aspera comments on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions - Less Wrong

71 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 August 2007 10:27PM

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

Comments (147)

Sort By: Old

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

Comment author: aspera 09 October 2012 11:07:45PM 12 points [-]

My mother's husband professes to believe that our actions have no control over the way in which we die, but that "if you're meant to die in a plane crash and avoid flying, then a plane will end up crashing into you!" for example.

After explaining how I would expect that belief to constrain experience (like how it would affect plane crash statistics), as well as showing that he himself was demonstrating his unbelief every time he went to see a doctor, he told me that you "just can't apply numbers to this," and "Well, you shouldn't tempt fate."

My question to the LW community is this: How do you avoid kicking people in the nuts all of the time?

Comment author: aspera 10 October 2012 12:16:07AM 3 points [-]

I jest, but the sense of the question is serious. I really do want to teach the people I'm close to how to get started on rationality, and I recognize that I'm not perfect at it either. Is there a serious conversation somewhere on LW about being an aspiring rationalist living in an irrational world? Best practices, coping mechanisms, which battles to pick, etc?