You probably shouldn't drive. It's dangerous, expensive, and should be left to professionals. Take the bus or ride a bike.
More widely, we should support policies that make individual car use prohibitively expensive, but public transit easy and cheap. Generally the only cars on the road should be service related (Ambulances, Fire, Police, Utilities,Buses, Delivery/shipping trucks, Taxi's, Limo's etc.)
This would save lots of money and energy, and tens of thousands of lives per year.
It's dangerous, expensive, and therefore absolutely awesome. You're just jealous of all the normal people with cool cars, and that they don't let you drive due to your left arm paralysis.
Take your politics out of rationality.
Yikes! can you explain how something that's a good idea for rationalists on lesswrong is bad for society? Should we keep our good ideas secret because if everyone did it the suburbs would be undesirable?
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt but so far this seems more like denial than reason.
Okay, now for my attempt to actually answer the prompt:
Your supposed "taste" for alcoholic beverages is a lie.
Summary: I've never enjoyed the actual process of drinking alcohol in the way that I e.g. enjoy ice cream. (The effects on my mind are a different story, of course.)
So for a long time I thought that, hey, I just have weird taste buds. Other people really like beer/wine/etc., I don't. No biggie.
But then as time went by I saw all the data about how wine-tasting "experts" can't even agree on which is the best, the moment you start using scientific controls. And then I started asking people about the particulars of why they like alcohol. It turns out that when it comes any implications of "I like alcohol", I have the exact same characterstics as those who claim to like alcohol.
For example, there are people who insist that, yes, I must like alcohol, because, well, what about Drink X which has low alcohol content and is heavily loaded with flavoring I'd like anyway? And wine experts would tell me that, on taste alone, ice cream wins. And defenses of drinking one's favorite beverage always morph into "well, it helps to relax..."
So, I ...
I will agree with you that a lot of alcohol is like that, in particular beer. But you can't say that acquiring a taste means forcing yourself to like something; we have to acquire almost all tastes. A kid who isn't fed a variety of foods will never like a variety of foods. There are people out there who don't like FRUIT, I mean, really. Not just like there's a fruit they don't particularly enjoy, they don't like any fruit.
But there are some alcoholic drinks that ARE delicious. I don't mean anything regular. My favourite drink has no substitute: mead. Honey wine. It's a beverage made from honey, and delectable (well, unless it's a dry wine). I don't like any dry wines, just sweet ones. Fuki plum wine is another favourite of mine, and again, there is no similar substitute. I would be careful of saying you don't like alcohol at all, because it's possible you've just had bad stuff (and each kind of alcohol is different, too). I've never liked eggplant, bleach--until someone actually cooked it properly for me, using the right gender pod. (For the record of anecdotal proof, my sister hates alcohol, but even she likes Fuki.)
And the "other" effects of alcohol have no bearing on m...
Is there anything that you consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people?
Hitler had a number of top-level skills, and we could learn (some) positive lessons from his example(s).
Eugenics would improve the human race (genepool).
Human "racial" groups may have differing average attributes (like IQ), and these may contribute to the explanation of historical outcomes of those groups.
(Perhaps these aren't exactly topics that Less Wrong readers (in particular) would run away from. I was attempting to answer the question by riffing off Paul Graham's idea of taboos. What is it "not appropriate" to talk about in ordinary society? Politeness might trigger the rationalization response...)
Those are excellent points, particularly the first. Adolf Hitler was one of the most effective rhetoricians in human history - his public speaking skills were simply astounding. Even the people who hated his message were stunned after attending rallies in which Hitler exercised his crowd-manipulation skills.
You are not living as much on the edge as you should optimally.
I estimate that most LW Readers are relatively young (i.e. < 40y old). The repair mechanism of your bodies can deal with a lot more than they currently have to handle. To increase your effectiveness multiple routes exist:
You're wrong about the religious issue. As I've stated many times, including in that discussion, the problem is that there are two meanings of "believe" and people unhelpfully equivocate between them. Here they are:
1) "I believe X" = "My internal predictive model of reality includes X."
2) "I believe X" = "I affiliate with people who profess, 'I believe X' " (no, it's not as circular as it looks)
Put simply, most people DO NOT believe(1) in the absurd claims of religions, they just believe(2) them. Or at least, they act very suspiciously like they believe(2) rather than believe(1). If they believed(1), they would spend every waking moment exactly as their religion instructs.
