Annoyance comments on A social norm against unjustified opinions? - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 29 May 2009 11:25AM

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Comment author: JoeShipley 29 May 2009 08:14:58PM 2 points [-]

I agree here: Reading stuff like this totally makes me cringe. I don't know why people of above average intelligence want to make everyone else feel like useless proles, but it seems pretty rampant. Some humility is probably a blessing here, I mean, as frustrating as it is to deal with the 'profoundly stupid', at least you yourself aren't profoundly stupid.

Of course, they probably think given the same start the 'profoundly stupid' person was given, they would have made the best of it and would be just as much of a genius as they are currently.

It's a difficult realization, when you become aware you're more intelligent then average, to be dropped into the pool with a lot of other smart people and realize you really aren't that special. I mean, in a world of some six billion odd, if you are a one-in-a-million genius, that still means you likely aren't in the top hundred smartest people in the world and probably not in the top thousand. It kind of reminds me of grad school stories I've read, with kids who think they are going to be a total gift to their chosen subject ending up extremely cynical and disappointed.

I think people online like to exaggerate their eccentricity and disregard for societal norms in an effort to appeal to the stereotypes for geniuses. I've met a few real geniuses IRL and I know you can be a genius without being horribly dysfunctional.

Comment author: Annoyance 29 May 2009 09:45:28PM -1 points [-]

I don't know why people of above average intelligence want to make everyone else feel like useless proles

Isn't it obvious? Almost everyone is a "useless prole", as you put it, and even the people who aren't have to sweat blood to avoid that fate.

Recognizing that unpleasant truth is the first step towards becoming non-useless - but most people can't think usefully enough to recognize it in the first place, so the problem perpetuates itself.

I know I'm usually a moron. I've also developed the ability to distinguish quality thinking from moronicity, which makes it possible for me to (slowly, terribly slowly) wean myself away from stupid thinking and reinforce what little quality I can produce. That's what makes it possible for me to occasionally NOT be a moron, at least at a rate greater than chance alone would permit.

It's the vast numbers of morons who believe they're smart, reasonable, worthwhile people that are the problem.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 31 May 2009 07:27:31PM 3 points [-]

I was reading around on the site today, and I think I've figured out why this attitude sends me running the other way. What clued me in was Eliezer's description of Spock in his post "Why Truth? And...".

Eliezer's point there is that Spock's behavior goes against the actual ideals of rationality, so people who actually value rationality won't mimic him. (He's well enough known that people who want to signal that they're rational will likely mimic him, and people who want to both be and signal being rational will probably mimic him in at least some ways, and also note that the fact that reversed stupidity is not intelligence is relevant.)

It may come as a shock, but in my case, being rational is not my highest priority. I haven't actually come up with a proper wording for my highest priority yet, but one of my major goals in pursuing that priority is to facilitate a universal ability for people to pursue their own goals (with the normal caveats about not harming or overly interfering with other people, of course). One of the primary reasons I pursue rationality is to support that goal. I suspect that this is not an uncommon kind of reason for pursuing rationality, even here.

As I mentioned in the comment that I referenced, I've avoided facing the fact that most people prefer not to pursue rationality, because it appears that that realization leads directly to the attitude you're showing here, and I can reasonably predict that if I were to have the attitude you're showing here, I would no longer support the idea that everyone should have as much freedom as can be arranged, and I don't want to do that. Very few people would want to take the pill that'd turn them into a psychopath, even if they'd be perfectly okay with being a psychopath after they took the pill.

But there's an assumption going on in there. Does accepting that fact actually have to lead to that attitude? Is it impossible to be an x-rationalist and still value people?

Comment author: byrnema 01 June 2009 05:26:26AM * 8 points [-]

Is it impossible to be an x-rationalist and still value people?

This is something I’ve thought a lot about. I’m worried about the consequences of certain negative ideologies present here on Less Wrong, but, actually, I feel that x-rationality, combined with greater self-awareness, would be the best weapon against them. X-rationality -- identifying facts that are true and strategies that work -- is inherently neutral. The way you interpret those facts (and what you use your strategies for) is the result of your other values.

Consider, to begin with, the tautology that 99.7% of the population is less intelligent than 0.3% of the population, by some well-defined, arbitrary metric of intelligence. Suppose also, that someone determined they were in the top 0.3%. They could feel any number of ways about this fact: completely neutral, for example, or loftily superior, or weightily responsible. Seen in this way, feeling contempt for "less intelligent" people is clearly the result of a worldview biased in some negative way.

Generally, humanity is so complex that however anyone feels about humanity says more about them than it does about humanity. Various forces (skepticism and despair; humanism and a sense of purpose) have been vying throughout history: rationality isn’t going to settle it now. We need to pick our side and move on … and notice which sides other people have picked when we evaluate their POV.

