ZoltanBerrigomo comments on Why CFAR's Mission? - Less Wrong

38 Post author: AnnaSalamon 02 January 2016 11:23PM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 04 January 2016 12:24:53PM *  2 points [-]

Being rational means many things, but surely one of them is making decisions based on some kind of reasoning process as opposed to recourse to emotions.

No. CFAR rationality is about aligning system I and system II. It's not about declaring system I outputs to be worthy of being ignored in favor of system II outputs.

You might, for example, have very strong emotions about matters pertaining to fights between your perceived in-group and out-group, but you try to put those aside and make judgments based on some sort of fundamental principles.

The alternative is working towards feeling more strongly for the fundamental principles than caring about the fights.

emotions are not easy to fake and humans have strong intuitions about whether someone's expressed feelings are genuine.

A person who cares strongly for his cause doesn't need to fake emotions.

Comment author: ZoltanBerrigomo 05 January 2016 05:51:22AM *  1 point [-]

Sure, you can work towards feeling more strongly about something, but I don't believe you'll ever be able match the emotional fervor the partisans feel -- I mean here the people who stew in their anger and embrace their emotions without reservations.

As a (rather extreme) example, consider Hitler. He was able to sway a great many people with what were appeals to anger and emotion (though I acknowledge there is much more to the phenomena of Hitler than this). Hypothetically, if you were a politician from the same era, say a rational one, and you understood that the way to persuade people is to tap into the public's sense of anger, I'm not sure you'd be able to match him.

Comment author: gjm 05 January 2016 11:53:14PM 5 points [-]

"The best lack all conviction, and the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" -- W B Yeats

"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt" -- Bertrand Russell

Comment author: ChristianKl 05 January 2016 10:25:58AM *  1 point [-]

Julian Assange was one of the first people to bring tears to my eyes when he spoke and I saw him live. At the same time Julian's manifesto is rational to the extend that it makes it case with graph theory.

Interestingly the "We Lost The War"-speech that articulated the doctrine that we need to make life easier for whistleblowers by providing a central venue to which the can post their documents was 10 years ago. The week ago there was a "Ten years after ‚We Lost The War‘" at this CCC congress.

Rop Gonggrijp closes by describing the new doctrine as:

Know there are probably not be a revolution magically manifesting itself next friday, probably also no zombie acopolypse but still we need to be ready for rapid and sizable changes of all sorts and kinds the only way to be effective in this and probably our mission as a community, is to play for the long term, develop a culture that is more fun and attractive to more people to develop infrastructure and turn around and offer that infrastructure to people that need it. That is not a thing we do as a hobby anymore. That's also something we do for people that need this infrastructure. Create a culture that capable of putting up a fight, that gives it's inhabitants a sense of purpose, self worth, usefulnes and then lunch that culture over time till it becomes a viable alternative to the status quo.

I think that's the core strategy. We don't want eternal september so it's no problem if the core community uses language that's not understood by outsiders. We can have our cuddle pies and feel good with each other. Cuddle pies produce different emotions than anger but they also create emotions that produce strong bonds.

If we really need strong charismatic speakers that are world class at persuasion I think that Valentine currently is at that level (as is Julian Assange in the hacker community). It's not CFAR mission to maximize for charisma but nothing that CFAR does prevents people from maximizing charisma. If someone wants to develop themselves into that role Valentine wrote down his body language secrets in http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp3/proper_posture_for_mental_arts/ .

A great thing about the prospects of our community is that there's money seeking Effective Altruistic uses. As EA grows there might be an EA person running for office in a few years. If other EA people consider his run to have prospects for making a large positive impact he can raise money from them. But as Rop says in the speech, we should play for the long-term. We don't need a rationalist to run for office next year.

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