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michaelcurzi comments on What Curiosity Looks Like - Less Wrong
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I'm having difficulty knowing what level of rationalist this is aimed at. Are the people you talk to every week students of rationality, or 'normal' people?
This post applies to both, I imagine. But because you talk about "people" instead of explicitly talking about people like me, it's easy to see this post as not being aimed at me. (Maybe it's not).
What I mean is: It's easy to praise oneself and one's peers by talking about people of a lower class. When I was young, it was 'dumb people', when I was a bit more sophisticated it was 'theists', when I was an Objectivist, it was 'non-Objectivists', and now that I'm a rationalist the temptation is to criticize those who "know almost nothing of logic, probability theory, argument, scientific method, epistemology, artificial intelligence, human cognitive science, or debiasing techniques." So this post, because it isn't clearly directed at people who have worked hard to do better in the ways prescribed by the Sequences, causes my semiconscious mind to ask: "is this a beginning level post, or something I should actually pay attention to?" Are you telling me to do better, or criticizing outsiders in order to promote group bonding?
Of course my rider knows I should pay attention; I must always work harder to cultivate the virtues. And I don't actually expect that you're just trying to promote group bonding. But what I really want - and what this post may not have been designed for - is a honest criticism of people you see who are a lot like me in that they have access to all the same correct memes as I have, and they have exerted effort to improve in the appropriate areas.
My target audience was meant to be ambiguous. Even the most curious people I know spend some of their time not looking very curious. My post is meant as a vignette of the human condition, like a scene from Gummo, and also (I hope) "valuably motivating (by way of shaming)."
I'm wary of being inspired by an example that I can't actually attain even through my best and most honest efforts. I would like to know -- and maybe it isn't possible to find out -- what it is about you, Luke Muehlhauser, that makes you such a persistent belief updater? At a biological level, even.
If variation in populations is a fact of life, then why wouldn't there be graduated levels of rationalist ability?
I predict you're selling yourself short. Maybe my weaknesses and shortcomings are largely filtered out if you know me only through my writings, but the people I work with every week could list them for you. There is clearly a level (or 5) above my own.
Moreover, I've been studying rationality for years, and since April have had the benefit of working on rationality or x-risk full time.
It's very hard to tell "what it is about me" that gives me the rationalist powers I do possess, but if I had to guess, the single biggest thing would be my deep desire to say oops whenever appropriate, which I suspect I got from having wasted 21 years of my life for failing to say oops about the supernatural. I don't want to waste my time like that again.
I could be selling myself short. And I'm certainly not surrounded by rationalist superheroes -- quite the opposite, in fact.
I should have been more specific. You're not so much famous here for how rational you are, but for the freakishly outlying amount of time you're capable of devoting to a particular kind of activity: studying stuff.
I wonder how much of that sort of sustained focus is just something you were born with, and whether it inclines you to activities that require such focus. Yes, you were Christian for 21 years, but you stopped being one in part because you were able to focus enough to read lots and lots of books disconfirming your beliefs -- itself an extremely unusual thing to do.
Then again, plenty of people with outlying levels of studiousness don't become rationalists. Despite some evidence to the contrary, monasteries probably aren't breeding grounds for atheism. And plenty of people with low mental energy have strong bullshit detectors.
So I guess I don't know.
I for one have read it as a possible criticism to what I do, exactly along the lines of "don't just look like you're curious and comment on LW and think that you're better because you share the beliefs of the coolest tribe" but go out and really do learn something...
(... so I ended up commenting on LW and thinking I'm even better than the people described above... to increase the number of relevant illustrations :P)
I am currently working my way through reading the responses to this essay, but I really liked your response and wanted to comment. I hope that is ok. You asked for "honest criticism" of people who are a lot like you; and while I realize you were asking Lukeprog I hope you don't mind if I throw my two cents in.
What I took from this essay is an idea I first encountered studying symbolic interactionism: That humans are animals with the unique capacity to act or to act. To act, in the sense that we, like all other living organisms can intentionally impact the territory we exist within. As a person I can run, fight, search for truth, etc. What makes humans unique is that in addition to this we hold the capacity to act, as in the sense of to pretend. In Tibetan Buddhism I believe this is called "shadow dancing," where you do something to mimic a form rather than become it. Luke has focused specifically in on the action of searching for truth. People can either genuinely search for truth, or they can for political reasons don the air of a truth seeker.
Now here comes your critique. The assumption people "who see it a lot like you" is that the former is in some way superior to the later. That one is necessary and the other is detrimental. it is important to genuinely seek truth, however, it is just as important to let it go and just actlike you are seeking truth. Not being able to do this is a problem of moderation. Probably more than 80% of humanity needs to learn how to act, how to be genuine in purpose. However, the elite who are already purpose driven need to learn how to balance serious action with social harmony (social harmony being what i think acting accomplishes).
I do not mean to pick a fight, but my honest criticism is you need to learn when to be irrational. What do you think?