Comment author: Darklight 22 January 2016 01:05:20AM -1 points [-]

Okay, so the responses so far seem less than impressed with these ideas, and it has been suggested that maybe this shouldn't be so public in the first place.

Do people think I should take down this post?

Comment author: Viliam 20 January 2016 09:26:10AM *  1 point [-]

I like this! But, you know, publishing it on the internet doesn't exactly make it secret. On the other hand, keeping secrets is difficult anyway, especially in large groups.

These gestures suppose that people already know (or at least suspect) that the other one is a part of their group. So perhaps there should also be some kind of "passive" sign; one that allows you to notice that a stranger in a crowd of strangers is likely a member of your group (and then you approach them and proceed with the gesture). Something like esperantists wearing a green star.

Comment author: Darklight 21 January 2016 09:02:25PM 0 points [-]

Another "passive" sign that might work could be the humble white chess knight piece. In this case, it symbolizes the concept of a white knight coming to help and save others, but also because it is chess, it implies a depth of strategic, rational thinking. So for instance, an Effective Altruist might leave a white chess knight piece on their desk, and anyone familiar with what it represents could strike up a conversation about it.

Comment author: Elo 20 January 2016 04:50:11AM 15 points [-]

I think this is a terrible and ridiculous idea. likely to create in-groups and out-groups and do more bad than good.

While you are willing to go down these paths have you considered sign-language representations? I am unfamiliar with them other than knowing they are there.

Comment author: Darklight 21 January 2016 08:29:47PM 0 points [-]

The in-group, out-group thing is a hazard I admit. Again, I'm not demanding this be accepted, but merely offering out the idea for feedback, and I appreciate the criticism.

I haven't had a chance to properly learn sign-language, so I don't know if there are appropriate representations, but I can look into this.

Comment author: Viliam 20 January 2016 09:26:10AM *  1 point [-]

I like this! But, you know, publishing it on the internet doesn't exactly make it secret. On the other hand, keeping secrets is difficult anyway, especially in large groups.

These gestures suppose that people already know (or at least suspect) that the other one is a part of their group. So perhaps there should also be some kind of "passive" sign; one that allows you to notice that a stranger in a crowd of strangers is likely a member of your group (and then you approach them and proceed with the gesture). Something like esperantists wearing a green star.

Comment author: Darklight 21 January 2016 08:28:08PM -1 points [-]

It's doubtful that if this were to gain that much traction (which it honestly doesn't look like it will) that the secret could be kept for particularly long anyway.

I'm not really sure what would make a good passive sign to indicate Effective Altruism. One assumes that things like the way we talk and show cooperative rational attitudes might be a reasonable giveaway for the more observant.

We could borrow the idea of colours, and wear something that is conspicuously, say, silver, because silver is representative of knights in shining armour or something like that, but I don't know if this wouldn't turn into a fad or trend rather than a serious signal.

Comment author: ChristianKl 20 January 2016 11:24:46AM 4 points [-]

Furthermore, historically, various organizations, ranging from secret societies to religions to militaries have sought to utilize very specific physical gestures as a way of communicating affiliation covertly or overtly for various purposes.

What makes you think that communicating affiliation is the primary goal of those gestures?

Comment author: Darklight 21 January 2016 08:22:42PM -1 points [-]

Well, there's obviously lots of possible uses for gestures like these. I'm only choosing to emphasize one that I think is reasonable to consider.

Comment author: Lumifer 20 January 2016 04:23:47AM 5 points [-]

Outstretch right hand towards the front or other person with palm raised upwards and fingers open and slightly curled.

I would interpret that as "Give me".

Comment author: Darklight 21 January 2016 08:21:30PM 0 points [-]

Mmm... I admit this is a possible way to interpret it... I'm not sure how to make it more obviously pro-cooperation than to maybe tilt the hand downward as well?

Comment author: gjm 20 January 2016 10:01:36AM 11 points [-]

I am trying, and failing, to think of any possible situation in which I would want to use one of these gestures.

If you don't know the person you're facing is another EA, the likely outcome is that you make a weird gesture and the other party is offended or confused, thinks you're creepy and weird, and avoids interacting with you in the future. Extra bonus points if they ask why you just did that weird thing, you explain it's an identity symbol for effective altruists, and now they think effective altruism is a sinister cult with weird hand gestures.

If you do know the person you're facing is another EA, why do you need a special gesture to identify you both as such?

Maybe it might be used in a situation other than one-to-one interaction like, er, that Nazi salute? But it's not like EA rallies are particularly common, and if they were you'd need this gesture to be known by everyone there, which ... doesn't seem likely to happen.

What other instances are there of this kind of gesture being used? You get them sometimes in secret societies like the Freemasons with their special handshakes, or maybe the early Christians supposedly scratching fish symbols in the dirt. But EA isn't a secret society nor (so far as I know) does it aspire to be one; effective altruists aren't persecuted and have no need to hide, and the available evidence suggests that openness about generous giving helps to encourage others to give more.

