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Imagine that in the current discussion, we suddenly realize that we've been writing all that time not to find the truth, but to convince each other (which I think is actually the case). It would be one of those situations where someone like Kaj Sotala would say: "it seems you're deeply motivated in finding the truth, but you're only trying to make people think you have the truth (=convince them)". Then my point would be: unless you're cynical, convincing and finding the truth are exactly the same. If you're cynical, you just think short term and your truth won't last (people will soon realize you were wrong). If you're sincere, you think long term and your truth will last. I would even argue that the only proper definition of truth is: what convinces most people in the long run. Similarly, a proper definition of good (or "important to do") would be: what brings gratitude from most people in the long run.
I think that defocussing a bit and taking the outside view for a second might be clarifying, so let's not talk about what it is exactly that people do.
Kaj Sotala says that he has identified something which constitutes a major problem source, with exemplary problems a) - f), all very real problems like failing charities and people being unable to work from home. Then you come, and say "there is no problem here," that everything boils down to us just using the wrong definition of motivation (or something). But what's with the charities that can't find anyone to do their mucky jobs? What's with the people who could offer great service and/or reduce their working hours by working from home, if only they could get themselves to do it? Where does your argument solve these problems?
The reason I reacted to your post was not that I saw the exact flaw in your argument. The reason I answered is that I saw that your argument doesn't solve the problem at hand; in fact, it fails to even recognize it in the first place.
I think that you are probably overvaluing criticism. If so, you can increase the usefulness of your thoughts significantly if you stop yourself from paying much attention to flaws and try to identify the heart of the material first, and only apply criticism afterwards, and even then only if it's worth it.
I've seen this tried, for this stated purpose. My impression of the results was that it did not at all lead to careful, on-the-margins consequentialist thinking and doing. Instead, it led to a stressed out, strung out person trying desperately to avoid more pain/shame, while also feeling resentful at the world and themselves, expecting a lack of success from these attempts, and so acting more from local self-image gradients, or drama-seeking gradients, than from any motives attached to actual hope of accomplishing something non-immediate.
"Signaling motives" can be stuck on a scale, from "local, short-sighted, wire-heading-like attempts to preserve self-image, or to avoid immediate aversiveness or seek immediate reward" to "long-term strategic optimization to achieve recognition and power". It would be better to have Napoleon as an ally than to have a narcotics addict with a 10 minute time horizon as an ally, and it seems analogously better to help your own status-seeking parts mature into entities that are more like Napoleon and less like the drug addict, i.e. into entities that have strategy, hope, long-term plans, and an accurate model of the fact that e.g. rationalizations don't change the outside world.
tl;dr: Signalling is extremely important to you. Doing away with your ability to signal will leave you helplessly desperate to get it back.
I think that this is a point made not nearly often enough in rationalist circles: Signalling is important to humans, and you are not exempt just because you know that.
I deny that having a goal as a "strategic feature" is incompatible with being sincerly and deeply motivated. That's my point.
More precisely : either one is consciously seeking gratitude, then he/she is cynical, but I think this is rarely the case. Either seeking gratitude is only one aspect of a goal that is sincerly pursued (which means that one wants to deserve that gatiude for real). Then there is no problem, the motivation is there.
I deny that having a goal as a "strategic feature" is incompatible with being sincerly and deeply motivated. That's my point.
Then you don't talk about the same thing as Kaj Sotala. He talks about all the cases where it seems to you that you are deeply motivated, but the goal turns out to be, or gets turned into nothing beyond strategic self-deception. Your point may be valid, but it is about something else than what his post is about.
Of course, being apreciated for what you do is important because goals are mainly social features. Having a goal for oneself and only oneself is simply absurd: when you die it's all gone. Nobody wants to achieve something that he/she can't share with others because everyone knows that someone alone counts for nothing.
So there is no problem here. You always work for gratitude, but unless you are a very cynical person, you'll always want to deserve that gratitude for real, and that's the most important here.
This is either a very obvious rationalization, or you don't understand Kaj Sotalas point, or both.
The problem Kaj Sotala described is that people have lots of goals, and important ones too, simply as a strategic feature, and they are not deeply motivated to do something about them. This means that most of us who came together here because we think the world could really be better will with all likelihood not achieve much because we're not deeply motivated to do something about the big problems. Do you really think there's no problem at hand? Then that would mean you don't really care about the big problems.
There aren't enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world, not by a long shot. There aren't even enough nuclear weapons to constitute an existential risk in and off themselves, though they might still contribute strongly to the end of humanity.
EDIT: I reconsidered, and yes, there is a chance that a nuclear war and its aftereffects permanently cripples the potential of humanity (maybe by extinction), which makes it an existential risk. The point I want to make, which was more clearly made by Pfft in a child post, is that this is still something very different from what Luke's choice of words suggests.
How many people will die is of course somewhat speculative, but I think if the war itself killed 10%, that would be a lot. More links on the subject: The effects of a Global Thermonuclear War Nuclear Warfare 101, 102 and 103
One thing I've thought would be good to have is a program that takes math formulas and damages them, to produce plausible, similar-looking formulas but with terms missing or altered. This would be used to make a set of flash cards where you have to distinguish between real and damaged formulas.
I think that you shouldn't keep false formulas so as to not accidentally learn them. In general, this sounds like you could hit on memetically strong corruptions which could contaminate your knowledge.
Skill: negotiation - deliberately reaching a mutually beneficial trade or agreement, even in situations of slight power imbalance. Important for rationalists who aim at earning money as an instrumental goal.
(At the 5-second level a key component of this is learning to say "no", being able to overcome one's agreeableness as the default decision.)
(For some reason negotiation in situations of extreme power imbalance seems like it should have a different name, and I don't know what that should be.)
(For some reason negotiation in situations of extreme power imbalance seems like it should have a different name, and I don't know what that should be.)
Dominance or Authority spring to mind. In this video Steven Pinker argues that there are three basic relationship types, authority, reciprocity and communality, and negotiation in extreme power imbalance sounds like it uses the social rules for authority rather than reciprocity.
Previously discussed a fair amount on Less Wrong. I made a wiki article and linked some of the articles/comments.
Thank you for the link!
I think would fit well into the introduction. You (or rather Luke Grecki) could just split the "spacing effect" link into two.
This seems to be a useful technique, thanks for introducing it.
I have a bit of criticism concerining the article: It needs more introduction. Specifically, I would guess I'm not the only one who doesn't know what SR is in the first place; a few sentences of explanation would surely help.
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There's a grand tradition of women withholding sex for political reasons (usually to end a war), starting with Lysistrata. People resurrect this idea from time to time, and often achieve quite remarkable results.
As an aside: The interesting thing to remember about Lysistrata is that it's originally intended as humorous, as the idea that women could withhold sex, especially withhold it better than men, was hilarious at the time. Not because they weren't allowed, but because they were the horny sex back then.