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Is it so irrational to not fear death?
Yes, it seems to be irrational, even if you talk about fear in particular and not preferring-to-avoid in general. (See also: Emotion, Reversal test.)
Since I can see literally nothing to fear in death - in nonexistence itself - I don't really understand why cryonics is seen by so many here as such an essentially "rational" choice. Isn't a calm acceptance of death's inevitability preferable to grasping at a probably empty hope of renewed life simply to mollify one's instinct for survival? I live and value my life, but since post-death I won't be around to feel one way or another about it, I really don't see why I should not seek to accept death rather than counter it. In its promise of "eternal" life, cryonics has the whiff of religion to me.
In response to
Abnormal Cryonics
Is it so irrational to not fear death?
Inventing new games isn't a bad idea, but there are already a bunch that would be worth promoting.
Eleusis, Zendo, Penultima, and Mao are all games of inductive reasoning. And a list of games with concealed rules, some of them suitable for this project, and some of them just silly.
Mao might be the best bet for getting started with a lot of kids-- it's already a popular game.
For that matter, Twenty Questions might be a good place to start.
There are some interesting claims of increased IQ at the WWF n Proof site-- I don't know how well founded they are, but the game implies the possibility of a similar game based on Bayesian logic.
Thanks for the list Nancy, I will check them out. BTW your Zendo link points to Eleusis.
Also, the karma system adds an additional barrier, at least in my mind. Knowing that your comment is going to be explicitly judged and your score added to a "permanent record" can be intimidating.
Whether we like it or not, that "intimidation" may be the single most important factor in keeping the level of discourse in the comments unusually high. Status games can be beneficial.
In response to
Attention Lurkers: Please say hi
Delurking from the woods of deepest Wisconsin. Doug Sharp here, old school game developer (ChipWits, King of Chicago http://channelzilch.com ), just finishing a novel about kickstarting the Singularity by stealing space shuttle Enterprise ( Hel's Bet http://helsbet.com ). Debugging the Human OS has been a longtime interest of mine, so I keep an eye on Less Wrong. As an ex-5th grade teacher, I'm interested in the possibility of translating ideas emerging from LW into teaching people how to think clearly.
Glad to hear more people are thinking about rationality in reference to school age kids. Catch their brains while they're young. While you're at it - why not develop a game that teaches them to think clearly? And ermm...Hi.
This is amongst the reasons I won't send my kids to school, and try to discourage anyone else from doing so.
Have you found ways for them to nevertheless socialize with their peers?
The problem may be as much a matter of age segregation in school as it is a lack of a ritualized, formal system for socializing young people.
Children of widely different ages playing together are a wonderful but increasingly rare sight. I strongly agree that age segregation within schools is a big part of the problem. But in a sense it's a subset of what I'm talking about on the scale of the whole culture. I'm not advocating a return rigid to social ritual or an overly formal system - say, the Masai cattle raid or even the Scouts. But something must be found to fill the gap. Groups and subgroups of teenagers are left to make do in a system that merely tries to keep them together, under control -- and obediently consuming junk. And the rest of us end up with a social system that mirrors High School instead of schools that reflect society as a whole.
In response to
Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks
Socialization is a social/cultural problem in a larger sense. The fact that nowadays most people learn their social skills in High School is bound to be problematic. Since we no longer have much of a ritualized, entrenched system for socializing our youth, they largely learn their social skills from other teenagers - the blind, gullible, hormonally confused and deeply irrational leading the blind etc. They go on to carry the resulting status games, irrational behaviour -- and scars -- into the rest of their lives and the whole of society. This explains much of our (barely) post adolescent culture and politics.
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Apply this argument to drug addiction: "I value not being an addict, but since post-addiction I will want to continue experiencing drugs, and I-who-doesn't-want-to-be-an-addict won't be around, I really don't see why I should stay away from becoming an addict". See the problem? Your preferences are about the whole world, with all of its past, present and future, including the time when you are dead. These preferences determine your current decisions; the preferences of future-you or of someone else are not what makes you make decisions at present.
I suppose I'd see your point if I believed that drug addiction was inevitable and knew that everyone in the history of everything had eventually become a drug addict. In short, I'm not sure the analogy is valid. Death is a special case, especially since "the time when you are dead" is from one's point of view not a "time" at all. It's something of an oxymoron. After death there IS no time - past present or future.