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Incidentally, do we have anybody about who can answer a very specific question about meditation practice? (And if you don't know exactly why I'm asking this question, instead of asking the question I want to ask, you shouldn't volunteer to try to answer.)
Got -1 on each post in this chain - downvoter, mind providing feedback? If I'm making some mistake here, I'd like to know.
If somebody downvotes an entire chain of content you've posted, you're probably expressing an idea they disagree with, rather than making a mistake. (Not always true, but usually.)
In response to
Who are your favorite "hidden rationalists"?
Highly recommend kazerad, for Scott-level insights about human behavior. Here's his analysis of 4chan's anonymous culture. Here's another insightful essay of his. And a post on memetics. And these aren't necessarily the best posts I've read by him, just the three I happened to find first.
By the way, I'm really averse to the label "hidden rationalists". It's like complimenting people by saying "secretly a member of our ingroup, but just doesn't know it yet". Which simultaneously presupposes the person would want to be a member of our ingroup, and also that all worthwhile people are secretly members of our ingroup and just don't know it yet.
Highly recommend kazerad, for Scott-level insights about human behavior. Here's his analysis of 4chan's anonymous culture. Here's another insightful essay of his. And a post on memetics. And these aren't necessarily the best posts I've read by him, just the three I happened to find first.
I gave him/her a shot.
After five or six pages of angry ranting about Gamergate, which was four or five pages too many, I quit. I have no dog in that fight, and I find the notion of arguing about specific people's specific lives as if they were culturally or socially significant to be a really misguided enterprise. It's tribal superstimulus, and it is both addictive and socially self-destructive.
You've encrypted a brain, and maybe salted it a bit to boot. You're still running the brain's "consciousness" program, it's just encrypted, and the brain is still experiencing exactly the same things, on account of it is running exactly the same program it would otherwise. The fact that the brain is cryptographically entangled with other data doesn't make the brain not exist.
In response to
Open Thread May 30 - June 5, 2016
Something I and my local group of conversational partners noticed (I don't have a better word for it) over the weekend: Greek philosophy was a matter of law; Theseus' Ship had tax consequences, and shifting conventions in philosophy had legal ramifications. Greek philosophy was argued in court; Sophists were lawyers who were paid to argue your case, and would argue any side whatsoever, as that was what they were paid to do. Socrates had to die, not because he was annoying important people (which he was), but because he insisted on a "pure" philosophy, and was causing all kinds of legal havoc.
It's an observation which probably isn't particularly unique, as all the clues are in just about every philosophy book I've ever read, but it's an interesting part of the history of the divergence between instrumental and epistemic rationality.
No, but suggesting I am "influenced by tribal motivations" while asking for evidence is. You're mixing an insult with a request for information; you've already decided I am wrong.
Given your own charge that other people are mindkilled it's interesting that you see that charge as an insult and not as a factual description. I didn't intent to insult, but to state a hypothesis. A hypothesis that I stated with the word "maybe" to mark uncertainty. Don't generalize from one example.
Stating a hypothesis does not mean I decided that believe a certain outcome. It just put forward a point about which I intent to communicate.
Fighting the hypothetical
The opposite of fighting the hypothetical is to avoid critical thinking and not challenge it's assumptions.
The problem with the hypothetical is that it ignores how beliefs in a society actually form. That's a process that's vital to the topic at hand. At a core it assumes that a society has beliefs about a war hold 50 years ago that have nothing to do with propaganda.
It's a point that I might made irrespectable of whether the story I'm reading favors a group that I support politically.
There are real criticisms to be made, and their absence is quite conspicuous given the strongly negative tone of the commentary.
What does "conspicuous" mean here? That you should treat people as being an enemy tribe? That's tribal thinking.
It's not thinking though the actual concent of the post.
Given your own charge that other people are mindkilled it's interesting that you see that charge as an insult and not as a factual description.
It is a claim of irrationality; yes, it should be taken as insulting.
I didn't intent to insult, but to state a hypothesis. A hypothesis that I stated with the word "maybe" to mark uncertainty. Don't generalize from one example.
I hypothesize you may be an idiot. (Do you see the issue?)
The opposite of fighting the hypothetical is to avoid critical thinking and not challenge it's assumptions.
Reversed stupidity isn't intelligence. Something can be poor rationality, and its opposite can be poor rationality as well.
The problem with the hypothetical is that it ignores how beliefs in a society actually form. That's a process that's vital to the topic at hand. At a core it assumes that a society has beliefs about a war hold 50 years ago that have nothing to do with propaganda.
No it doesn't. It makes it clear that there's motivated reasoning - and thus propaganda - going on on both sides of the equation.
What does "conspicuous" mean here? That you should treat people as being an enemy tribe? That's tribal thinking.
No. It means there are clear and obvious problems with the article that COULD have been criticized, but weren't, in favor of dumb tribal things to criticize.
Fighting the hypothetical, fighting the hypothetical, fighting the hypothetical, suspicion of hidden purpose
Real-world hypotheticals are often made with hidden purposes in mind. It may end up being a good idea to fight the hypothetical, when faced with the tactic of stating claims about real things as "hypotheticals" in order to get the audience to avoid questioning them.
Real-world hypotheticals are often made with hidden purposes in mind. It may end up being a good idea to fight the hypothetical, when faced with the tactic of stating claims about real things as "hypotheticals" in order to get the audience to avoid questioning them.
Simply: I disagree.
The incidental details are the point of the article [...] in-depth example [...]
It seems to me that the article could have done just fine with about half the quantity of incidental details. I am guessing that in fact you agree, given your description of it as "overextended".
it detracted from your understanding of the article.
What about it do you believe I failed to understand?
It seems to me that the article could have done just fine with about half the quantity of incidental details. I am guessing that in fact you agree, given your description of it as "overextended".
Quite, yes. I don't think it's a perfect article - indeed, my primary issue with the criticisms of it are that they are criticizing the wrong things.
What about it do you believe I failed to understand?
I have no idea. But you've indicated, if not in those exact words, you found it difficult to read.
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I answered a slightly different question. I don't think all ethics or moral systems do either or both of these things. My preferred ruleset (consequentialist personal regret-minimization) both prohibits and requires action, and in fact doesn't distinguish between the two.
I'd classify it loosely as Both; nothing requires an ethical system to distinguish between the two cases, but I think it's a substantial divide in the way people tend to think about ethics.
I'm starting to think "ethics" is an incoherent concept. I'm a strict-negative ethicist - yet I do have an internal concept of a preference hierarchy, in terms of what I want the world to look like, which probably looks a lot like what most people would think of as part of their ethics system. It's just... not part of my ethics. Yes, I'd prefer it if poor people in other countries didn't starve to death, but this isn't an ethical problem, and trying to include it in your ethics looks... confused, to me. How can your ethical status be determined by things outside your control? How can we say a selfish person living in utopia is a better person, ethically, than a selfish person living in a dystopia?
Which isn't to say I'm right. More than half the users apparently include positive ethics in their ethical systems.