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IlyaShpitser comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (7th thread, December 2014) - Less Wrong
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Dear All (or whatever is the appropriate way to address the community here),
Reading Star Slate Codex kindled my interest in this community. I do not (yet) consider myself a Rationalist, largely because I don't put a disproportionately high value on the truth value of statements as opposed to their other uses, but I might be something sort of a fellow traveller because I think we have one thing in common: curiosity and the desire to investigate and analyze everything.
About me: not actually Dutch (although European, never been to the USA), my nickname is a bit of an in-joke I cannot explain without compromising my privacy. ESL, but hopefully fluent enough.
Things I would like to discuss and please guide me to the right places for this:
1) Why do you place such a high value on the truth value of statements as opposed to their other uses? For example when you are grieving for a loved one, don't you rather want to hear some comforting, soothing half-truths?
2) Same, with a focus on religion. Why do you care so much about whether they are true, as opposed to caring about whether they are socially useful or harmful, for a huge variety of purposes and optimization goals?
2/B) Shouldn't a species with a generally Low Sanity Waterline rather construct something along the lines of lest harmful / most useful Designer Religion (parallel: designer drugs) as opposed to trying to overcome it entirely? What would be the ideal features, goals, deliverables of a proper Designer Religion?
3) How can we approach the problem of ego-centrism / narcissisism rationally, which is NOT the same problem as selfishness or egoism? It is rather the problem of a disproportionate focus / attention to the self, which can be entirely coupled with unselfish altruism, for example giving charity but not focusing on the recipient but on your own virtue. This a problem, I think this is a growing problem, I think in politics narcissism or ego-centrism has traditionally been a problem of the Left and the most intelligent conservatives and religious writers (Chesterton, Burke, Oakeshott, Lewis etc.) can be seen as anti-narcissists, but they were not systematic, not principled enough - and ignored narcissism on their own side of course. This deserves a rational analysis but I don't even know where to begin! Is there something like a narcissism test for example?
4) Value judgements and personal choices. Is the Future You always right? You face the choice between going to the gym to lose weight or stay in comfortably and read. Your short term goals conflict with your long term ones. Your time preference conflicts with your other preferences. Current You would feel better staying in, Future You prefers to not be overweight. Generally it is said wise people who have self-control and whatnot, respected people choose the preferences of Future You. But if you keep pleasing Future You, you will very literally never be happy. And if you keep pleasing Current You, you end up an unhealthy addicted trainwreck. What is the rational strategy?
5) Testosterone and masculinity. I used to be the typicial intellectual "gamma rabbit" man who dislikes it, see Carl Sagan on testosterone poisoning. I used to be influenced by Redpillers to the opposite, then I realized they are, how to put it, not the kind of people I want to take my advice from. Vox Day does a "great job" of inadvertedly convincing people like me to not want to have ANYTHING to do with people like them. Now I stand confused in the middle. Right now I try to play both sides of the game, be a good husband and dad at home and a fierce fighter in the boxing gym (the keyword is "try", as in, fiercely trying not to collapse from exhaustion during sandbag work). I don't know if anyone tried to analyze this rationally, what is best etc.
6) Discuss Jack Donovan. Dude be crazy. Also, intelligent and writing well-researched stuff. Also, he is evil. What not to like?
7) Thomas Aquinas. Theist or not theist, he was a genius. Even if you see theology as a form of fantasy fiction, he was leaps and bounds the best, most structured, most logical fantasy writer. You want superhuman machine intelligence? It will probably have to cross through the phases of very high human intelligence. One phase of your AI will be "AIquinas".
8) Pet topic: how to un-fuckup Eastern Europe? I intend to live there, so quite motivated. Example: how to convince people that thinking in categories of players and suckers is not such a good idea or cooperation is a good one? Is there such a thing as escaping the corruption spiral?
This is a great question, I think about this a lot too. My intuitions are: a bit of reaction, e.g. getting in touch with the glorious past. This might work w/ e.g. Poland/Lithuania, may work even on Russia, if Russia remembers how the Novgorod republic worked. But Russia is a hard nut to crack.
But yes once there is a society-wide defection norm, it is hard to get out of.
Isn't that what Putin is doing? I am not sure this is a great idea. The past glories tend to be associated with nationalistic wars.
Another issue is what would unfucking entail -- turning East Europeans into Scandinavians? National cultural characteristics tend to be pretty persistent :-/ Otherwise, the canonical answer seems to be a long period of civil society, rule of law, etc. I am not holding my breath.
Russia is a super interesting special case. An interesting alternative history to ponder, re: Russia, is what would have happened had Novgorod predominated and not Moskva. Novgorod was sort of "the Lowlands of the East" in terms of the way they did things. Moskva was quite culturally nasty, and they got ahead by being basically the tax collectors for the Mongols.
One solution to this is to develop, through force if necessary, a small group of people where cooperation is enforced, then expand that group. For example, anarchy advances to despotism when a single powerful despot dominates and prevents anyone but him from using force. City-states advance to empire when a single city (e.g. Rome) conquers them and forces cooperating within its borders (Pax Romana). The analogy might be for a rich, powerful Russian with a clean reputation to make lots of friends who also have a clean reputation and go found a city somewhere in unincorporated Russian land with an able, honest police force and strongly enforced cooperation norms. Of course, in this age you win with industry, so maybe you'd also want lots of smart people starting software companies.
(Or why start it on Russian land, even? Russian is one of the coldest places on Earth, right? Is just moving everyone who doesn't like corruption out of Russia a viable solution?)
Are there anonymous online forums where Russians can discuss corruption?
It is, and is in fact what happened once the Iron Curtain fell. (This is an oversimplification, obviously).
Are you referring to the collectivization of agriculture in Russia? X-D
Ain't no such animal.
Anonymity is on the speaker's end, not on the forums end. But you might be interested in Alexei Navalny who is politically active on the anti-corruption platform.