curi comments on David Deutsch on How To Think About The Future - Less Wrong

4 Post author: curi 11 April 2011 07:08AM

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Comment author: curi 10 April 2011 01:23:50AM * 2 points [-]

Deutsch's definition of "the bad guys" is not the most expansionist groups.

He would regard the colonizers as the good guys (well, better guys) because their society was less static, more open to improvement, more tolerant of non-conformist people, more tolerant of new ideas, more free, and so on. There's a reason the natives had worse technology and their culture remained static for so long: they had a society that squashes innovation.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 10 April 2011 01:27:26AM 4 points [-]

You'd have to convince me that they were more open to non-conformists. A major cause of the European colonization was flight of non-conforming groups (such as the Puritans) to North America where they then proceeded to persecute everyone who disagreed with them.

There's a reason the natives had worse technology and their culture remained static for so long: they had a society that squashes innovation.

I'm curious what you think of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" or similar works. What causes one society or another to adopt or even make innovations can be quite complicated.

Comment author: Randaly 10 April 2011 09:09:15PM 7 points [-]

The Renaissance/much of modern science originated in Italy, not in England (thus, e.g. Galileo, da Vinci, etc.) And the Italian city-states of the time were fairly free: Pisa, Milan, Arezzo, Lucca, Bologna, Siena, Florence, and Venice were all at some point governed by elected officials. They were also remarkably meritocratic: as the influential Neapolitan defender of atomism Francesco D'Andrea put it, describing Naples:

There is no city in the world where merit is more recognized and where a man who has no other asset than his own worth can rise to high office and great wealth.

(Even if he's only boasting about his own city-state, it's significant that meritocracy was considered worth boasting about.)

Similarly, merchants, not priests, politicians, etc. were considered the highest status group: nobles up to and including national leaders (e.g. the Doge of Venice) dressed like merchants.

(Incidentally, the other factors you mentioned below also played a role: competition between city-states and the influence of outside science from Byzantium and the Islamic world showing what could be done. Nevertheless, Italian freedoms were also necessary: e.g. Galileo was only able to publish his ideas because he lived in the free Republic of Venice, where Jesuits were banned and open inquiry encouraged; he was persecuted and forced to recant his theories when he moved to Tuscany.)

Comment author: curi 10 April 2011 01:46:29AM * -1 points [-]

read The Beginning of Infinity by Deutsch. It discusses that Diamond book and other similar works.

Yes European society was not favorable to non-conformists. One period I've studied, which is later (so, i think, better in this regard) is around 1790 ish. At that time, to take one example, the philosopher william godwin's wife died in childbirth and he published memoirs and people got really pissed off because she had had sex out of wedlock and stuff along those lines. when godwin's daughter ran off with shelley there were rumors he had sold her. meanwhile, for example, there was lots of discrimination against irish catholics. i know some stuff about how biased and intolerant people can be.

but what i also know is a bit about static societies (again, see the book for more details, or at least check out my website, e.g. http://fallibleideas.com/tradition).

when a society doesn't change for thousands of years that means it's even harsher than the european society i was talking about. preventing change for such a long period is hard. stuff is done to prevent it. the non-conformists don't even get off the ground. everyone's spirits are squashed in childhood -- thoroughly -- and so the adults don't rebel at all. if there were adults who were eccentric then the society simply wouldn't stay the same so long. european society was already getting fairly near fairly rapid changes (e.g. industrial revolution) when it started colonizing the new world.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 10 April 2011 02:01:12AM * 4 points [-]

when a society doesn't change for thousands of years that means it's even harsher than the european society i was talking about.

This doesn't follow. (Incidentally, I don't know why you sometimes drop back to failing to capitalize but it makes what you write much harder to read.) For example, if one doesn't have good nutrition then people won't be as smart and so won't innovate. Similarly, if one doesn't have free time people won't innovate. Some technologies and cultural norms also reinforce innovation. For example, having a written language allows a much larger body of ideas, and having market economies gives market incentives to coming up with new technologies.

Moreover, innovation can occur directly through competition. When you are convinced that your religion or tribe is the best and that you need to beat the others by any means necessary you'll do a lot better at innovating.

There's also a self-reinforcing spiral: the more you innovate the more people think that innovation is possible. If your society hasn't changed much then there's no reason to think that new technologies are easy to find.

