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Estarlio comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong
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Hello, Less Wrong world. (Hi, ibidem.)
I'm pretty new here. I heard about this site a few months ago and now I've read a few sequences, many posts, and all of HP:MoR.
About a week ago I created an account and introduced myself on the Open Thread along with a difficult question. Some people answered my question helpfully and honestly, but most of them mostly just wanted to argue. The discussion, which now includes over two hundred comments, was very interesting, but at the end it appeared we just disagreed about a lot of things.
It began to be clear that I don't fully accept some important tenets of the thinking on this site—I warned I might fundamentally disagree—but a few community members became upset and decided to make me feel unwelcome on the site. My Karma dropped from 6 (+13, -7) to -25 in just a couple hours, and someone actually came out and told me I'd better leave the site for good. (Don't let this person's status influence your opinion of the appropriateness of such a comment, in either direction.)
Don't worry, I'm not offended. I knew there might be a bit of backlash (though one can always hope not, because there doesn't have to be) and I'm certainly not going to be scared away by one openly hostile user.
Now, before everyone reads the comments and takes sides because of the nature of the issue, I'd like to think about how and why this all happened. I have several different ways of thinking about it ("hypotheses"):
The easy justification for those opposing me is to blame my discourse: my opinions are not a problem as long as I present them reasonably. However, I have consistently been "incoherent" etc. and that's why I got downvoted. Never mind that I managed to keep up hundreds of comments' worth of intelligent discussion in the meantime.
The "contrarian" hypothesis: I am a troll. I never had anything helpful or constructive to say, and in fact everyone who participated in my discussion (e.g. shminux, TheOtherDave, Qiaochu_Yuan) ought to be downvoted for engaging with me.
The "enforcer" hypothesis: I came in here as a newbie, unaware that actually substantive disagreement is highly discouraged. The experienced community members were just trying to tell me that, and decided that being militant and aggressive would be the best way to do so.
The "militant atheist" hypothesis: my opinions are mostly fine, but I managed to really touch a nerve with a few people, who started unnecessarily attacking me (calling me irrational) and making the entire LW community look unreasonable and intolerant.
The "martyr" hypothesis: The LW community as a whole is not open to alternate ways of thinking, and can't even say so honestly. They should have been nicer to me.
What do you think? Which of these are most accurate? Other explanations?
Here is a link to my original comment.
These are the most honest and helpful responses I received,
and this is the most hostile one.
My generally impression has been—trying not to offend anyone—that the thinking here is sometimes pretty rigid.
I have found that there is a general consensus here that belief in God (and even a possibility that there could be a God) is fundamentally incompatible with fully rational thinking. (Though people have been reluctant to admit it because I personally think it's unhealthy and reflects poorly on the site.)
But in any case, I've enjoyed the discussion and I'd guess that some other people have too. I'm definitely not going to leave as some have tried to coerce me to do; I like the way of thinking on this site, and it's the best place I know of to find smart people who are willing to talk about things like this. I'll keep reading at the very least.
I'm still undecided as to what I think generally of the people here.
Yours truly,
ibid.
(Oh, and I'm a Mormon. And intend to remain that way in the near future.)
Of course, that's to be expected for a community that defines itself as rationalist. There are ways of thinking that are more accurate than others, that, to put it inexactly, produce truth. It's not just a "Think however you like and it will produce truth," kind of game.
The obsession that some people have with being open minded and considering all ways of thinking and associated ideas equally is, I suspect, unsustainable for anyone who has even the barest sliver of intellectual honesty. I don't consider it laudable at all. That's not to say they have to be a total arse about it, but I think at best you can hope that they ignore you or lie to you.
Are you saying it's more rational not ever to consider some ways of thinking?
(I'm pretty sure I'm not completely confused about what it means to be a rationalist.)
Yes. Rationality isn't necessarily about having accurate beliefs. It just tends that way because they seem to be useful. Rationality is about achieving your aims in the most efficient way possible.
Oh, someone may have to look into some ways of thinking, if people who use them start showing signs of being unusually effective at achieving relevant ends in some way. Those people would become super-dominant, it would be obvious that their way of thinking was superior. However, there's no reason that it makes sense for any of us to do it at the moment. And if they never show those signs then it will never be rational to look into them.