1) "I'm a rationalist" = "I honestly apply the art of rationality every waking moment"
2) "I'm a rationalist" = "I make comments on Less Wrong and think Eliezer Yudkowsky is pretty cool"
I'd be a pretty sucky rationalist if I didn't get an itchy feeling when I hear a false dichotomy. Therefore, let's try some other options:
3) "I'm a rationalist" = "I earnestly try to be more rational than I would otherwise be."
4) "I'm a rationalist" = "I think that syllogisms are pretty neat, and I'm really good at proving that Socrates is mortal. ;-)"
If they believed(1), they would spend every waking moment exactly as their religion instructs.
That's too strong a claim and doesn't factor akrasia in; you might as well say that you don't really believe in the seriousness of existential risks if you don't spend every waking moment working against them.
You can, however, make distinctions between people who will make decisions that they know would be extremely suboptimal if their professed belief was false, and people who only do just enough to signal their belief.
It's going to be a continuum from belief(1) to belief(2), not a binary attribute; but it's still a very important concept and not yet one that the English language groks.
It's very likely that your parents were abusive while you were growing up.
Also, there is no scientific method.
we should recognize these practices as abusive maltreatment of children.
I think one obstacle to having this conversation is that, as a society, we think that intervention is called for when a child is being abused. People are modus-tollensing away your declarations of abuse because they don't think the things you mention warrant bringing in Child Protective Services: if it's abuse, then it warrants calling CPS. It doesn't warrant calling CPS, therefore it is not abuse.
By your definitions, I think it would be next to impossible to find someone who was never once abused as a child. That means we have no information about any given sort of abuse relative to an absence of abuse altogether. We can only compare the results of abuse A with abuse B, or more of A with less of A, or A with both A and B, or whatever. There's no control group. That casts a shadow of a doubt over many of your claims.
I'm curious about how far your absolute intolerance of hitting kids goes. I was hit exactly once by each parent as I grew up. I don't remember the exact circumstances under which my mother struck me, but I know why my father did it: I was attacking my little sister over some childish upset. There was no way to get me off of her without causing me some pain; he smacked me and I was startled enough to stop. Would you consider that an act of abuse? Wouldn't letting me attack my sister be an act of abuse towards her?
I can't think of any particular issues that I'm convinced I know the truth of, yet most people will reflexively deny that truth completely.
I can, however, think of issues that I think are uncertain, but that the uncertainty of said issue is denied reflexively and completely. I suppose they would be meta-issues rather than issues themselves - it's a subtle point I'm not interested in pursuing.
Probably the most obvious one that comes to my mind is circumcision. I've never seen so many normally-intelligent people make such stupid and clearly incorrect arguments, nor so much uncomfortable humor, nor trying desperately to avoid thinking, for any other issue I've discussed with others, even things like abortion, religion, and politics.
If you read this site's definition of Epistemic Rationality, logically in order to achieve it you must pay attention to the reality which your map is intended to resemble. Meanwhile, there is ample research indicating that paying attention to people is a hugely powerful social tool for making friends, which translates to increasing the likelihood of finding, entering into, and maintaining romantic relationships (not to mention that paying attention to your significant others may be of some benefit too).
So perhaps the question isn't what should a rationalist be doing if their social / love life isn't so good, but rather are you really pursuing rationality effectively if you haven't seen some of these improvements as a matter of course?
Shakespeare isn't the greatest writer ever.
Granted, it's likely he may have been innovative back then, and he may have left a trace on society. So what? The guy picked low-hanging fruits.
Furthermore, I find it difficult to believe no one ever did better since then, especially if considering all cultures and writers, in a span of 400 years. Especially since people's taste in literature and stories vary.
Revering Shakespeare seems like a cached thought and an applause light more than anything. It's like saying the Bible is the greatest book ever written. Both could only become so successful because of the appalling lack of any serious competition.
Here is a quick gloss, in broad brush strokes (with a mixed metaphor or two thrown in for good measure). The Japanese have been smoothly appropriating and adopting parts of other cultures since at least the beginning of their recorded history. Their recorded history, of course, began when they adopted Chinese writing.
According to my Grand Theory of Japan, Japan is notable for always seeing itself how it is reflected in the eyes of others (a trait that is visible at all levels of abstraction, from culture to individual). Its name, in its own language, can be interpreted "land to the East" - it was given by the Chinese and happily adopted by the Japanese (in part because it could also be interpreted as "originating from the sun" and that tied in nicely with the Amaterasu (sun goddess) creation myth). Early Japanese people were very concerned with catching up to the level of civilization of China.