I always find it ironic, when 'rationalists' are especially misanthropic here on Less Wrong, that Eliezer wants to develop a friendly AI. Implicit with this goal -- built right in -- is the awareness that rationality alone would not induce the machine to be friendly. So why would we expect that a single-minded pursuit of rationality would not leave us vulnerable to misanthropic forces? Just as we would build friendliness into a perfectly logical, intelligent machine; we must build friendliness into our ideology before we let go of “intuition” and other irrational ways we have of “feeling” what is right, because they contain our humanism, which is outside rationality.

We do not want to be completely rational because being rational is neutral. Being more neutral without perfect rationality would leave us vulnerable to negative forces, and, anyway, we want to be a positive force.

Comment author: Annoyance comment score below threshold [+] (32 children)

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 01 June 2009 12:03:05AM 2 points [-]

It may come as a shock, but in my case, being rational is not my highest priority. I haven't actually come up with a proper wording for my highest priority yet, but one of my major goals in pursuing that priority is to facilitate a universal ability for people to pursue their own goals (with the normal caveats about not harming or overly interfering with other people, of course). One of the primary reasons I pursue rationality is to support that goal.

Once I realized that achieving anything, no matter what, required my being rational, I quickly bumped "being rational" to the top of my to-do list.

Yes, I see that you did that. Why would I want to do that, given my current utility function? I appear to be accomplishing things reasonably well as is, and it looks like if I made that change, I wouldn't wind up accomplishing things that my current utility function values at all.

Is it impossible to be an x-rationalist and still value people?

'People' do not lend themselves to any particular utility. The Master of the Way treats people as straw dogs.

Persuasiveness: You fail at it.

Comment author: Annoyance 01 June 2009 03:19:04PM -2 points [-]

Why would I want to do that, given my current utility function?

What's the function you use to evaluate your utility function?

Persuasiveness: You fail at it.

Persuasiveness: what I was not aiming for.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 01 June 2009 04:18:35PM * 1 point [-]

Why would I want to do that, given my current utility function?

What's the function you use to evaluate your utility function?

And what function do I use to evaluate that, and on to infinity. Right. Or, I can just accept that my core utility function is not actually rational, examine it to make sure it's something that's not actually impossible, and get on with my life.

Or does Eliezer have a truly-rational reason behind the kind of altruism that's leading him to devote his life to FAI that I'm not aware of?

Persuasiveness: You fail at it.

Persuasiveness: what I was not aiming for.

Oh, silly me for assuming that you were trying to raise the rationality level around here. It's only the entire point of the blog, after all.

So if you're not actually trying to convince me that being more rational would actually be a good thing, what's have you been doing? Self-signaling? Making pointless appeals to your own non-existent authority? Performing some bizarre experiment regarding your karma score?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 June 2009 04:50:04PM 2 points [-]

Sets of terminal values can be coherent. Logical specifications for computing terminal values can be consistent. What would it mean for one to be rational?

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 01 June 2009 05:53:40PM 2 points [-]

I have no idea.

As far as I can tell, my terminal values are not rational in the same sense that blue is not greater than three.

Comment author: Annoyance 01 June 2009 04:27:34PM -2 points [-]

Or, I can just accept that my core utility function is not actually rational,

If there's isn't a tiny grain of rationality at the core of that infinite regression, you're in great trouble.

The ability to anticipate how reality will react to something you do depends entirely on the ability to update your mental models to match data derived from reality. That's rationality right there.

If there's even a tiny spark, it can be fanned into flame. But if there's no spark there's nothing to build on. I strongly suspect that some degree of rationality is present in your utility function, but if not, your case is hopeless.

Oh, silly me for assuming that you were trying to raise the rationality level around here.

Why would I try to do that? Nothing I do can cause the rationality level to go up. Only the people here can do that. If I could 'make' people be rational, I would. But there's no spoon, there.

All I can do is point to the sky and hope that people will choose to pay less attention to the finger than what it indicates.

Comment author: conchis 01 June 2009 07:51:29PM 5 points [-]

All I can do is point to the sky and hope that people will choose to pay less attention to the finger than what it indicates.

It's usually more effective if you don't use your middle finger to do the pointing.

Comment author: MrHen 01 June 2009 04:47:21PM 1 point [-]

If there's even a tiny spark, it can be fanned into flame. But if there's no spark there's nothing to build on. I strongly suspect that some degree of rationality is present in your utility function, but if not, your case is hopeless.

Out of curiosity, can someone who does not have a grain of rationality in them ever become more rational? In other words, can someone be so far gone that they literally can never be rational?

I am honestly having trouble picturing such a person. Perhaps that is because I never thought about it that way before.

