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Hul-Gil comments on Tendencies in reflective equilibrium - LessWrong
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Comments (69)
I wonder how many $5 transfers I would get if I actually tried this sort of mugging on LessWrong. Physical proximity isn't required, after all. Would you, or anyone, actually Paypal me $5 if I made the zillion-units threat? Or is this a case of intellectual acceptance, emotional reluctance?
Please don't do this. We don't want to drive people who take their beliefs seriously away from the site.
I don't mind if he does. It will encourage those who have silly beliefs to think them through a bit more clearly.
Mind you I would advise against making the threat. Because the rational response to threats is not necessarily compliance.
You think that would drive people away from the site? You and wedrifid seem to take this astonishingly seriously. I thought it was clear I was merely musing about whether or not people really accepted Alexei's conclusion. The mugging's already been done by someone else, apparently, in any case; and I wasn't saying I'd do it, only that I wondered if people (Alexei) really believed paying up was the most rational response. See his edit, which makes it a moot point.
I think your 'seriousness' evaluator is somewhat broken. It is generally frowned upon to make try his kind of thing explicit even when hypothetical but try to imagine the kind of actions I would take if I thought you actually represented a zillion-unit threat. Hint: they do not include blog comments.
I don't understand the first sentence. Are you saying you were just being facetious in your advice?
Unless you were, I think my seriousness evaluation is just fine. Your responses may not be serious compared to, say, an actual zillion-unit threat-response, but I am surprised that you'd bring up the possibility of the latter at all. I understood your advisory quite well; what was somewhat astonishing was that you apparently felt someone on LessWrong might take a fanciful version of a fanciful thought experiment seriously enough to engage in a "non-blog-comment rational response"! (!)
It was also surprising to see that endoself felt people would be bothered enough by a Pascal's Mugging to leave the site. These on top of the fact that I had no intention of actually posting a mugging, and meant my post to be a mere musing ("I wonder if ... Would anyone") on intellectual vs actual acceptance.
It is I who do not take this seriously enough, it appears! Though I myself have no intent to actually attempt said mugging, as stated before, I will point out that according to CarlShulman, user TimFreeman has already done so, and no shitstorm ensued... AFAIK.
None, the last time this was done by TimFreeman. And there's no plausible set of assumptions under which paying the $5 is better than alternative uses of the money. See the comment linked to above.
Ah, someone beat me to it, I see. Not a single transfer, eh?
I agree re: the advisability of paying up; Alexei's comment led me to believe he thought the opposite, but I see from his edit he agrees too.