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wedrifid comments on A Challenge for LessWrong - Less Wrong
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No, I cannot let you get away with that. The position I was presenting was that small good deeds should not be discouraged. If you are going to assert that that undermines a core value of this community (which one?), you are going to have to present a serious (and almost certainly novel) argument before you get to call me "evil".
Absolutely no "shaming" was used in presenting this position. The charge is an ironic one, because I am in fact attempting to defend myself and any other warm-fuzzy-enthusiasts who may happen to consider themselves members of this community from being "shamed" by those who would regard with contempt any activity not (e.g.) calculated to minimize the expected number of deaths.
Epistemic rationality (which, by the way, is what I presented the Knox case as a lesson in in the first place) is, as you know, not an end in itself. At least, it isn't the ultimate end. There has to be something to protect. And, at least in my own case, part of what I protect is that part of myself that is capable of caring about specific, individual humans, apart from "humanity" as an aggregate.
For the sake of cutting to the chase, let me now present what I think this disagreement is really about, and you can correct me if necessary. I think what is going on here is that you perceive the kind of "caring" I described above as an obstacle to epistemic rationality, which should therefore be Destroyed. Is that right, or am I being unfair?
See my ETA.
That is not right. I disagree specifically with the claims which I quoted in my reply and my disagreement is limited to precisely that which is contained in said reply.
I approve, for example, of seeking warm fuzzies and this is entirely in line with my stated position.
Then what, exactly, do we disagree about?
(Your earlier comment is of no help in clarifying this; in fact you explicitly described the pursuit of warm fuzzies -- as would be exemplified by contributing to the causes listed in the post -- as "bad decision making".)
This is not the case. I explicitly describe the equivocation of 'rational' with any meaning apart from 'rational' (and the application of said equivocation when decision making) as 'bad decision making'.
Okay, I think I see what happened. Your original point was really this:
-- with which I agree. However, the following statements distracted from that point and confused me:
These made it sound like you were saying "No! Don't contribute to those causes! Doing so would be irrational, since they're not philanthropically optimal!" (I unfortunately have a high prior on that type of argument being made here.) My natural response, which I automatically fired off when I saw that your comment had 17 upvotes, is that there's nothing irrational about liking to do small good deeds (warm fuzzies) separately from saving the planet.
However, as I understand you now, you don't necessarily see anything wrong with those causes; it's just that you disapprove of the label "rationality" being used to describe their goodness -- rather than, say, just plain "goodness".
Is this right?