There's no reason to think that Native American populations were systematically preventing change. There's a very large difference between having infrastructural and systemic issues that make the development of new technologies unlikely and the claim that "everyone's spirits are squashed in childhood -- thoroughly".

Comment author: curi comment score below threshold [+] (28 children)

Comment author: curi 10 April 2011 04:12:26AM -9 points [-]

(Incidentally, I don't know why you sometimes drop back to failing to capitalize but it makes what you write much harder to read.)

I don't know either. I have noticed that I will often stop using capitals in parentheses, even if they contain multiple sentences or words that are supposed to be capitalized like "I". (you can see in the first parenthetical, and this one, missing capitalization, even though that first parenthetical in my previous comment is in a section of text where, otherwise, i was capitalizing.) I don't really care. I can capitalize when I want to impress people. Here I do not wish to impress. I want to filter people. If they can't look past some capitalization -- if they are shallow -- then let them dislike me and we'll go our separate ways quickly. You can, btw, looking through my history see that I've asked people tangential questions sometimes which might be taken as rude or aggressive. It's again for filtering purposes. I don't regard offending a portion of the people here as a bad thing, but a good thing. Then when a few people like me better and keep talking with me, my tone changes somewhat, and I'll write stuff like this which is more open, cooperative and non-confrontational. Then one thing that will happen is other people, who I didn't write this for, will jump in and find it arrogant, condescending, and so on. But I think you (JoshuaZ) might appreciate these remarks. No guarantees, but worth a try.

For example, if one doesn't good nutrition then people won't be as smart and so won't innovate. Similarly, if one doesn't have free time people won't innovate.

Where does free time come from? Where does better nutrition come from? Ideas.

Here's an example from BoI: llamas. South America had llamas. Why didn't they spread? Why didn't they get sold to distant towns, and bred to have more, and used to save tons of labor and create more free time? It's not for lack of suitable animals that people were doing more hand labor in some places than others. It's for lack of ideas.

Some technologies and cultural norms also reinforce innovation. For example, having a written language allows a much larger body of ideas, and having market economies gives market incentives to coming up with new technologies.

Yes, that's just my point. Things like written languages, technological ideas, and pro-progress cultural norms aren't natural resources provided by Nature. They are ideas people have. And they make all the difference.

Comment author: Swimmer963 10 April 2011 04:15:33AM 6 points [-]

You can, btw, looking through my history see that I've asked people tangential questions sometimes which might be taken as rude or aggressive. It's again for filtering purposes. I don't regard offending a portion of the people here as a bad thing, but a good thing. Then when a few people like me better and keep talking with me, my tone changes somewhat, and I'll write stuff like this which is more open, cooperative and non-confrontational. Then one thing that will happen is other people, who I didn't write this for, will jump in and find it arrogant, condescending, and so on.

I find this attitude very surprising. Can you explain what it is that works for you about posting this way?

Comment author: curi comment score below threshold [+] (26 children)

Comment author: Desrtopa 10 April 2011 02:33:22PM 10 points [-]

There were a few people I inspired to flame me. I know I provoked them. I didn't actually do anything that deserves being flamed. But I broke etiquette some. It's not a surprising result. Flaming me for some of the things I did is pretty normal. (Btw a few of the flames were deleted or edited a bit after being posted.)

This reliably decreases your chance of changing minds and having your own mind changed. It creates an adversarial Us vs. Them mentality which limits limits the degree to which either of you is open to the other's arguments. Perhaps it doesn't feel to you like you're closing yourself off and making yourself less inclined to change your mind, but this happens to people quite reliably, and you strongly appear to be exhibiting it in your debates. You try to kick holes in the arguments of others, and not just reject the arguments but behave insultingly towards others for making them, when you could be asking "is there any reasonable way I could modify this argument so that it would retain the same point and not have this flaw?"

This behavior will tend to drive away people who're concerned with civility for its own sake, and people who're interested in fruitful debates that share meaningful ideas and change people's minds.

