= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Tetronian comments on [SEQ RERUN] What is Evidence? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (9)
Strongly agree with both of these. I have a lot of trouble talking to people (even some of my closest friends!) about topics like cryonics, death, or even plain old rationality because of bandwidth and weird-sounding support. Does anyone know how to combat these effects besides simply (a) telling people to be patient, and (b) explaining why the absurdity heuristic is bad (which itself is a long discussion)?
Ask them questions, about their preferences and how they are going to realize them, until any internal incoherence is revealed. For example (roughly), ask them if they care about their health and if they want to see the future. At some point they will have to draw a line between what they are already doing to survive and cryonics. Ask why they draw that line...
Questioning is sometimes better than preaching because it causes the people who are questioned to reveal their own ignorance or incoherence while it allows those who ask the questions to act submissively.
Thank you! I'll definitely give that technique a try.
If it were easy, this website wouldn't exist.
That phrase is used when there are only problems of understanding, it's also used when there is only emotional stress in the speaker. The context above makes me think you at least meant the former, did you choose that phrase because you also meant the latter?
No, it was poor wording on my part. I 95% mean the former as implied by the conext, 5% the latter because I do have emotional difficulty with the fact that I can't explain something as simple as "death is bad."
Have you tried starting with: "Maybe death is bad, maybe death is good, maybe death is neither."
For audiences that do not understand that net good outcomes come from events with negative outcomes, append "depending on the circumstances."
Interesting, that approach hadn't occurred to me--I've mostly been trying variants of Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant. I'll give that a try, thanks!