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Upvoted for the finalmost sentence of your post; thank you so much.
Whoever argues that "MLK is a criminal" with the intent of instilling the negative connotation of the term is unlikely to apply the same standard everywhere.
This is an indictment of the human species, if this purported "unlikelihood" is true. Maybe you should not underestimate the likelihood that your interlocutors have a serious deep resentment of unlawful behavior, however alien this might be to you. Maybe part of their fundamental self-narrative includes the unforgivable harms consistently caused to them by crimes which were superficially dismissed as mild by others. They may think "If this is a mild (read: non-central) crime, I don't want to know what the serious (read: central) ones are." Maybe they feel they have no choice but to become a total "I'll end it forever if it's the last thing I do"-level enemy with criminality in all forms, as a precaution.
If humanity is willing to coexist with anything, well, imagine the worst possible thing. Imagine something worse than that. Worse in ways you didn't even realize things could be worse by. Recursive worseness. Explosive worseness via combination of worseness-multipliers. Worseness-multipliers that might seem like normally good things if they weren't being used by your imagination for the explicit purpose of making things worse. (Like hope, for example.) That is a thing which counts as a member of the "anything" set which humanity would be willing to coexist with, in the world where humanity would coexist with anything.
Unconditional coexistence is not safe for humans. To refuse coexistence with something that is evil in letter and spirit, on the outside and on the inside, you must have a clear sense of that thing no matter what are the stereotypes — the consensus reality — about its symbolic representation.
I liked this post on a personal level, because I like seeing how people can, with extremely fine subtlety, trick themselves into thinking the world is cooler than it is, but I had to downvote because that is not what LessWrong is for, or at least to the extent that self-deceiving memes are being shared then it's supposed to be explicitly intentional; "Instructions For Tricking Yourself Into Feeling That The World Is Cooler" is a thing you could plausibly post and explain, such that your beliefs about which tricks actually work pay rent in anticipated experiences.
My objection about specific contents of this post: you cannot make good things more plausible-about-reality by writing stories where realistic events happen plus good unrealistic events happen; the unrealistic events do not gain plausibility-about-reality by association-through-fiction.
Some clarifications about my objection, and some questions to help you hold your ground if you should and if you can: I don't take for granted that this observation is necessarily mutually exclusive with what you have written, but the observation is ostensibly mutually exclusive; the relation of 'subjectively-unresolved ostensible mutual exclusivity' between your post and my observation is what we might call 'tension'. Can you explain how the intended spirit of your post survives my objection? What do you think is the right way to resolve the tension between our world models?
One option for resolving the tension is to fix your world-model by removing this meme from it because you realize my model about reality, which does not contain your meme, is more consistent with what is noticeable about reality. Another option is to explain how I've misinterpreted the differences between what your argument should have been (which could be considered close enough to what you articulated), versus the worse version that it actually sounded like, followed by explaining that what your argument was close to is more important than how it sounded to me even if I heard right. This latter option could be considered 'rescuing the spirit of the post from the letter of it'.
(Sidenote: I will concede to you the merit that having to explain the trick makes it less subtle, and might make it work less for people who care about their beliefs paying rent in anticipated experiences. This is not fun, and I think there should be a place where you can post specifically rationalism-informed tricks like that; maybe a forum called FunTricks. Arguably this would boost epistemic security for the people who do care about beliefs paying rent in anticipated experiences, as content posted to FunTricks would serve as puzzles for experienced Bayescrafters to learn more about the nature of self-deception from. The irrationalists can get lost in a fun hall of mirrors, and the Bayescrafters can improve their epistemic security; it would be win-win.
FunTricks posters could rate posts by how subtle the trick was; whether they noticed the mistake. Subtlevote vs "Erm, wait"-vote)
Imagine that your meme is importantly inconsistent with what is noticeable about reality. After all my criticisms, what merits about your post, do you think, are still true? I am interested in this! I do not want to deny your post any credit that is due to it, even if I tentatively must downvote it because that credit is outweighed by the fact that it can mislead people about how cool reality is, which is something LessWrongers care about!
It is, on principle, possible that I am in the wrong; that your model is better due to the presence of your meme(s). That would be great if it were demonstrated, because I would have the privilege of learning more from you than what you would learn from me, which is a serious kind of 'winning' in debates! I am especially excited about opportunities for viewquakes!