I have a record of online debates of comparable magnitude to your own, and one flaw that I have had to address in myself is the tendency to persist in hammering disagreements out ad nauseam. If you had visited the forum I frequented four years ago, the debate could have drawn out for days, and would almost certainly have been wasted, because we would both have walked away convinced that we won the argument having not changed our minds at all. The point of arguments is not to convince yourself you argued better, it's to see to it that people learn something and someone changes their mind, and if this doesn't happen, everyone involved loses. I have learned that arguing with people who demonstrate your conduct overwhelmingly tends to be a waste, which is why I'm no longer going to bother discussing Popper with you, but I am going to suggest that if you want to engage in fruitful debates, you should reconsider this approach.

Comment author: curi comment score below threshold [+] (0 children)

Comment author: curi comment score below threshold [+] (2 children)

Comment author: Swimmer963 10 April 2011 04:44:46AM 1 point [-]

I suppose that makes sense if that's the way you view things. I happen to enjoy small talk, now that I'm good at it. I really value the ability to have conversations with people I disagree with, because the last thing I want to do at this point in my life is shut off my opinions to change. (This might have to do with my age: I am neither old enough, nor smart or experienced enough to be right all the time, or even most of the time, and I know that.)

And yeah, if I think the other person is wrong, I want them to change their mind...but being amenable to changing my own mind in response to their arguments (if valid) works better than upfront confrontation. (I try not to make this true of myself...I don't want to miss out learning about someone else's worldview just because they're more confrontational than I am.)

If I'd been super polite they might have pretended to have a civil discussion with me for longer while having rather irrational thoughts going through their hide.

Agreed. I guess a lot of the time, I want to have a civil conversation for longer because a) I enjoy civil conversation for its own sake, and b) eventually I'll notice that they're having irrational thoughts and emotional reactions, and if I want to I can ease that into the conversation without necessarily provoking a confrontation. (I am fairly good at this face-to-face, but the subtle emotional cues don't carry through to online posting so much, which might be why "discussion can go wrong for unstated reasons." Face-to-face, the unstated reason would still be noticeably, if you're looking for it, long before the actual confrontation.

I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with your way of doing things...just that it wouldn't work for me, because I hate confrontation and I would regard being flamed as a disaster...I have this annoying tendency to care about anything that anyone says to or about me.

Comment author: curi comment score below threshold [+] (19 children)

Comment author: curi 10 April 2011 04:57:24AM * -7 points [-]

I happen to enjoy small talk, now that I'm good at it.

A cultural bias.

Well, sort of. It's genuinely useful for accessing some things our culture restricts access to. Like friends, good conversations (often people won't talk to you seriously, in person, at first, until they feel more comfortable with you. internet forums often do a good job of circumventing this though) or sex. It's a lot easier to get sex if you are good at small talk. And if you genuinely enjoy it, that helps even more. People like genuine conformists because they do a better job of conforming! (Usually. Faking it is so much harder, and takes way more skill.)

I really value the ability to have conversations with people I disagree with, because the last thing I want to do at this point in my life is shut off my opinions to change.

I'm not trying to filter by disagreement. I like to find people who agree because I could use more of those, and I do have enough access to people who disagree (it's no trouble at all to come here, or many other forums, and find people to disagree with me).

Talking to people I disagree with isn't so hard. I spend a lot of time debating with people who don't agree with me. And I can even be non-confrontational if I want to. Sometimes I go to new groups and just listen for a while to see what they are like without being disturbed. But I've been familiar with Less Wrong culture since before the Less Wrong website existed, so I'm not missing anything but interfering with the normal culture here (besides, if I want to know the normal culture, I can just go read the Sequences and other static content. or just stop posting and lurk on new threads.)

I want to I can ease that into the conversation without necessarily provoking a confrontation

Too much work to help one person, who probably doesn't want your help, and won't appreciate it, IMO.

I am fairly good at this face-to-face, but the subtle emotional cues don't carry through to online posting so much

I'm actually better at picking them up in text than IRL. It's a different skill. I practice it in text a lot. I've been known to, when I get bored with low quality content from people, start replying with little but psychological analysis of their posting. They'll usually reply a few times before they stop speaking to me, and I can get good feedback about how much of my initial guesses were correct.

I hate confrontation

You could change this. It's not human nature. It's not your genes. It's a cultural bias. A very common one. And it's important because criticism is the main tool by which we learn. When all criticism has to be made subtle, indirect, formal, filled with equivocation about whether the person stating it really means it, or various other things, then it slows down learning a lot.

