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It seems like Proverbs has a lot of important content for gaining rationality, perhaps it should be added to our reading lists
I highly recommend Robert Alter's translation in "The Wisdom Books," if you're interested in reading it.
In response to
Rationality Quotes August 2013
What the Great Learning teaches is: to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.
The point where to rest being known, the object of pursuit is then determined; and, that being determined, a calm unperturbedness may be attained to.
To that calmness there will succeed a tranquil repose. In that repose there may be careful deliberation, and that deliberation will be followed by the attainment of the desired end.
The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the world, first ordered well their own States.
Wishing to order well their States, they first regulated their families.
Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.
Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts.
Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts.
Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost of their knowledge.
Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Things being investigated, knowledge became complete.
Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere.
Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified.
Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated.
Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated.
Their families being regulated, their States were rightly governed.
Their States being rightly governed, the entire world was at peace.
From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.
It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered.
It never has been the case that what was of great importance has been slightly cared for, and, at the same time, that what was of slight importance has been greatly cared for.
-The Great Learning, one of the Four Books and Five Classics of Confucian thought.
This could probably be empirically tested, to see if it is true and would work as a technique. I can imagine a test where someone is promised candy, and anticipates it while acting to fulfill a task, and then is rewarded instead with a dollar.
That is not the same thing as the quote. Empirically testing your candy and dollars reward switch would tell us next to nothing about the typical efficacy of the dubious self deception of the miser.
You are telling me I am wrong, but it is not helpful to me unless you explain why I am wrong.
I thought it made sense. As far as I could tell, the original parable has a miser with two desires: the desire for delicious booze and the desire to save money. The latter desire is by far the more important one to him, so he "fools" his desire for booze by promising himself a booze reward, and then reneging on himself each time. In my interpretation, this still results in an overall positive effect for self-discipline, because the happiness of saving money is so much more important to the miser than the disappointment of missing the booze reward.
The truth of whether this would actually work could be seen in an experiment. I tried to think of one with two rewards that satisfy different desires, and tried to think of a way to slightly disappoint the desire for sugar while strongly rewarding the impulse for money, after the completion of the task. Maybe I should specify that people should be hungry before the task, and tested in the future when they are hungry, to see if they are still willing to complete the task?
I don't understand this rationality quote. Is it about fighting akrasia? Self-hacking to effectively saving money? It clearly describes a method that wouldn't actually work, and it could work as humour, but what does it mean as a rationality tale?
It could be used as an effective "How to create an Ugh Field and undermine all future self-discipline attempts" instruction manual. It isn't a rationality tale. It is confusing that 40 people evidently consider it to be one. (But only a little bit confusing. I usually expect non-rationalist quotes that would be accepted as jokes or inspirational quotes elsewhere to get around 10 upvotes in this thread regardless of merit. That means I'm surprised about the degree of positive reception.)
I don't think you are correct.
The miser knows each time he will not get the reward, and that he will save on food and drink. That is the real reward, and the rest is a kabuki play he puts on for less-important impulses, to temporarily allow him to restrain them in service of his larger goal. The end pleasure of savings will provide strong positive reinforcement.
This could probably be empirically tested, to see if it is true and would work as a technique. I can imagine a test where someone is promised candy, and anticipates it while acting to fulfill a task, and then is rewarded instead with a dollar. Do they learn disappointment, or does the greater pleasure of money outweigh the candy? This is predicated on the idea that they would prefer the money, of course - you would need to tinker with amounts before the experiment might give useful results.
In response to
Why Eat Less Meat?
I've been eating less meat lately for a reason that has nothing directly to do with animal suffering. Rather I have been experimenting with a lifestyle of nutrient powders, aka DIY Soylent, to substitute for meals. The recipe I settled on happened to be vegan, since it uses soy powder as the main protein source. One could substitute whey (the main Soylent is whey based) or meat based protein, however I am thus far happy with the taste and effects of the soy version.
Anyway, I don't know how widely this practice is likely to spread. It makes remarkable sense to me, and people like me, but perhaps not to the majority. I am attracted to novelty to an above-average degree, and not particularly attached to eating (as long as I can be full/satisfied). The idea that humans can live (not just live, but thrive) on a bit of powder, oil, and water, is somehow fascinating and thrilling -- more so than the idea of surviving on lettuce and veggie burgers, which sounds like more of a boring halfway solution. The reports of less sleep / more energy / better cognition (which seem true to my experience so far) also caught my attention -- perhaps for the same reasons that transhumanism seems like a good idea.