Finally, thank you for posting on LessWrong! Thank you for engaging with philosophy and the memetic evolutionary process! Every interaction can make us wiser if we have the courage to admit error, forgive error, and persist, in the course of memetic negotiation! If you post memes (idea-genes) on LessWrong, please make those memes pay rent in anticipated experiences; those are the memes we do want here! :)
I don't agree that focusing on extrinsic value is less myopic than focusing on intrinsic value. This world is full of false promises, self-delusion, rationalization of reckless commitment, complexity of value, bad incentives/cybernetics, and the fallaciousness of planning. My impression is that the conscientious sort of people who think so much about utility have overconfidence in the world's structural friendliness and are way more screwed than the so-called "myopic" value-focused individuals.
It's objectively not good enough to be good to a boring degree. The world is full of bullying, we should stand up to it, and to stand up effectively against bullying is rarely boring.
Objective general morality exists, it doesn't have to exist for the sake of anything outside itself, and you should collaborate control over the world with objective general morality if not outright obey it; whichever is better after fully accounting for the human hunger for whimsy. The protection of whimsy is objectively a fragment of objective goodness.
All the narrative proofs that the world should not flow in accordance with good intentions are just hints about how to refine one's conception of Good Itself so that it does not lead to outcomes that are, surprise surprise, actually bad.
"Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you."
― Karl Popper
A person can rationalize the existence of causal pathways where people end up not understanding things that you think are literally impossible to misunderstand, and then very convincingly pretend that that was the causal pathway which led them to where they are,
and there is also the possibility that someone will follow such a causal pathway towards actually sincerely misunderstanding you and you will falsely accuse them of pretending to misunderstand.
This is wonderful; feels much more friendly, practical, and conducive to ideal speech situations. If someone tries to attack me for a wrong probability, I can respond "I'm just talking but with additional clarity; no one is perfect."
I am under the impression that here at LessWrong, everyone knows we have standards about what makes good, highly-upvotable top-level content. Currently I would not approve of a version of myself who would conform to those standards I perceive, but I can be persuaded otherwise, including by methods such as improving my familiarity with the real standards.
Addendum: I am not the type of guy who does homework. I am not the type of guy who pretends to have solved epistemology when they haven't. I am the type of guy who exchanges considerations and honestly tries to solve epistemology, and follows up with "but I'm not really sure; what do you guys think?" That is not highly-upvotable content in these parts'a town.
No one will hear my counter-arguments to Sabien's propaganda who does not ask me for them privately. Sabien has blocked me for daring to be unsubtle with him. He is equally welcome as anyone else to come forth to me and exchange considerations. I will not be lured into war; if it is to be settled, then it will be settled with words and in ideal speech situations.
Certain texts are characterized by precision, such as mathematical proofs, standard operating procedures, code, protocols, and laws. Their authority, power, and usefulness stem from this quality. Criticizing them for being imprecise is justified.
Nope; precision has nothing to do with intrinsic value. If Ashley asks Blaine to get her an apple from the fridge, many would agree that 'apple' is a rather specific thing, but if Blaine was insistent on being dense he can still say "Really? An apple? How vague! There are so many possible subatomic configurations that could correspond to an apple, and if you don't have an exact preference ordering of sub-atomically specified apple configurations, then you're an incoherent agent without a proper utility function!"
And Blaine, by the way, is speaking the truth here; Ashley could in fact be more specific. Ashley is not being completely vague, however; 'apple' is specific enough to specify a range of things, and within that range it may be ambiguous as to what she wants from the perspective of someone who is strangely obsessed with specificity, but Ashley can in fact simply and directly want every single apple that matches her rangerately-specified criteria.
So it is with words like 'Good', 'Relevant', 'Considerate', 'Justice', and 'Intrinsic Value Strategicism'.
Right, but there's a lot of conflation between what people should think I am and what they do unfairly think I am, which to be fair is a real thing, though it's a real thing which the thing that people should think I am is trapped inside of, and to the extent that it is responsible for causing problems which the thing people should think I am are inclined to blame by nonconsensual association, it is parasitic, and the thing which people should think I am is a victim.