Comment author: Rubix 28 March 2016 10:09:05PM 11 points [-]

The contrast on the side-by-side options is way too low (clicking a dark blue text bubble turns it a slightly darker blue).

Surveiled!

Comment author: Rubix 07 January 2015 10:43:41PM *  2 points [-]

Personally: Overall positive experiences. I'm polyamorous by nature, and have never had a relationship that wasn't poly. In my friend circle (bay area rationalists) there's a fair bit of polyamory. It seems like there's more + happier relationships, as well as more + calmer breakups, when I compare to the current relationships of my acquaintances from high school.

Negative data point: someone I know tried polyamory for (I think) 10-25 years, had a lot of difficult life experiences some of which related to her relationships, and has lately skewed towards relationship anarchy but with one primary romantic partner.

Data point in favor of poly, but sad: I know a person who left a 10-year relationship last year due to (her own) cheating and has been cheerfully doing CNM since then.

Comment author: Rubix 24 October 2014 01:27:49AM 47 points [-]

Survey surveilled!

Comment author: Rubix 01 April 2014 04:41:40AM 0 points [-]

s/by seeing someone else stupidity/by seeing someone else's stupidity/

Comment author: Rubix 22 November 2013 05:28:10PM 35 points [-]

I took the survey.

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 19 February 2013 07:58:52PM *  3 points [-]

I was worried this would happen to me, so I started Beemindering my RTM tasks (and also pinning both an RTM tab and a Beeminder tab in Chrome). I have $5 riding on completing an average of 6 tasks a day. (You might object that this incentivizes me to break up my tasks into smaller tasks, which it totally does, and that is great.)

Comment author: Rubix 09 March 2013 07:19:44AM 5 points [-]

The top item in my to-do list reads: "If confused, make list! If confusion persists, make lists for lists!"

Point being, I think taskifying in order to avoid counting difficult, unpleasant tasks as one item is useful because it better mirrors reality. For (very ground-level) instance, eating enough meals in a day is hard for me to do consistently because "eat a meal" has a ton of steps: decide what to eat, find ingredients, assemble, and so on. So if I lie to myself and say it's only one step, I feel bad about being so stupid for having trouble with Just One Step, and subsequently don't do anything because I'm in an Ugh Field. If I acknowledge that if I am having trouble accomplishing something, that means it has multiple steps... well, I still do less than my fictional idealized self would do, but I still do more than otherwise.

I find that a lot of my friends have trouble grokking this because the rationalist/perfectionist ideacluster is heavily grouped. For some reason it's hard to think about what a perfect rational agent would do without, at least somewhat and unconsciously, comparing oneself to that agent.

Comment author: Rubix 02 February 2013 01:17:50AM 25 points [-]

"In any man who dies, there dies with him his first snow and kiss and fight. Not people die, but worlds die in them."

-Yevgeny Yevtushenko

In response to comment by Rubix on Morality is Awesome
Comment author: [deleted] 11 January 2013 09:06:23PM 4 points [-]

"Morality is awesome", as a statement, scans like "consent is sexy" to me.

It was secretly meant to be parsed the other way: "awesome is morality". Sorry to confuse.

It's not about signalling, it's supposed to be an entirely personal thing.

It's not about hacking your brain to find your current conception of morality more awesome either. It's about flushing out your current conception of morality and rebuilding it from intuition without interference from Deep Wisdom or philosophical cached thoughts.

In some cases of assessing ... one would sometimes have to lie ...in order to be a Perfectly Moral Good Individual who does not Like Evil Things.

I assume the capitals are about signaling "goodness". Sometimes one will have to lie about what is actually moral, in order to appear "moral". The awesomeness basis is orthogonal to this, except that it seems to make the difference between what is actually good and "morality" more explicit.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Morality is Awesome
Comment author: Rubix 11 January 2013 09:30:24PM *  2 points [-]

I assume the capitals are about signaling "goodness"

I use Meaningful Initial Caps to communicate tone, but recognize that it's nonstandard. Sorry for any confusion.

So as far as I can tell, you're saying that "awesomeness" is a good basis for noticing what one's brain currently considers moral, so it can then rebuild its definitions from there.

To extend the metaphor, "sexiness is (perceived by the intuitive parts of your brain, absent intervention from moralizing or abstract-cognition parts, as) consent" is a good thing to pay attention to, so you can know what that part of you actually cares about, which gives you new information that isn't simply from choosing a side on the "Sexiness is about evopsych and golden ratios and trading meat for sex!" versus "Sexiness is about communication and queer theory praxis and bucking stereotypes!" battle.

What I'm curious about is:

rebuilding it from intuition without interference from Deep Wisdom or philosophical cached thoughts.

What, then, do you rebuild your current conception of morality from? "Blowing up people, when I have vague evidence that they're mooks of the Forces of Evil, by the dozens, is a bad idea, even though it seems awesome" seems like a philosophical cached thought to me. Do you think it's something else?

Counterfactual terrorism - "but those mooks may not be mooks!" - isn't a good tool for discerning actual bad ideas.

If I respond to "Consent is sexy!" by saying "But some of my brain doesn't think that!", noticing what those brainbits actually think, then change those brainbits to find sexy what I think of as "consent", I'm not in a very different situation from the person who's cheering blindly for consent being sexy. I just believe my premise more on the ground level, which will blind me to ways in which my preconceived notions of consent might suck.

In other words, both my intuitive models of awesomeness and my explicit models of morality might be lame in many invisible ways. What then?

In response to Morality is Awesome
Comment author: Rubix 11 January 2013 08:46:18PM *  6 points [-]

"Morality is awesome", as a statement, scans like "consent is sexy" to me. Neither of these statements are true enough to be useful except as signalling or a personal goal ("I would like to find X thing I believe to be moral more awesome, so as to hack my brain to be more moral").

In some cases of assessing morality/awesomeness or consent/sexiness correlation, one would sometimes have to lie about their awesomeness/sexiness preferences, and ignore those preferences in order to be a Perfectly Moral Good Individual who does not Like Evil Things.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 11 January 2013 08:18:30PM 1 point [-]

I didn't, and still don't... but now I'm a little bit disturbed that I don't, and want to look a lot more closely at Hermione for ways she's awesome.

Comment author: Rubix 11 January 2013 08:32:37PM *  6 points [-]

Quirrell scans, to me, as more awesome along the "probably knows far more Secret Eldrich Lore than you" and "stereotype of a winner" axes, until I remember that Hermione is, canonically, also both of those things. (Eldrich Lore is something one can know, so she knows it. And she's more academically successful than anyone I've ever known in real life.)

So when I look more closely, the thing my brain is valuing is a script it follows where Hermione is both obviously unskillful about standard human things (feminism, kissing boys, Science Monogamy) and obviously cares about morality, to a degree that my brain thinks counts as weakness. When I pay attention, Quirrell is unskillful about tons of things as well, but he doesn't visibly acknowledge that he is/has been unskillful. He also may or may not care about ethics to a degree, but his Questionably Moral Snazzy Bad Guy archetype doesn't let him show this.

It does come around to Quirrell being more my stereotype of a winner, in a sense. Quirrell is more high-status than Hermione - when he does things that are cruel, wrong or stupid he hides it or recontextualizes it into something snazzy - but Hermione is more honorable than Quirrell. She confronts her mistakes and failings publicly, messily and head-on and grows as a person because of that. I think that's really awesome.

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