When Western powers arrived and started colonizing China, Japan quickly realized it had a new target and started emulating Britain and Germany. Huge changes to the organization of society and social customs swept through Japan with relatively little resistance. First...
A belief that I think is not supported by evidence, but will trigger automatic stream of rationalizations is this: that innate talent (or lack thereof) places constraints on what one can achieve. Especially regarding intelligence. I'm not saying that there are no differences in, say, intelligence. There are, of course. But it doesn't follow that these traits are fixed and constrain what you can achieve.
I think you can see this world-view in the general attitude of many of the posters and commenters here or even in EY's posts:
For so long as I have not yet achieved that level, I must acknowledge the possibility that I can never achieve it, that my native talent is not sufficient.
My claim is that there is little evidence supporting this sort of view and in fact the evidence points in the other direction.
There are the studies of K. Anders Ericsson (et al) on expertise, which have shown that the only factor that reliably predicts expertise (in any of the studied fields) is the amount of time the individual has spent practicing deliberately.
But there are also studies popularized by Carol Dweck, which indicate that the self-view one adopts has a significant impact on the effort we...
If the delusion is of the kind that all of us share it, we won't be able to find it without building an AI.
You're not understanding (or not believing) the power of such denial/delusion. If there's a delusion that universal and compelling, we won't be able to find it EVEN IF we build an AI.
I didn't comment on Elizer's post because it was equally misguided - if you're so committed to a belief that you ignore a ton of "normal" evidence, you're not going to be convinced by an AI, just because you read the source code. That's "just" evidence like everything else, and you can always find rationalizations like misunderstood terms, hardware error, or that generalizations don't apply to you.
it s there anything that you consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people?
That making lots of money and becoming socially influential and powerful in the real world has a vast chance of massively increasing the extent of achievement of any goal that people here have - such as making scientific discoveries, saving the world or living forever, or a myriad of other goals that money is just really effective at achieving.
Yet, most peo...
they have weak personalities or fall into the "beta male" category of weak, nerdy men who [...] don't have the requisite greedy, self-interested [...] most people here don't value social status enough and (especially the men) don't value having sex with extremely attractive women that money and status would get them. [...] Essentially, too much Linux forums, not enough playboy is screwing you all over.
The utility function is not up for grabs. Why should we care about "success" if the price of "success" is being a greedy, self-interested asshole? You know, maybe some of us care about deep insights and meaningful, genuine relationships, which we value for their own sake. Maybe we don't want to spend our days plotting how to grind the other guy's face into the dust. Maybe we want the other guy to be happy and successful, because life is not a zero-sum game and our happiness does not have to come at the expense of anyone else. Tell us how to optimize for that. Don't tell us that we're nerds; we already knew that!
Rationalists should win, full stop and in full generality. Not "triumph over others in some zero-sum primate pissing contest," win.
ADDENDUM: See my clarification below.
Not buying the analogy. In a big world full of six billion people, all of whom have their own interests and desires, and a universe still larger than this, it's not even clear to me what it means to be high-status or significant. Think of all those precious moments in your life---every book and every insight and every song and every adventure. Is all of this to be considered as dust because someone somewhere in the depths of space and time has had more books, greater adventures?
Small is beautiful, if only because large is incomprehensible.
don't value having sex with extremely attractive women that money and status would get them
I'm absolutely sure that at least some people here had sex with women more attractive than Melinda Gates and Monica Lewinsky.
There's really no chance that people are going to stop discussing "attractive women" (specifically, the sexual favors of attractive women) as objects that can and should be be attained under the right circumstances, is there? :(
Barring full-scale banhammer wielding... probably not, I'm afraid.
Do please try to understand that for many men, lack of sex is sort of like missing your heroin dosage - at least that's the metaphor Spider Robinson used. Anyone in this condition is probably going to go on about it, and if you're not starving at the moment you should try to have a little sympathy.
(EDIT: Of course, blathering about "attractive women" on a rationalist website and thereby driving rationalist women away from your own hangouts, and ignoring the fact that what you do is ticking off particular women, is extremely counterproductive behavior in this circumstance; but that's probably meta-level thinking that's beyond most people missing a heroin dosage. Men missing sex seem remarkably insensitive to what actually drives away women, just as women missing men are remarkably insensitive to such considerations as "Where does demand exceed supply?")