Comment author: Annoyance 01 June 2009 04:53:07PM * 1 point [-]

Out of curiosity, can someone who does not have a grain of rationality in them ever become more rational?

They may stumble across rationality as life causes their core functions to randomly vary. As far as I can tell, that's how explicit and self-referential standards of thought first arose - they seem to have occurred in societies where there were many different ideas and claims being made about everything, and people needed a way to sift through the rich bed of assertions.

So complex and mutually-incompatible cultural fluxes seem to not only be necessary to produce the first correct standards, but encourage them to be developed as well. That argument applies more to societies than individuals, but I think a similar one holds there too.

Short answer: only by chance, I think.

continue this thread »

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 June 2009 04:56:20PM 0 points [-]

You need to be more careful with problem statement, it seems too confused. For example, taboo "rational" (to distinguish irrational people from rocks), taboo "never" (to distinguish the deep properties of the phenomenon from limitations created by life span and available cultural environment).

continue this thread »

Comment author: alvarojabril 01 June 2009 05:10:57PM -2 points [-]

You've never thought about it that way before because it's completely silly. How on earth does Annoyance make these judgments? I'm not nearly prideful enough to think I can know others' minds to the extent Annoyance can, or, in other words, I imagine there are circumstances which could change most people in profound ways, both for ill and good. So the only thing judging people in this manner does is reinforce one's social prejudices. Writing off people who seem resistant to reason only encourages their ignorance, and remedying their condition is both an exercise and example of reason's power, which, incidentally, is why I'm trying so hard with Annoyance!

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 01 June 2009 04:48:58PM 0 points [-]

If there's isn't a tiny grain of rationality at the core of that infinite regression, you're in great trouble.

You did catch that I'm talking about a terminal value, right? It's the nature of those that you want them because you want them, not because they lead to something else that you want. I want everybody to be happy. That's a terminal value. If you ask me why I want that, I'm going to have some serious trouble answering, because there is no answer. I just want it, and there's nothing that I know of that I want more, or that I would consider a good reason to give up that goal.

All I can do is point to the sky and hope that people will choose to pay less attention to the finger than what it indicates.

Right now, it's pointing at "don't make this mistake", which I was unlikely to do anyway, but now I have the opportunity to point the mistake out to you, so you can (if you choose to; I can't force you) stop making it, which would raise the rationality around here, which seems like a good thing to me. Or, I can not point it out, and you keep doing what you're doing. It's like one of those lottery problems, and I concluded that the chance of one or both of us becoming more rational was worth the cost of having this discussion. (And, it paid off at least somewhat - I think I have enough insight into that particular mistake to be able to avoid it without avoiding the situation entirely, now.)

Comment author: Cyan 01 June 2009 06:41:05PM 0 points [-]

What are you aiming for?

Comment author: StanR 01 June 2009 02:08:47AM * 1 point [-]

Once I realized that achieving anything, no matter what, required my being rational, I quickly bumped "being rational" to the top of my to-do list.

Voted down because your realization is flawed. Achieving anything does not require you to be rational, as evidenced by this post.

The Master of the Way treats people as straw dogs.

Your strategy of dealing with people is also flawed: does the Master of the Way always defect? If you were a skilled exploiter, you wouldn't give obvious signals that you are an exploiter. Instead, you seem to be signaling "Vote me off the island!" to society, and this community. You may want to reconsider that position.

Comment author: Annoyance 01 June 2009 03:18:09PM -1 points [-]

Voted down because your realization is flawed. Achieving anything does not require you to be rational, as evidenced by this post.

Wanting to accomplish thing X, and being able to expect it to occur as a result of actions I take, requires rationality.

Your objection is incorrect.

Your strategy of dealing with people is also flawed:

Your understanding of my strategy is incorrect, as evidenced by your question.

Comment author: alvarojabril 01 June 2009 07:18:31PM 1 point [-]

Could you elucidate what you intend with this gem?

"The Master of the Way treats people as straw dogs."

Comment author: Cyan 01 June 2009 07:59:18PM * 0 points [-]

It's from the Tao Te Ching:

"Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; the sage is ruthless, and treats the people as straw dogs."

One might accuse this of falling afoul of the appeal to nature, but that would assume a fact not in evidence, to wit, that Annoyance's motivations resemble that of a typical LW poster (to the extent that such a beast exists).

Comment author: saturn 01 June 2009 07:55:51AM * 0 points [-]

If we assume he has goals other than simply being a self-abasing misanthrope, the attitude Annoyance is showing is far from rational. Arbitrarily defining the vast majority of humans as useless "problems" is, ironically, itself a useless and problematic belief, and it represents an even more fundamental failure than being Spocklike -- Spock, at least, does not repeatedly shoot himself in the foot and then seek to blame anything but himself.

