= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
pjeby comments on A social norm against unjustified opinions? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (158)
The piece you may have missed is that even if the situation can be changed, it is still sufficient to use a positive reinforcement to motivate action, and in human beings, it is generally most useful to use positive reinforcement to motivate positive action.
This is because, on the human platform at least, positive reinforcement leads to exploratory, creative, and risk-taking behaviors, whereas negative reinforcement leads to defensive, risk-avoidance, and passive behaviors. So if the best way to change a situation is to avoid it, then by all means, use negative reinforcement.
However, if the best way to change the situation is to engage with it, then negative emotions and "shoulds" are your enemy, not your friend, as they will cause your mind and body to suggest less-useful behaviors (and signals to others).
IAWYC, modulo the use of "should": at least with connotations assumed on Less Wrong, it isn't associated with compulsion or emotional load, it merely denotes preference. "Ought" would be closer.
It's true that in technical contexts "should" has less emotional connotation; however even in say, standards documents, one capitalizes SHOULD and MUST to highlight the technical, rather than colloquial sense of these words. Banishing them from one's personal vocabulary greatly reduces suffering, and is the central theme of "The Work" of Byron Katie (who teaches a simple 4-question model for turning "shoulds" into facts and felt-preferences).
Among a community of rationalists striving for better communication, it would be helpful to either taboo the words or create alternatives. As it is, a lot of "shoulds" get thrown around here without reference to what goal or preference the shoulds are supposed to serve.
"One should X" conveys no information about what positive or negative consequences are being asserted to stem from doing or not-doing X -- and that's precisely the sort of information that we would like to have if we are to understand each other.
Agreed. Even innocuous-looking exceptions, like phrases of the form, "if your goal is to X, then you should Y", have to make not-necessarily-obvious assumptions about what exactly Y is optimizing.
Avoiding existing words is in many cases a counterproductive injunction, it's a normal practice when words get stolen for terms of art. Should refers to a sum total of ideal preference, the top level terminal goal, over all of the details (consequences) together.
Should may require a consequentialist explanation for instrumental actions, or a moral argument for preference over consequences.
Agreed. This is one of the major themes of some (most?) meditation practices and seems to be one of the most useful.