done anything. I don’t think we can compare it with the real world—America was the last pillar of support, and if it collapsed without Galt having convinced people to “save their minds” then there would have been another long “Dark Ages” period. And people don’t actually act the way they do in her books. I would compare it to the decisions made in the Foundation series. But that wasn’t really my point anyway—in the book, it was clear that Galt was saving the country in the way Rand thought it should be saved, meaning that she believed that a scientist had that power, and thus advocating something akin to “Study Science!” regardless of the morality of Galt’s decision.
I disagree. I don’t think LW does this. We’re (or at least I am) happy to admit that Rand was correct about a number of things. She made more progress than most philosophers, but that bar is set so unbearably low as to not really be worth mentioning. It’s more that she is a better example of what not to become. It’s not that she did nothing good. There have even been some decently upvoted Ayn Rand quotes in the threads.
I didn’t say LW did this. It was only in this specific essay. I would find it hard to believe that LW disagreed with everything she said. My only problem was with the presentation, and that it would lead to wrong interpretations, or at least interpretations based on falsities.
She quite vehemently signaled agreement with the scientific tribe, I agree. But that’s not the same as actually supporting it. (Well, it supports it in some way, but I think you get my point.) Given how she felt about the environment (and based on the positions taken by most Objectivist themed organizations (ARI, ARC, etc.)) she probably wouldn’t have much respect for anthropomorphic global warming as a theory. I don’t know much about the science of it myself, so my opinion isn’t worth much, but I believe the predominant opinion on LW is closer to AGW denial is akin to evolution denial.
Again, I only have problems with the way her positions were portrayed. She was most definitely portrayed as failing to tell her followers to “study science” when in fact she did exactly that. Whether her support of the scientific community was any good is an entirely different discussion which I will probably agree with you on.
I think I failed to make it clear that I do think she is a good example of what not to strive for. I just think that the rhetoric involved in convincing me of that point was deceitful.
Could you explain to me this whole “mind killing” business? I’m not talking politics here, I’m talking rhetoric. All I did was take Rand’s actions as mentioned in the original essay and gave a justification by Rand’s philosophy. This wasn’t used to justify her philosophy, only to show that her actions were consistent with it. I agree with Eliezer’s final points, but I don’t agree with the way they were represented, and that’s all I sought to show here.
I don’t see how the nature of the criticism is changed by the fact that worse criticism exists. If the facts are incorrect, they are incorrect and that’s it.
I’m sincerely confused as to why this is getting downvoted so heavily (and it seems to have disappeared… is this a feature?). Is it just the nature of the topic? Honestly, it’s not a well structured critique or whatever, but this is the discussion page, is it not? I’m not arguing some logically indefensible position, and I can’t seem to find any errors in my logic (my logic consisting of my use of Rand’s philosophy and not of the logical positioning of her ideas).
Is it not encouraging valid discussion? I don’t see why not, as there are many things to talk about here. Perhaps a response to the idea of a closed system? I thought that was interesting. Maybe a defense of why it is okay to disregard facts in favor of convincing rhetoric? I honestly think I may be missing something in Eleizer’s post, because it seems to me to hold a blatant disregard for evidence.
Did I need to make it more clear that I am not arguing for or against objectivism, only for a more charitable rhetorical representation of a cultural and philosophical character? Maybe someone can enlighten me on the atrocities committed by Rand.
Have these things been said before? Maybe someone can link me to the relevant discussion.
Is this “mind killing”? I would like to know which parts, and why.
Ah, I see. The mind killing bit makes sense, but wouldn’t you want to combat it by confronting it head on and refusing to succumb to the polarization? I don’t find it to be particularly hard to do, and I’m fairly certain I haven’t been mind killed. But I very much respect this position, and I accept the consequences of publishing material that enables these tendencies.
