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taw comments on How I Ended Up Non-Ambitious - Less Wrong
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Less Wrong is entertainment, if it surprises you that it didn't change your life, your expectations were very irrational.
Like all entertainment, sometimes it has some positive (or negative) side effects, but they're not the real reason people are here.
Reading LW is fun. In that sense, it's entertainment, just like some people read physics textbooks for fun. People also watch reality TV for fun. Does that mean reading LW, or physics textbooks, is equivalent to watching reality TV? I would say that physics textbooks have a lot of fringe benefits aside from their entertainment value–you end up understanding physics really well. LW maybe isn't as good as a physics textbook, because it's based less on tried-and-true science and more on a bunch of concepts, hypotheses, and ideology thrown together into the idea of "rationality." But I'd bet most people get more fringe benefits out of LW than out of reality shows.
Let me recommend "Everything Bad is Good for You" - a highly entertaining book on how modern entertainment - including reality TV - is actually far more intellectually stimulating than entertainment of past times, and that this might very well be the very cause of Flynn effect.
I'd been assuming that more complex popular art was a result of the Flynn effect, not a cause of it. Is there any way to tell?
Of course.
What would be causing Flynn effect then? They make some arguments from timing etc., I recommend reading the book and taking your own conclusions as to how convincing they seem to you.
I'm not sure I'm going to get around to the book-- I just took a look at what was conveniently online.
This interview has a moment at about 19:20 where Johnson implies that he doesn't know the cause. He does seem to think that simulation games are much important (whether as cause or indicator) than movies or tv.
The beginning of the book about his playing complex chart and dice baseball simulation as a kid, and then much later realizing that he wasn't all that unusual, suggests that something else sparked an increase in the number of young people interested in complex simulation.
Other possibilities for the Flynn Effect: better nutrition and less lead, but I don't have a strong opinion there. Just for the hell of it, I'll allow for the possibility that there's a food additive which is making a difference.
There's plenty of possible causes for Flynn Effect, but since we have very crappy data about worldwide historical IQs it's pretty much impossible to pick one for sure.
Many obvious candidates are rejected by the fact that Flynn Effect is global and affects both rich and poor countries. That's about how far we can go reliably.
It wouldn't surprise me too much if physical effects started the Flynn effect, but once intelligence went up somewhat, the culture changed because thinking became more fun, so that there's a positive feedback.
That's one idea. The difficulty with physical effects is lack of any obvious physical effect which could plausibly affect both rich countries in mid-20th century (long past adequate nutrition phase and at slow beginnings of obesity epidemic) and poor countries in mid-20th century (still with regular starvation, and up to this day without adequate micronutrient supply in diets) at similar rates.
But then "similar rates" may very well be due to our evidence being so bad, perhaps these rates were very different, we just don't know it.
It is a bad sign that you labeled her expectations with that symbol alone.
This looks like the beginning of an argument about whether or not LW is "really entertainment." If it is really entertainment, then that doesn't prevent it from being useful in any other way, unless its being entertainment precludes it from being those things by definition, which would of course be irrelevant.
Saying that LW is entertainment is somewhat relevant as an evolutionary debunking argument, to explain its popularity as being from something other than usefulness, which all else equal makes it less likely LW is useful. But I don't like how the comment was phrased, nor is that argument terribly strong.
Almost all causes have multiple effects, almost all effects have multiple causes.
Your comment is far below the standard for you. Standing alone, it implies a broken ideology and worldview, and looks like many useless internet comments. Only from your other comments is it clear that this one is an aberration. A bad one, one that looks as if it were written by someone else.
Everyone has to have a worst comment, my worst is probably worse. But please rethink this issue, or express your thoughts better.
Reading lesswrong is the least entertaining thing I intentionally do.
I'm a tad curious about your motives for reading lesswrong? Just habit perhaps? Or some evaluation suggesting it is useful?
