I don't wish to reveal that "more important value", because I think it would be very distracting
From this alone I expect that you have something to change your mind about. Don't avoid discussing it, or at least have a plan for developing new epistemic tools. :-)
In local terminology, "morality" refers to the meaningful kind of "eternal goals", and some notions of "eternal goals" are seen as confusion, so your original statement remain unclear.
I noted with satisfaction that I believe that following my "sacred beliefs" is in contradiction with following "animal urges" like enjoying myself or morality
Could you expound upon this?
Oh, it's just a fairly straightforward notion that considering my limited resources, I should pursue eternal goals rather than any personal interests, but that personal interests are constantly thwarting my effort to pursue eternal goals. Fairly standard akrasia stuff, I guess I could have made that more clear.
Whenever I read something on Less Wrong about how to change my mind, I feel guilty for not changing my mind.
Change your mind. Seriously. Identify the underlying beliefs that result in the guilt, assess whether they are rational or beneficial and then change them. Because they are neither. Guilt (usually) sucks as an ongoing motivator.
I don't think you quite understood my meaning. I can see why, though, as my post is not very clear. Edited it a little.
I don't really have anything significant to change my mind about, as I'm reasonably certain that my major beliefs are without error. I just feel a social pressure to change my mind because many of these posts on Changing Your Mind seem to decry having any level of certainty that your beliefs are rational and correct. I feel guilty that I have that certainty, which I think is justified, when I supposedly should not.
the only violations are "Better dead than Red" and the mention of a spouse and children.
I have to say, I was also a little puzzled that the idea being accepted here was communism. To give it a favorable interpretation, I just assume it's being used as an cultural idiom to convey the idea of preferring death to submission to an ideological opponent.
I actually meant that the use of the idiom (I'm confident that it's only an idiom) would bias people against "red" ideas. Mocking "red" ideas with this routine idiom might lead someone to more firmly entrench themselves in a belief that "red" ideas are perpetually and eternally wrong, and that as someone opposed to "red" ideas they are perpetually and eternally right. Very minor, but I felt compelled to mention it for the purpose of completeness.
in that it appeals to your emotions rather than making rational argument.
Appealing to emotions in a transparent fashion as a way of helping deal with problems that arise from the same emotional cluster doesn't seem to be dark arts. The solution to emotion creating irrationality is not to turn into a straw Vulcan.
Agreed, I was simply attempting to gain insight into drawde's perspective.
Whenever I read something on Less Wrong about how to change my mind, I feel guilty for not immediately changing my mind about everything I believe. This post especially. I've already examined my beliefs and concluded they are absolutely worthy, I've already taken all the advice on how to maintain rational beliefs, but the style of these posts makes me feel so guilty for being as committed as I am to what I am fairly sure are rational beliefs. Of course, I hope this comment doesn't lead anyone to believe that they don't need to relentlessly focus on changing their mind. Recognizing that it is hard and annoying to be constantly vigilant is not an excuse to not be.
On the other hand, it could be that I've just internalized the rhetoric and made myself immune to the Less Wrong style of belief-correction. Reading this post, for example, I noted with satisfaction that I believe that following my "sacred beliefs" is in contradiction with following "animal urges" like enjoying myself or morality. But even asceticism, radicalism can be a defense for some perniciously deep-seated wrong idea. The only genuine defense against irrationality is constant self-examination; the only genuinely problematic beliefs are those that bias or otherwise prevent one's self-examination.
Could you clarify what you are referring to? I didn't see any dark arts in this article, but I'd like to improve my ability to detect them.
Perhaps he is referring to the entire thing. The story-telling format might be considered dark arts, in that it appeals to your emotions rather than making rational argument.
Other than that it is remarkably neutral (and thus unlikely to be dark-arts-ish), the only violations that I see are "Better dead than Red" and the mention of a spouse and children.
Request for clarification - what exaclty is meant by "changing a policy"?
I'm not authoritative, but I suspect the meaning is "changing the method by which you implement your values", testing your instrumental rationality, kind of thing.
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By saying that in a community as insatiably curious as LW you now have dozens of people (including me) persistently wondering what the heck it could be.
:)