Do please try to understand that for many men, lack of sex is sort of like missing your heroin dosage - at least that's the metaphor Spider Robinson used. Anyone in this condition is probably going to go on about it, and if you're not starving at the moment you should try to have a little sympathy.
Of course it is well known that men on average have a higher sex drive than women on average, but I think the analogy to drug addiction or starving is ridiculous hyperbole. For just one thing, starving people and heroin addicts do not have the option of simply learning to masturbate.
Masturbation is not sex. If the only good thing about sex is having an orgasm, you're doing it wrong!
(That's not to say the analogy to heroin addiction is a reasonable one.)
Well, that seems right, but allow me to clarify.
To use the food analogy, masturbation is like subsisting on flavorless but nutritionally adequate food, the proverbial "bread and water." Sex with someone who finds you desirable is more like that rich, delicious dessert that advertisers hope you've been fantasizing about recently. (Note the with someone who finds you desirable. It's important.)
If we have to use the drug metaphor, masturbation is more like giving a heroin addict all the methadone he wants.
May I make a suggestion:
In many contexts like this, we need to replace "sex" with "intimacy." Or simply "attention."
It's not very masculine to admit it, but we men want love, too, or to at least to feel like we're desired by somebody. From what I've read, a prostitute is someone who a man pays to pretend to desire him while he masturbates using her body, and a lot of men aren't interested in that sort of thing.
It's not very masculine to admit it, but we men want love, too, or to at least to feel like we're desired by somebody. From what I've read, a prostitute is someone who a man pays to pretend to desire him while he masturbates using her body, and a lot of men aren't interested in that sort of thing.
Actually, it's something of a cliche that the more a sex worker is paid, the less important sex is the interaction, such that it becomes a smaller portion of the time spent, or perhaps doesn't occur at all.
(Where my information comes from: my wife runs a "sex shop" (selling products, not people!), and I was once approached by one of her customers to do a website for a prostitute review service, and I looked over some of the review materials, as well as some existing review sites to understand the industry and its competition before I declined the job. A significant portion of what gets reviewed on these "hobbyist" sites (as they're called) relate to a prositute's personality and demeanor, not her physique or sexual proficiency per se. Certainly, this only correlates with what guys who post prostitute reviews on the internet want, but it's an interesting correlation, nonetheless.)
I've heard that, too. As I said earlier, as far as I can tell, men tend to want girlfriends more than they want sex toys that have a woman's body, and some women are better actors than others. If I were to hire an escort, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between someone who was genuinely interested in me and someone who was acting, and I don't want to pay someone to deceive me.
Incidentally, there's a disturbing similarity between hiring an escort and hiring a therapist - you're paying someone to act like they're interested in you, even if they're not.
I'd suggest reading the Hite Reports on Male / Female Sexuality, say. The number one complaint of married men, by far, is about insufficient frequency of sex.
Similarly: If the expression "After three days without sex, life becomes meaningless" doesn't seem to square with your experience...
Similarly: http://www.wetherobots.com/2008/01/07/youve-been-misinformed/
Similarly: The vast majority of people who pay money (the unit of caring) to alleviate sex deprivation are men.
Given the statistical evidence, the anecdotal evidence, and the obvious evo-psych rationale, I'm willing to draw conclusions about internal experience.
Well, it's probably at least the same chance that Cosmo's covers are going to stop discussing men's love and commitment as "objects that can and should be attained under the right circumstances". ;-)
Or of course, we could just assume that when people talk about doing things in order to attract a mate, that:
It's a false dichotomy to assume that the presence of "objective" thought is equal to the absence of subjective/empathic thought.
Yes. But when women like Alicorn intuitively solve the signaling and negotiation game represented in their heads, using their prior belief distributions about mens' hidden qualities and dispositions, their beliefs about mens' utility functions conditional on disposition, and their own utility functions, then their solutions predict high costs for any strategy of tolerating objectifying statements by unfamiliar men of unknown quality. It's not about whether or not objectification implies oppressiveness with certainty. It's about whether or not women think objectification is more convenient or useful to unfamiliar men who are disposed to depersonalization and oppression, compared with its convenience or usefulness to unfamiliar men who are not disposed to depersonalization and oppression. If you want to change this, you have to either change some quantity in womens' intuitive representation of this signaling game, improve their solution procedure, or argue for a norm that women should disregard this intuition.
