I have to say, that goes a bit beyond what I intended. But that part where I communicate the experience is really important. I wonder if there's some way to make it a bit less darkish without losing the experiential communication?

One theme of OB and LW has been to take the fuzzy complexity of the real world and show that in principle at some level it's related to something precise. We can't actually do Bayesian math in our heads for real-world calculations, but just knowing how to work the ideal case protects us against certain real-world errors. Likewise, Eliezer's meta-ethics reduces morality down to some horrendously complex thing that we can never calculate, but it's nice to know that morality does reduce to something when we're wondering whether it exists at all, whether it's all relative, or so on.

The real positivists thought they could reduce all language to their positivism and spent thirty years trying. I don't think I'm going to do that in a few days of posting about stuff on a blog. But if I can sketch a few really-large-scale things and then let people's common sense fill in the blanks, that'll still be better than nothing.

This is a really good post. I particularly like the suggestion that we don't have to infer and cache conclusions about ourselves when we screw up and don't return a library book. (Of course, other people would be rational to cache a conclusion about us because thinking differently wouldn't be a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

This may be excessive nit-picking, I'm not sure; but I just don't think that your examples of the Connotation Game provide connotations as you define them. "demagogue" and "eloquent" have different denotations - it's not just the emotional aura of the words, their actual meanings are different. Ditto for "patriotic" and "jingoistic" and so forth. The point of the game is that the same person/act can be described by flattering, neutral and disparaging words, but even though the same behavior is described by different words, the meanings of the words are different. The game points out inherent subjectivity present in those meanings.

If you used e.g. "black", "colored" and "African-American", then it'd be about connotations. But that's not how the game is played.

More generally, I think you're trying to give the concept of a connotation a larger role than it's used to. Connotations are about differences in phrases like "ultra-rich", "stinking rich", and "independently wealthy". In the phrase about the ultra-rich you quote, it seems difficult to assign the subtext being carried to connotations, unless you want to use "connotation" in the sense of "subtext, any implied meaning". But I don't think those shoes will fit the word.

Subtexts are very important, and are used insidiously all the time. They're not always emotional; sometimes they exploit logical structure, as in the canonical example "Have you stopped beating your wife?" It's difficult to stand your ground against them, and forcing them into the open, demanding that they be made explicit, as you suggest, is a useful technique. Unfortunately, it usually won't work on someone who feels entitles to use a subtext against you - due to either intentional demagoguery or misguided self-righteousness, for instance.

One framework that seems to make a careful study of implied meanings is that of framing. I don't really know what they're doing with this and whether it's more than a useful metaphor. But, to repeat myself, I think that "connotations" might be too straight a jacket to use for the notion.

I do believe that anonymous fund raising removes information about community participation that is very valuable to potential donors. Part of making a donation is responding the signal that you are not the only one sending a check to a hopeless office somewhere.

The reason I specified anonymity was to reduce the likelihood of a social stigma attached to not donating. The idea of pressuring people into an otherwise voluntary gesture of support makes me very uncomfortable.

However, I may be overcautious on that aspect, and I defer to your greater experience with fundraising. Do you have any other empirical observations about response to fundraising efforts? You could consider submitting an article on the subject, either as it relates to instrumental rationality, or for the benefit of anyone else who might want to organize a rationality-related non-profit.

And of course, how can we forget Tennyson's Ulysses?

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

... -- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

EDIT: dang it, what is up with this lesswrong markdown? br tags don't work, and I need to add some non-quoted text between quoted fragments? And I thought normal markdown was messed up for ignoring newlines in quoted text!

I'm going to agree with the people saying that agreement often has little to no useful information content (the irony is acknowledged). Note, for instance, that content-free "Me too!" posts have been socially contraindicated on the internet since time immemorial, and content-free disagreement is also generally verboten. This also explains the conference example, I expect. Significantly, if this is actually the root of the issue, we don't want to fight it. Informational content is a good thing. However, we may need to find ways to counteract the negative effects.

Personally, having been somewhat aware of this phenomenon, when I've agreed with what someone said I sometimes try to contribute something positive; a possible elaboration on one of their points, a clarification of an off-hand example if it's something I know well, an attempt to extend their argument to other territory, &c.

In cases like the fundraising one, where the problem is more individual misperception of group trends, we probably want something like an anonymous poll--i.e., "Eliezer needs your help to fund his new organization to encourage artistic expression from rationalists. Would you donate money to this cause?", with a poll and a link to a donation page. I would expect you'd actually get a slightly higher percentage voting "yes" than actually donating, though I don't know if that would be a problem. You'd still get the same 90% negative responses, but people would also see that maybe 60% said they would donate.

American Rhetoric is an incredible site and there are some real gems that aspire to rational persuasion with some flair.

<http://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html>

Malcolm X's "Ballot or the Bullet" navigates the fact that he is black, widely regarded as dangerous and Muslim all at once while urging people to put these things aside and think about his plans and their outcomes. He does a first rate job of tailoring his rhetoric to increase your emotional desire to think and not react.

Milton Friedman is another person to watch live. He gets a bad rap from people who don't watch him, but if you have ever heard him speak, he excels at softly thinking through positions with the listener while still taking bold positions.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfdRpyfEmBE&feature=player_embedded>

They said it best in Howard Stern Private Parts:

"I want to hear what he'll say next."

Gladwell is probably the best for presenting fact and figures in speeches. You might not like his numbers or rigor, but his presentatoon methods are top notch, often focused on challenging his listeners beliefs with academic research:

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6204900041349106153&ei=YRTDSerTM4qIqwLbn9yuCw&q=Gladwell&hl=en>

"If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"

A good primer on chaos theory for youth?

"Rendezvous with Rama"

Why have a plot when gradual discovery with expository dialogue will do.

"Contact" -Sagan

More scientific method

"The Diamond Age" -Stephenson

This book even has long discussions of computing

"Sideways Stories from Wayside School"

Anything with jokes is going to be about logic at some point.

"Of Human Bondage" -Maugham

This book has a famous scene where the Phillip goes to Paris to study art; you get the impression that he isn't very good at painting and as time goes on he starts to recognize that his fellow students are not great painters either. After two years, he gradually builds up the courage to have one of his instructors look at all of his work and let him know whether or not he can achieve his goal of becoming great painter. After he receives a negative verdict he commits to a new life plan.

I think modernist poetry is invested in the belief that there is something special about excellent modernist poems; that is, their structure produces emotions or enlightenment not found in random series of words, and modernist poets deserve high status because they can create structures with this emotion or enlightenment.

A competing hypothesis is that the arrangement of words in modernist poetry has no particular value at all, and that people who claim it has value are only doing so to gain status within the modernist poet community.

I think the important part of the Malley experiment was that the two hoaxers created their poems from randomly chosen phrases taken by opening books to random pages. If there's no way to distinguish a random collection of words from a great modernist poem, then people who can create "great modernist poems" aren't special and don't deserve high status, and it supports the hypothesis that people who claim to have been moved by modernist poetry are faking it to look highbrow.

But in reference to your point, I remember reading Lovecraft's poem "Nathicana" and being very impressed by it. I was astonished to discover a few years later that he wrote it as a parody of people who stick too much emotion into their poetry. I was only slightly mollified to learn I wasn't the only person who liked it and that it was often held up as an example of how a deliberately bad poem can sometimes be pretty good.