So maybe when advertising veganism to transhumanists specifically, Soylent / quantified self / powder based diet is a good pitch. Market it as "cyborg food" or something. Yes, animals suffering is bad, we get that... But if we focus on animals suffering, what happens? Lab research gets subjected to a bunch of new regs that slow things down, while the food factories in their arrogance keep cranking away and making us look like idiots. The economics are strongly in favor of the meat industry continuing for as long as people remain attached to their meat products, ensuring that they are the last to go despite doing more harm and less good than labs. And as a transhumanist, I really want the labs to succeed -- at least on the important life extension related stuff.
This seems rather a separate issue, especially since you admit that your choice of "cyborg food" only happened to be vegan. You're an accidental vegan. Next week, you might discover that a powder made from lamb faces had more bio-available iron, and that'd be the end of that.
Unrelated: The Accidental Vegan also sounds like the most boring movie imaginable.
I'm interested! I became a vegetarian about 4 months ago, shortly after I started doing my own cooking. My abilities are basically limited to pasta, salads, mushrooms in sandwiches or tortilla wraps, and lots more pasta. To learn recipes, Youtube videos were my main sources. I just haven't gotten around to searching for vegetarian specific foods. What are some more options out there?
Tofu is a good choice, and can be used in many ways. One secret to tofu is to pay attention to the amount of water in the tofu, as that seriously changes the way it tastes, feels, and acts in dishes. For example, when you are making a stew with tofu, such as the spicy and delicious Korean soup kimchi jiggae, you probably want to choose silken tofu, which is soft and will interact well with the rich broth. But if you are making something like McFoo, a tofu sandwich where you marinate the tofu in select spices until it tastes like junk food, then you want a firm and chewy tofu. You can achieve the latter by pressing your tofu for an hour (there are special things to do this, but a towel, cutting boards, and a brick does just fine). You can make it even firmer and more textured by freezing it first, so most of my tofu goes right into the freezer until I need it.
There are also a few veg-specific things that you almost certainly have never had, such as TVP: textured vegetable protein. Despite the unappetizing sci-fi name, it's actually an amazing thing to include in your diet. The trick to learning to love and use it is not to make the sad mistake of just pretending it's meat. Most fake meat things don't taste anything like meat, but instead have a rank and lingering chemical taste and overwhelming profile of salt and sugar, as they try to mimic what you might have liked about meat. TVP and other decent meat substitutes are different, and they just taste good without trying to taste like meat. So TVP chili is hearty and rich and has a great mouthfeel, giving you that chewiness and resistance that's part of what makes meat good, but it doesn't try to ape meat.
Other things you can make: veggie shepherd's pie (lentils and veggies for the filling), pumpkin mac and cheese (add shredded pumpkin when making mac and cheese; if you use a sharp cheese the tastes blend amazingly), filo-wrapped spinach and veggies (you can buy prepared filo dough), loaded baked potatoes, pizza, calzones, quiches, grilled cheese and chard sandwiches, and lots of variations on curries and stews and things.
In response to
Just One Sentence
"Most diseases are caused by tiny little mindless creatures the reproduce and spread quickly and live in sick people's bodies, and quite a few of them can be killed be a certain mold that you can grow on bread."
Hmm, how many "and's" can I put in this one sentence? This reminds me of a competition for extra credit in one of my CS classes to write a C++ program in "as few statements as possible," where I took the obvious algorithm, completely unrolled the loop, and used logical connectives to stick every statement together into one. I skipped class the day the winner was announced, and the teacher later said he changed the rules and let the class vote for a winner, which wasn't me.
I like to think about initial application of this sentence.
"How old is this bread? A week? You fool! Look at how sick he is! Get some two-week bread immediately, and feed it to him as fast as you can! NO TIME FOR CHEWING."
Just as a datapoint, though I expect my reaction is not atypical: I consider myself something of an insider — I have been to several meetups and I comment on LW regularly — and this seems cultish to me. I have to agree that, pretty inevitably, outsiders would see this kind of ritual as cultish. We would do well to understand the complexities involved.
It does sound like fun, though.
As a newcomer who has never been to a meetup - an outsider - I assure you that you are right. It seems surprisingly cultish. I say "surprisingly" because I would never have imagined that LWers would attempt to ape religion and chain awe at the numinous to a specific set of rituals. I suppose in retrospect there is ample precedent, because certainly the Twelve Virtues and the litanies are pseudo-religious (presumably to lend them gravity), but... yipes!
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That only tells you that if you just rely on the scientific method, it won't result in only benevolent knowledge. You could use another method to filter for benevolence.
That would be wonderful, world-changing, and unlikely. I hope but do not expect to see it happen.