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handoflixue comments on Rationality, Transhumanism, and Mental Health - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: ialdabaoth 14 October 2012 09:11AM

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Comment author: handoflixue 15 October 2012 09:18:29PM 2 points [-]

a pack-identification ritual, which I did not respond to correctly?

Going out on a limb here: Yes, correct. I would have failed it too, and I've been here for a year. People here tend not to care if you fail their pack-identification rituals, and will actually get a bit annoyed if you start trying to optimize for that.

In other words, it's not important that it's a pack-identification ritual.

(Disclaimer: There are packs that care a lot about rituals. My general philosophy is to avoid all such packs, because I suck at such rituals. I like LessWrong because even when people downvote me and otherwise disapprove of me, I've never had the sensation that the pack is trying to ostracize me or punish me for failure-to-observe-pack-rituals)

Comment author: ialdabaoth 15 October 2012 10:41:57PM 1 point [-]

On this site, there are discussions about believing-in-belief, and how to purge it when you are merely "aping the belief" in something wrong, like religion.

I want to believe that there are packs that do not care about rituals, but I cannot formulate an actual belief that this is true; only a "belief-in-belief" that it is true.

How does one modify the process of purging "belief-in-belief"s that happen to actually correspond to reality? Because it seems that getting the right answer for the wrong reason is just as bad as being wrong.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 03 November 2012 04:10:27PM 0 points [-]

What do you mean by "ritual"?