Servant

Why Would A Cer­tain Hoax Story Be Re­ported For So Long?

What causes peo­ple to be­lieve in con­spir­acy the­o­ries?

• 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 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 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 24 Sep 2010 8:17 UTC

  5 points

  on: Poli­tics as Charity

  In a ‘direct democracy’ system where the general population vote directly to change and implement policies, then discussing about the behavior of these individual voters would be sensible.

  But in a ‘representative democracy’, like the United States, the people don’t vote directly for policies. They vote for representatives in Congress to ‘represent’ their interests. It is these representatives that actually vote to change and implement policies. The chance of these represenatives casting the deciding vote is ¹⁄₅₃₅ (1/​100 in Senate, ¹⁄₄₃₅ in the HoR), and thus is much higher than the chance of an individual casting the deciding vote (1/​1,000,000). If politics is charity, then it would be more productive to donate to “assist” the represenatives GOTV (by voting how you want them to vote) than it is to get the average powerless individual to GOTV.

  In addition, focusing on elected officals tend to ignore the judicary system and the bureacracy, unelected officals who, nevertheless, make policies just as much as the elected officals do. For example, the FDA rejects and accepts drugs based on criteria it sets, the Fed sets monetary policy and implictly decides the unemployment and inflation rates, the EPA passes environmental regulations that corporations must follow, and the Supreme Court justices rule on important court cases that would impact the lives of millions. “Assisting” those represenatives GOTV would be incredibly lucrative.

• 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).

The Direct Democ­racy Experiment

• 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 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.

• Servant 28 Sep 2010 19:53 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Vote Qual­ifi­ca­tions, Not Issues

  “Yeah, I know I am sliding into Mind Killer territory here. Sorry.”

  Is the Mind Killer policy really policy? If it was, your posts would have been downvoted instantly. Instead, you’ve made a total of 24 karma through 3 posts by “sliding” into this Mind Killer territory.

  If there is no enforcement (negative Karma) for a policy, and if anybody can hop in Mind Killer territory without suffering any penalty, then this policy doesn’t exist.

• 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 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 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 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 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 1 Oct 2010 8:53 UTC

  1 point

  on: Hy­po­thet­i­cal—Moon Sta­tion Government

  A ‘technocratic’ Bureacratic Despotism, with the Philanthropist technically in charge.

  Before you say otherwise, realize that the OP has asked: “What sort of government do you establish?”, not “What sort of government WOULD you wish to establish?” Regardless of my personal views, the wealthy philanthropist has too much influence and control over the government (by being its sole source of funding) for it to be truly ‘democratic’. I also have to make sure that the system survive and thrive, so I cannot rely on testing out new and exciting ideas, lest the philanthropist sues me when they fail. The safest method for surviving and thriving then would be to rely on a bunch of technocratic experts to handle the government for the philanthropist, and if the government collaspes, it would be the technocrats who are blamed, and not me.

• Servant 29 Sep 2010 14:37 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Sly’s comment on: The Direct Democ­racy Experiment

  By war, I mean actual war that can result in the destruction of the direct democracy. Your victory in the actual war is dependent on Quality of Life, Economic Strength, and Army Strength.

  I think it would be more accurate for voting blocs to propose given policies (representing referendums and initivates). It will also save me the effort for coming up with the actual policy questions myself; the voting blocs will do it for me.

• 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).