Servant

Karma: 57

Servant 26 May 2011 16:37 UTC
−5 points
in reply to: knb’s comment on: Peter Thiel announces the 20 talented people he will pay to drop out of college to pursue innovative scientific and technical projects
Knowing what you’re doing (which is really all that certification “signals”) seems to be higher status than being one of the few people that were lucky enough to receive enough start-up funding to establish a business and are skilled enough to hire people...who know what they’re doing.

Servant 25 May 2011 4:44 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Jayson_Virissimo’s comment on: How to Dissolve the Problem of Free Will and Determinism (Video)
“His arguments only undermine the conception of free will as ultimate origination, but have nothing to say about (the more defensible) conception of free will as choosing on the basis of one’s desires.”

That is not “more defensible”, that’s inane. What’s the point of “freely choosing” what you want to do based on your desires...if you are not in control of your desires? It’s a pedantic technicality that ignores what laymen generally assume when they say “free will”...that they are in control of their own actions, as well as their own desires that act as motivation for their own actions.

If I develop a mind control device that implants “desires” in the mind of its targets, and the targets act predictably based on said “desires”, can you really say that the targets have ‘free will’?

EDIT: It’s possible that “free will” may somehow be “bounded” or “limited” (desires are selected, but you decide what you do with said desires), and that may be what you’re getting at, but if this is the case, I don’t think you should really call it “free will” then, lest it get confused with the broader interpretation of “free will” that is more commonly understood to be said definition of “free will”.

Servant 12 May 2011 18:56 UTC
0 points
in reply to: MartinB’s comment on: Personal Benefits from Rationality
I don’t see that as a net negative. There may be a lot of people who are “rational”, and possibly those who are already “winning”. Knowing how to communicate with them is indeed a net plus, since this gives you an exclusive network other people won’t have (letting you “win” as well).

Servant 12 May 2011 9:17 UTC
0 points
on: Personal Benefits from Rationality
My main goal at the moment is to utilize “rationality” as a way to map how individuals comes to a decision/belief (what to do, what to say, what to believe, etc.). I am not assuming that these individuals ARE rational, but it’s a useful (and quickie) tool for me to retrospectively “map out” the thought process of an individual. Like all tools though, they will be limitations.

Servant 10 May 2011 20:36 UTC
5 points
on: “I know I’m biased, but...”
Maybe this individual is saying, “I know I’m biased” as a sort of disclosure of where their views are coming from. If they did not say that they are biased, and it is later revealed that they are biased, then people would likely accuse said individual of misrepresenting his positions and claiming “objectivity” when he had no right to possess it. For example, had that person you quoted said, “IPhone was the best!” without me knowing that he had a bias in that belief, I might have sincerely believed him, and this could lead to terrible consequences, like me buying an IPhone instead of a potentially better version.

It’s clear that this individual likely does sincerely and rationally believe whatever he believes, with or without his bias, but it’s important to admit the existence of this bias to avoid accusations of “falsely portraying yourself as objective” later on. And it’s better to disclose your bias rather than not mention it and end up having said bias be unmasked or revealed and you suffering embarrassment.

Servant 10 May 2011 15:22 UTC
0 points
on: Karma needed to post?
If it is true that officially, the karma limit is raised to 50, but effectively, the actual programming behind this “blog” allows for anyone to post at 20, then it suggests a real inconsistency between stated policy and actual policy.

Inconsistency is certainly not good if people want to actually follow policy. Either the official karma limit lowers to 20, or the real karma limit goes to 50. I lean towards the latter, because the existence of the Discussion section obsoletes the existence of the main LessWrong section, but the fact that this stated policy was formally established in 2009 suggests that there might have been policy problems detected by the staff that prevented it from becoming actual policy by this time (maybe the inability of most people to reach that high total of 50 that forced the staff to not implement this policy before).

Servant 8 May 2011 4:15 UTC
0 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Religious Behaviorism
I understand the example. Thanks. Helps me to understand why you object to it.

Servant 8 May 2011 3:50 UTC
0 points
on: Religious Behaviorism
“But it is an empirical question. With math, plus with some reasonable assumptions, you can prove that you can unambiguously determine the correct mapping even from the outside. In a world where you can tell someone to think of a square, and then use functional magnetic resonance imaging and find a pattern of neurons lit up in a square on his visual cortex, it is difficult to agree with Quine that the word “square” has no meaning.”

Of course the word “square” has meaning, but that meaning may be different from our meaning. In a world where society told this individual all the time that an “square” is really a triangle with an X in it, and then you do that experiment, you’ll see what that individual thinks a square is...and he’d be right, going off the definitions and meanings that society have told him about a square. Doesn’t help the researcher who is trying desperately convince said research subject what a square is “supposed” to be.

Servant 8 May 2011 2:48 UTC
2 points
in reply to: saturn’s comment on: What causes people to believe in conspiracy theories?
While I am more interested in the latter, the former is likely the one more suited for the main goal of this “community blog”.

Servant 25 Mar 2011 2:19 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Why Would A Certain Hoax Story Be Reported For So Long?
It does explain a lot! Thanks! I knew it was good to be tentative in my judgement on the issue if this is a hoax or not. At least now there is a plausible reason why no other sources of this exist.

Servant 24 Mar 2011 18:42 UTC
0 points
in reply to: JGWeissman’s comment on: death-is-bad-ism going a little bit more mainstream?
You’re right, it isn’t a good sampling technique. When I said “random individual” though, I wanted to state some sort of distance from the LessWrong Community. It is very possible that most people in that community know of appsumo and reddit, but since I’m outside of that community, I knew nothing about it. I suppose, in retrospect, I should have said “outsider” instead, and I also realize that the extent of an outsider’s knowledge likely doesn’t have any relevance here for this topic.