Because I actually use the stuff I learn here to survive, and it is the most important thing I can do right now to increase the probability of a friendly singularity, which I have conditioned myself to have as my only goal.
I'm honestly curious, how did you condition yourself to feel this way?
I mean, I think about the singularity, try to discount for my given bias (introverted young male in STEM field who read a lot of scifi) and I still conclude it is a worthwhile problem; but more importantly a problem that could use my skillset.
But I don't emotionally ... grok it, which makes me wonder if I really do believe it, or if it is belief-in-belief. I'm having my own struggle with ambition, and I'm at a point where I don't know if I actually care about anything. It seems that at my core, all my motivation stems from a desire for social status, which scares me.
See here and the OP (emphasis added):
(People rarely exhibit long-term planning to acquire social status any more than we/they exhibit long-term planning to acquire health. E.g., most unhappily single folk do not systematically practice their social skills unless this is encouraged by their local social environment.)
Dunno. I seem to have had very powerful innate self modification capabilities in the past. Either I've lost them, or they are inaccessible to introspection in some very weird way.
The style of it is "brute, clichéd brainwashing", I literally can't imagine caring about anything else and it's not very good for my mental helth.
Habit for me.
Your cynicism is not helping. If you have some advice to improve the effectiveness of LW, please post.
Lesswrong is not for entertainment, it's not even that entertaining. 4chan blows lesswrong out of the water on that front. I for one am not here for entertainment, I suck at rationality and want to become stronger. Cynicism doesn't help.
If all you're here for entertainment, you suck at entertaining yourself.
Just before writing this comment I was reading a calculus book just for fun. I am currently working part-time as gardener and don't need calculus and don't expect that I will need it any time soon for anything other than understanding ideas that are even more fun. I get an incredible kick from understanding new concepts.
People are psychologically very different. I had some of the greatest fun in my life reading lesswrong.
ETA I also like to take photos, read science fiction and play games...and A LOT more :-)
Some people program computers for fun, and some people watch Jackass. It isn't clear to me that the people who don't watch Jackass suck at entertaining themselves ....
It's true that people have different ideas of fun. I find it hard to believe that a specific blog not at all devoted to being entertaining happens to be the best way to be entertained for anyone.
I have been a baker and I always cringe from the thought that some people do it for fun.
My dad has been a construction engineer for the German Railways. He told me about people who came to his workplace and took photos of the bridges and tracks he was inspecting. Those people literally knew every screw being used in the construction. They did that stuff for fun. There are whole clubs.
I even heard of people who collect stamps and travel to international meetings. Crazy huh?
Tourist railways. People volunteer to get up at 3am and do jobs that 150 years ago were incitements to socialist revolution.
'Work is anything you have to do', as the saying goes. However, I suspect if we looked, we would find that the working conditions 150 years ago would be vastly different from those volunteers' jobs. (Possible differences: 16-hour working days, emitted pollution, ergonomics like 'chairs'...)
I am not cynical here, I find lesswrong very entertaining to read for similar reasons to I regularly read research papers on things I'll never need in my life for fun.
I cannot possibly be alone - just ask anyone what happens when they want to quickly check a random article on Wikipedia or even worse TvTropes and end up spending an entire day on the site, learning minutae of things they have no use for whatsoever.
XiXiDu's and David_Gerard's responses suggest there's plenty of people who see lesswrong the same way.
I go back to chans every now and then, but it tends to get boring after a few days.
If you want helpful advice (wrt "sucking at rationality"):
One super-simple and very practical exercise I recommend is - every time you go shopping try to estimate cost of your shopping basket before you checkout. You'd be surprised how far off and how one-sided your estimates will be the first few times. Since everybody shops a lot it won't take you any extra time, and that's actually a pretty useful instance of more general skill of quick estimation.
Thanks.
YMMV. I take LessWrong strictly [1] out of my internet-as-television budget, and find it more consistently interesting than 4chan.
[1] though I'll often Google to link a remembered post in random Internet philosophical arguments.