Group rationality diary, 7/9/12

cata

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of July 9th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit
Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to everyone who contributes!

Academian put up a wiki page with links to the prior May and June threads for reference. Good idea, thanks!

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of July 9th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit
Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
Tried doing any of the above and failed

Thanks to everyone who contributes!

Academian put up a wiki page with links to the prior May and June threads for reference. Good idea, thanks!

I realized the importance of dress when I noticed how much more I respected a man because he was wearing a suit.

We can try to pretend like that stuff doesn't matter, but it does.

I spent today reading Dyson's Turing's Cathedral. One point he made in passing a number of times, but which I had generally ignored, was that the socialite Von Neumann almost always wore a suit. I also learned he managed to marry an heiress before correctly cutting all ties with Europe well before 1939, and Dyson seems to imply he arranged for no patents to be taken out on his computer work due to his hefty consulting contracts with IBM.

Epistemic & instrumental rationality: Von Neumann has it.

(Except for his wife reporting that he was superstitious abo... (read more)

1duckduckMOO14y

his point is that it shouldn't matter not that it doesn't matter. Did you until that moment think other people didn't do that sort of thing because you hadn't noticed yourself doing it? Not that you thought that sort of thing is unfair or silly? In which case it kind of sounds like you suddenly upped your estimate of the rewards of conforming to the shitty standard (due to what could be an unusually high tendency to respect people based on their clothing) and decided to call your abandoning the principle "not pretending that stuff doesn't matter." Now obviously I think this is a shitty way to be and I'm not going to expand on why but what is simply false is the idea that people who dissaprove of the practice of wearing e.g. suits to impress are pretending stuff like that doesn't matter. I'm completing the pattern here: I'm not sure if that's what you meant. But other people might read it like that and a lot of people would use those words to express that sentiment and I really don't like that sentiment. Hence the comment. There probably are people who pretend stuff like that doesn't matter but i assume it would have to be just as a soldier argument against people judging people for wearing businessman (or other) costumes or respecting others for doing so. Because, obviously it does matter, right? People discuss these kinds of judgements openly and without shame to the point of internalisation. The only other way that comes immediately to mind to not think it mattered would be to not come across people like that in positions of power (edit: over you) which I'm pretty sure is really rare. same-edit: but in any case they could notice that this effected other people.

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