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Do you or would you secretly invade your child's privacy for their own protection?
In response to
Open thread, Dec. 1 - Dec. 7, 2014
Yes, I would.
(Have two small children, haven't needed to).
I don't see why this was modded down. Saying that someone should stop posting things that you disagree with, because it is bad for their health, when you are very transparently motivated to not want them to post things you disagree with because you don't like seeing things you disagree with, is a prime example of motivated reasoning. It's not as if you have made a general policy of giving XiXiDu advice on his health.
About the only way that this could have been any clearer an example would have been if you said "You should give me your car, because giving me your car is good for your health".
I didn't downvote you, but you're wrong. I don't particularly want XiXiDu to go away, and I haven't felt offended by his posts. It's simply an option that he should consider, given his description of his health problems. If I wanted him to leave, I would have urged him to leave, not suggested that he consider the option.
In response to
Breaking the vicious cycle
There's no "fight". You've been a very aggressive and mean-spirited critic of LW/MIRI/EY for a few years. Doesn't mean that there's a fight. Doesn't mean anyone "wins" if, say, you shut up and go away.
Your suggestion is not constructive, because coming up with retorts to mean-spirited past posts and endorsing them would be a poor use of MIRI's time, and would only add to drama rather than reduce it. Here's what you should do instead:
First, consider just going away. It may be best for your physical and mental health to stay away from LW and LW-related topics. Delete your old posts, forget you ever cared about this stuff, take up some other hobbies, etc. If you feel you can't, presumably because you think these issues are really important, read on.
Come up with a generously-sized kindly-worded update that negates the meanness and stick it on top of your relevant past posts. E.g. if I were in your position I would write something like "I wrote the post below during years in which, I now recognize, I was locked in a venom-filled flamewar against a community which I actually like and appreciate, despite what I perceive as its faults. I do not automatically repudiate my arguments and factual points, but if you read the below, please note that I regret the venom and the personal attacks and that I may well have quote-mined and misrepresented persons and communities. I now wish I wrote it all in a kinder spirit".
Continue participating on LW as you desire, trying your best to be kind and not get into drama. Plenty of people manage to be skeptical of MIRI/EY and criticize them here without being you. (If you're not sure you can do this well, ask some regular(s) to help you out. Precommit that if people you asked PM you about your future LW comment or blog post saying you're being an asshole, you'll believe them and mend it.)
Accept that some people will continue to hate/dislike/hold a grudge against you. Issue private apologies to them if you feel you should, but don't do it publicly (because drama). If that doesn't help, accept and move on.
Meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup: Brains and Biology
Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup: Brains and Biology
We're going to have a meetup on Thursday, October 23rd at Google Israel's offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., Tel Aviv.
We will have a two-part talk on brains and biology.
In the first part, Dan will talk about the biology behind brain plasticity. In the second part, Liran will follow up with existing brain-machine interfaces.
And then there's free discussion. The audience takes it away to wherever they (we) like.
We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building at 19:00. If you arrive and can't find your way around, call Anatoly who's hosting us at 054-245-1060. Email at avorobey@gmail.com also works.
See you there!
Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup: Brains and Biology
Do you have evidence that it is or is not inherent? For evidence of gayness being inborn there is the digit ratio where if you scroll down to sexual orientation you'll see that lesbians have a lower average digit ratio. This has been suggested to be affected by androgens like testosterone while in the uterus. This is evidence that sexuality is inborn. If true the obvious parallel is that a person can no more change their sexuality than choose to have one finger grow more than the other.
Edit: Having just looked around, It seems there is a long list of differences between homosexual and heterosexual humans. This is very strong evidence that people are born with their sexuality.
Edit 2: is that a downvote for going to close to the realms of politics? I'm still getting used to the conventions around here
The list you mention is not very strong evidence that "people are born with their sexuality". It's a list of correlations of varying quality and effect size that is subject to strong publication bias. More importantly, all of these correlations are perfectly compatible with the possibility that genetic/prenatal factors only partially influence one's sexual orientation rather than completely determine it.
Please read the section on twin studies that opens the Wiki page you referenced. The epidemiological twin studies are probably the strongest evidence we currently have, and they suggest that genetic factors play a role but do not determine sexual orientation.
What do you think that something is that they feel?
Why do you think such a meme would spread or originate, if not due to its truth value?
Probably a lot of different things, for example: revulsion at some of the traditional gender roles and behaviors. Negative emotions about their sexual organs. Intense erotic pleasure while imagining themselves the opposite sex. Anxiety due to not feeling what they think the person of their sex is supposed to feel.
Why do you think such a meme would spread or originate, if not due to its truth value?