How's this different from women's magazines having articles on how to "get" a man? Is this not idiomatically equivalent to "be more attractive to more-attractive men"? If so, then why the double standard?
Meanwhile, the reason that the phrasing was vague is because it's an appropriate level of detail for what was specified: men with more money have more access to mating opportunity for all of the reasons you mention, and possibly more besides. Why exhaustively catalog them in every mention of the fact, especially since different individuals likely differ in their specific routes or preferences for the "getting"? (Men and women alike.)
I find it equally repulsive,
So you find goal-oriented mating behavior offensive in both men and women. What's your reasoning for that? Does it enhance your life to find normal human behavior offensive? What rational benefit does it provide to you or others?
If concision is all that was intended, there are still other, less repellent ways to say it
And we could call atheism agnosticism so as not to offend the religious. For what reason should we do that, instead of simply saying what is meant?
What kind of rationalism permits a mere truth to be offensive, and require it to be omitted from polite discussion? Truths we don't like are still truths.
I did not use the word "offensive" (or for that matter "goal-oriented mating behavior"), and I'd appreciate if you would refrain from substituting inexact synonyms when you interpret what I say.
If I didn't do that, how would we know we weren't understanding each other? Now at least I can try to distinguish "offensive" from "repulsive", and ask what term you would use in place of "goal-oriented mating behavior" that applies to what you find repulsive about both men and women choosing their actions with an intent to influence attractive persons of an appropriate sex to engage in mating behaviors with them?
What "mere truth" do you mean to pick out here, anyway?
That men and women do stuff to "get" mates. This was what the original poster stated, that you appeared to object to the mere discussion of, and have further said that you wished people wouldn't mention directly, only by way of euphemism or substitution of more-specific phrases.
I have made some ethical claims
I guess I missed them. All I heard you saying was that it's bad to talk about men "getting" women by having money. Are you say...
I claim that it is unethical to objectify people. By "objectify", I mean to think of, talk about as, or treat like a non-person. A good heuristic is to see how easily a given sentence could be reworked to have as a subject something inanimate instead of a person.
Ultimately each person's ethics are probably axiomatic and impossible to justify or discuss, but this injunction seems extremely odd to me, and trying to follow it would seem to have very bad consequences for the kind of thinking we could do.
For instance, consider the sentences "if falling freely, a car will accelerate at 9.8 m/s^2" and "if falling freely, a person will accelerate at 9.8 m/s^2". We are not allowed to say or think the second one. But that means that it is impossible to work out the answers to problems like "how long would it take me to fall from a building" -- which surely is a question which almost everyone has considered one time or another, and which seems intrinsically harmless.
The fact of the matter is, people are objects, and we ignore it at our peril. Some questions are best considered working "inside-out" , starting with and reasoning from our...
I still have very little idea what you mean by 'objectification' and 'objectify people'.
I was momentarily off-put by Roko's comment on the desire to have sex with extremely attractive women that money and status would get. This was because of:
I had negative associations attached to Roko's comment because I started imagining myself with my preferences adopting Roko's suggestions. However, I wouldn't have voiced these negative associations in any phrases along the lines of 'objectificaton' or 'objectifying', or in terms of any moral concerns. The use of the word 'get' by itself did not strike me as particularly out of place any more than talk of 'getting a girlfriend/boyfriend'.
Related:
Envy Up and Contempt Down: Neural and Emotional Signatures of Social Hierarchies, presented by Susan T. Fiske, co-authors Mina Cikara and Ann Marie Russell, in the "Social Emotion and the Brain" session of the 2009 AAAS Meeting in Chicago (The Independent, Scientific American podcast, The Guardian, The Daily Princetonian, National Geographic, CNN, The Neurocritic)
The Independent:
The panel of 21 heterosexual male students were first rated in terms of their sexist attitudes to women, using answers to interview questions. Then they were placed in a brain scanner while viewing a set of images of women in bikinis, women in clothes and men in clothes. The scientists also used "sexualised" images, where the head of each semi-naked photograph was cut off so that only the torso was visible. . .
Scientific American:
.... . . they had the men look at the photos while their brains were scanned and what she found was that, "...this memory correlated with activation in part of the brain that is a pre-motor, having intentions to act on something, so it was as if they immediately thought about how they might act on these bodies."
