Raemon comments on The Sacred Mundane - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 March 2009 09:53AM

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Comment author: DSimon 03 March 2012 04:58:15AM 0 points [-]

What does "stay[ing] faithful to reality" mean?

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 March 2012 06:36:07AM 8 points [-]

It's similar to staying faithful to someone you love, e.g. a wife or a good king. Caring about the way the world really is even if the world is really painful. Not flinching away from reality because it tells you something you don't want to hear, not rebuking reality because it dares to disagree with you, not resenting reality because it seems unjust. Not replacing reality with a fantasy because you're bored or because you want to escape. Not gerrymandering the definition of what counts as staying faithful to reality. Like Eliezer's "something to protect". It's something that binds you to reality and keeps you from going out and identifying with a lot of stupid hypotheses and having sex with tons of chicks and getting STDs or delusions or whatever. (Note that going on dates with a lot of ideas is great, but you shouldn't have sex with every idea you come across.)

Comment author: Raemon 21 April 2012 02:49:01AM *  1 point [-]

I really like this framework. In particular, the interpretation of Job that goes with it. I may want to use them as part of this year's Less Wrong Solstice gathering, if that's okay with you.

Comment author: Document 14 September 2016 04:20:16PM 0 points [-]

How did it go? It seems like it would create some unsettling ambiguity in the "happy" ending.

Comment author: Raemon 14 September 2016 10:17:48PM 1 point [-]

I did not end up using it, although I periodically stumble upon this again and still think it's a neat way of thinking