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JoshuaZ comments on [Link] Simon Cowell plans to sign up for cryonics - Less Wrong
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Comments (18)
Hmm, seems like a potential example of reversed stupidity not being intelligence.
I understood this to mean that people will see Simon Cowell doing a thing, and think (by implication, wrongly) "He is stupid, therefore this is a stupid thing to do." Other people (shokwave, for one) seem to be interpreting it as a criticism of Cowell, suggesting that he is doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Clarify?
I intended it as how you interpreted. Thanks for making that explicit. I didn't understand exactly what some of the other replies were trying to say and realizing how they interpreted it makes them make a lot more sense.
Even though this is plausible, don't criticize people when they get the right answer. There's a post about that somewhere.
edit - This was all I could find, although I thought it was more developed than that one line.
We s̶h̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ want to successfully correct people when they use wrong methods to arrive at an answer, regardless of whether the answer is correct or not.
['should' replaced with 'want to successfully' in response to comment below by Shokwave.]
In the post that you linked to, Eliezer wrote:
It seems to me that Eliezer avoids criticizing people when they are right because it takes more effort to convince them that their methods are incorrect in this case. In other words, the (social, cognitive, etc.) costs of correcting someone's reasoning are greater when their final answer is correct.
I found JoshuaZ's comment to be uninformative because he did not provide evidence for his implicit claim that Cowell's beliefs about cryonics are from faulty reasoning (or other traits associated with stupidity).
The goal is not to emit truthful propositions; the goal is to make the other believe truthful propositions. Paraphrased from Pavitra's comment.
Avoid criticizing people when they are right not because it takes more effort to convince them - but because all your effort will merely convince them more strongly of their own position, thanks to hardwired faults in the human brain.
Ah, okay. I agree that it would be a bad idea to criticize someone if doing so is more likely to strengthen an incorrect belief or faulty reasoning in that person.
I no longer agree with my use of the word 'should' in my first sentence in the grandparent comment.
However, I stand by my wording in the third paragraph - if you have strengthened an incorrect position in someone, then you have not convinced them at all. It still better to convince someone that their reasoning is wrong when it is wrong, but you have brought up the good point that a failed attempt to convince someone can do harm.
I think we should refrain from trying to publicize this, for that reason. People perceiving cryonics as "that weird thing Simon Cowell signed up for" are unlikely to sign up themselves.
Simon Cowell is known as the brutally honest [singing contest] judge. He worked himself up in the music industry and doesn't seem to be a nutjob. Personally, I think his name is good for the reputation of cryonics.
I agree with this. It seems to me that the publicity cryonics would tend to get from Simon Cowell would tend to be much better than if e.g. Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton were to go through with it.
He's well known, and he doesn't seem to be too much of a nutjob; I'm just afraid he's not very well liked.
In addition, he demonstrated himself to be a very fast driver on Top Gear, the most watched television show in the world.
I also agree. As far as celebrity endorsements go, Cowell isn't bad.