The factual inaccuracies were primarily in the presentation of her actions as being discordant with her philosophy. I have attempted to show her actions were not so incongruous. Also, the presentation of her character was inaccurate, portraying her as some sort of pseudo philosopher who had no idea what she was talking about. Just because she idolizes Aristotle is not evidence of her ineptitude as a thinker. Just because she has a bloated ego (though this is also a big part of her philosophy) does not mean she is incapable of recognizing her superiors. She may have thought she was the epitome of a rational person, but this certainly did not prevent her from recognizing ability when she saw it. She is portrayed in the original essay as being unable to recognize the nature of science and its progression, when there is much evidence that she was very aware of how science progresses and why.
Agreed. I was lugging around her specs only to justify her actions, not to justify her philosophy.
By “justify” I meant “show that her actions were not a contradiction of her philosophy”, which is what I think you said in your third question.
However, I was not trying to provide a justification for objectivism, and I was not attempting to use the tenets of objectivism in any clever sort of way.
I also was not trying to give strong justifications of her actions, only to show that if one were to give her main ideas a charitable reading, one would find a significant amount of evidence showing that her portrayal in Guardians of Ayn Rand was not consistent with the facts. Each time I “defended” her actions, I gave a quote that showed her characters acting in a similar way or giving credence to a similar action. Again, this was not a defense of her philosophy.
What I wrote was not about the structure of objectivism or lack thereof, not about objectivism being a closed system, and not about Rand’s motives in her construction of objectivism. I specifically stated that I am not an expert on objectivism, and I would not try to defend it a community of rationalists.
My only motive behind this post was to highlight factual inaccuracies and (in my opinion) deceitful rhetoric in the original essay. It would have liked to have put in a comment, but it seemed much too long; so I formatted it a little and posted it here. Next time I’ll have to treat these posts like a formal analysis and not like a casual writeup.
I don’t think I missed the point of the essay. I clearly state at the end of the post that the ideas presented were incredibly interesting. I even posted an essay about Peikoff’s defense of the closed system of objectivism, which I thought was more representative of the cultish nature of the group. I was responding to what I saw as a misrepresentation of Ayn Rand that I thought was unnecessary with respect to the goals of the essay.
Suppose Eleizer decided to collect all of his writings and found his own philosophy called Yudkowism of which he was the final arbiter. You can object to him doing that, and that’s a pretty damn valid objection considering the nature of his writing. But suppose he didn’t care what you thought, and did it anyway. He writes up plenty more ideas, gives some lectures, influences people, vigorously tries to further intellectual progress, and dies. Towards the end of his life, people notice him doing some weird things that don’t seem to fit with his ideas. Someone thinks “Hey, this isn’t’ cool! I thought he was an advocate of rationality, but he doesn’t seem to be accepting of other people’s reasonable ideas!’. Then this person writes an essay using him as an example of what to avoid when trying to further humanity, “raise the sanity waterline”, and encourage progress in philosophy and science. In this essay, the person uses Eliezer’s personal life to reveal the extent of his spiral into destruction.
Now, you and I both think very highly of the ideas presented in Yudkowism, though we might object to the name, to the closed system, or to its structure. We have read his writings, and they have influenced us in a positive way and helped us become more rational people. We don’t see him as a Great Leader, and we don’t want him presented as such, but we can’t deny that his actions have precipitated this label. And so we read this essay, and we feel like we learned more about rationality, about group identification, about the need for openness and the awareness of our place in the progress of humanity.
But then we notice that the essay is unnecessarily dismissive of Eliezer. We realize that this may or may not have any influence on the relevance of his philosophy (as, of course, if the ideas are good enough they should be able to stand up to any criticism of its spokesman), but we are a little taken aback by the flawed portrayal of his character.
This was the point of my post. I don’t think it’s necessary to attack a person’s character for the sake of rhetoric, especially when the highlighted aspects of that person’s character are exaggerated. You might think the same, but disagree that the rhetoric was all that harmful, and that’s fine. I thought it was harmful.