Servant 24 Mar 2011 16:44 UTC
1 point
on: death-is-bad-ism going a little bit more mainstream?
What exactly do you mean by mainstream? If you mean accepted by the general population, then I’m guessing not. In fact, as a random individual, I know nothing appsumo AND reddit (I didn’t even know appsumo existed until you said they did so in this blog post), so if those things are not mainstream, then I highly doubt “death-is-bad” would become somehow become mainstream by associating with non-mainstream stuff.

Servant 21 Mar 2011 4:26 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Cyan’s comment on: Can we stop using the word “rationalism”?
Throwing up numbers would just be pointless guessing for the sake of pointless guessing, but because of the tight-knit nature of the blog in question (meaning that people here tend to share the same ideas and values concerning rationality), I’d say that the chances of regression for the LessWrong community would be significantly lower than the chances of regression for two random individuals.

Servant 21 Mar 2011 0:04 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Cyan’s comment on: Can we stop using the word “rationalism”?
And then, about three minutes later, we’d have to taboo said common keywords and then write a three sentence summary of said keyword and present it to each other in order to pick out common themes and keywords, and repeat this process over and over...and not being able to actually talk about what we were supposed to talk about.

Can’t we just argue over what is being done in the name of rationality, rather than arguing over the word “rationality” itself?

Servant 19 Mar 2011 2:34 UTC
1 point
on: How best to show dying is bad
“More generally, I’d like to figure out how to pierce this sort of argument in a way that makes the person in question actually change his mind.”

Since you did post that letter about your Father trying to argue to you in a manner to try and have you change your mind, this raises alarms bells for me.

If both you and your Father is trying to change each others’ minds, then there is a possibility that the argument can degenerate: both sides would only treat the other people’s arguments as something to swat away, as opposed to something to seriously consider and take into account. If this occurs, then the argument would become futile, neither side will budge on this point, so no persuasion will occur.

That being said, if both you and your Father are arguing in good faith, then there is still a chance of someone being persuaded (either you or your Father). If neither are though, then no persuasion will occur and the argument is futile. Since I am unable to determine which is the case in your OP, I would request a clarification on this point.

Servant 2 Nov 2010 19:56 UTC
4 points
in reply to: araneae’s comment on: Voting is not rational (usually.)
The reason may be less that the LW community believes voting is rational...but that the LW community already understands that voting IS irrational, and the LW community is just reacting negatively to having the same idea be brought up again.

I understand you provided some solutions to try and make voting ‘rational’, though, however, I do disagree with the idea that #3 and #4 would actually work. Voting only becomes rational when your vote does sways an issue, and not only is this chance incredibly small, but it would likely provoke an automatic recount, meaning your vote is again proven useless.

Providing one extra vote to your side when your side is already is winning/losing is inherently irrational (at least in terms of swaying policy, not signaling views).

Servant 27 Oct 2010 5:17 UTC
6 points
on: Willpower: not a limited resource?
“Much recent research suggests that willpower—the capacity to exert self-control—is a limited resource that is depleted after exertion.”

Instead of taking this research at face value, shouldn’t we wait for new experiments to verify their findings? I am afraid of people just accepting this experiment, and ignoring the many OTHER experiments that said otherwise.

Servant 7 Oct 2010 20:01 UTC
1 point
on: There is no such thing as pleasure
“If there are people who do experience a definite thing common to all enjoyable experiences, this might be one reason for the attraction, to some, of utilitarian theories—even for taking some sort of utilitarianism to be obviously, trivially true.”

People do find a definite thing common to all enjoyable experiences: they enjoy them.

Your comment raises a good point though: it would be very hard to measure one sort of enjoyment with another, especially between the “carnal pleasures” and the “intellectual pleasures”, which both produce enjoyment...but how much? Without a way of measuring pleasure, you’re left with subjective judgement, which may be of little use.

Servant 7 Oct 2010 19:09 UTC
6 points
on: A Parable On Obsolete Ideologies
“Germany should completely lose all the baggage of Nazism and replace it with a completely democratic society that has no causal linkage whatsoever to its bloody past.”

General Y is advocating for an absolute bastardization of history as much as General F. You cannot deny the past, because the past shaped your country and what your country did. There is a difference between interpreting the “real” meaning of Nazism, and actually erasing Nazism from history, as General Y wants.

General Y also want to place all blame on the the Nazi regime, thereby excusing the rest of the German population for actually supporting the National Socialists to begin with! You aren’t dealing with “militant nationalism” here at all. You’re dealing with HUMAN BEINGS.

Finally, General F could argue that de-Nazification could get out of control, leading to the rise of left wing terrorist groups who argued you haven’t done enough de-Nazification and the only way to remove the “Nazi taint” is to destroy capitalism entirely and surrender to the Soviet Union.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification#The_radical_left_in_Germany_during_the_1960s.E2.80.9370s_and_Nazi_allegations

Servant 3 Oct 2010 3:15 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Will_Newsome’s comment on: Rational Terrorism or Why shouldn’t we burn down tobacco fields?
You would likely have to, for the simple reason that if Cancer gets cured, more resources can be dedicated to dealing with other diseases, meaning even more lives will be saved in the process (on top of those lives saved due to the curing of Cancer).

The economy can be in shambles for a while, but it can recover in the future, unlike cancer patients..and you could always justifying it that if a banker like you could blow up the economy, it was already too weak in the first place: better to blow it up now when the damage can be limited rather than latter.

Though the reason it doesn’t appeal is because you don’t quote hard numbers, making the consequentalist rely on “value” judgements when doing his deeds...and different consequentalists have different “values”. Your consequentalist would be trying to cure cancer by crashing the economy to raise money for a cancer charity, while a different consequentalist could be embezzling money from that same cancer charity in an attempt to save the economy from crashing.