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brazil84 comments on Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians - Less Wrong
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Well my comment was kinda focused on modern society. I'm not sure how things were in Ancient Greece. Would Socrates or Plato have been particularly distracted if a Greek girl in a short toga had wandered into one of their Socratic sessions?
Probably! My intuition is that your art as a rationalist is most in need when it's hardest to exercise (HJPEV, I think, possibly also in the Sequences) and that you shouldn't expect the world to give you the peace of mind to apply all your skill to a question. I can bench-press more weight with a proper safety bar and a spotter, but the real world doesn't often offer safety bars and spotters so I press less weight, without the bar and spotter, and have a better estimate of my capabilities.
Would the same reasoning apply to noises, like jackhammering, people talking on their cell phones, etc?
Yes. Also to time-pressured situations like a question requiring an immediate answer, and emotionally charged situations.
I disagree, I think it's better to practice stuff without distractions, at least at first. So for example I wouldn't prefer to have rational club meetings at a construction site; or to have people talking on their cell phones during the meeting.
That's unexpected. In this comparison of sex based distractions to construction sites jackhammers turn out to be analogous to breasts. I'd usually expect something different.
It's not so much a matter of comparison as a matter of applying shokwave's reasoning to other distractions.
He didn't make the argument that simply having girls present is only a mild distraction. Instead, his argument is that one should accept distractions because they are present in normal life.
I know, I agree with your argument. (Without supporting sex segregated lesswrong meetups as being a remotely practical idea!)
Ah. The male-only problem is pretty much a permanent decision - it's a Hard Problem to attract females to an all-male group. So if you had to decide between never any distractions or always distractions... I would pick distractions. Otherwise I feel training caps out too early.