I think the rest of your comment pertains to the actual evidence of Rand’s strangehold over her followers. The bit about homosexuality is especially revealing without resorting to harmful rhetoric. Again, I liked the final conclusion and thesis of the essay, but I disliked the way it was reached.
The vibrance that Rand admired in science, in commerce, in every railroad that replaced a horse-and-buggy route, in every skyscraper built with new architecture—it all comes from the principle of surpassing the ancient masters. How can there be science, if the most knowledgeable scientist there will ever be, has already lived? Who would raise the New York skyline that Rand admired so, if the tallest building that would ever exist, had already been built? And yet Ayn Rand acknowledged no superior, in the past, or in the future yet to come.
This seems to state that Rand was incapable of accepting that someone could be better than her, which I think was an exaggeration of her bloated ego. I understand the point, but the following passage from Branden’s book did not seem to justify this statement enough. Here is some more context on that quote (take it with a grain of salt, as I found it on objectivist site, though it seems to be well cited) :
No, she did not. Tales that Rand ended relationships with people over disagreements in musical tastes seem to stem primarily from Barbara Branden’s book The Passion of Ayn Rand, in which Branden gives a brief account of several arguments between Rand and her longtime friends Joan Mitchell Blumenthal and Allan Blumenthal, over differences of taste in music and painting. According to the information in Branden’s book, these arguments were part of a generally worsening relationship between Rand and the Blumenthals over several years in the 1970s, which culminated in the Blumenthals initiating a break with Rand (not vice versa) in 1978. Even if one believes that Rand ran a cult from which she excommunicated people, it is hard to see how these disagreements could be interpreted as instances of excommunication, since the Blumenthals remained friends with Rand for several years while these arguments were happening, and they were the ones who initiated the break.[] Other accounts of how Rand dealt with artistic differences also fail to support the “excommunication” interpretation. Alan Greenspan is reported to have disagreed openly with Rand’s opinions on music, and even convinced her to moderate her negative opinion of Mozart.[] At least one person who remained Rand’s friend until her death was an admitted lover of Beethoven’s music: Leonard Peikoff, who was Rand’s closest friend for over a decade and the heir to her estate.[*]
Another quote:
It’s noteworthy, I think, that Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes were architects and engineers; John Galt, her ultimate, was a physicist; and yet Ayn Rand herself wasn’t a great scientist. As far as I know, she wasn’t particularly good at math. She could not aspire to rival her own heroes. Maybe that’s why she began to lose track of Tsuyoku Naritai.
I think I showed why this statement was untrue, and I don’t think anyone can argue how arrogant it sounds (though that is a personal gripe I have with it).
“Study science, not just me!” is probably the most important piece of advice Ayn Rand should’ve given her followers and didn’t. There’s no one human being who ever lived, whose shoulders were broad enough to bear all the weight of a true science with many contributors.
She did tell her followers to study science.
To be one more milestone in humanity’s road is the best that can be said of anyone; but this seemed too lowly to please Ayn Rand. And that is how she became a mere Ultimate Prophet.
She seemed very pleased with her achievements, and I couldn’t find any evidence that said she refused to accept other ideas when faced with substantial proof (though this a difficult topic, since many of her ideas were based on her axioms of morality and so I’m sure she refused to accept many ideas that contradicted her axioms and thus invalidating many of the things I’ve said. But I still think the portrayal was a bit harsh). I recall that she was invited to speak at the Ford Hall Forum where she knew there would be many, many people challenging her ideas. I know she was very rigid in her beliefs, but it seems hard for me to accept that “being one more milestone in humanity’s road” was not enough for Rand. But I may be giving her too much credit in this regard.
Ayn Rand fled the Soviet Union, wrote a book about individualism that a lot of people liked, got plenty of compliments, and formed a coterie of admirers. Her admirers found nicer and nicer things to say about her (happy death spiral), and she enjoyed it too much to tell them to shut up. She found herself with the power to crush those of whom she disapproved, and she didn’t resist the temptation of power.
