I think I fundamentally disagree with your premise. I concede, I have seen communities where this happened . . . but by and large, they have been the exception rather than the rule.

The fundamental standard I have seen in communities that survived such things, versus those that didn't fall under two broad patterns.

A) Communities that survived were those where politeness was expected - a minimal standard that dropping below simply meant people had no desire to be seen with you.

B) Communities where the cultural context was that of (And I've never quite worded this correctly in my own mind) acknowledging that you were, in effect, not at home but at a friendly party at a friends house, and had no desire to embarrass yourself or your host by getting drunk and passing out on the porch - {G}.

Either of these attitude seems to be very nearly sufficient to prevent the entire issue (and seem to hasten recovery even on the occasion when it fails), combined they (in my experience) act as a near invulnerable bulwark against party crashers.

Now exactly how these attitudes are nurtured and maintained, I have never quite explained to my own satisfaction - it's definitely an "I know it when I see it" phenomena, however unsatisfying that may be.

But given an expectation of politeness and a sense of being in a friendly venue, but one where there will be a group memory among people whose opinions have some meaning to you, the rest of this problem seems to be self-limiting.

Again, at least in my experience - {G}. Jonnan

This intuitively feels to me very similar to the questions I have about things like memory and the way people act when the situational context has been gamed to cause unethical behavior (see "The Lucifer Effect").

One wants to believe that one's personal memory is not only accurate, but indeed unbiased, but to what extent does the realization that it may not be actually help to mitigate the fact that it may not be? Does my awareness of things such as the Stanford Prison Experiment have any correlation with whether I will or will not be sucked into the group mindset under similar circumstances in reality?

Indeed, what would one do if the answer was "No"?

Jonnan

Fair enough, but I think making the distinction explicit is important, and that Eliezer's edited post is better for it.

Call me superstitious, but I prefer to avoid anything that might get the Laws of Thermodynamics angry. You don't wanna mess with those guys.

Are you saying it didn't work because it didn't curb your hunger or your desire for other, less healthy foods? Or it didn't work because you stuck to the diet of healthy foods and gained weight nonetheless? The latter seems hard to believe, though I suppose it's technically possible to accumulate an excess of calories via turkey and bananas...

What I find interesting is this matches, almost exactly, the 30 pounds I lost when I decided to consistently take a multi-vitamin with every meal on the theory that hunger was caused (at least at times) by vitamin deficiencies, and maybe making sure I was flush with vitamins would help.

Worked great for a month or so - I lost (and have kept off) 30 pounds (Unfortunately that means I'm down to 310). Then it just kinda stopped - I haven't gone back up (indeed there have been moments when it acted like it might start going back down again, but so far I'm stuck in fluctuation mode).

But what it to me interesting is this is the second occasion that happened - the first time was four years ago when I started buying flavored carbonated waters, and drinking those on a regular basis - not fatty at all, and flavored (both in opposition to, arguably, the vitamins), but virtually identical results (I did regain that weight, but only at an identical rate to my previous weight gain.).

Maybe I can switch them out?

Jonnan

You're right that the existence of Omega is information relevant to the existence of other omniscient beings, but in the least convenient world Omega tells you that it is not the Catholic version God, and you still need to decide if that being exists. (And you really do have to decide that specific question because eternal damnation is in the payoff matrix.)

Omniscience is almost a side issue.

Umm - who are these people that would rather donate their time than their money?

I guess, I have never been one of those people - unless someone needs work in my realm of expertise (in my case, tweaking computers to do what you want it to do, fairly cheaply, or training people to use them), I don't volunteer for very much at all.

I do love modern web banking - I can set my bank account to send $5 a month to my local NPR/PBS affiliate, 2nd week of the month, the Monday after my payday (So I can turn it off if I'm unexpectedly tight). The ACLU get it's $5 on the 4th Monday, and if I'm doing well the EFF gets a donation on week 3. It's been a bad year so I can't honestly remember what I had toggled up for week one - it's my weakest week financially (mortgage payment) so my lowest priority was there.

Giving money is great - let them hire who they need. If I show up at a soup kitchen, they needed a computer geek.

Jonnan

I think you're undervaluing the value of simple respect in the equation, as opposed to strict honesty. There is the potential for simply telling your boss - "I don't have the skill required to explain this in laymens terms yet, and you don't have the skill required to evaluate this as raw data yet, but we have a serious problem. Give me time to get someone smarter than me to either debunk this or verify it"

It has worked for me numerous times.

I guess I'm a bit tired of "God was unable to make the show today so the part of Omniscient being will be played by Omega" puzzles, even if in my mind Omega looks amusingly like the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Particularly in this case where Omega is being explicitly dishonest - Omega is claiming to be either be sufficiently omniscient to predict my actions, or insufficiently omniscient to predict the result of a 'fair' coin, except that the 'fair' coin is explicitly predetermined to always give the same result . . . except . . .

What's the point of using rationalism to think things through logically if you keep placing yourself into illogical philosophical worlds to test the logic?

Yes, to make it work, you may have to imagine yourself in an unreachable epistemic state. I don't see why this is a problem, though.