Open Thread, March 16-31, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

The rudeness wouldn't help with the downvotes, I can understand that.

But the factor that I was pointing out, and the common factor for my grouping them together was the lack of being able to say "oops". I am sorry, I didn't make it very clear. Thus why I listed the assholes with nice people.

MrHen left LessWrong believing in a God, and Mitchell_Porter (as far as I can tell) still believes dualism needs to be true if colour exists (or whatever his argument was, I'm embarrasing myself by trying to simplify it when I had a poor understanding of what he was trying to say). They were/are also great rationalists apart from that, and they both make sure to be very humble in general while on the site.

The other 3 were often rude, but the main reason I pointed them out was their lack of ability to say "oops" when their rational failings were pointed out to them. Unlike the other two, these 2 them proceeded to act very douchey until friven from the site, but their first posts are much less abrasive and rude.

In general though, if they aren't going to work out they are wrong at LessWrong, where are they going to?

Some of these people may work it out with time, and it may be unreasonable to expect them to change their mind straight away.

But this should show at least how difficult it is for an irrational person to attempt to become more rational; it's like having to know the rules to play the rules.

What does it take to commit to wanting rationality from a beginning of irrationality?

These examples show the existence of people on LessWrong who aren't rational, and while that isn't a surprise, I feel like the Lesswrong community should be perhaps learn from the failings of some of these people, in order to better react to situations like this in the future, or something. I don't know.

In any case, thank you for replying.

Mitchell_Porter (as far as I can tell) still believes dualism needs to be true if colour exists (or whatever his argument was, I'm embarrasing myself by trying to simplify it when I had a poor understanding of what he was trying to say)

The argument is that for dualism not to be true, we need a new ontology of fundamental quantum monads that no-one else quite gets. :-) My Chalmers-like conclusion that the standard computational theory of mind implies dualism, is an argument against the standard theory.

3GLaDOS14y

Compartmentalization. Bold statment that somehow still seems true: Most LessWrongers probably have a belief of comparable wrongness. MrHen is just unlucky.

0TheOtherDave14y

Deciding that being less wrong than I am now is valuable, realizing that doing what I've been doing all along is unlikely to get me there, and being willing to give up familiar habits in exchange for alternatives that seem more likely to get me there. These are independently fairly rare and the intersection of them is still more so. This doesn't get me to wanting "rationality" per se (let alone to endorsing any specific collection of techniques, assumptions, etc., still less to the specific collection that is most popular on this site), it just gets me looking for some set of tools that is more reliable than the tools I have. I've always understood the initial purpose of LW to be to present a specific collection of tools such that someone who has already decided to look can more easily settle on that specific collection (which, of course, is endorsed by the site founder as particularly useful), at-least-ostensibly in the hope that some of them will subsequently build on it and improve it. Getting someone who isn't looking to start looking is a whole different problem, and more difficult on multiple levels (practical, ethical, etc.).