Azathoth123 comments on A discussion of heroic responsibility - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Jackercrack 31 October 2014 10:14:49AM -1 points [-]

Okay, my definition of sane is essentially: rational enough to take actions that generally work towards your goals and to create goals that are effective ways to satisfy your terminal values. It's a rather high bar. Suicide bombers do not achieve their goals, cultists have had their cognitive machinery hijacked to serve someone else's goals instead of their own. The reason I think this would be okay in aggregate is the psychological unity of mankind: we're mostly pretty similar and there are remarkably low numbers of evil mutants. Being pretty similar, most people's goals would be acceptable to me. I disagree with some things China does for example, but I find their overwhelming competence makes up for it in aggregate wellbeing of their populace.

gjm gives some good examples of heroic responsibility, but I understand the term slightly differently. Heroic responsibility is to have found a thing that you have decided is important, generally by reasoned cost/benefit and then take responsibility to get it done regardless of what life throws your way. It may be an easy task or a hard task, but it must be an important task. The basic idea is that you don't stop when you feel like you tried, if your first attempt doesn't work you do more research and come up with a new strategy. If your second plan doesn't work because of unfair forces you take those unfair forces into account and come up with another plan. If that still doesn't work you try harder again, then you keep going until you either achieve the goal, it becomes clear that you cannot achieve the goal or the amount of effort you would have to put into the problem becomes significantly greater than the size of the benefit you expect.

For example, the benefit for FAI is humanities continued existence, there is essentially no amount of effort one person could put in that could be too much. To use the example of Eliezer in this thread, the benefit of a person being happier and more effective for months each year is also large, much larger than the time it takes to research SAD and come up with some creative solutions.

Comment author: Azathoth123 04 November 2014 05:25:15AM 0 points [-]

Suicide bombers do not achieve their goals,

Really, last time I checked there is now a Caliphate in what is still nominal Iraq and Syria.

Comment author: Lumifer 04 November 2014 05:33:37AM *  1 point [-]

there is now a Caliphate

Not quite. A collection of semi-local militias who managed to piss off just about everyone does not a caliphate make.

P.S. Though as a comment on the grandparent post, some suicide bombers certainly achieve their goals (and that's even ignoring the obvious goal to die a martyr for the cause).

Comment author: Azathoth123 12 November 2014 05:38:41AM 1 point [-]

A collection of semi-local militias who managed to piss off just about everyone

But not enough for "everyone" to mount an effective campaign to destroy them.

Comment author: Jackercrack 04 November 2014 10:58:17PM -1 points [-]

Achieved almost entirely by fighting through normal means, guns and such so I hardly see the relevant. Suicide bombing kills a vanishing small number of people. IED's are an actual threat.

Their original goal as rebels was to remove a central government and now they're fighting a war of genocide against other rebel factions. I wonder how they would have responded if you'd told them at the start that a short while later they'd be slaughtering fellow muslims in direct opposition to their holy book.