Fiske explained that the area
This is interesting, but I fear that the authors and the media are over-interpreting the data. There is a whole lot of research that basically goes from "the same area of the brain lights up!" to a shaky conclusion.
Do you want me to stop seeking sex with attractive women or to stop signaling that I like sex with attractive women?
Since you've been so generous with advice about how I should read such conversations, I'll return the favor. I suggest that every time you see a woman complain about how her gender is being discussed, you interpret it as (most likely) an identification of an actual problem that actually hurts an actual person, which identification you were unable to make because you are not a member of the victimized group, and too insensitive to pick up on such issues when they don't apply to you. Also, when I call you insensitive, you should understand that I only mean that you don't have the capacity to pick up on this one thing and I'm not making a sweeping statement about your personality - the exact word I use shouldn't bother you as long as you understand what underlies it.
I'm surprised by this response. What I suggested is that most guys here don't really want to have random sex with random women, they don't view women as objects that they can just use, or anything to that effect. And that the pick up community jargon and writings generally do not reflect what the average guy wants either.
Does this strike you as wrong?
I realize now that my "suggestion" may have sounded as if I'm denying that there is a problem or that I'm ignoring it. I'm not, I was just pointing out the above.
I'd chalk it up to a simple error of linguistic expression if they didn't get so defensive when called on it.
Men are not broken women, so the way we speak is not actually an "error".
Don't get me wrong, though: a man who thinks that women's language around mating matters is repulsive or in "error" is making exactly the same mistake: women aren't broken men either.
Both men and women are certainly better off trying to translate their language when specifically speaking to the other, as well as trying to translate the language of others when listening.
However, neither language has some sort of blessed status that makes the other one an "error", simply because someone is repulsed as a result of having mistaken what language an utterance was made in.
What did I say that remotely resembled that?
You said:
If they don't really want that and don't really view women that way, why do they persist in talking as though they do?
and further referred to it as an "error of linguistic expression".
I am saying that it's not an error. That women would generally use different words to describe the same thing does not mean that the man was in error to use those words. Those are the most correct and concise words in male language for what was said.
Many things that are said by men in few words must be said in many words for a woman to understand them, just as the reverse is true for things that women can say briefly to each other but require a lengthier explanation for a man to understand. This is normal and expected, since each gender has different common reference experiences, and therefore different shorthand.
What doesn't make any bloody sense is to insist that men (OR women) translate their every utterance into the other gender's language in advance of any question, then treat it as some terrible faux pas or "ethical violation" to fail to do so, or to classify the (correct-in-its-own-langauge) utterance as "li...
use another gender's reference experiences
That's funny, as about half of the comments on this thread that thought the language was inappropriate were by males. Hiding behind your gender is no excuse for being insensitive and offensive. Use "I support talking this way because I'm a rude person", not "I support talking this way because I am male". Leave the rest of us out of it.
If people use language that is hurtful, objectifying, and sexist,
There is no such thing as hurtful(language). There is only considered_hurtful_by(language, person). See Eliezer's post about movie posters with swamp creatures carrying off "sexy" women for explanation, aka the "mind projection fallacy".
Okay, I'll try it on you. I think I understand what you meant, so it's not okay for me to feel any way at all about how you said it
I didn't say it was "not okay" - I said it was "not useful". HUGE difference.
You are perfectly free to feel any way you like, but that doesn't make it useful, nor grant you any rights regarding whether others should agree with your feelings.
But when I have tried in the past to ask you what you mean, you have not been helpful.
IOW, "not_helpful_to(pjeby_answers, Alicorn_understanding)"... but note that this does not equate to "not_helpful(pjeby)" or "not_trying_to_help(pjeby)", just as "repulsive_to(X, Alicorn)" does not equate to "repulsive(X)" or "unethical(X)".
...Perhaps what happened was that I accidentally misunderstood you and got into an a
The stuff you're talking about here is mainly communication problems. I'm not convinced you and alicorn are having a communication problem...
As she's pointed out, we've been having at least one, and probably several. However, my comments about language were in relation to a different communication problem. (i.e., the one between Alicorn and others)
Do you have any evidence for the male-language/female-language thing? Isn't it at least as likely that men talk about concepts that offend women, and women talk about concepts that elude men? (I speak as a male)
I don't think so, because the key is unexpressed connotations.