This is related to my previous criticisms. It just seems to harsh to me. I wanted more factual evidence for this, not just the quote about musical differences which turned out to be more ambiguous than it was portrayed.
Perhaps I’m being too picky. Calling Rand an “Ultimate Prophet” seemed so incongruous with her actions and her philosophy. She was incredibly forthright and in your face with her ideas, and I can see why it was interpreted as evangelism. But objectively speaking, it seemed to harsh for my tastes. Saying she “crushed those of whom she disapproved” is just… I don’t know.
I see your position and I accept that you have every right to criticize my thoughts. This is a very ambiguous topic, and I think I can see why people seem to be angry with my choice of presenting this. I don’t think her portrayal was very fair, is all. Yes, compared with other criticisms out there, this looks like praise. I just hold these Sequence posts to a higher standard. If I found this in a popular article about Ayn Rand, or a newspaper article, or a Reddit post… I would note it’s high quality. I’ve just been so used to every side of an argument being represented incredibly clearly and without ambiguity (ironic, given my post) that I felt a need to post this. It was kind of like eating a bunch of skittles and getting an M&M; not so bad, just a little jarring.
The substantial amount of mathematics related posts has encouraged me to emerge from lurker status and post my own ‘project’.
I have spent the last 5 months recording every minute of rigorous mathematical practice here in an attempt to test the limits of my modest intellect. I used a stopwatch and paper for the first couple of months, but I have now graduated to Emacs and org-mode (and to tracking all of my time, out of pure curiosity—I like knowing that every aspect of my life is searchable. It frees a (possibly imagined) mental burden).
A (long) background for whoever is interested: I’ve never been very good at math, and I struggled throughout all of my high school math classes. Toward the end of high school, however, I became absolutely enraptured with something about mathematics, something that I can’t really put into words. It’s been a kind of a curse, to be honest. I feel like Paul Erdos without any semblance of mathematical intuition; maybe close to how he felt for that week of no amphetamines.
So I spent the summer after senior year with my nose in every math textbook I could find. I have huge piles of paper filled with exercises from Apostol, Rudin, Munkres, that I spent upwards of 10 hours a day on. But it didn’t help much… I went to university, took a fairly heavy, but not impossible courseload, and didn’t do so well. Not horrible, but definitely not what you would expect from someone who spent every waking moment on this stuff. Same thing happened the next semester.
I breezed through an Analysis course last summer, and that gave me some confidence. It also prompted me to figure out exactly why this was happening to me… Is there something fundamental I am missing? What can I do about it?
So I took another heavy courseload for the fall semester, but this time I decided to track every moment of really vigorous, concentrated practice—no light reading, leisurely thoughts, a skim through a couple chapters; but actual, no bullshit, rigorous mind work. The kind where you get tired after 15 minutes. Lectures were the most brutal—I made it my goal to get ahead of the professor, to ask every single dumbass question that I honestly could not think of the answer to, and even attempted to completely re synthesize as many proofs as possible when there was any downtime. And I recorded it all.
It didn’t help. I spent an average (I think) of 40 hours a week on this kind of work. The rest was ‘regular’ work—mostly math related (I did play skyrim for a bit, but didn’t get very far), but not quite so intense. I got three B’s and one A-. Disappointing.
Well, here I am now. No happy ending (yet). I took a much needed break for the winter as a test to see whether I was just running on steam. Definitely not the case. By the end of the month, I was itching to get back.
So what have I learned? I don’t know. I’d like to blame it on exams—I do very well on the homework, but I can’t seem to get in the right mindset for solving problems in such a small window of time, and they practically count for your entire grade. But exams DO test your understanding… perhaps I haven’t understood anything deep enough yet.
If you read all this… thanks! I haven’t shared this with anyone, and it feels like I’m letting out a dark secret.
Last note: I have almost no problems whatsoever with akrasia. Not sure why… but I would gladly trade it for a modicum of the deeply inspirational intelligence I see here.