I know much less Chinese than you do. Having said that:

The Chinese version of "be" lets you apply a noun predicate to your subject, but not an adjectival predicate: you can use it to say "I am a student" or "I am an American" but not "I am tired" or "I am tall;" that is, it doesn't state the attributes of a noun but an equivalence between two nouns. To say "I am tall," you just say "I tall." All of the other meanings of "be" (the ones relevant to this problem are those related to the essence/existence question) are expressed with various other words in Chinese.

Sapir-Whorf-related question:

Although I've been an informal reader of philosophy for most of my life, only today did I connect some dots and notice that Chinese philosophers never occupied themselves with the question of Being, which has so obsessed Western philosophers. When I noticed this, my next thought was, "But of course; the Chinese language has no word for 'be.'" Wikipedia didn't provide any confirmation or disconfirmation of this hypothesis, but it does narrate how Muslim philosophers struggled when adapting Greek questions of Being into their own words.

Then I asked myself: Wait, did the Chinese never really address this subject? Let's see: Confucianism focused on practical philosophy, Taoism is rather poetry instead of proper ontology, and Buddhism did acknowledge questions about Being, but saw them as the wrong questions. I'm not sure about the pre-Confucian schools.

If it turns out to be the case that the main reason why Chinese philosophers never discussed Being is that Chinese has no word for "be," that would seem to me to be a very strong indication that Western philosophers have spent centuries asking the wrong questions, specifically by falling into the confusion mode of mistaking words for things, a confusion mode that I'm tempted to blame Aristotle for, but I need to reread some Aristotle before I can be sure of such an accusation.

Am I missing something here?

I bet if you phrase the question as "your brain is destroyed and recreated 5 minutes later", most people outside LW answer no. I guess this might be another instance of brain functions inactive vs lack of ability to have experiences.

Well, this is a stupid questions thread after all, so I might as well ask one that seems really stupid.

How can a person who promotes rationality have excess weight? Been bugging me for a while. Isn't it kinda the first thing you would want to apply your rationality to? If you have things to do that get you more utility, you can always pay diet specialist and just stick to the diet, because it seems to me that additional years to life will bring you more utility than any other activity you could spend that money on.

Cost-benefit analysis

I think Patri's whole post was pretty much this.

Conflicting with law

If you feel free speech is threatened, then you have bigger problems to worry about.

Inconvenience of disagreement

Only weak-willed people are afraid of disagreement. In a self-respecting community, you can say "you're wrong, here's 11 reasons why: [1] [2] [3]".

Dark knowledge

Unless you're running the simulation, I doubt you'd be the only one to know that. I'd actually advise you to tell about it so it will be properly dealt with.

Signaling: Seriously, would you discuss your affiliation to LW in a job interview?!

Terrible example, it has no relevance to a job interview.

Or tell your friends that you are afraid we live in a simulation? (If you don’t see my point, your rationality is totally off base, see the next point).

That's what friends are for.

LW user “Timtyler” commented before: “I also found myself wondering why people remained puzzled about the high observed levels of disagreement. It seems obvious to me that people are poor approximations of truth-seeking agents—and instead promote their own interests. If you understand that, then the existence of many real-world disagreements is explained: people disagree in order to manipulate the opinions and actions of others for their own benefit.”

Zero-sum.

WEIRD-M-LW: It is a known problem that articles on LW are going to be written by authors that are in the overwhelming majority western,[1] educated,[2] industrialized,[3] rich,[4] democratic,[5] and male.[6]

1. So? (what of being western is of importance?)
2. No fools in my garden. (Well-kept gardens die by pacifism)
3. Sorry folks, internet only. No "The LessWrong Times" available. (By no fault of our own)
4. By third-world comparisons, yes. Otherwise, I doubt it. Provide an example. (Or pledge 50% of your richness to GiveWell)
5. I've never seen a discussion about this, so no comment. (Mind linking to one?)
6. Men are far more interested in stuff like this. This is no category and in fact I doubt women won't be included should they want to. (If women are 'turned off' by the discussion here, and therefore choose not to participate, then they both don't have to, and the inverse would be true for me and probably a significant amount of men too)

The LW surveys show distinctly that there are most likely many further attributes in which the population on LW differs from the rest of the world.

Well, that's pretty much a given. That's not a bad thing, and if it's a good thing is debateable.

LW user “Jpet” argued in a comment very nicely: “But assuming that the other party is in fact totally rational is just silly. We know we're talking to other flawed human beings, and either or both of us might just be totally off base, even if we're hanging around on a rationality discussion board.”

In case the user is inactive: I have no idea what he meant. Not everyone is rational or being 100% effective or whatever. The last sentence feels like a LW-complete sanity test, and a very scary one by it's implications of the userbase being completely off-base with reality.

LW could certainly use more diversity.

