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Konkvistador comments on [LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist - Less Wrong Discussion

21 Post author: Apprentice 06 January 2014 12:16AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 06 January 2014 08:00:47AM *  34 points [-]

I like Less Wrong-- there are courtesy rules here which keep it from going wrong in ways which are common in SJ circles. People get credit for learning rather than being expected to get everything right, and it's at least somewhat unusual to attack people for having bad motivations.

This being said, there are squicky features here, and I'm not just talking about claims that women are different from men-- oddly enough, it generally (always?) seems to be to women's disadvantage, even though there's some evidence that women are more trustworthy at running banks and investment funds.

I tolerate posts like this, but LW would seem like a friendlier place (to me) and possibly even be more rational if articles about gender issues would take utility for men and women equally seriously.

Reactionaries had something of a home here-- less so after the formation of More Right, I think. I haven't seen evidence of anything especially extreme on the egalitarian side, though there might be as good a rationalist case to be made for thorough reparations. Now that I think about it, I haven't even seen a case made for strong economic support for intelligent poor children.

Trolley problems..... I keep getting an impression that the point is that people don't have enough inhibitions against killing for the greater good. (By the way, how easy do you think it would be to move an unwilling person who weighs a good bit more than you do?)

And torture seems to be taken too lightly. It's a real world problem, not just a token to be passed around in arguments.

What the original post made me realize is that what I consider most certain to be valuable at LW is the instrumental rationality material, and it would be a good thing for there to also be an online site for instrumental rationality without the "let's do low-empathy discussions to prove how rational we are" angle.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 January 2014 07:16:00AM *  6 points [-]

Now that I think about it, I haven't even seen a case made for strong economic support for intelligent poor children.

Does there need to be a case made for that? This seems like one of the earliest identified reasons for redistributing wealth. You had people and organizations sponsoring poor talented youth and this being considered virtuous since ancient Greece. And the reform of education and welfare in the 19th and 20th century often emphasized this example, thought they may not have always done much about it.

In Slovenia at least we have scholarships handed out to people who preform very well on aptitude tests, is this something that doesn't happen as reliably in the US?

Comment author: jaime2000 14 January 2014 01:38:47PM *  3 points [-]

In Slovenia at least we have scholarships handed out to people who preform very well on aptitude tests, is this something that doesn't happen as reliably in the US?

Several states have merit-based scholarships (though these usually require performance in classes as well as aptitude tests, so there is a conscientiousness element as well as an intelligence element). I myself am going to university on a Bright Future scholarship. However, my impression is that federal need-based aid is a lot more common than state merit-based aid.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 January 2014 03:20:36PM 2 points [-]

I know smart Americans who grew up very poor, and don't seem to have received a lot of help.