ThisSpaceAvailable comments on Inquiry into community standards - Less Wrong

-19 Post author: ThisSpaceAvailable 06 August 2014 08:22PM

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Comment author: ThisSpaceAvailable 26 August 2014 11:46:52PM -2 points [-]

The interesting thing is that you don't perceive your own behavior in this case to be rude.

I certainly don't consider my behavior prior to being accused of dishonesty as being rude. Do you? After I was accused of dishonesty, I still trying to resolve the issue civilly. As I endured more and more abuse from gwern, I became increasingly short with him, but I don't think anything I said was inappropriate, given his behavior, and I find your proposition that it was to be poorly defended with vague, contradictory, and outright false statements.

The fact that you purposefully chose to avoid gendered pronouns just confirmed my suspicion.

Is that so surprising, as to provide significant information?

No. I know a bunch of people in that space who are very clear that they have no responsibility for anything that happens outside of their body.

I'm sure in pretty much any group there will be some who reject the concept of obligation. That doesn't mean that this is the predominant strain of thought.

In Buddhism you get bad karma if you kill another person. The Buddhist idea is that you don't go around killing other people because it's in your own self interest not to mess up your own karma. It has nothing to do with having obligations not to kill.

I find it disingenuous to claim that there is no sense of obligation connected with the concept of karma, especially as conceived in its Western versions. That's like saying that in Christianity, there is no sense of obligation in the concept of sin; Christians avoid sin merely out self interest, wanting to avoid hell.

In the moment where you repress the desire to be an asshole that desire doesn't go away.

So, I shouldn't repress the desire to be an asshole?

People who don't disassociate their emotions but act authentically deal with them and thereby learn not to feel like wanting to be an asshole.

That sound like a bunch of hooey to me. And I have a problem with the word “authentically” being redefined to mean “without inhibitions”.

I don't trust people who feel like they would like to be an asshole towards me but only act nicely because they perceive an obligation to be nice.

What's, there's something dishonest about not being an asshole? Maybe if gwern were to repress his desire to be an asshole long enough to have a civil discussion with me, he would discover that I have legitimate reasons for thinking as I do, and then would lose his motivation for being an asshole. Being a rationalist means not being ruled by System 1, and allowing for errors to be corrected.

Comment author: ChristianKl 27 August 2014 11:34:58AM 1 point [-]

I certainly don't consider my behavior prior to being accused of dishonesty as being rude. Do you?

You behaved in a way that predictable annoyed gwern. I don't care very much about whether or not to apply the word "rude" to that behavior.

I find your proposition that it was to be poorly defended with vague, contradictory, and outright false statements.

Basically you still fail to understand what I'm arguing. Nothing less, nothing more.

Is that so surprising, as to provide significant information?

Confirmations of past predictions are in their nature not surprising. That's why they are called confirmations. When doing pattern matching it's useful to see whether you find confirmations or disconfirmation for the patterns that you see.

I'm sure in pretty much any group there will be some who reject the concept of obligation. That doesn't mean that this is the predominant strain of thought.

I find it disingenuous to claim that there is no sense of obligation connected with the concept of karma, especially as conceived in its Western versions. That's like saying that in Christianity, there is no sense of obligation in the concept of sin; Christians avoid sin merely out self interest, wanting to avoid hell.

There might be some Western people who misunderstand what Buddhists mean with karma, that doesn't change much about the Buddhist concept. A good Christian doesn't sins because God is an authority in which he trusts and God put out rules that the Christian isn't supposed to do certain things. Buddhist thought doesn't have a God that does things like that.

If you jump up gravity pulls you down but that has nothing to do with you having an obligation to be near the ground. Buddhist karma is supposed to work just the same.

So, I shouldn't repress the desire to be an asshole?

I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't do.

In practice you might pretty soon stop desiring to act like an asshole when you act based on those desires and suffer the costs of acting like an asshole.

Being a rationalist means not being ruled by System 1, and allowing for errors to be corrected.

You are not correcting the error of frequently wanting to be an asshole towards other people.

If I think about what outcome I want to achieve based on enlightened self interest and pick the actions that leads to that outcome I don't have to let myself be ruled by my System 1.

Comment author: ThisSpaceAvailable 07 September 2014 09:55:07PM -1 points [-]

You behaved in a way that predictable annoyed gwern.

It certainly wasn't predicted by me. If your point is that asking people to clarify their position will predictably annoy them, and that's a standard norm here, and that if I want to avoid annoying people, one step to accomplish that would be to not ask people to clarify their statements, well, that really doesn't sound like a discussion board I have much interest in participating in.

I don't care very much about whether or not to apply the word "rude" to that behavior.

Then why did you bring it up? You said "The interesting thing is that you don't perceive your own behavior in this case to be rude."

Basically you still fail to understand what I'm arguing. Nothing less, nothing more.

If you have no concern for whether you are understood, why are you posting? If you are concerned, why do you not try to correct your failure to communicate what you are saying?

Confirmations of past predictions are in their nature not surprising.

Then they are not evidence on which one can make a conclusion. Your conclusion came from some other piece of evidence.

A good Christian doesn't sins because God is an authority in which he trusts and God put out rules that the Christian isn't supposed to do certain things.

And the Christian conflates moral obligation with divine command.

Buddhist thought doesn't have a God that does things like that.

What difference does God make? God puts out rules, karma puts out rules. God can say "should" all He wants, but those are irrelevant until someone adopts the "I should follow God" rule. Christians follow the rules that they believe God has put forth because they believe that they have a moral obligation to do so, and that moral obligation can't come from God, because if it did come from God, it would just be another one of God's rules, and what reason would anyone have to follow the "You should follow Me" rule?

If you jump up gravity pulls you down but that has nothing to do with you having an obligation to be near the ground. Buddhist karma is supposed to work just the same.

I don't believe that Buddhists believe that karma is simply an arbitrary rule that doesn't reflect morality.

You are not correcting the error of frequently wanting to be an asshole towards other people.

"Error" refers to actions, not to emotions.

If I think about what outcome I want to achieve based on enlightened self interest and pick the actions that leads to that outcome I don't have to let myself be ruled by my System 1.

But that would, in my understanding of what you're saying, not be being authentic.

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