I'm sure people would oppose more people like me. Leaving me aside, "diversity" seems like an ideal that I'm not sure what it actually implies. Let's add women, and people of colour, and some monkeys and jackdaws. That's just my silly recommendations though. What do you imply by "diversity" that LW is lacking, and why is it important to be included?

Personal anecdote: I was dumbfounded by the current discussion around LW T-shirts sporting slogans such as "Growing Mentally Stronger" which seemed to me intuitively highly counterproductive.

Me too. I think they're silly.

(Crocker's warning)

You mean trigger warning.

Genes, minds, hormones & personal history: (Even) rational agents are highly influenced by those factors.

Correct, but you still need to infinitely recurse.

Priorities

Agreed. I'd put other stuff on the list, but it would derail this post well past oblivion.

Other beliefs/goals

Then what is the point of the previously mentioned diversity? To me it looks like a contradiction and admittance that it's not a very utility-generating ideal.

Vanity: Considering the amount of self-help threads, nerdiness, and alike on LW, it may be suspected that some refrain from posting due to self-respect.

Yeah, the high school jock cliche won't like it. Can't disagree with you about the cheerleaders, though.

E.g. I do not want to signal myself that I belong to this tribe.

You've already made a point I agreed with on rationality T-shirts being silly, there's no reason to implement a mildly different form of it that accomplishes the same thing.

This may sound outlandish but then again, have a look at the Facebook groups of LW and other rationalists where people ask frequently how they can be more interesting, or how “they can train how to pause for two seconds before they speak to increase their charisma." Again, if this sounds perfectly fine to you, that may be bad news.

No, it's only bad news to you. People who recognize weak aspects of them and try to self-improve should be applauded. You are, as far as I am concerned, dragging humanity down. Now tell me where you keep those un-traceable rifles. (The examples are admittedly silly but they're mere examples)

(A note of importance to me is what they consider 'interesting', and why. Are they trying to appeal to a different group?)

Barriers to entry

Agreed, but on the other hand, those talking about that are probably fify books or so ahead of you. I don't participate in the AI department and don't plan to. On the other hand, there's plenty of topics where LW could theoretically help, but they appear less commonly and there's less people who can help with them.

There's also the issue of specialization: the more specialized a topic, the more you need to know about it. Highly specialized topics shouldn't be confused with a high entry barrier.

Nothing new under the sun

Too many places suffer from this to one degree or another, but unless the community bands together (LW wiki?) and makes those 'already posted' stuff easy to access so it won't be reposted.

Maybe a bunch of AI researchers can make something that goes through text and tells the user "this might have been already posted". And hopefully it won't destroy the world while it's at it, too.

Error

Once again, infinite recursion.

Protection of the group: Opinions though being important may not be discussed to protect the group or its image to outsiders.

Such as? You don't need to publicy discuss EVERYTHING, either.

See “is LW a *” and *’* **."

1. Unless a community has no merit, you can take the good stuff with you and leave the rest.
2. I heard that's bad for you and you shouldn't mention it. That correlates with the first one, amusingly enough.

This argument can also be brought forward much more subtle: an agent may, for example, hold the opinion that rationality concepts are information hazards by nature if they reduce the happiness of the otherwise blissfully unaware.

Live your life as you see fit.

However, said agent must first research happiness thoroughly before making such a statement. There's also individual reactions, but that's getting too precise for my calculations.

Topicality

That happens to everything, eventually. Overlaps with my aforementioned specialization.

This is a community-only thing, though. People can develop and have different experiences and the next best thing to do is what we can take from LW and how we can apply it in our life.

Russell’s antinomy: Is the contribution that states its futility ever expressed? Random example article title: “Writing articles on LW is useless because only nerds will read them."

Best thing I can say is: maybe people like it? Maybe they want to write something. Why not let them? So what if only nerds read it.

There's an insulting, "what-if" that assumes it's not only correct but also unquestionable and any deviation from it should be punished with a smack on your head in that title.

+Redundancy:

If we've become redundant on the topic of rationality, then it's time to stop milking the cow and start using it in our life. This is the real rationality test; the real freakin' deal.

Everything below that list is excellent and I don't regret taking a reading break for this just because of that.

Prepare yourself.

This may shock some of you, even by my standards.

Suspend your judgement for a moment to objectively consider the prospect of chemical castration.

There are health benefits, and growing numbers of voluntary eunuchs who don't do it because of prostate cancer or coercion.

I, for one, have felt compelled to chemically castrate for many years. I do not know if the feeling that my sexual urges are more trouble than they are worth is idiosyncratic or more widely shared, but too taboo to act upon. So, I'm opening up the question to the thread!

I have some reservations based on implementation. So, even if I do decide it would be a desirable course of action, the execution may be delayed until the evidence of safety becomes clearer or new techniques emerge.

