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sketerpot comments on Rationality Quotes: November 2010 - Less Wrong
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Not always. I know someone who narrowly avoided Auschwitz who would beg to differ; her worst enemies were definitely external.
Your comment raises a very delicate point and I'm not sure that I am tactful enough to make it clearly.
Zooming out to get a broader view so that we can notice what usually happens, rather than the memorable special case, we notice that most Germans were enthusiastic about Hitler, all the way from 1933 to 1941. It is hard to reconstruct the reasons why. Looking at the broad picture we get a clear sense of people being their own worst enemies, enthusiastically embracing a mad leader who will lead them to destruction.
The message that history is sending to Alan is: if you had been a young man in Germany in 1933 you would have idolized Hitler. There are two ways to respond to this sobering message. One is to picture myself as an innocent victim. There were plenty of innocent victims, so this is easily done, but it dodges the hard question. The other response is to embrace the LessWrong vision and to search for ways to avoid the disasters to which self-deception sentences Man.
You're right, and I think that the reason it's so hard to make that point tactfully is because of how scary it is. If we go down that line of thought honestly, we can imagine ourselves firing up the ovens, or dragging manacled people into the belly of a slave ship, and feeling good about it. This is not a comfortable idea.
But there's another, more hopeful side to this. As MartinB points out, it's possible to understand how such monstrous acts feel to the people committing them, and train yourself to avoid making the same mistakes. This is a problem we can actually attack, as long as we can accept that our own thoughts are fallible.
(On a lighter note: how many people here regularly catch themselves using fallacious logic, and quickly correct their own thoughts? I would hope that the answer is "everyone", or at least "almost everyone". If you do this, then it shows that you're already being significantly less wrong, and it should give a fair amount of protection against crazy murderous ideologies.)
I doubt that it is. You find similar idolizations of leaders in many places. The general principles can be understood, and I think are by now. For the special case of nazi-germany you have the added bonus of good documentation and easy availability of contemporary sources.
I'm a big fan of lesswrong yet I think it falls short because it lacks any concrete steps taken in the direction of being more rational. Just reading interesting posts won't make you a rationalist.
It's true that just reading posts won't make you more rational very fast. But thankfully, that is not the extent of LW - it is also encouraging people to respond to arguments they see, in a social context that rewards improving skills very highly. We are sort of practicing "virtue rationality" here, if you will.
Once you have truly assimilated the core ideas of LW, to the point where they're almost starting to feel like cliches, you simply cannot HELP but to apply them in everyday life.
For example, "notice when you're confused" saved my bacon recently: I was working on a group engineering project (in university) which was more or less done, but there was some niggling detail of interfacing that didn't sit well with me. I didn't know it was wrong; I just had a weird sensation of butterflies and fog every time I thought about that aspect. In the past I have responded to such situations with a shrug. This time, inspired by the above maxim, I decided to really investigate, at which point it became clear that our design had skipped a peripheral but essential component.
I can cite more personal examples if you like. The trouble with noticing such instances is that once a skill is truly digested, it doesn't have a little label that says "that skill came from LessWrong." It just feels like the obviously right thing to do.
Can't you say "not always" about pretty much any quote? They aren't meant to be taken as universal truths that apply to all people and all circumstances across all of time ;-).
True, but barely. For how long do you think she would have had to plan and execute fully rationally in order to prevent Auschwitz. I think that it would have been a lot of work, but not insanely much work if done honestly.
?
Do you mean avoiding getting sent to Auschwitz, or preventing the Holocaust?
Escaping was something of a gamble. It probably wasn't obvious that fleeing to France wasn't good enough.
I guess when the guys that hate your guts get into power, is a good time to start packing. But after a decent time in the 20s, and lots of history, and many people of jewish decent being educated, and involved in the society, it is hard to see the signs. Jews have served in the 1. world war, and rightfully, and completely saw them self as Germans. Getting banned from professions came later, limits to who can marry whom and so on. It reminds me of the story of the frog that slowly gets heated up in water. Each step seems only a little worse than the other, so one thinks it might fade away.
One should also keep in mind that racism and sexism was more widely spread in these days. Jews were not particularly welcomed in the US or elsewhere.
The horror of Auschwitz was never announced. on each step there was talk of relocation. That includes the officials. No one imagined that a cultured people would be so barbaric.
For a fictional presentation on how to turn up the heat the original V miniseries is pretty good.
As I understand it, a good many German Jews had the amount of warning and the resources to get out. Polish Jews were caught more by surprise and (I think) were generally less well off, and most of the Holocaust happened there.
Perhaps we should have a discussion about making high-stakes urgent decisions under conditions of great uncertainty.
I happen to be German, currently live in Nuremberg, and finally got around to visit Auschwitz last year. But i do not know the relation of people that flew and people that stayed. Fleeing also involed the ability to pay for the ticket. I probably read some about that, but forgot. It is true that the killings mostly happened in the east. But quite many were deported there just for this purpose.
Wikipedia: Over 90% of Polish Jews were killed, and about 75% of German Jews.
Until I checked, I didn't realize that the proportion of German Jews who were killed was that high. I didn't have a specific number in mind, I think I was just giving more attention to the idea of those who'd escaped.
Yes. Not having been there limits imagination. Pre WW2 jews were as common as they are now in the US (or maybe more.) Now you will not find that many. All people of Jewish decent i know are not from Germany.
In the last year I stumbled over genocides. This being the most unexpected evil I found..
This is the one that surprised me.
Why?
Oh, and the difference between people that flew at a suitable time vs. the number of people who survived. The later includes people who were deported but not killed, so the former is even lower. If you haven't read it yet. I found the comic from Art Spiegelman called 'MAUS!' pretty intense and interesting.
Depends on your level of paranoia. They might still be after you. Lets have that discussion.
It's not just them being after you-- sometimes medical decisions fall into the same category.
Maybe we should make a collection of realistic situations.
From a little thought I guess one tries to minimize damage, or maximize expected welfare. Both strategies need some calibration for realism.
Yes, on the calibration-- in particular, how do you maintain focus to do the best you can with the information you've got? What sorts of information do you need?
I'm haunted by a quote from a holocaust survivor who said that he would have done things differently (presumably fled early) if he'd "had the soul of a poet". Hindsight is 20/20, but predicting from group emotional trends is sometimes part of what's necessary.
I'm a homosexual atheist living in the United States, and apparently people take the teabaggers seriously enough to vote for them. Should I move?
Considered under the categorical imperative, this strategy seems like it would lead to people clustering themselves into super-fanatical cliques, which strikes me as undesirable. In particular, it would become harder and harder for anyone to change their mind, and thus harder for human knowledge to progress.
Note also that, if the liberal Americans are the first to leave, the trigger-happy neocons get to keep control of the heavily nuclear-armed country.
I will tell you in hindsight.
The move or change decision is an interesting one. For German Jews it was obviously better to leave. I would guess that many dissidents in islamic countries are also better off being alive in exile. Edit: Formatting
Prevent the Holocaust.
How do you think that could have been done?
General principles. Doing things isn't ever that difficult relative to the psychological capabilities we casually assume ourselves to possess. We then fail to update correctly and include that goals are difficult rather than concluding that over long time horizons we don't work the way we very casually seem to over periods of a few minutes.
On the other hand, the universe doesn't guarantee that apocalypse is scaled to your abilities.
It's plausible that the Holocaust could have been averted if people had done more to optimize their efforts against it, but by no means guaranteed.