Ads may have greater impact on you when you buy gifts for others. You are less sure about their utility function than you are about yours, so it is easier to nudge you.
This is a good point.
(Maybe I should even watch more ads for women’s stuff. I am usually clueless about what to give my wife...)
Are you taking into account the distinction between the preferences that people act on and the preferences that people wished they would act on? I don’t know if there is any standard terminology for this (in philosophy or on LessWrong), but an obvious example is the smoker who struggles to stop smoking. It is possible to “prefer” one’s own convenience and luxury, and at the same time want to be a “better person” by doing more for others.
I get the impression that you think the majority of rationalists actually prefer their own convenience over effective altruism even though they maybe deluded or dishonest about it. What evidence do you base this on?
Thanks for the explanation!
So it would be epistemically suboptimal to be “immune to” the outputs of the advertising.
I get that you are saying that ads convey useful information. It seems to me, though, that instead of relying on ads for this information, I could get the same information just as easily by observing people.
Are there any particular situations where it is especially useful to pay attention to ads for this kind of group signalling information?
(I gather that hightops and brogues are types of shoes. I had to look them up...)
I still do not understand it. Could I ask you to please rephrase the sentence “However, a lot of people...” so it expresses what you intended to say, as exactly as reasonably possible?
Are you saying that no one genuinely agrees with Peter Singer’s conclusion (that you should sacrifice your own convenience to save a stranger)? And that everyone who claims to agree with Singer either (1) lies or (2) is too stupid to know their own beliefs?
However, a lot of people who don’t get caught with Singer’s thought experiment, and don’t recognize the inconsistency with their previously held beliefs.
This sentence is not completely grammatical. It looks like the result of an editing mistake. I would love to know exactly what you intended to say here.
Smarter and more honest inductees will report that, “I care about having nice things for myself, and then my friends and family, much more than a random child,” leave the room muttering, “cult,” and not show up to the next EA reading club.
Could you please elaborate on why you think “smarter and more honest” people will give this answer?
Let me ask you just one question: Do you truly want to learn to be more rational?
Please give me a direct answer to this.
The motivation, after the double edit, is clearly to express suprise after connecting the dots and to enumerate it…
Sure, but do you need to express all your emotions?
In my experience (as a rough guideline), when I do something, it is either because I want to achieve some goal, or because I am in the grip of some subconscious impulse. The latter is something I want to catch and notice as often as I can, in order to learn to be more conscious and more rational as much of the time as possible.
Since you read and post on LessWrong, I assume that you want to learn to be more rational. Am I right?
I may have been expressing myself too vaguely. What I have been trying to say is this: I think that when you write these posts, you are in the grip of subconscious urges—presumably an urge to defend yourself and “win fights” in order to secure your social status. I am trying to convince you that you can train and improve your own rationality by introspecting more about why you do the things you do.
I wrote it in the most straightforward and direct manner possible?
Is this a question? Or are you just defending yourself again?
May I ask what your motivation was when you wrote and published this post of yours?
Were you trying to learn something? Or were you trying to teach me something? Or were you just responding to the knee-jerk impulse to win a fight online?
My post above was an attempt to teach you something. I hope that this wording does not come off as condescending; it is not meant as such. I am here on LessWrong primarily to learn. As such, I appreciate it when someone genuinely tries to teach me something. I hope that you will take it in the same spirit.
I think your first post above had some flaws in terms of rationality. I think your follow-up is even less rational.
Am I making sense? I might not be. I can try to be clearer, but only if you truly want to know what I am trying to say.
I am the person that caused Duncan to crystallize the concept of ‘emotionally tall’ discussed here
Upvoted for this link, which I found valuable.
I know what you mean, of course, but it is funny that you use Jesus as an example of someone unlikely to be banned when, historically, Jesus was in fact “banned”. :)
Edit: I seem to have attracted 4 random downvoters who appear too ashamed to even indicate a rationale. Which seems to indicate my comment touches upon something of substance.
This is not a strong argument. It is equally plausible that 4+ people think your post is simply bad and not worth the effort to criticize.
This is not meant as an attack on you, but I do think your post here is guilty of some of the same misbehaviour that the OP explains.
