I will attend this.

Compared to online posting, the advantage of meetups seems to be (1) less formality and (2) quicker transfer of ideas. I think this makes meetups particularly suitable for advice. I would be interested in trying some activity that promotes exchange of advice. Perhaps an activity where a person is encouraged to provide a personal problem that is in need of application of instrumental rationality, and then others try to generate a solution. Example problem classes: diet, akrasia, career, education, relationships, etc.

I'll almost certainly attend this.

Please reply to this comment if you intend to participate, and are willing and able to free up a few hours per week or fortnight to work through the suggested reading or exercises.

Please indicate where you live, if you would be willing to have some discussion IRL. My intent is to facilitate an online discussion here on LW but face-to-face would be a nice complement, in locations where enough participants live.

(You need not check in again here if you have already done so in the previous discussion thread, but you can do so if you want to add details such as your location.)

The important question is: are freethinkers brought up in our society more likely to go in the ‘right’ direction against the status quo? The example in the OP is only weak evidence for this, because its a lot easier to find moral actions ‘less evil than Nazis’ than ‘more evil than Nazis’.

This criticism would be valid if the study considered someone who neither opposed nor actively supported Nazi crimes as a 'rescuer'. But since the Uncommitted are filed as 'non-rescuers', the study does indeed single out the free-thinkers' tendency to go against the status quo.

Furthermore, the fact that the crimes of Nazism are considered among the most repugnant in history is only weakly relevant. As long as the society-encouraged activities are sufficiently offensive that in the lack of supporting propaganda they would be suffer universal condemnation, the more important trait is that the consequences for pursuing an unconventional morality were far harsher under the Nazi regime than in most other situations - and one had little personal gain to find there as well. This danger strongly ties anti-Nazi activity to a sense of personal moral duty.

But the idea is that without rational thinking skills, you have no way of knowing whether you're in a typical or atypical place to be obedient.

Hi!

I’ve been reading LW for about a year. Most of the rationalizations that came to mind for why I haven’t yet made the transition from lurker to poster boil down to social indifference or low conscientiousness.

Reading this topic made me think about why I hadn’t posted, and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I hadn’t thought about why I hadn’t posted. Looking more deliberately at potential foregone losses in utility to myself (and maybe the community) from my non-involvement, it seems like I should force myself to at least see if I don‘t get downvoted.