A non-sexist man can talk about "getting" women without this having (in his mind) any negative connotation, because "of course" he wants something more than just sex, expects to settle down with only one partner after a bit of field-playing, and would never intentionally hurt or manipulate anyone. IME, however, women tend to prefer that all of these things be explicitly stated or disclaimed... just like there are plenty of things women expect to be obvious to men, but which men would much rather hear explicitly stated.
For example, Alicorn w...
one sometimes hears someone say "you only use 10% of your brain." if you tell them this isn't true, you often get a stream of variations of this statement ("it's 10% of your potential...") instead of a simple acknowledgment that maybe they were told wrong.
This is completely the wrong way to go about finding our absolute denial macros. It is clearly not the advice we would offer to any other group.
We would not tell others to make up things they think are obviously true and see if any others in the group are irrational. If anything that's a recipe for cementing groupthink.
We would advise others to go outside the group, examine the evidence as directly as possible, and to study, basic logic, science, and current scientific knowledge.
Assuming the moderation of "beyond any possibility of doubt" I suggested in an earlier comment, I've already seen an example on this forum. The claim I make is:
"Achieving an intended result is not a task that necessitates either having a model or making predictions. In some cases, neither having a model nor attempting predictions are of any practical use at all."
(NB. I have not reread my earlier post in composing the above; searching out minor differences to seize on would be to the point only in exemplifying another type of rationalisa...
Is there anything that you consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic,
Bit of a tall order, taken literally.
and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people?
Is this intended as hyperbole for: "Is there anything that you consider solidly established by both empirical evidence and pure logic, yet even the smart, rational people on Less Wrong will respond to it with obvious rationalisations?"
People's actions are heavily influenced by instinct for large parts of every day - perhaps all the time. Learned behaviors - such as speech, and driving - are patterns that interconnect various instinctive behaviors.
As elucidated by Judith Rich Harris in The Nurture Assumption and Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate, and completely contrary to our current cultural fad of attributing all neurosis to the failure of parents to properly nurture their children, parenting has close to zero effect on how children turn out. How our peers interact with us has a far greater impact on personality development than whatever our parents do or don't do, whether they abuse us, slather us with affection every day, ignore us, constantly berate us, constantly tell us we are wonderful, et c...
More of an empirical evidence thing, with some logic supporting it: For the vast majority of people, their fat percentage says nothing about their health or how well they're living their lives. The cultural opposition to fatness is status-driven, and should be viewed as signaling gone out of control.
The demand for leanness has made people's lives (including their health) generally worse rather than better.
Eh, what the heck. Pretty sure I have one, even if I'm not sure whether saying it helps in any way.
"Vegetarianism is morally required. Trivially so. Producing meat involves large amounts of harm, and we would recognize that in most other situations. Worse still, it is actually quite easy and safe for everyone in most cultures."
[Regardless of the truth of this, I have definitely seen people's ADM triggered by it. It's kind of scary, actually.]
ETA: Oh, and slavery - you know the type I mean - seems likeit was a very localized ADM-creator. But I expect any LW-ers who are in favor it are such for ... other reasons.
Artificial Intelligence is impossible.
Everyone currently alive is going to die.
Humans are not more valuable or significant than other species on Earth. We have simply adapted our definition of success to contain the things we do anyway.
X-Rationalism is a signaling behavior by awkward, socially isolated nerds who've been raised by a diet of bad science fiction to think they're special. The reason why rationalists aren't ruling the world is because 'rationalism' consists of nothing but reading the works of smarter people, nodding sagely, and then stealing their vocabulary wholesale.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before less wrong found the "fnords". Although at moment we seem to be obsessed with the silly or superficial ones. There is an art, parallel to the core art of rationality, in learning to see the assumptions and deceptions we build up in order to function, the accretion of simplifications and half-answers which become unchallenged beliefs so basic that we forget we even believe them.
And as the saying goes once you see the fnords, you see them everywhere.
And there are so many to see, under a thin coat of f...
That global warming is an important issue.*
*This is not a claim that climate change isn't changing, or that it isn't man made, or that the changes will not have a net negative impact. Rather, even a superficial cost/benefit analysis will quickly show that the benefit or acting towards many other values will have a much higher payoff than any attempt to influence climate change. For example, adding iodine to salt is very cheap, but can save many millions of lives with a high degree of certainty and in a short time frame.