Is it that fun, though? Are surviving mountaineers usually exceptionally happy people? Does the fun of successfully climbing mountains make up for the risk of death? I suspect it does not.
Some kind of “meaning”, perhaps.
But it’s precisely the “basic kindness” which doesn’t interfere with “epistemic virtues” that rationalists are unusually bad at; and, conversely, precisely the “basic kindness” (though, again, I consider this to be a tendentious description in that case) which does interfere with “epistemic virtues” that’s mostly commonly demanded. This leaves us with the worst of both worlds.
Could I ask you to please elaborate on what you mean here?
I do not interact with a lot of rationalists, so it is not obvious to me what you have in mind.
John’s teammates who did ~none of the work.
It is likely that they felt they did more useful work than John felt they did.
Thanks. I apologize for sounding negative and contrarian, but “the truth of life as it is” does not sound like much of a refuge. Could I ask you to please elaborate on that?
I’d say anyone who takes refuge in the three treasures, believes the four noble truths, and follows the eight fold path is clearly a Buddhist.
I am not sure I believe in the four noble truths. I believe that the dharma and eightfold path can reduce suffering, certainly. I am not completely convinced that the end of suffering is possible.
Nor do I particularly take refuge in the three treasures. I think the dharma, as preserved in the sutras, is valuable, but probably flawed and incomplete. I also suspect that the Buddha is largely legendary. (I am sure that he lived, but I suspect that his accomplishments have been exaggerated.)
I have seldom read the original sutras. I find more value in modern interpretations such as Culadasa’s The Mind Illuminated, in conjunction with other (non-Buddhist-inspired) self-improvement literature.
What I will say is that I think you would benefit from participation in an in-person sangha because you are a human, humans are naturally gregarious if not made avoidant as a defensive strategy, and we have greater well-being when part of tight-nit communities. If you feel resistance to doing that (I get the sense that you do), that’s something to investigate
I feel resistance partly because I am wary of the time commitment (I struggle to find the time to meditate already), and because I am skeptical about whether I will be able to find a good group. But you have a point. I have now posted and asked about it in some Facebook groups for meditators and Buddhists in Denmark. Let us see.
many Western “Buddists” are not clearly religious (they’re more Buddhist philosophy enjoyers and meditation dabblers)
I am a bit like this. I meditate 60+ minutes per day, talk to a teacher regularly, participate casually in a number of online “sanghas”, and follow the Eightfold Path and the Five Precepts as rough guidelines. But as I have described on Reddit here, I do not consider myself as “being a Buddhist” but merely has “having/doing a Buddhist-inspired practice”.
Could I ask you to please say a bit more about why I might want to “be a Buddhist”?
I know very little about Judaism, so I am not qualified to say, but I can quote Yudkowsky on the topic:
Modern Orthodox Judaism is like no other religion I have ever heard of, and I don’t know how to describe it to anyone who hasn’t been forced to study Mishna and Gemara. There is a tradition of questioning, but the kind of questioning . . . It would not be at all surprising to hear a rabbi, in his weekly sermon, point out the conflict between the seven days of creation and the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang—because he thought he had a really clever explanation for it, involving three other Biblical references, a Midrash, and a half-understood article in Scientific American. In Orthodox Judaism you’re allowed to notice inconsistencies and contradictions, but only for purposes of explaining them away, and whoever comes up with the most complicated explanation gets a prize.
There is a tradition of inquiry. But you only attack targets for purposes of defending them. You only attack targets you know you can defend.
In Modern Orthodox Judaism I have not heard much emphasis of the virtues of blind faith. You’re allowed to doubt. You’re just not allowed to successfully doubt.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dHQkDNMhj692ayx78/avoiding-your-belief-s-real-weak-points
Your posts in this thread ooze with contempt for large swathes of people, on and off LessWrong. In this last post you are not doing much analysis; you are mostly just judging.
I get the impression that your reasoning here is motivated less by a desire to genuinely understand the human mind and more by a desire to dismiss people who disagree with you and feel superior to them.
Please note that this is NOT intended as an attack on you. It is intended as constructive criticism. I am suggesting that you could benefit from being more curious and more aware of your own biases.