Memes that provide an explanation of one's behavior in terms of one's identity are insanely powerful. They spread because they lead you from from "I don't understand why I'm like this" to "I understand why I'm like this", and the latter feeling is something we all lust for.
The truth value is not especially important to the initial spread of an attractive identity-meme. Consider that "people are born gay" is almost a dogma in the LGBT community and liberal circles, although the available scientific understanding sharply contradicts it. Or recall that the 19th century saw a very potent meme in which gay people self-identified as "the third sex", "a female psyche in a male body". It seems that many gay people in the 19th century really felt very strongly that they have a "female psyche" or a "female soul", similarly to how today many biological-X transgender people feel very strongly that they have a "non-X brain".
In response to
What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong?
Transgender people are fundamentally delusional.
This was mostly typical mind fallacy, supported by an argument that rested on an availability heuristic problem, which was this: I'm aware of no record of trans people historically, so the phenomenon was not present; therefore, the prior on being born into a male/female body is overwhelmingly that you are a man/woman (respectively), and you need an enormous amount of evidence to overcome the prior. (This isn't how I would have formulated it at the time; I wasn't familiar with Bayesian terminology and had only intermittently read the sequences, and that in small, scattered chunks.)
Hmm, "delusional" is a bit underspecified.
How about "There's no solid evidence for a gender bit in the brain. While many or most transgender people feel something, explaining that feeling as "I'm an X brain trapped in a non-X body" is essentially a memetic phenomenon. Additionally, genderqueer and non-binary persons are typically participants in a memetic fad."
I think that's what I believe; summarizing this as "trans people are delusional" seems harsh and uncharitable to me, but I can see how someone might say that's exactly what it is. If you think now that the above is obviously wrong, I'm very interested in arguments/evidence.
In response to
October 2014 Media Thread
Nonfiction Books Thread
And Then I Thought I Was a Fish. After a bad LSD trip, a 20-something student can't sleep for two weeks, and as a result of the drug, the sleep deprivation, or both, he goes into psychosis. After a few months in this state, which include brief institutionalization which he ends by learning to fake recovery, he spontaneously wakes up sane one day. This is a first-hand account of the entire story, written 10 years after the fact. The author has very specific memories of what it felt like to be insane, which he's able to share convincingly. He tells us about his friends, roommates, crushes. He interviews people who interacted with him at the time and reports their impressions.
I couldn't put this book down. It's very well-written and utterly fascinating.
Meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games
Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games
We're going to have a meetup on Thursday, October 2nd at Google Israel's offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., Tel Aviv.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The time above might say 6pm or 7pm or 8pm depending on how daylight savings time is processed. The meetup is at 7pm Israel Local Time.
This time we're going to have a social meetup! We'll be socializing and playing games.
Specifically, we look forward to playing any cool board or card game anyone will bring. By all means bring your favorite game(s) with you and teach others or find people who already like that game. But it's also fine to come empty-handed. We always end up with enough games for everyone.
We'll start the meetup at 19:00, and we'll go on as much as we like to. Feel free to come a little bit later, as there is no agenda. (We've decided to start slightly earlier this time to give us more time and accommodate people with different schedules).
We'll meet at the 29th floor of the building. If you arrive and cant find your way around, call Anatoly, who is graciously hosting us, at 054-245-1060. Email at avorobey@gmail.com also works. See you there!
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Can anybody give me a good description of the term "metaphysical" or "metaphysics" in a way that is likely to stick in my head and be applicable to future contemplations and conversations? I have tried to read a few definitions and descriptions, but I've never been able to really grok any of them and even when I thought I had a working definition it slipped out of my head when I tried to use it later. Right now its default function in my brain is, when uttered, to raise a flag that signifies "I can't tell if this person is speaking at a level significantly above my comprehension or is just spouting bullshit, but either way I'm not likely to make sense of what they're saying" and therefore tends to just kind of kill the mental process that that was trying to follow what somebody was saying to me / what I was reading.
Given how often it comes up, and often from people I respect, I'm pretty sure that's not the correct behavior Figured it's worth asking here. In case it wasn't obvious, I have virtually no background in philosophy (though I've been looking to change that).
Metaphysics: what's out there? Epistemology: how do I learn about it? Ethics: what should I do with it?
Basically, think of any questions that are of the form "what's there in the world", "what is the world made of", and now take away actual science. What's left is metaphysics. "Is the world real or a figment of my imagination?", "is there such a thing as a soul?", "is there such a thing as the color blue, as opposed to objects that are blue or not blue?", "is there life after death?", "are there higher beings?", "can infinity exist?", etc. etc.
Note that "metaphysical" also tends to be used as a feel-good word, meaning something like "nobly philosophical, concerned with questions of a higher nature than the everyday and the mundane".