Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, HPMoR, Eliezer Yudkowsky, or Robin Hanson. If you'd like to revive an old quote from one of those sources, please do so here.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
- Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.
Hmmm... does he say something that goes beyond his condescending style? If he wants to criticize naive pleasure-hedonism, fine, but to talk of "best interests" without bothering to specify what he means by that phrase strikes me as an attempt to grab my utility function. At best it seems like a way to signal "Look how rational I am!" without having to admit to the banal motivation of wanting to sell books.
He's saying that our desire for punishment is potentially a lost purpose. How is that an attempt to grab the utility function?
Also, I'd be interested to hear why you read this as condescending; I don't see where you're coming from with that.