What am I missing? When would anyone use this and why? I think I need some concrete examples. The OP says things like "for various purposes" (what purposes?) and "to help us identify each other" (in what situations?) and "for the positive psychological effects" (of doing what, exactly?). I just don't get it.

Comment author: Darklight 21 January 2016 08:20:16PM -1 points [-]

Well, I was hoping that people could be creative in coming up with uses, but I suppose I can offer a few more ideas.

For instance, maybe in the business world, you might not want to be so overt about being an Effective Altruist because you fear your generosity being taken advantage of, so you might use a subtle variant of these gestures to signal to other Effective Altruists who you are, without giving it away to more egoistic types.

Alternatively, it could be used to display your affiliation in such a way that signals to people in, say, an audience during a speech or lecture, where you're coming from. Again, this can be overt, or covert depending on circumstances.

Furthermore, if this is a one on one "conversation", the response could be useful for telling you how overt or covert you should be in the environment. Say for instance, you display a subtle "Dark" gesture to someone you suspect to be an Effective Altruist in an environment that may otherwise be hostile to Effective Altruism (like say, a financial company). Depending on their response, you can gauge how open you should be in the future. They might for instance, give you a very covert sign in return, which may signal that the environment is hostile. Alternatively, they may signal back with the "Light" gesture, indicating that they themselves are able to be open in this environment safely.

While it is true that most of us want to be open as effective altruists, I suspect that there is a significant number of people who while sympathetic to our causes, are hesitant to openly affiliate for fear of being taken advantage of by free riders and egoists. These gestures would be most useful for those people.

Symbolic Gestures – Salutes For Effective Altruists To Identify Each Other

-5 Darklight 20 January 2016 12:40AM

A significant part of human communication is non-verbal.  Body language and gestures often have the capacity to convey and signal a great detail and wealth of information about a person.  Furthermore, historically, various organizations, ranging from secret societies to religions to militaries have sought to utilize very specific physical gestures as a way of communicating affiliation covertly or overtly for various purposes.

I would like to propose then that we within the Effective Altruist movement devise our own particular salute, to help us identify each other and also for the positive psychological effects that deliberate symbolism can entail.

Before I go on, I will emphasize here that I am aware of the potential for misuse that such methods can also cause, and that I am familiar with the very well-known failure state that was historical fascism’s “Roman salute”.  In fact, the particular choice of gesture I will be advocating is deliberately in opposition to that example.

My proposal consists of two gestures, one which I will refer to as the “Light” gesture, as it is open, transparent, and obvious in its symbolism.  The other I shall refer to as the “Dark” gesture, as it is more covert and plausibly deniable.

The Light gesture consists of:

  • Place left hand behind back.
  • Place right hand on forehead.
  • Move right hand to heart.
  • Outstretch right hand towards the front or other person with palm raised upwards and fingers open and slightly curled.

The Dark gesture consists of:

  • Place left hand behind back.
  • Outstretch right hand towards the front or other person with palm sideways, the fingers closed, and the thumb raised upwards.

Explanation of Symbolism

In both cases the left hand is placed behind the back.  This is, for those of you familiar with it, a reference to the Christian scripture of “When you give, do not let the left hand know what the right hand is doing.”  I know the majority of Effective Altruists are probably not religious, but I think that the symbolism of this reference from our cultural history remains a useful signal.

In the case of the Light gesture, placing the right hand on the forehand first before then placing it on the heart and then extending this in the universal gesture of giving/receiving/cooperation is indicative of “reason to compassion”, which I hope we can all agree sums up Effective Altruism quite nicely in a nutshell.

I need to emphasize again that the upward facing palm and open fingers are essential.  It is admittedly a more submissive gesture, but it is also the exact opposite of the “Roman salute” position, which was symbolically chosen by the fascists because it represented emotional power and dominance and superiority.  We are trying to be in essence, the opposite of that, to represent reason, equality, and compassion.  The upward direction of the palm also symbolizes that we have a higher ideal we aspire to.

The Dark gesture is less obvious.  It is for when you can’t be so open about your affiliation, for whatever reason.  Symbolically, the palm facing sideways and thumb upwards symbolize moral equality and having a higher purpose respectively.

Proper Responses

The proper response to the Light gesture is not as pop culture would assume, some kind of high five slap down.  Rather, the respectful symbolic response is to in turn, grasp the gesturer’s wrist and raise the gesturer’s hand up even further, which suggests a mutual understanding of Effective Altruism.

The proper response to the Dark gesture is not a handshake, as would be normally assumed, but to return the gesture identically if possible, or to make the handshake more of an equally measured clasp if there is a need to be covert about it.  If the situation is one that demands pretending not to be allies, then perhaps returning just a thumbs up without a handshake can appear as such to outsiders, while signifying that you got the message.

