nyan_sandwich comments on We Don't Have a Utility Function - Less Wrong

43 [deleted] 02 April 2013 03:49AM

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

Comments (123)

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

Comment author: Error 02 April 2013 04:51:06PM *  0 points [-]

This is interesting. For some time, I've had my anti-authoritarianism (and anti-governmentism) sort of filed away in the back of my mind as "review this opinion when I think I can handle finding out I'm wrong" Sounds like you've been through the process already.

How much of your change of heart would you attribute to explicit reasoning, aesthetics, and personal experience respectively?

Comment author: [deleted] 02 April 2013 05:58:24PM 2 points [-]

How much of your change of heart would you attribute to explicit reasoning, aesthetics, and personal experience respectively?

Good question. I wouldn't say it breaks up so nicely.

First of all, the aesthetic appreciation basically got uncovered when the big aversions went away. It was like, "ok authority can be practical a lot of the time, and oh, look, now that I'm not afraid of it, it's kind of beautiful after all."

The personal experience (having been an anarchist, running a LW meetup, etc) mostly just provided a bit of extra verification fuel once anti-authoritarianism was being seriously questioned.

The thing that actually got me to explicitly formulate the whole process was reading Moldbug. He pointed out some glitches in the matrix, so to speak.

I don't know how to weight the importance of these, or what that would mean. Is there a more specific question you're interested in?

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 April 2013 05:46:26AM 5 points [-]

I think you're failing to distinguish between authority one voluntarily submits to (potentially even reserving the right to reverse the decision), e.g., meetup organizer, and authority backed by a monopoly on violence, i.e., the modern conception of government.

Comment deleted 04 April 2013 12:11:46PM [-]
Comment author: Eugine_Nier 05 April 2013 04:27:02AM 2 points [-]

That's much more of a qualitative difference based on how much say you have.