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Algernoq comments on The map of cognitive biases, errors and obstacles affecting judgment and management of global catastrophic risks - Less Wrong
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Comments (63)
A lot of great topics here.
I am a huge fan of Elon Musk.
I suspect a big reason Mr. Musk tries to make the greatest possible positive difference for humanity is to reduce his risk of being murdered by established players. He’s pissed off a lot of powerful people, but provided benefits to many more.
He was forced out of controlling PayPal...and his vision for PayPal was to make it a “full-service financial institution”. He wanted to “convert the financial system from a series of heterogeneous insecure databases to one database.” This is threatening to the global elite in a way that going to Mars is not. Thus, he was forced out.
While he risked his personal fortune on SpaceX in 2013 when it looked like they would run out of money, he also had plans to sell a large interest in Tesla to Google in order to acquire funding for additional SpaceX launches. The story he tells about betting all of his assets with no recourse is true but under-emphasizes his backup plans for additional launches.
I am a huge fan of Paul Graham as well.
However, his advice can mislead young technical people into thinking that a startup is going to make them rich. He says, “If you wanted to get rich, how would you do it? I think your best bet would be to start or join a startup....you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years”. But in reality most startups fail and waste 5 years of the founders’ time in the process. Plus, for every founder, there are dozens of joiners/employees who work for below-market-rate salary plus a small percentage (often 0.1%) of the new company. Thus, his advice to “start or join a startup” is dangerously misleading because his target audience is young technical people without the political or sales skills to actually succeed.
Arguing for the opposition is Michael Church. I was intrigued by The 3-Ladder System of Social Class in the US (summary: college-educated technologists learned how to make wealth, not how to own it) and his VC-istan series (summary: Silicon Valley got colonized by MBA financiers who extracted all the goodwill). He alleges he deleted his blog archive and left the Valley because of threats from financiers affiliated with Paul Graham.
The Forbes 400 does not and cannot track privately-held wealth. Thus, the Forbes 400 only includes rich people who wanted to appear there.
That’s a marketing piece. Rich people often hide their wealth, but if they can’t they market themselves as hyper-successful good people, not as the driven perfectionist tyrants they often are. As the MacLeod Hierarchy explains, rank-and-file workers work best if they think they’re climbing a career ladder. Rich people climbed a different ladder, then hid it.
There’s a tradition of robber barons giving away vast wealth to manage their public image.
I agree with this.
The truth is not just politically incorrect; the truth is disgusting and offensive.
The Red Pill says is clearly: women want good genes and good resources. This means that men with good genes have the opportunity for lots of sex, and men with good resources get strung along in sexless relationships, and men with neither good genes (looks) nor good resources (money/power) get nothing except shame. Women want the best they can get, so the top 10% of men have sex with the top 80% of women. Below-average men get nothing. Traditional marriage is illegal (“until death do us part” is legally unenforceable). Many women try to copy the behavior of the most attractive men -- promiscuous casual sex that they lie about -- and then settle down with someone much less attractive than their casual sex partners once they reach their late 20s. And for men: most men are weak, emotionally-manipulated, directionless sheep.
This explains why rock band front-men, criminals, and selfish finance bros enjoy lots of sex despite their toxic behavior: they have looks plus power.
Yup. Will do. To be clear, the advice is to develop a ripped body that generates tingly feelings in women’s vaginas, not to “be a good person” or “make a positive difference” or even “have a job”. We deserve the coming global Apocalypse.
So it was OK for them to lie to me? Fuck you. If that’s how it works, I’m gonna go date 5 young women at the same time by telling them lies, then blame them for being insecure when the truth comes out.
Do not mistake my righteous anger for “insecurity”. That’s what old women do when they’re trying to shame a man into marrying them.
I don’t see how this would benefit me. “Cool” is a fossilized instinct for what is powerful. I’d rather go get what will really make me powerful: a shitload of money, and skill at building alliances I control.
For women, definitely. For men, the data is inconclusive.
Did you start acting like a non-dominant non-defector type, and get dumped soon after? Or did you become less attractive/successful/high-status over time? The struggle is real.
The Art of Manliness is clickbait for unsuccessful beta males. A psychological survey is a hilariously inaccurate methodology for gaining insight into a biological response.
I don’t have the power to make a difference.