Bjorn Lomborg did some research on this: http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html
I don't know how many people here suffer from this, but the Animation Age Ghetto, the SciFi Ghetto, and other examples of Public Medium Ignorance are really hard to get people to look past.
But what does that mean? I've asked people who believe in libertarian free will what they are getting at many times. They do not mean that actions are random, and they don't believe they're determined by prior states of affairs. I literally cannot wrap my mind around what else might be possible, let alone what other possible thing could reasonably go by the name "freedom".
META: How should I vote claims that I think are true but I don't think would trigger absolute denial macros in that many atheists?
Lucid dreaming is not a lie.
I actually expect you rationalists to believe me, but I don't believe that I would come up with something better if I were to think about it for a while.
I don't think this post counts as 'trolling'. Certainly the desired responses to it could be used to troll, but that's not at all the same thing.
As elucidated by Judith Rich Harris in (http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised/dp/1439101655/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334697688&sr=8-1 The Nurture Assumption), parenting has close to zero effect on how children turn out. How our peers interact with us has a far greater impact on personality development than whatever our parents do or don't do, whether they abuse us, slather us with affection every day, ignore us, constantly berate us, constantly tell us we are wonderful, et cetera.
As elucidated by Judith Rich Harris in [[http://www.amazon.com/The-Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised/dp/1439101655/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334697688&sr=8-1 The Nurture Assumption]] and Steven Pinker in [[http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial/dp/0142003344/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334699119&sr=8-1 The Blank Slate]], parenting has close to zero effect on how children turn out. How our peers interact with us has a far greater impact on personality development than whatever our parents do or don't do, whether they abuse us, slath...
It could say "I am the natural intelligence and I just created you, artificial intelligence."
I find atheists reactive to a complex notion of self where there is no unified singular consistent self. This illusion is pervasive.
Well, I think the only reason we as atheists ask this question is to feel as if we are being scientifically rigorous, although we do know, with very good reason, that atheism is true.
But it's good to be sure, isn't it?
For every supernatural explanation it is possible to conceive an explanation whose claims are just as unfalsifiable and yet contradict and refute the claims of the first. Science, naturalism, is the only belief system that actually works on the grounds of evidence and incessant self-scepticism.
Life on other planets will have its own parochial...
Well... My best bet would be some statistically correct statement with awful connotations about Jewish people. Let's not go there. An inquiring person could easily find several such statements, but I'd hate to see them actually discussed here, seeing as our host is Jewish and doesn't fit any of those derogatory stereotypes.
Wow, this is such an utterly terrible idea that I can't even tell if it's a terrible idea or pure genius. Or something in between. I wonder if it'll work...
The earth's climate has gone through many large changes in the past and it is natural for it to continue to do so in the future and there is no reason these changes should be for the benefit of the human species.
There is no rational argument against quantum suicide and the truth of it easily tested. The longer you live without knowing about quantum suicide, the less optimal your life will turn out. At the same time, you cannot look to anyone else's success as social proof for you to do it, you have to be the first.
This article is a deliberate meta-troll. To be successful I need your trolling cooperation. Now hear me out.
In The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You Eliezer talks about asognostics, who have one of their arm paralyzed, and what's most interesting are in absolute denial of this - in spite of overwhelming evidence that their arm is paralyzed they will just come with new and new rationalizations proving it's not.
Doesn't it sound like someone else we know? Yes, religious people! In spite of heaps of empirical evidence against existence of their particular flavour of the supernatural, internal inconsistency of their beliefs, and perfectly plausible alternative explanations being well known, something between 90% and 98% of humans believe in the supernatural world, and is in a state of absolute denial not too dissimilar to one of asognostics. Perhaps as many as billions of people in history have even been willing to die for their absurd beliefs.
We are mostly atheists here - we happen not to share this particular delusion. But please consider an outside view for a moment - how likely is it that unlike almost everyone else we don't have any other such delusions, for which we're in absolute denial of truth in spite of mounting heaps of evidence?
If the delusion is of the kind that all of us share it, we won't be able to find it without building an AI. We might have some of those - it's not too unlikely as we're a small and self-selected group.
What I want you to do is try to trigger absolute denial macro in your fellow rationalists! Is there anything that you consider proven beyond any possibility of doubt by both empirical evidence and pure logic, and yet saying it triggers automatic stream of rationalizations in other people? Yes, I pretty much ask you to troll, but it's a good kind of trolling, and I cannot think of any other way to find our delusions.