Obviously, none of this will fool careful observers and as rationalists, you should be avoiding the use of deception and championing truth as much as possible, but I leave the Dark gesture proposal as something to consider for particular circumstances.  Personally I would prefer that we publicly use the Light gesture proposal for most normal circumstances.

I’m curious what people think of these ideas.  Thank you for reading and considering!

Comments (39)
Comment author: Eitan_Zohar 13 July 2015 02:04:12AM *  -1 points [-]

For instance, with Dust Theory, you say that you gave it at most a 10% chance of being true, and it was paralyzing to you. This shouldn't be. First, you need to consider your priors and the evidence.

No, I rated the death outcome as having a 10% chance of being true. But now I rate it much lower.

How often in the past have you had the actual experience that Dust Theory suggests is possible and which you fear? What actual experiential evidence do you have to suggest that Dust Theory is true?

This:

It will be some kind of natural selection in dust world lines, which will result in more stable ones, and most likely I am already in such line. In this line dreaming is built such that it will not result in important shifts of reality. And it is true: dreaming is not unconsciousness state. I start to have dreams immediately than I fall asleep. So dreaming is built to be not interupting some level of consciousness.

Basically, the fact that we do it only a little bit accounts for our observations in ways that other cosmological theories can't.

For that matter, one of the common threads of your fears seems to be that "you" cease to exist and are replaced by a different "you" or that "you" die. But the truth is already the case that people are constantly changing. The "you" from 10 years ago will be made up of different atoms than the "you" 10 years from now by virtue of the fact that our cells are constantly dying and being replaced. The thoughts we have also change from moment to moment, and our brains adjust the strengths of the connections between neurons in order to learn, such that our past and future brains gradually diverge.

Er, you don't understand the problem. I was worried about my subjective self dying.

Comment author: Darklight 13 July 2015 05:26:50PM 1 point [-]

I guess I don't understand then? Care to explain what your "subjective self" actually is?

Comment author: Darklight 12 July 2015 07:28:42PM 11 points [-]

I think what you're doing is something that in psychology is called "Catastrophizing". In essence you're taking a mere unproven conjecture or possibility, exaggerating the negative severity of the implications, and then reacting emotionally as if this worst case scenario were true or significantly more likely than it actually is.

The proper protocol then is to re-familiarize yourself with Bayes Theorem (especially the concepts of evidence and priors), compartmentalize things according to their uncertainty, and try to step back and look at your actual beliefs and how they make you feel.

Rationality is more than just recognizing that something could be true, but also assigning appropriate degrees of belief to ideas that have a wide range of certainties and probability. What I am seeing repeatedly from your posts about the "dangers" of certain ideas, is that your assigning far too much fear to things which other people aren't.

To use an overused quote: "Fear is the mindkiller."

Try to look at the consequences of these ideas as dispassionately as possible. You cannot control everything that happens to you, but you can, to an extent, control your response to these circumstances.

For instance, with Dust Theory, you say that you gave it at most a 10% chance of being true, and it was paralyzing to you. This shouldn't be. First, you need to consider your priors and the evidence. How often in the past have you had the actual experience that Dust Theory suggests is possible and which you fear? What actual experiential evidence do you have to suggest that Dust Theory is true?

For that matter, one of the common threads of your fears seems to be that "you" cease to exist and are replaced by a different "you" or that "you" die. But the truth is already the case that people are constantly changing. The "you" from 10 years ago will be made up of different atoms than the "you" 10 years from now by virtue of the fact that our cells are constantly dying and being replaced. The thoughts we have also change from moment to moment, and our brains adjust the strengths of the connections between neurons in order to learn, such that our past and future brains gradually diverge.

The only thing that really connects our past, present, and future selves is causality, in the sense that our past selves lead to our future selves when you follow the arrow of time. Therefore, what you -think- is a big deal, really isn't.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't care about your future selves. In fact, in the same way that you should care about the experiences of all sentient beings because those experiences are real, you should care about the experiences of your future selves.

But don't worry so much about things that you cannot control, like whether or not you'll wake up tomorrow because of Dust Theory. I cannot see how worrying about this possibility will make it any more or less likely to occur. For all we know the sun could explode tomorrow. There is a non-zero possibility of that happening because we don't know everything. But the probability of that happening, given our past experience with the sun, is very very very low, and as such behaving as if it will happen is completely irrational. Act according to what is MOST likely to happen, and what is MOST likely true, given the information you have right now. Maximize the Expected Utility. Expected is the key word here. Don't make plans based on mere hopes or fears unless they are also expected. In statistics, expectation is commonly associated with the mean or average. Realistically, what will happen tomorrow will probably be a very average day.

That is being rational.

Hope that helps!

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