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Would you consider having Less Wrong members record the sequences or do you already have people you've promised to give the job to?
C. Yes.
B. Agreed that there's benefit to realizing we have bias, disagree that there's no benefit to declaring some biases aren't overcomeable. Trying to overcome biases takes effort. Wasted effort is bad. It's better to pursue mixed strategies that aim at instrumental rationality than to aim at the perfection described in the Rand quotation. Thoughts that seem complex or messy should not be something we shy away from, reality is complicated and our brains are imperfect.
A. I don't know how to describe how to do it, but I do it all the time. It's something humans have to fight against to avoid doing, as it's essentially automatic under normal conditions.
Trying to overcome biases takes effort. Wasted effort is bad. It's better to pursue mixed strategies that aim at instrumental rationality
I think you are assuming hyperbolic discounting/short time preference. It requires a lot of effort to overcome bias, perhaps years. But there are times when it is worth it.
than to aim at the perfection described in the Rand quotation
What perfection? Choosing philosophy? You can always update your philosophy.
If the bolded pair of words were struck, I'd agree completely. Different people will have different balls and chains.
This quote was from a speech given to West Point cadets. By no means are they identical but it would be relatively hard to find a group of people more identical (from the perspective of being of the same gender, same age (within a few years) same nationality, and same general ideology).
A. False dichotomy - there are other choices. We might choose to compartmentalize our rationality, for example.
B. False dichotomy in a different sense - we actually don't have access to this choice. No matter how hard we work, our brains are going to be biased and our philosophies are going to be sloppy. It's a question of making one's brain marginally more organized or less disorganized, not of jumping from insanity onto reason. I'm suspicious that working with the insanity and trying to guide its flow is a better strategy than trying to destroy it.
C. Although not having a philosophy leaves us open to bias, having a philosophy can sometimes expose us to bias even further. It's about comparative advantage. Agnosticism has wiggle room that sometimes can be a place for bias to hide, but conversely ideology without self-doubt often serves to crush the truth.
A. How would you implement that choice?
B. We is a loaded term, speak for yourself. There's benefit to realizing that as a human you have bias. There's no benefit to declaring that you can't overcome some of this bias.
C Wouldn't that depend on your philosophy?
Yes, but most of those people live in areas where $2 goes a long way.
The GDP statistics I cited were nominal. The $2 a day thing was not. They don't make $2 a day. The make enough to go as far as $2 would in the US.
Really? Do you think successful people don't have children? And that they don't try to make these children US citizens by 'immigrating' (often illegally) to the USA? I can assure you this happens frequently.
Only 13% of the US population is immigrants. 20% of the world's immigrant population is in the US, so it works out to about two million immigrants. Less than a thirtieth of a percent of the world population. I does not explain the discrepancy of income.
That's up for them to define, not for you to define.
It's not up for you to define either. It seems highly unlikely that living on a fifteenth of what the US would call poor is successful. There are certainly people who value living on next to nothing, but I don't think there are billions of them. It would take powerful evidence to show that they consider themselves more successful than a US citizen. How much evidence do you have of this?
This argument has gone far away from the original quote. I'm not going to argue about the details. If you want to try to disprove your ability to become successful by using your intelligence, go ahead.
It's very difficult to make economic comparisons between countries while simultaneously acknowledging all of the cultural differences between countries. You can do it, but the results aren't necessarily meaningful.
There are clearly other factors differentiating Somalia and the US. If there weren't, there would be massive starvation in Somalia because you can't get by on $145 a year in the US.
There's a couple of things going on there. One is that Somalia is in fact a very malnourished country. Another is that the GDP figures DanielLC cites are nominal, not based on purchasing power parity, and therefore can be skewed by exchange rates. The currencies of poor third-world nations tend to be very weak, so going by nominal GDP will end up making them look even poorer than they actually are.
PPP estimates for Somalia seem uncommon for some reason, but the CIA estimated a per-capita annual value of around $600 USD in 2010.
Thanks for the information. My point is that money is a poor predictor of happiness and success.
I think the world's top altruist is the person who desires the image of success the most.
Who cares? You just spent half this thread claiming that success is subjective. Bill Gates and James Harrison are going by their own ideas of altruistic success, not yours.
(For what it's worth, I personally do consider James Harrison successful at helping people. It explicitly was his goal, he made a pledge and everything.)
You just spent half this thread claiming that success is subjective
Really? I'm pretty sure I didn't. Success is hard to define, but that doesn't mean it's subjective.
Bill Gates and James Harrison are going by their own ideas of altruistic success, not yours.
Oh really? Can you read their minds? I've read about Bill Gates motivations and I didn't see the word altruism once. It's all good and well to claim Bill Gates is part of your movement but for all you know he's never heard of it.
Why don't you call Jesus an altruist? Or some other religious figure?
This is availability bias. There are clearly other factors differentiating Somalia and the US. If there weren't, there would be massive starvation in Somalia because you can't get by on $145 a year in the US.
There is, in fact, massive starvation in Somalia, price differences notwithstanding. The first sentence of the first link from a Google search for "malnutrition statistics somalia" says that "Somalia has some of the highest malnutrition rates in the world".
Malnutrition and Starvation are different things. It's much better to be malnourished than to starve. And it's much harder to feed people the optimal food than to just feed them some food...
But you're missing the point. There are successful people in Somalia, if you manage to not be malnourished in Somalia then you are successful (unless you value eating bad food for religious reasons...).
I think the world's top altruist is the person who desires the image of success the most.
Please tell us more about your inside information on the psychology of Bill and Melinda Gates.
what Ayn Rand meant when she used it
You do understand, don't you, that Ayn Rand did not invent the term "altruism"?
Please tell us more about your inside information on the psychology of Bill and Melinda Gates
I have none. Just an opinion that given my posts downvote counts suggests that I shouldn't share.
Ayn Rand did not invent the term "altruism"?
Neither did the Effective Altruism people. But Ayn Rand's books have sold a lot and are read by influential people, so I'll use her definition until I have a reason not to.
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Ayn Rand, in a letter to Nathaniel Branden