It's a massive waste of time and resources for individuals to consider every idea and every way of thinking before making a decision. You're getting closer to death every day. You have to decide which ways of thinking you are going to invest your time in - which ones have the greatest evidence of giving you something you want.
That's the thing for rationalists really, I think - chances of giving you what you want. It's entirely possible that if you don't want to achieve anything in this world with your life that it may just be a mistake for you personally to pursue rationality very far at all - at the end of the day you're probably not going to get anything from it if all you really want to do is feel justified in believing in god.
What does it mean to be a rationalist?
I suppose what Estarlio and I are actually referring to (as in "a community that defines itself as rationalist") is "good epistemic hygiene."
Given your earlier claims about how the meaning of reliably evaluating evidence depends on your paradigm, I have no confidence that you and I share an understanding of what "good epistemic hygiene" means either, so that doesn't really help me understand what you're saying.
Can you give me some representative concrete examples of good epistemic hygiene, on your account?
Articles like this one, obviously.
Or carefully evaluating both sides of an issue, for instance. Even if it's not specifically a LW thing it's considered essential for good judgment in the larger academic community.
Are we ever allowed to say "okay, we have evaluated this issue thoroughly, and this is our conclusion; let's end this debate for now"? Are we allowed to do it even if some other people disagree with the conclusion? Or do we have to continue the debate forever (of course, unless we reach the one very specific predetermined answer)?
Sometimes we probably should doubt even whether 2+2=4. But not all the time! Not even once in a month. Once or twice in a (pre-Singularity) lifetime is probably more than necessary. -- Well, it's very similar for the religion.
There are thousands of issues worth thinking about. Why waste the limited resources on this specific topic? Why not something useful... such as curing the cancer, or even how to invent a better mousetrap?
Most of us have evaluated the both sides of this issue. Some of us did it for years. We did it. It's done. It's over. -- Of course, unless there is something really new and really unexpected and really convincing... but so far, there isn't anything. Why debate it forever? Just because some other people are obsessed?
So, I basically agree with you, but I choose to point out the irony of this as a response to a thread gone quiet for months.
LOL
I guess instead of the purple boxes of unread comments, we should have two colors for unread new comments and unread old comments. (Or I should learn to look at the dates, but that seems less effective.)
OK. Thanks for answering my question.
I'm curious too. Can you give me an example of a particular way of thinking that you considered, yet ended up rejecting ? I'm not sure what you mean by "ways of thinking", so that might help.
OK, I'm ready to entertain new ideas: What's sacred about Mormon underwear?
You're free to answer, or you may notice that not all ideas deserve to be elevated above background noise by undue consideration. Rejecting an Abrahamic God as (is ludicrous too harsh?) ... not all too likely helps in demoting a host of associated and dependent beliefs into insignificance.
Only that God makes it sacred. But I'm actually too young to be wearing it myself, so I don't know if I'm qualified to talk. And I think it would be better for me not to get into defending my particular religion.
I'm not a Mormon, and I actually don't know that much about their underwear, but this is still rather a silly question. A Mormon might answer that, given that the Mormon god does exist and does care about his followers, the underwear symbolizes the commitment that the follower made to his God. It serves as a physical reminder to the wearer that he must abide by certain rules of conduct, in exchange for divine protection.
Such an answer may make perfect sense in the context of the Mormon religion (as I said, I'm not a Mormon so I don't claim this answer is correct). It may sound silly to you, but that's because you reject the core premise that the Mormon god exists. So, by hearing the answer you haven't really learned anything, and thus your question had very little value.
Which is the point I was trying to make when talking about that question in the second paragraph. As goes "is there an Abrahamic god", so goes a majority of assorted 'new' - but in fact dependent on that core premise - ideas.
I didn't get the impression that ibidem was talking about specific tenets of any particular religion when he mentioned "new ideas", but I could be wrong.
The same applies to many ideas that build upon other concepts being the case. You could probably make an argument that no ideas at all are wholly independent facts in the sense that they do not depend on the truth value of other ideas. Often you can skip dealing with a large swath of ideas simply by rejecting some upstream idea they all rely upon.
Religion, in this case, was a good example. That, and there's always some chance of hearing something interesting about holy underwear.