Crux comments on Nonmindkilling open questions - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Yvain 23 March 2012 04:23PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (112)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Crux 24 March 2012 12:42:37AM *  2 points [-]

Almost everything seems to serve for signaling at least somewhat.

Even with my example, which I think seems to have an unusually dense combination of commonality of being asked, how fun or interesting it seems, and how impartial or non-partisan the answer would be, you could certainly still signal being pessimistic by saying no, or all futuristic or something by saying yes, or whatever.

I think the point would be less to find something that wouldn't serve for signaling at all, and more to come up with something that would be the least infected with the most mind-killing sort of signaling. Anything sufficiently interesting and common probably has at least some non-trivial signaling incentives.