What subjects are important to rationality, but not covered in Less Wrong?

casebash

As many people have noted, Less Wrong currently isn't receiving as much content as we would like. One way to think about expanding the content is to think about which areas of study deserve more articles written on them.

For example, I expect that sociology has a lot to say about many of our cultural assumptions. It is quite possible that 95% of it is either obvious or junk, but almost all fields have that 5% within them that could be valuable. Another area of study that might be interesting to consider is anthropology. Again this is a field that allows us to step outside of our cultural assumptions.

I don't know anything about media studies, but I imagine that they have some worthwhile things to say about how we the information that we hear is distorted.

What other fields would you like to see some discussion of on Less Wrong?

I don't know anything about media studies, but I imagine that they have some worthwhile things to say about how we the information that we hear is distorted.

What other fields would you like to see some discussion of on Less Wrong?

Parenthood as Optimizing for Multiple Goals.

I mean, when your kid is born, you are expected to be a parent first and foremost, yet (at least in my case) you often want to actually be someone, do something that keeps you immersed in life as you knew it. (I apologise if I offend anyone here.) It's easy to say to people: 'Hey, just wait until he goes to school, you'll get more time!' - you might not get more time, not ever. And I don't mean it just as missed career opportunities.

I have watched (still do) my Mom entertain herself with hand-crafts, etc., trying her hand at drumming (she plays piano, but she prefers drums because it's easy to do in groups), now that her daughters all grew up and she has spare time when she's not at work. And I keep thinking: is she just filling in holes, or is this what she's really wanted to do?.. It seems so sad. (Not that I'm against hand-crafts, or anything, but I don't want it to happen to myself.)

(Maybe this is a sub-clause of 'instrumental rationality', dunno.)

And I keep thinking: is she just filling in holes, or is this what she's really wanted to do?

I think it's unusual for people to know what they really want to do -- maybe it's even unusual for people to have such a clear and pronounced desire at all. Most just muddle through life, especially once middle age hits.

1[anonymous]11y

We decided to have a kid when we realized we are not doing anything with our lives and will not, probably. I think this is when people should make this decision. We were just working and then being tired in the evening and then just having drinks and watching films or something. And it was horrible. To think our life will be this ennui, boredom, grayness forever, except we also get older and thus our bodies will suck more and more, was intolerable. A child can fill that kind of emptiness, lack of goals well. A child is like being young again, being reborn, having a second chance, seeing life through the eyes of a person who still enjoys it and expects interesting things out of it. For some reason it sounds bad to say you don't want anything from your life other than a comfortable existence and sooner or later to reproduce, but biologically, evolutionarily it made sense. We really did not want to, and maybe your Mom didn't either. I mean, I don't think we are really evolved to want things, to have goals, I think we are mostly evolved to keep deal with hardship and suffering. It is hard, really hard to find goals once your life is okay-ish. Well fed, safe, and reproduced, maybe some social life and respect and status, all our genetic drives are satisfied. The issue is the lack of hardship, risk, challenge. And on the other hand, the lack of opportunities to win or make something big. This may be a welfare state issue, we live in Vienna, Austria, at the moment, maybe same policies that take away the risk and challenge also take away the opportunities. But as of now, it seems everybody is being tepidly mediocre here not doing anything but just enjoying comfort.

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What subjects are important to rationality, but not covered in Less Wrong?

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What subjects are important to rationality, but not covered in Less Wrong?

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