Jiro comments on A discussion of heroic responsibility - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Swimmer963 29 October 2014 04:22AM

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

Comments (215)

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

Comment author: Jiro 31 October 2014 09:10:22AM 1 point [-]

and if you are a normal person then you shrug your shoulders, say "damn, that's too bad", and get on with your life; but if you are infused with a sense of heroic responsibility then you devote your life to...

If you're a normal person, the fact that you shrug your shoulders when faced with such things is beneficial because shrugging your shoulders instead of being heroic when faced with the destruction of civilization serves as immunity against crazy ideas and because you're running on corrupted hardware, you probably aren't as good at figuring out how to avoid the destruction of civilization as you think.

Just saying "I'm not going to shrug my shoulders; I'm going to be heroic instead" is removing the checks and balances that are irrational themselves but protect you against bad rationality of other types, leaving you worse off overall.

Comment author: gjm 31 October 2014 11:15:02AM 0 points [-]

I am inclined to agree; I am not a fan of the idea of "heroic responsibility". (Though I think most of us could stand to be a notch or two more heroic than we currently are.)