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Any good advice on how to become kinder? This can really be classified as two related goals, 1) How can I get more enjoyment out of alleviating others suffering and giving others happiness? 2) How can I reliably do 1 without negative emotions getting in my way (ex. staying calm and making small nudges to persuade people rather than getting angry and trying to change people's worldview rapidly)?
In response to
December 2013 Media Thread
Fanfiction Thread
Through the Well of Pirene. A pony fic. It doesn't have rationalist themes, nor a clever philosophical plot, but it has great characters, atmosphere, dialogue and everything else that makes up awesome writing.
Not very tempted, actually. In this hypothetical, since I'm not feeling empathy the murder wouldn't make me feel bad and I get money. But who says I have to decide based on how stuff makes me feel?
I might feel absolutely nothing for this stranger and still think "Having the money would be nice, but I guess that would lower net utility. I'll forego the money because utilitarianism says so." That's pretty much exactly what I think when donating to the AMF, and I don't see why a psychopath couldn't have that same thought.
I guess the question I'm getting at is, can you care about someone else and their utility function without feeling empathy for them? I think you can, and saying you can't just boils down to saying that ethics are determined by emotions.
I guess the question I'm getting at is, can you care about someone else and their utility function without feeling empathy for them? I think you can, and saying you can't just boils down to saying that ethics are determined by emotions.
I think that ethics, as it actually happens in human brains, are determined by emotions. What causes you to be an utilitarian?
Is there a good canonical source for all LW comments ever? I'm interested in importing the data into Python and playing around with ranking algorithms. (I'm not sure what disclaimer to use to keep others from not doing the same just because I publicly said that I'm interested in it, but yeah, feel free to duplicate work and come up with other interesting analyses)
How do you distinguish this from "If I can convince myself that the past version of said loved one would have considered this being as themselves, then I too can consider this being as them"?
You're missing the point. That's exactly what Ishaan is saying. We cannot make the distinction, therefore the answer to your question as it was phrased: "what makes me believe" is: "Nothing."
If that fails, but the so-called "resurrected" being BELIEVES it has all your first order desires and values, and BELIEVES it retains a few key memories, but this "you" is no longer there to verify that it does not, how is that different?
Here you're getting into questions about consciousness, and I don't believe we are at the level of understanding of it to be able to give a satisfactory answer. At the very least, I'd like a unified theory of everything before attempting to attack the consciousness question. The reason I'm saying this is because a lot of people seem to try to attack consciousness using quantum theory (Elezier included) but we don't even know if quantum theory is the fundamental theory of everything or just some approximation to a deeper theory.
Here you're getting into questions about consciousness, and I don't believe we are at the level of understanding of it to be able to give a satisfactory answer. At the very least, I'd like a unified theory of everything before attempting to attack the consciousness question.
An idea occurs, of an Extrapolated Philosophical Disposition. If I were to ask a djinni to resurrect a loved one, I'd tell it to do it in a way I would want if I knew and understood everything there is to know about physics, neuroscience, philosophy of consciousness, etc.
a lot of people seem to try to attack consciousness using quantum theory (Elezier included)
Huh. Where did that happen?
In response to
I notice that I am confused about Identity and Resurrection
"Umm... that... let me think. I suppose, that personal identity cannot be contained within the history of choices that have been made, because for every choice that has been made, if it was truly a 'choice' at all, it was also made the other way in some other tributary of the Great Tao."
I don't like that part at all. As far as I understand those things, just now almost all of your measure/amplitude/whatever went into the version of you that didn't spontaneously stand up and jump out of the window and the difference between that and what would happen in a completely deterministic universe (in which you also wouldn't have jumped) doesn't seem very important.
In fact, I think that the less determined your actions are, the less they are 'choices'. Not jumping out of the window because a quantum coin came up heads may be more 'free' in some sense but if its independent from your past mental states then it's not really something 'you' do.
In response to
Meetup: Somewhere you do not live even close to
I like your plan, but I think you'll have to write something first and demonstrate that it works well enough for it to be accepted. This place overfloweth with perfectionism.
In response to
Meetup: Somewhere you do not live even close to
I think the best solution to this is an option for meetup posts to recur automatically at some frequency. My crude hack for the Austin meetup keeps us on the map, on the sidebar, and out of the discussion section- this should be something everyone can do easily.
A solution which does not put meetups on the map and on the Nearest Meetups sidebar strikes me as a strongly suboptimal solution. It's not obvious to me that we need a third reddit for meetups.
Do you actually need to make a separate top-level post for the meetup to appear in the sidebar or on the map? I thought there was a separate mechanism for that.
The problem of attention could easily be solved. No need to have a seperate 'Meetup' section. Use the discussion section, but just have a single thread and put all the meetup areas together in the title. So that instead of the current way, which is:
Meetup : Frankfurt
Meetup : Moscow, Now 2 Sigma More Awesome
Meetup : November Meetup (Second of Two)
Meetup : Durham NC/Triangle Area Meetup: Productive Other-Optimization
Meetup : Meetup Bolder CO
We'd just have:
Meetups: Frankfurt, Moscow, Atlanta, Durham NC, Boulder CO
Then the details of each individual meetup could be written down in the comments. This way would probably get even more attention, because of the reduced clutter.
Isn't that kind of what the OP is proposing?
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Could you elaborate? I'm relatively familiar with and practice mindfulness meditation, but I've never heard of loving-kindness meditation.
This here Wikipedia page is a good summary.
It mostly boils down to simply concentrating on feeling nice towards everyone. There is some technical advice on how to turn the vague goal of 'feeling nice' to more concrete mental actions (through visualization, repeating specific phrases, focusing on positive qualities of people) and how to structure the practice by having a progression of people towards which you generate warm fuzzy feelings, of increasing level of difficulty (like starting with yourself and eventually moving on to someone you consider an enemy). Most of this can be found in the Wiki article or easily googled.