Daniel_Humphries

BusinessConsultant: But to say that we are irrational because we are basing our decision on our own personal context is to deny everything that you have built up to this point. Really? If a decision is irrational, it's irrational. You can make allowances for circumstance and still attempt to find the most rational choice. Did you read the whole post? Eliezer is at pains to point out that even given different expected utilities for different amounts of money for different people in different circumstances, there is still a rational way to go about making a decision and there is stilla tendency for humans to make bad decisions because they are too lazy... (read more)

rukidding wrote: now you're claiming brainwashed (if not drug-induced) suicide of defenseless and unsuspecting people isn't the height of cowardice. Is there a reason you can't work on your OWN biases?

I agree with you on two points, ru, (1) that the overall thrust of this post by Eliezer is strong, and (2) that cowardice is a fair and accurate descriptor of the hijackers.

I understand Eliezer's point about the folly of tossing every kitchen-sink insult at the Enemy even when it's inaccurate. I think he just chose a bad example. The definition of cowardice doesn't seem very nuanced at all. A willingness to commit suicide does not necessarily entail bravery, and certainly... (read more)

Interesting post.

But lack of broad distribution of an ability doesn't necessarily mean the ability doesn't exist. One of the themes of this blog is that human brain power has outstripped "nature" (I use that advisedly) in its ability to change, create and evolve. If psychic powers were an epiphenomenon of supercomplex brain structure, for example, then they would be no different than the ability to, say, do higher mathematics. That is, something most humans are physically capable of but only a tiny fraction of which have actually put in the requisite study, and learned from the right teachers. The ability to do higher mathematics could be seen, abstractly, as conferring a huge... (read more)

Richard:

I suppose this counts as threadjacking, but this thread seems about played out, so I'll respond to your response to my off-topic aside.

I'm interested in what you say. I don't think it's necessarily off base. But my little cheeky comment was in reference to the Buddhist concept of anatta, or non-self. That is, Eliezer's insistence that there is no purposeful unifying force behind what we experience as "our" desires reminded me of an analogous teaching of the Buddha. Evolution can be seen as a unifying force, I suppose, since it is the common wellspring of our desires, but as Eliezer is rightly at pains to point out, it is decidedly not purposeful.... (read 591 more words →)

"Being a thousand shards of desire isn't always fun, but at least it's not boring."

I like that. I have a feeling Lord Gautama would have liked it too.

I will venture to say that Eliezer's habit (this isn't the first instance) of teasing out the same subject again and again from slightly different angles is highly illuminating for me, at least. (And, I suspect, for him as well... though that's conjecture).

I'm a bit slower than your average Overcoming Bias lurker, it would seem from the level of discourse here. Sometimes I think I barely grasp what everyone is even talking about, though I try to read the background links people provide. But I'm... (read more)