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It would be great if you traveled all the way to Phoenix, Arizona. I would have definitely tried to meet up. In fact, this seems like a good time for me to say this. If there is anyone here from the state I mentioned, I would really love to have our own LW meet up. If you're interested, message me, and we'll try to work something out.
In response to
The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You
The AI tells me that I believe something with 100% certainty, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. I ask it to explain, and I get: "ksjdflasj7543897502ijweofjoishjfoiow02u5".
I don't know if I'd believe this, but it would definitely be the strangest and scariest thing to hear.
In response to
Rationality is Systematized Winning
Rationality is winning that doesn’t generate a surprise; randomly winning the lottery generates a surprise. A good measure of rationality is the amount of complexity involved in order to win, and the surprise generated by that win. If to win at a certain task requires that your method have many complex steps, and you win, non-surprisingly, then the method used was a very rational one.
In response to
Belief in Self-Deception
"And so humanity's token guardians of sanity (motto: "pooping your deranged little party since Epicurus") must now fight the active worship of self-deception - the worship of the supposed benefits of faith, in place of God."
- As I keep saying, helping people to overcome biases (such as the above) is a lot easier if there are psychologically viable places for people to jump to once they've overcome their bias.
You should have spent much more of your time in this debate convincing your tangled friend that, if she were to abandon her religious belief (or belief in belief, or whatever), she would still be able to feel good about herself and good about life; that life would still be a happy meaningful place to be.
Maybe she has a massive internal guilt complex and thinks of herself as a bad person, and she thinks that only religion can help her with this. Maybe she is frightened that atheism will lead to nihilism.
"You should have spent much more of your time in this debate convincing your tangled friend that, if she were to abandon her religious belief (or belief in belief, or whatever), she would still be able to feel good about herself and good about life; that life would still be a happy meaningful place to be."
I don't think Eliezer cared so much to correct someone's one wrong belief as much as he cared to correct the core that makes many such beliefs persist. Would he really have helped her if all his rational arguments failed, but his emotional one succeeded? My guess is that it wouldn't be a win for him or her.
In response to
That You'd Tell All Your Friends
How to Bind Yourself To Reality is the number one thing people should GET. But my guess is that this one might not be teachable.
In response to
The Most Frequently Useful Thing
Most frequent would have to go to my avoidance of settling with cached thoughts. I notice, revise, and completely discard conclusions much more regularly and effectively when I recognize the conclusion was generated as soon as a question was asked.
In response to
The Most Important Thing You Learned
The Wrong Question sequence was amazing. One of the very unintuitive sequences that greatly improved my categorization methods. Especially with the 'Disguised Queries' post.
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I'm shy at the best of times, and LW people are really smart. What if I had nothing remotely useful or interesting to say?
I once attended a transhuman meetup group with the same mentality years ago. Yet, by the second visit I ended up being one of the highest contributors. I know LWers are levels above the average tranhumanist, but I now know that I’ll be intimidated by no one but the luminaries.