For example, I want to make it illegal to lie about one’s relationship status and sexual history. But, I can’t at my current power level. More specifically: I have met 3 different employees of a certain investment bank, who all were more sexually successful than me despite routinely lying to women to get sex. One tried to seduce my girlfriend at the time despite having one “girlfriend” and several “casual sex partners” who were unaware of each other, and who he implied possible long-term relationship potential with. Another tried to set me up with a woman he was tired of seeing (she wanted a relationship; he just wanted sex) without disclosing that he had had sex with them. A 3rd talked to me about startup projects while badly hiding the micro-expressions for “smugness/contempt” and “duping delight” and then predictably failed to follow up. I’m pretty sure at least 2 of these guys are into spreading genital herpes. But, I looked up the slander laws and it’s illegal for me to publicly shame these selfish men or their firm without recorded evidence (there’s a presumption of innocence), and it’s illegal for me to collect that evidence (two-party consent required for recording, and they avoid using email for their games). Thus, they win, and I lose, and their sex partners lose, and the people they do business with lose (their attitude carries over to their business dealings...it’s all about wealth extraction.).) Check out Wall Street Playboys for a description of the “finance bro attitude” including advice about being attractive enough for someone in a relationship to want to cheat with. I’ve thought about creating some sort of morality Leviathan app, to track people’s “trust graphs” over time to provide a permanent record of who burned who, but this has the potential to go badly wrong.
Thus, I figured the best thing to do was to pull a Voldemort and go all-in on selfishness. Investing in other people and in relationships is a bad deal because the relationships inevitably end. Successful people only invest in relationships that they control. God is OK with animals violently killing each other all the time, with zero regard for suffering or fair play, and who am I to question God? The 48 Laws of Power (by Robert Greene) has some fascinating ideas about how to find common grounds to shit in.
False convictions. “Cruel and unusual” punishments are illegal because they make people angry in a way just locking up the wrong person doesn’t. Can you imagine the rage of the Black Lives Matter movement if the US Government was routinely castrating rapists? Or, more accurately, rich people are against physical punishments because they can’t be undone (whereas a long prison sentence + enough expensive lawyers = freedom).
Taking a step back here...I shouldn’t be this angry for this long with this little forward progress.
Better to choose a specific dream and make it happen.
Undisciplined flailing with no single clear goal has kept me middle-class for a decade.
I did not say that.
If women were as terrible as you claim they are, it would not be necessary to tell them lies. Telling them about the other women you were seeing would increase their attraction to you.
Roosh (Red Pill thought leader) has written multiple times about how girls he's slept with have cried when they found his blog. This is also a data point that works against Red Pill ideology--if Roosh's online personality was actually one that women found attractive, they should want to fuck him even more after finding his blog. I suspect what is going on is that Roosh used disrespect for women as a crutch to overcome the fact that he used to be a weak, directionless man (as a result of unknown environmental factors--see my other comment) and overcome his fear of them. Then once he was reinforced for this behavioral strategy (with what is possible evolution's strongest reinforcer), he kept it up. Mark Manson wrote a good piece on this.
OK, so I think you are making a sort of classic geek mistake of believing that the stated rules are the actual rules. This is something most people figure out relatively early in life, but the same cognitive reallocation that makes geeks so good at analytical stuff, and the internal honesty that makes them good at building accurate world models, may mean they take a while to pick this hypocrisy stuff up. To fix this mistake, internalize the fact that the rules don't apply to you. The rules apply to people who follow the rules. Operate with more of a consequentialist mentality. Sometimes the world needs Chaotic Good agents of justice to use Tor through a proxy and talk trash about people online. It sounds like this issue is important to you--this is your opportunity to be a hero. Just keep in mind: "It's only illegal if you get caught". Wait a while after you have left the lives of these men to write about them, and distort your accusations so they won't think of you while you're reading them. Do thorough thinking/planning/research--this is your project, not mine.
BTW a quote from the Playboys blog you link to suggests that Graham's remarks about West Coast wealth may generalize surprisingly well to East Coast wealth:
From a consequentialist perspective, I would much rather see you seek revenge in order to get this off your mind and then join aturchin on the good guy team (a relatively high-trust group, by the way, with few bad actors) than stew in effective egoism. And research has found that giving back increases long term happiness, so selflessness may the selfish route in the long run.
Sounds like you're saying lying is OK.
That's selfishness...maximizing one's own utility at the expense of total utility. Apparently this is OK.
