OC, in the immortal words of Paul Simon : "A Bayesian estimates the priors he wants to estimate "And disregards the rest... "Lih lih lih........."
By that time everyone knew it was time to leave, they had seen the lights repeatedly dimmed, but they were comfortable in the hall, and as long as no individual could be blamed for the antisocial act of staying, they would do so. Nevertheless their discomfort level was rising. Your action precipitated the decision, like seeding a supersaturated solution precipitates crystallisation. It's another example of an unstable group equilibrium just waiting to be disturbed, like the lonely dissenter in a group where the majority have private doubts. If the lights hadn't previously been repeatedly dimmed, the group might well not have followed you.
I've always wondered, since I was very small, why 'The Emperor's New Cloths' as commonly told doesn't include the scene where the Emperor has the Imperial Guard clear the street with a sabre charge.
'This may come as some surprise' to Asch & Aumann, but rationality is not the design point of the human brain (otherwise this blog would have no reason to exist), getting by in the real world is. And getting by in the real world involved, for our ancestors through tens of millenia, group belonging, hence group conformity. See J. Harris, 'No Two Alike', Chaps. 8 & 9 for a discussion which references the Asch work. This does not mean of course that group conformity was the only adaptation factor. Being right and being 'in' both had (and have...) fitness value, and it's pefectly natural that both tendencies exist, in tension.
There's a lot of confusion here. 1) Don't confuse respect for religion (unreasonable) with respect for people who have deep religious beliefs, however daft. In some abuse of religion I sense a lot of contempt for religious people. I try to fight my contemptuous side, knowing how strong it is. 2) Don't confuse 'the harm done by religion' with harm done by people, who would have done it anyway , who find in religion a convenient cloak. 3) This is not the place for a post on the human need for religion or the rag-bag of needs it subsumes (social, political, historical, personal identity definition, ethical, the love of the marvellous, transcendental etc.). However, I strongly suspect that some of those same needs might not be a million miles away from the motivations that attach people so strongly to the aims of a certain Institute..... Saul/Paul was not the first nor the last human to have radically changed his beliefs while maintaining the underlying personality structure which drove him to give himself so totally to the first set, then to the second. And to found his own personal religion, but that's another story.
It's illuminating to see this post next to the one on procrastination. I doubt Musashi would insist on delaying your sword stroke until you were absolutely sure you would cut at the same time as parry. His perfectionism concerns the initial state of mind, not the outcome. Raising the prior, in other words.
To the following phrase : "You can't hate someone while laughing at his foibles" I should of course have added that you may, however, get a sense of reclaiming the human high ground in what might otherwise be situational inferiority.
Scott Adams' jokes about pointy headed bosses are 'release of tension' jokes : the tension that arises from having to live with the species. You could call it, being constrained to live in absurdity. In that sense, some say they serve rather to avoid the phb becoming a hated enemy. You can't hate someone while laughing at his foibles. I guess that is the distinction, we're laughing at the phb's absurdity, not at his discomfiture. There is no such tension with a co-worker, hence no joke.
Robin, you're right, most people do think economics is a cult, even though there may be a small proportion of usefulness in the teachings... characteristics are, cult members cut off from contact with non-cult members (in this case by the ignorance of the non-cult members, of course), devotion to the cult leader (Keynes ! Friedman ! the Gourd! the Sandal!), proclamations of infallibility (the market is infallible), progressive alienation (this is a science, I can believe six impossible things before breakfast), and ending in total learned helplessness (for instance, when a team of six beauticians, or whoever it happens to be this week, outperform the nation's best fund managers yet again...). Only teasing, but I was just reading some very old threads and came across one where you professed surprised at relative levels of acceptance of announcements in economics and physics, and am still suffering from vertigo. Happy Christmas !
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Not sure why EY redefined the debate in terms of cultishness. Was anyone under the illusion they were being asked to pack their things for Guyana ?
Doubts about the objectives of the SI arise more from the seeming contradiction between the professed rationality of its members (Bayesian rationality, weighing the risks, putting all the 'Friendly' safeguards in place etc.) and the passion with which in their writings they seem to hail the Singularity and radical life extension like the Second Coming. Which leads one to fear a certain bias. Fear only, mind you. My slovenly and inadequate heuristics don't push me into a superhuman effort to get involved.
BTW, the very abuse of the term Bayesian, except humouristically, is in itself worrying. It's only a statistical method for Chrissake. Very useful in well defined scientific investigation, of no use at all in areas where the priors are (a) innumerable (b) inestimable, like, in all areas in the 'humanities'.
BBTW : The word 'Singularitarianism'. Any word ending in '-arianism' denotes a belief system, no ? So using that word does indicate that its users have gone beyond the domain of ideas and are in the domain of beliefs.