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Apprentice comments on Open Thread: June 2009 - Less Wrong
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Comments (142)
Thank you, this sounds like very good advice for how to lead someone down the path.
But given that she is reluctant to go down the path, do I want to lead her down it? She already believes that I can defend my views better than she can her's. She probably even believes that my views are closer to the truth.
My guess is that she is reluctant to discuss and evaluate the fundamental facts of existence and our values, precisely because she cherishes certain aspects of her current worldview that she correctly believes she is likely to lose. I think its plausible that she'll end up less happy, and maybe less productive, after hearing about the preference utilitarianism and the opportunity cost of spending $80 to have flowers delivered to a friend (note: I'd never try to stop her from doing it, I'd just like to explain why I'm not going to) or after explaining why the idea that people have souls is incoherent (note: I would never say something that strongly. As you suggest I'd want to build up to it slowly, by asking questions and letting the conclusions fall out of the discussion.)
Religious people report being happier. By many measures they also do more "good works." I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true of deontologists vs. consequentialists.
Do I really have reason to believe she'll benefit from serious detailed discussion of our respective worldviews?
I'd be curious to know what sort of power dynamic you have. My spouse believes I am more rational and intelligent than s/he is - but s/he's still the one who makes the decisions. I advise - my spouse decides. We both like it that way and we've had a successful and happy relationship for more than a decade. Now that I think about it, this is reminiscent of Eliezer's "Three Worlds Collide". You want to keep the rationalist cultists around - but you don't want them in charge :p
In "Three Worlds Collide", the rational one does have the power to override if necessary, which I think is very important. If you cant agree, you're doing it wrong- but it still happens occasionally. You'll get better results if you defer to the person that is more rational under those circumstances.
In general, it seems like the right policy is to let whomever has harder to communicate data decide. This way, the decision maker is as informed as possible.
Actually, in 3WC the Confessor is supposed to be strictly charged with sedating people who depart the bounds of sanity. He goes outside this bound, which is completely against all the rules, and afterward he can no longer be called a Confessor.
I don't know about the rest of the audience, but I'd really appreciate a worldbuilding writeup, or maybe even just a glossary, explaining the cultural/technological backdrop of 3WC in more detail than the story provides.
There are some worlds for which I have devised huge cultural, technological, and historical backdrops but this is not one of them.
I was referring to the part where the president went crazy and her confessor sedated her "and recommend to the government that they carry out the evacuation without asking further questions of your ship".
If that doesn't count as the "power to override if necessary", then I'm missing a distinction somewhere.
Well, part of the point there was that their President would have been universally recognized by her own society as crazy, at that point, just as if she'd said she was hearing voices from her teapot. In contrast to say our own society where this would be considered perfectly normal madness in a politician. The reason her Confessor then needs to advise the government is that her Confessor was the only one to listen to an extremely classified conversation; in other words she has private info which she must summarize/convey somehow to the government.
Thank you very much for this data point.