Comment author: Annoyance comment score below threshold [+] (6 children)

Comment author: saturn 01 June 2009 09:15:53PM 2 points [-]

If your actions accomplish your goals, fine. However, it's safe to say most of the people here don't want to be Annoyances, and it's important to point out that your behavior does not reflect a requirement or implication of rationality.

If you disagree, I hope you will explicitly list the assumptions leading to your belief that it's a good idea to treat people with condescension.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 June 2009 04:51:49PM 0 points [-]

The rational thing to do when confronted with a position you don't understand is ask yourself "Why did that person adopt that position?"

This is of low value, if the answer doesn't come easily.

Comment author: Annoyance 01 June 2009 05:03:50PM -1 points [-]

Easy answers are rarely worthwhile. Worthwhile questions are rarely answered easily.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 June 2009 05:14:53PM * 0 points [-]

The rational thing to do when confronted with a position you don't understand is ask yourself "Why did that person adopt that position?"

[...]

Worthwhile questions are rarely answered easily.

Search for an answer requires the question to be worthwhile, which is far from prior expectation for the research of inane-sounding positions people hold.

Comment author: pjeby 01 June 2009 05:21:37PM 0 points [-]

Search for an answer requires the question to be worthwhile, which is far from prior expectation for inane-sounding positions.

If you want to convince someone of something, it's generally a good idea to understand why they believe what they believe now. People generally have to be convinced out of one belief before they can be convinced into another, and you can't refute or reframe their evidence unless you know what the evidence is.

Even if their reasoning is epistemologically unsound, if you know how it's unsound, you can utilize the same type of reasoning to change their belief. For example, if someone only believes things they "see with their own eyes", you would then know it is a waste of time to try to prove something to them mathematically.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 June 2009 05:28:27PM * 0 points [-]

I agree, but in this case the benefit comes not from the expectation of finding insight in the person's position, but from the expectation of successful communication (education), which was not the motivation referred in Annoyance's comment.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 01 June 2009 04:27:17PM 0 points [-]

I've pretty much figured that out. If nothing else, Annoyance is being an excellent example of that right now.

Next question: Is it something about this method of approaching rationality that encourages that failure mode? How did Annoyance fall off the path, and can I avoid doing the same if I proceed?

I'm starting to think that the answer to that last question is yes, though.

Comment author: MrHen 01 June 2009 04:43:35PM 2 points [-]

How did Annoyance fall off the path, and can I avoid doing the same if I proceed?

While I find conversations with Annoyance rather void, I would encourage you to not try and lift (him ?) up as an example of falling off the path or entering failure modes. If you care about the question I would make a post using generic examples. This does a few things:

Gets you away from any emotional responses to Annoyance (both in yourself and anyone else).
Provides a clear-cut example that can be picked apart without making this entire thread required reading. It also cleans up many straw men and red herrings before they happen, since the specifics in the thread are mostly unneeded with relation to the question you have just asked.
Brings attention to the core problem that needs to be addressed and avoids any specific diagnoses of Annoyance (for better or worse)

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 01 June 2009 05:49:21PM 0 points [-]

That's very good advice. However, I'm not going to take it today, and probably won't at all. It seems more useful at this point to take a break from this entirely and give myself a chance to sort out the information I've already gained.

I'll definitely be interested in looking at it, in a few days, if someone else wants to come up with that example and continue thinking about it here.

Comment author: MrHen 01 June 2009 06:00:18PM 0 points [-]

I would agree.

I'll definitely be interested in looking at it, in a few days, if someone else wants to come up with that example and continue thinking about it here.

I pass. The discussion of that topic would be interesting to me but writing the article is not. I have too many partial articles as it is... :P

Comment author: alvarojabril 31 May 2009 05:39:35PM 3 points [-]

Annoyance, you're still dodging the question. Joe didn't ask whether or not in your opinion everyone is a useless prole, he asked why it's useful to make people feel like that. Your notion that "social cohesion is the enemy of rationality" was best debunked, I think by pjeby's point here:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/za/a_social_norm_against_unjustified_opinions/rrk

more flies with honey and all that.

Comment author: Annoyance 31 May 2009 11:34:16PM -2 points [-]

I don't want to catch flies.

Comment author: alvarojabril 01 June 2009 05:03:07PM 2 points [-]

Annoyance, your argument has devolved into inanity. If you don't want to popularly cultivate rationality then you disagree with one of the core tenets of this community. It's in the second paragraph of the "about" page:

"Less Wrong is devoted to refining the art of human rationality - the art of thinking. The new math and science deserves to be applied to our daily lives, and heard in our public voices."

Your circular word games do no good for this community.

Annoyance comments on A social norm against unjustified opinions? - Less Wrong

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