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Z_M_Davis comments on Absolute denial for atheists - Less Wrong
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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.
Why should we assume that financial success requires being a greedy, self-interested asshole?
Maybe some of us can do these things while still figuring out how to make ourselves sufficiently valuable to society to exchange those skills for significant wealth?
Maybe economic wealth isn't a zero-sum game?
Now I'm repeating myself. Maybe delivering sufficient value to society that society is willing to reward you richly for your contribution doesn't necessarily come at anyone else's expense?
You're assuming wealth is a zero-sum game. Most of the time, its not.
Oh, dear, I'm afraid I haven't expressed myself clearly. I agree with you on all of these points! It is honorable to create goods or services that people want and then to make money selling them. Wealth is not a zero-sum game; I totally, totally agree. To clarify my intentions, I was not objecting to the suggestion that nerdy male LessWrongers should make money; I was objecting to the suggestion that they should relinquish their allegedly "weak" personalities to better seek power and status and sex. Sorry this wasn't clearer in my original comment.
I wonder how much of your complaints should really be addressed to Roko (in the parent of Z. M. Davis's comment).
Roko's claims:
Z. M. Davis's claim:
Incidentally, while wealth acquisition is obviously not a zero-sum game, Robin Hanson has argued that status acquisition is in some sense a zero sum game: you can't have high status without there being someone having lower status than you.
ETA: This post was made redundant while I was writing it. Darn it.
I'm taking that proverb as "rationalists should win everything at everything everywhere all the time forever" lest I risk redefining success and deluding myself. Real life's lack of predefined win conditions is actually a bad thing.
say more.
What more do you want to hear?
"If at first you don't succeed, redefine success." goes the demotivator. The life's lack of preset win conditions allows you to define your current state as a win. That leads to complacency and boredom. Bad, bad, bad!
So one should set his win condition as high as possible, so the journey has maximum amount of experience and fun.
Maybe people say they like these things for the same reason they say they like alcohol.
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.
I feel a gut reaction to upvote your comment because it seems both right and profound, and yet I cannot relate what you're saying to the comment's parent.
The parent seemed to be suggesting that those who say they're living for insight are lying or self-deceiving in the same way that those who say they drink alcohol for the taste are conjectured to be lying or self-deceiving, so I put forth an argument for why it makes sense to live for insight. (I don't know why people drink alcohol.)
Well, one reason people drink alcohol is because it stops the internal dialog and you just do whatever comes to your mind, which sometimes results in arrest and disaster, and sometimes reward you with getting laid. It is remarkable how much more attractive the person of your fascination is when the bottle is empty. ;-)