My concerns specifically are:

• The ambiguous evidence on the reversibility of bone mineral density losses due to long term use of chemical castrates.
• De-masculanisation resulting in lower attractiveness (physical or behaviour) and therefore less social, political and career clout, esteem.

I would appreciate any evidence anyone can dig up on bone mineral density loss and chemical castrates, relating to long term use and reversibility. I'm struggling to find what I need. And, in the spirit of improving my research skills - if you can give me suggestions for how to do it myself (keywords for google scholar, for instance) that would be good as an alternative! It seems to be a very long and specific question so it's hard to get clarity!

I'll probably trial depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (antiandrogen associated with bone mineral loss for long term use) and trial Benperidol (antipsychotic that reduces sexual urges) instead of Androcur, since the latter has well known depression and withdrawal side effects. There seems to be a huge vacuum on internet information and research on the antipsychotic. But, it may be easier for me to get access too since I have other, ambiguously psychotic symptoms. Any info on that antipsychotic truly appreciated. Given that it's the most potent neuroleptic (tranquiliser), and I've been on other antipsychotics which were overwhelmingly neuroleptic (and thus I discontinued them), I most likely won't give it a try, actually.

edit: I'm considering this now in light of reflection on other libido reducing substances (antidepressants) that didn't feel very good. Sexual desirelessness felt and probably will feel undesirable in light of this, contrary to my earlier thoughts

Prepare yourself.

This may shock some of you, even by my standards.

Suspend your judgement for a moment to objectively consider the prospect of chemical castration.

There are health benefits, and growing numbers of voluntary eunuchs who don't do it because of prostate cancer or coercion.

I, for one, have felt compelled to chemically castrate for many years. I do not know if the feeling that my sexual urges are more trouble than they are worth is idiosyncratic or more widely shared, but too taboo to act upon. So, I'm opening up the question to the thread!

I have some reservations based on implementation. So, even if I do decide it would be a desirable course of action, the execution may be delayed until the evidence of safety becomes clearer or new techniques emerge.

My concerns specifically are:

• The ambiguous evidence on the reversibility of bone mineral density losses due to long term use of chemical castrates.
• De-masculanisation resulting in lower attractiveness (physical or behaviour) and therefore less social, political and career clout, esteem.

I would appreciate any evidence anyone can dig up on bone mineral density loss and chemical castrates, relating to long term use and reversibility. I'm struggling to find what I need. And, in the spirit of improving my research skills - if you can give me suggestions for how to do it myself (keywords for google scholar, for instance) that would be good as an alternative! It seems to be a very long and specific question so it's hard to get clarity!

I'll probably trial depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (antiandrogen associated with bone mineral loss for long term use) and trial Benperidol (antipsychotic that reduces sexual urges) instead of Androcur, since the latter has well known depression and withdrawal side effects. There seems to be a huge vacuum on internet information and research on the antipsychotic. But, it may be easier for me to get access too since I have other, ambiguously psychotic symptoms. Any info on that antipsychotic truly appreciated. Given that it's the most potent neuroleptic (tranquiliser), and I've been on other antipsychotics which were overwhelmingly neuroleptic (and thus I discontinued them), I most likely won't give it a try, actually.

edit: I'm considering this now in light of reflection on other libido reducing substances (antidepressants) that didn't feel very good. Sexual desirelessness felt and probably will feel undesirable in light of this, contrary to my earlier thoughts

More spam: someone called "lucy" is posting identical nonsense about vampires to multiple threads. Less obnoxious than denature123 yesterday, but still certainly spam.

(I've been assuming that, given that we have multiple moderators, it's better to post comments like this than to PM one or more individual moderators. I will be glad of correction from actual moderators if some other approach is better.)

Sorry, I forgot to reference. The quotes are from Wikipedia.

Also, qi = ki.

Everybody who reads LW and integrates what they read into their lives is an interesting person provided they can tell stories about it.

If someone asks you what you do with your free time and you tell him that you read LW with is a community about getting rid of biases and fallacies that isn't interesting.

If you tell him you read LW and there you learned to fix your sleep that's interesting. If you tell him how you now take Melatonin and have now much more energy in your life that's a conversation they can remember a year later, provided you tell the story well.

Applied rationality provides for experiences that make good stories, provided you are good at story telling. On the other hand I don't think my Salsa dancing provides for experiences that make good stories that will likely to be remembered a year down the road.

I went to that extreme that my life was interesting enough to have two reporters with a camera man coming along to film a talk I was given at the Chaos Computer Congress for a Quantified Self documentary and at the same time seeing that I'm not socially interesting and feel like I can't tell interesting things at the end of 2011.

Having "interesting to journalists" but not "interesting for standard social interaction" covered might be a personal extreme that isn't true for everybody in LW, but I think most people here are basically interesting and there issues with other people not finding them as interesting as they would like lies in an inability to communicate interesting stories.