Red Pill ideology says women want a "naturally" successful guy, and seeing how the sausage is made is disgusting to them (male struggles, male suffering, time at the gym, time reading weird forums, steroids, shoe lifts, etc.). Roosh's blog reveals that he is a fake, low-status, STD-spreading manipulator, which is disgusting to most women. His persona, however, is not unappealing.
The Red Pill explained some painful mistakes I had made, more clearly than any other source. Examples:
"Beta orbiting": why demonstrating good character, high value and virtuous restraint through being friends with an attractive woman is disgusting to them, why I spent years in sexless relationships, and why many women I was attracted to dated liars who pushed for sex quickly instead of me.
"Hypergamy": why all of my exes lined up other sexual prospects while in a relationship with me, and dumped me as soon as it was in their best interest. Also why my aunts with fat or poor husbands got divorced, while my uncles with fat or poor wives stayed married.
"Tingles Uber Alles": why tall, muscular and slightly scary men get a lot of sex, and why my outgoing middle-class Asian friend who's 5'3" is a virgin at age 30.
"Alpha Fucks; Beta Bucks": why many women enjoy casual sex, and lie about it without hesitation or remorse, including one of my exes.
Look it up. Or don't. Actually, it's better for me if you stay naive.
Thank you for permission to turn evil. I make my own rules from now on. My revenge will be legal, general (not targeting any specific group, people or company), and anonymous.
For the sake of argument, if my sexual fetish was nuking densely populated cities and fucking in the heat of the fireball while listening to the screams of the dying, can you say with certainty that this is morally wrong?
Sure, in certain circumstances. I think I agree with Chris Hallquist at least.
A person who's maximizing total utility is not going to grant every favor asked of them.
Women cried when they found his blog. They did not blow a raspberry in disgust. They cried because they thought they had some kind of connection with a guy who turned out to be callously manipulating them.
I agree it's a perspective worth keeping in mind and I said so above. I'm just saying that the case the RP folks make is overstated.
Think about it this way: Crime happens. Sometimes people get mugged. And it makes sense to take steps to protect yourself from getting mugged. Maybe you're going to learn martial arts. Maybe you're going to avoid walking through sketchy areas at night. Maybe you're going to pack heat. But even though crime happens, that doesn't mean that everyone is a criminal. It's easy for a person who had one or two really emotionally significant muggings to update on those experiences and start assuming the world is full of criminals even if that isn't actually the case.
I don't think it's normal for unmarried men to stick with women who don't have sex with them for years, so if you don't mind I'm going to psychoanalyze you a little bit.
It sounds to me like what might have happened in your case is that you focused really hard on being "good" and not so much on being "powerful" (see my good * power attraction equation from above). You were passed over by women looking for monogamous relationships, because they thought they could do better than you in the "power" department, and get a respected brave instead of a disrespected one. However, you were an ideal mate for "dual mating strategy" bad actor women. For these women, the fact that your "power" stat was low did not matter since they were just looking for a provider to work their dual strategy. Since your relationship prospects were filtered in this way, this gave you a distorted picture of what a typical woman is like.
Another possibility is that in the same way some neighborhoods are bad neighborhoods that have a lot of crime, you live in a city that has a dog-eat-dog dating culture.
It seems kind of pointless and counterproductive to take revenge on randoms that have not done anything to harm you...? BTW, I gave you "permission" to take revenge only on people who harmed you.
Consider a world in which nondirected revenge is normal. In such a world, revenge does not act as a deterrent to bad actions (because nondirected revenge isn't likely to result in bad consequences for a particular bad actor) and it also results in an expanding circle of harm (because victims of nondirected revenge are liable to engage in nondirected revenge themselves--consider the possibility that the bad actors you were harmed by were themselves acting in aggression in response to some bad situation like growing up with an absent father).
Jesus christ dude. I'm a moral anti-realist but I certainly would prefer you did not do that.
I put a check mark for today on the calendar I use to track my Quirrelmort-inspired cynicism.
Brains evolved to enable people to exploit dumber people.
I naively believed the best way to get a good wife was to act like a good husband.
It turns out that the best way to get a good wife is to be powerful...and the way to become powerful is to selfishly build up skills/power/experience, including sexual experience.
Welcome to any metropolitan city.
Probably. But what difference does it make? They still hurt me, violating norms of civil behavior, and were not (and cannot) be punished for it. Thus, the rational thing for me to do is to do unto others first.
Justice is a lie told by the powerful.
I am a "happiness monster". My utility deserves a 1000x multiplier.