I have this annoying tendency to care about anything that anyone says to or about me.

You know, Feynman had this problem. He got over it. Maybe reading his books would help you. One of them is titled like "What do you care what other people think?"

Not caring isn't just his advice. The title is something his first wife often said to him, because he had a problem with it. She kept reminding him. He got better at it eventually. It wasn't easy but he did it.

but being amenable to changing my own mind in response to their arguments (if valid) works better than upfront confrontation.

I am open. One thing is you're seeing is me after 10 straight years of online debate. It's gotten to the point that I rarely am told any argument I don't already know by a stranger. Early on I changed my mind a ton. It got gradually less frequent. I like to be wrong, I like to concede debates. I enjoy conceding. I'm tired of not losing debates; it's dull and I learn less. It's so much fun to be like, "Oh I get it now! That's even better than what I used to think!" But, well, there's no easy solution to getting more of that.

Comment author: Swimmer963 10 April 2011 01:11:54PM * 2 points [-]

I like to find people who agree because I could use more of those.

What is it about your beliefs that so many people disagree with? I haven't seen anything particularly extreme so far.

I'm tired of not losing debates; it's dull and I learn less. It's so much fun to be like, "Oh I get it now! That's even better than what I used to think!" But, well, there's no easy solution to getting more of that.

I have many years to go before I run up against this problem...and I probably never will entirely, since I suspect much of the LW community is genuinely smarter than me. I agree that the feeling of suddenly grasping a new solution is awesome and it sucks not to have it, but I can't suggest anything other than reading a ton of books on stuff you don't know yet...which might be hard to find if your general knowledge is already at a high level.

You could change this. It's not human nature. It's not your genes. It's a cultural bias.

Considering that I was raised in pretty much the same environment as my brother and sister, I think there's got to be some genetic influence on why my personality is so drastically different. On the Big Five standardized personality test, I score high on Agreeableness and Conscientiousness and low on Extroversion (whether or not that means anything is another question...) and I doubt I can change that.

In a lot of ways I'm a non-conformist; I stick to my own routine even if it makes me stand out from the crowd of people my age. For example: I don't wear makeup, I don't shave my armpits, I buy my clothes at Value Village, etc. People do make comments about these things, and I really and honestly don't care what they think. I do care if I hurt people's feelings. Considering that I'm studying to be a nurse, a field where empathy is essential, I don't want to change that. Another thing I know about myself is that I have trouble acting differently in different circumstances, partly out of a stubborn belief that I shouldn't have to. I don't want to train myself to be less sensitive only to find that I treat my patients insensitively. And I don't have problems online anyway...I do frequently disagree with people, and my agreeableness instinct just kicks in and helps me phrase it in a way that isn't going to antagonize the person before they even get to my point. I really hope there are people on LW who are mature enough to look past the way something is phrased, but I don't know so I don't take the risk.

I'm actually better at picking them up in text than IRL. It's a different skill. I practice it in text a lot. I've been known to, when I get bored with low quality content from people, start replying with little but psychological analysis of their posting.

What's your psychological analysis of my comments??? I'm serious, I'm actually really curious. This is valuable knowledge about myself that I want. And yeah, I can see that 10 years of online debate would make you really good at seeing through to the emotions behind the text.

continue this thread »

Comment author: JoshuaZ 10 April 2011 02:16:33AM * 0 points [-]

Minor remark: Your essay about tradition is much more readable than a lot of the other material on your site. I'm not sure why but if you took a different approach to writing/thinking about it, you might want to apply that approach elsewhere.

Comment author: curi 10 April 2011 03:59:28AM 1 point [-]

I think the difference is you. I wrote that entire site in a short time period. I regard it as all being broadly similar in style and quality. I attempted to use the same general approach to the whole site; I didn't change my mind about something midway. I think it's a subject you understand better than epistemology directly (it is about epistemology, indirectly. traditions are long lived knowledge). The response I've had from other readers has varied a lot, not matched your response.

I do know how to write in a variety of different styles, and have tried each in various places. The one I've used here in the last week is not the best in various senses. But it serves my purpose.

curi comments on David Deutsch on How To Think About The Future - Less Wrong

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